Our Book of Faces: Holidaze

I have continued to put off blogging about holidays because I knew it would take awhile....and here we are 6 months after Thanksgiving and I haven't blogged about any of them. Whoops, feel free to skim through information that is a half-year old.

For Thanksgiving we spent the holiday with Grandma and Grandpa Rambeck and Uncle Scotty. They have moved into a new home which was fun to see and very homey and welcoming for Archer's first holidays. And most importantly, all of Daddy and Uncle Scotty's key vintage toys made the move and it was Lego and Ninja Turtle paradise. And as tradition dictates, we laughed and reminisced about Simon's first Thanksgiving when he thought lefse was a tortilla.

Over the weekend we spent some time with Grandma and Grandpa Alberg and Aunts, Uncles and Cousins. We went to the Excelsior holiday festival again. We were not able to ride the trolley this year but we did see the reindeer and were able to sit in the sleigh.

After the Thanksgiving weekend we busted out our Christmas decorations. Simon waits forever and ever to get it out so we have come to an agreement that Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend is our time. And literally at daybreak Sunday it. must. happen. We have a pathetic fake Christmas tree from back when I didn't care about decorating for the holidays and Simon is totally disgusted by it. We agreed that next year we'll get a real tree.

Archer insisting on hanging his own stocking

How that turned out

And it stayed that way

We have a Christmas extravaganza between family, friend and work parties. Simon has caught on and knows just want to look forward to. Steve's company has an annual party with the amazing Santa who I cried to last year (oh yeah that fun was documented in last year's holiday post). So it was fun (and a little embarrassing) to see him again and have Archer with us. Last week we stopped by Steve's office and when we walked up the stairs and started heading towards some offices Archer says, "Where Santa go?!" I'm pretty sure that was the last time we were there. So anyhow, he was excited to see him and happily went up to him, but had a few moments of uncertainty during picture taking.

Then comes our neighborhood party. We have an annual breakfast/pj/cookie decorating fest.

The kid crew

The parent crew (as captured by Simon)

We try to do a little holiday celebration with just the 4 of us, but with everything we do it tends to be a minor moment. We went to a game place this year which proved to be way more fun than I thought.

After that, we take off for the big family Christmas get-togethers. Christmas Eve and Grandma and Grandpa Albergs.

Christmas Day we Celebrated with the Rambeck's.

Steve and I took advantage of daycare during the Christmas break and took in an afternoon bowling date (that ended when we got a call that Archer had a fever)

Then to cap off the year we celebrated New Year's with an early neighborhood celebration.

We went home and celebrated New Year's a little more with Uncle Scotty.

2015 was good to us, but we left it looking forward to our first complete year with Archer. Hellooooooooo 2016. Here are a few outtakes from our 2015 holiday season.