What does a young family do on New Year's Eve...

We had a pizza party with the Gohean's tonight. The kids even had their own kid-safe bubbly. We were home with the boys in bed by 8. Brian and I are watching the Auburn game then going to bed...if I can even make it through the game. Happy New Year!

Annie totally posed when I pulled out the camera.

 How cute is this girl?

Evan's month late 18 month pictures

When Luc was 18 months old, it was the beginning of football season. We decided it would be a great idea to make his 18 month portraits football themed. The pictures turned out so cute. I wanted to do it for Evan too. I keep forgetting to take him in to get the portraits done so I took some at home today. They aren't professional but at least I got some done. And these are actually a month late...he is 19 months old now.

Here was Luc's 

Christmas morning

After the sad post about not going home for Christmas, I will say that it is so nice to wake up Christmas morning and relax. I love watching the boys excitement when they see presents under the tree. It's nice to be able to just sit with Brian and have coffee while the boys play. And we all can have a yummy Christmas breakfast together...this year it was a super easy Pintrest cinnamon roll recipe.

The boys got their very own suitcases...something Luc has been asking for for a while now.

They both loaded their suitcases up and pulled them around the house. They had a lot of fun riding around on them too.

Evan got a Lego four wheeler and motorcycle. They motorcycle went everywhere with him the first few days. I even found it in his bed one morning.

Luc got an Eiffel Tower to add to his GeoTrax.

Brian got some socks and boots

I was behind the camera but I got some awesome stuff too. My favorite thing may have been the huge container of Nutella that Santa left in my stocking. He knows me too well.

We had a lot of fun with these silly diapers this year.

As for the rest of Christmas day...

We went to late service at church. There were no kid classes so the boys went to service with us. We sang lots of Christmas carols. When we sang "The First Noel", Luc gave me the funniest look. I so wish I can had a camera. He thought it was so funny that we were singing a song about me.

After church, I began cooking. We had cornbread dressing, sweet potato casserole, ham, mashed potatoes, and salad (because I forgot to buy vegetables). We had some friends over. It was a very nice dinner. Thank you Jamie and Kelsea for hanging out with us on Christmas night!

Evan 18 months

I can't remember if I did an 18 month post or not. Anyway, here were his stats at his 18 month check-up:

Weight: 25 lb 2 oz; 35th percentile

Height: 33 in; 55th percentile

Head circumference: 49 3/4 cm; 90th percentile

Here were Luc's:

Weight: 25 lb 7 oz; 45th percentile

Height: 34 in; 90th percentile

Head circumference: 50 1/2 cm; 97th percentile

Evan is a handful at 18 months. He is very active. He tried to keep up with everything Luc says and does. He's pretty quick. He always runs away from us at the park. He climbs on everything. He hasn't climbed/fallen out of his bed yet though. His vocabulary is pretty large. He uses a variety of different words and is saying 4-5 word sentences. My favorite thing about this age is how he puts his sentences together. He has lots of words but doesn't know how to arrange them in a sentence. It's so cute.

 Here are some things he says at 19 months:

-"Mama, hold you me peez"("Mama, hold me please")

-"Daddy no go pay wif Emi" ("daddy is not going to play with Emi")

-"Papa John eat gum. Papa John no eat gum." (My dad had gum and told Evan that he couldn't have any. Evan talks about it all the time)

-"Daddy/Luc/Mama pooed" (when actually he did)

-"Daddy no take you go night night" ("I don't want daddy to take me to go night night")

-"No go night night"

-"Come Mama. Scary monsters dere. Wight on." (He says this almost every night when it gets dark and he wants to go in his room. "Come on Mama. Scary monsters are in there. Lights on.")

-"Bawee hot. It burn you" ("Very hot. It will burn me.")

Wally the Elf

Santa sent a cute mischievous little elf to our house this year to watch the boys and report back to him on their behavior. I didn't even know that Santa sends elves out until this year. Anyway, he arrived and was quite the troublemaker in our house. When he arrived, we read the book that came along with him which gave rules about the elf. One of the first things to do was to name him. Luc thought Wally was the perfect fit for him.

Luc thought Wally's drawing on the mirror was hilarious. He woke me up that morning giggling saying "Mama, you're going to be so mad when you see this mess."

 One morning Luc found himself and his mattress on the floor

 Wally got into food a couple of times

 He hung diapers and underwear on the tree

 He looked at old Christmas photos 

 He and our stuffed friends had a marshmallow fight in the boys room. Luc said he never even heard them. He and Evan had no complaints cleaning the mess up. Those marshmallows were gone in no time.

 He turned the water in the toilet blue

Other things Wally did that we don't have pictures of:

-rolled the Christmas tree with toilet paper

-built an awesome GeoTrax track around the Christmas tree

-filled the bathroom sinks with water and turned the water colors

-played with Luc's Lego sets

-colored some of the spaceship that MiMi and Granddaddy brought

-blocked the entry way to the living room with wrapping paper on Christmas morning

Santa sent a book with Wally that said that if you touch him, he will lose his magic. It also said that Santa will take him back to the North Pole with him on Christmas Eve. We figured that since Santa will take him, it would be okay to give a good-bye hug. Luc packed him a "to-go package" which included socks and a couple of toys. He is such a sweet little boy.

Luc loved having Wally in the house this year. He was so excited every morning to see what he had done. Almost every night Luc would say "what silly thing do you think Wally will do tonight?" He is already saying that he really misses Wally. We'll see what naughty things Wally does next year.

Christmas blues but a Happy Birthday

I have mixed feelings about traveling during Christmas. It has become much more difficult with the kids. Not only do we have to travel 800+ miles but we also have Christmas with both sides of our families which live 3 1/2 hours apart. We have a lot of fun at both. It is just exhausting to travel that much especially on Christmas day. And we have Santa to deal with now too. One the other hand, I get really sad when I can't be with everyone during Christmas. I really miss the silliness of dirty Santa games, my cousins that I don't get to see when I go home, the delicious food, having teenagers that want to chase my boys around, and late night card games. Anyway, we decided not to go home this year which has been pretty sad for me.

I am so happy that we have awesome friends to distract us from the sadness though. Since we were here, my friend Ashley invited us to have dinner with them. It was a lot of fun. Thank you Ashley and Zac for letting us come trash your house and for the delicious food and for making my birthday fun!

I took cookies for the kids to decorate for Santa.

 How else would you clean icing off the table?

 The babies decorated one cookie. I don't think Santa wanted it though.

 Following in their big brothers' footsteps (refer to the picture of "the castle" on facebook)

 And Brian made a delicious Coca-Cola cake for me. It's my all time favorite cake...maybe favorite dessert. Sorry for the unattractive picture. Ashley, Brian, and Zac warned me that I was making an ugly face. Oh well...here's the picture anyway. We all celebrated my one year anniversary of my 29th birthday.

On a side note, I have also been very sad/anxious about this birthday. I know it's stupid. I know it's better than never turning 30. Not long ago, I thought 30 years old was old. I guess I'm old now.

Christmas Eve

We let the boys open a couple of presents Christmas Eve so they wouldn't be so overwhelmed Christmas morning...and it was rainy so I wanted them to have their new rain boots.

Evan excited to open presents

 Evan was really excited to open presents this year but once he found one thing to play with, he was done.

 Luc has been asking for his "very own camera". He was surprised to actually see it. There have been lots of pictures of the floor, random pieces of toys, his stuffed animals, parts of us. He has had lots of fun with it.

 Evan got a much less cool camera.

A little taste of evenings in the McNeil house

Christmas with MiMi and Granddaddy

Brian's parents came to have Christmas with us the week before Christmas. They brought loads of presents. The boys got to open a present..or 3...every day they were here. We all had a lot of fun.

I don't have all the pictures since some are on their camera. I'll post those later. Our week involved lots of presents, a trip to IKEA, a REALLY fun Christmas light tour, and birthday dinner for me at the Salt Lick!

 Brian opening what he thought was a gag gift...he was certain that it was a picture of Nick Saban. It was an IPad. Wahoo!!! Thank you to everyone for getting it for us. We love it!

 The boys got this spaceship. It was really a perfect gift. They had a lot of fun in it for several days. They slowly ripped pieces off. Finally, we "flew" it to the recycle bin together. We had a lot of fun with it.

Look for awesome Christmas lights and more pictures from their trip in the future.

Carriage ride

A mall here in Austin has been giving free horse drawn carriage rides on the weekends in December. We met our friend Kim and her kids, Ryan and Molly the other evening for a ride. We thought we were getting there early but we ended up waiting for 2 hours. The kids had a lot of fun. They ran around and played together. We checked out the huge tree in from of Macy's. We had some hot chocolate and cake. They were also showing short movies on a wall of a building. It really didn't feel like we waited 2 hours.

Watching a movie

 Enjoying hot chocolate and a cookie...FYI I love this picture

 This one in hilarious too

 I love these kids. Luc looks a bit out of place with all these blonde babies.

 Here's a good Christmas picture!

 Silly kids

 Waiting...

 Movie date?

 Brian won over these two with piggy back rides while we were waiting. They both wanted to sit with him after that.

 I'm so glad I have this friend in Austin!

 Luc loved the ride