Christmas Morning!

Matt woke us all up bright and early at 6:30 because he was so excited for Christmas.  It just makes me laugh because usually it's me that wants to get up early.

 

Here is the Christmas tree after Santa visited our house.  When Caden got up I asked him "Did Santa come last night?"  He saw the presents and got really excited and said "I think he did!  I think he did come!"  It was really cute. 

Checking out his stocking. 

 Opening the first present.

Every time that we go to Target Caden has to wear one of these masks around the store, so Santa brought him one for Christmas. 

Helping Matt open his present. 

Caden got a little play house for his big present.  He was super excited when he saw it.  Yesterday he had to eat lunch in there. :)



Duke Loves the Christmas Tree!

Every time that I turned on the lights on the Christmas tree, Duke ran over and laid underneath the tree.  He was really sad when we took it down the day after Christmas.

Playing Basketball

Matt and Caden had fun playing basketball with Caden's new basketball hoop! 

 

Christmas with Mike and Beth

We celebrated Christmas with Matt's dad and Beth yesterday.  The kids were super excited to open presents.  

 

Passing out the gifts. 

 Caden was excited for his Spider man Lego set.  It cracks me up how he holds it right in front of his face.

 



 Caden  opening his new big boy basketball hoop.  Matt and Caden are both really excited to play with this!

 



Mike with all of the grandkids.

Dirt Bike

Every time that we go to Costco Caden admires this dirt bike that they have on display.  Well he was quite happy when my dad put him up there to sit on it. (He is wearing pajamas because it was pajama day at school, and we had come straight from there.)  My dad said that this is what he wants for Christmas.  Ha maybe in like 20 years.

The Polar Express!

The Polar Express is a train ride on the Grand Canyon Railway that is based on the book and the movie The Polar Express.  Caden loves trains, so we knew that he would be super excited to ride the train!

 

 We got there a few hours early because it said online that there were some things to do at the train station plus we wanted to make sure that we didn't have any issues with traffic or weather since it's a 40 minute drive from Flagstaff.  Well we were there early enough to see the train ride before ours leave.  Caden couldn't wait for it to blow the whistle and "start to chug" as he put it.

 



It turned out that there wasn't really much to do, and it was freezing cold outside.  The train depot is right next to the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel, and we spent most of the time enjoying the fire in the hotel lobby. 

They did have some fun Christmas decorations outside. 

When we finally got on the train Caden was so happy!  He loved watching out the window.  After the train started going we were served chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate.  My only complaint really about the whole thing is that the hot chocolate was awful.  It tasted like water.  In the book it is described as rich as a melted chocolate bar, and it really did not come even close to that! 

The conductor read the book The Polar Express over the loudspeaker while the Chefs came around and showed the kids the pictures in the book. 

Then we made it to the North Pole!  The kids could look out the window and see the North Pole which was a little town all lit up and looked like a magical place especially because of all of the snow.  There was also a sleigh with reindeer, and they waved to Santa Claus out of the window.  Well the train stopped to go back the other way.  The kids all wanted to wave at Santa again, but when we passed his sleigh he wasn't there.  The chef called the conductor to find out where Santa was, and it turned out that he got on the train!  Caden was so excited waiting for Santa to get to our car, and everyone sang Christmas songs while we were waiting.

Finally Santa got to our car, and gave everyone a bell just like in the movie.  Caden was a little nervous of Santa as you can see from his expression in the picture.    Overall we had so much fun.  It was a really special trip, and we could definitely feel the magic of the holiday season!

The Hotel

Caden loves staying in hotels.  That is pretty much all that he talked about the whole day before.  When we finally made it to the hotel he was really pleased to have his own bed that pulled out of the couch, and he didn't want to leave.  The whole time that we were sledding he kept saying, "Let's go back to the hotel." For our next vacation we can probably just book a hotel down the street, and Caden would love it.  He is too funny sometimes.



 

Snow!

On Monday morning we headed up to Flagstaff because we were going to go on the Polar Express, in Williams, on  Monday night!  We were super excited to hear that it had snowed over the weekend too!

 

I actually fell asleep on the way there, and when I woke up this is what I saw.  I knew it had snowed, but there was so much snow! 

We brought our sleds along, and we finally found a good spot for sledding.  Caden was not too happy with the cold when we got out of the car.  (The temp was in the low to mid 30's for the whole day.) 

I have to admit that I was a little nervous going down the hill the first time, but it was so fun! 

It took a little convincing to get Caden to go on the sled, and he only went down one time.  We couldn't convince him to go down the big hill a second time.  He would scream and freak out if we tried to put him on the sled.

Eventually he agreed to go down this little teeny hill by himself.  Maybe we should started small and worked our way up.  Oh well, maybe he'll like it next year.

Bonfire

On Friday night we made a fire in our fire pit and roasted marshmallows and made smores.  I think that either my dad thought that we were at the dunes or he wanted to burn down our house because he made the fire pretty big. 



 

Early Merry Christmas!

 We celebrated Christmas with the LeSueur's on Thursday.  My mom made a yummy feast of Mexican food (flautas and bean dip).  We also had a visit from Santa Claus (aka Mikey).  Santa Claus was hilarious and insisted on having his picture taken with everyone.  Caden was a little nervous, but warmed up to him pretty fast.

 Caden and Santa

 



 Caden, Madelyn, Max, and Santa

Mom and Santa

 

Grandma Shobe and Santa

 

The LeSueurs opened their Christmas presents, and Grandma Shobe was nice to bring Caden his too so he didn't feel left out.