Merry Christmas Day

My Christmas sure did Rock this year (as you can see below, literally)! I got to celebrate Christmas Day at my Oma & Opa's house with Bryan, Sarah, & Greta, Kathryn & Matthias, and Old Papa. We ate, drank, napped, and played, over and over again :)

Had to wear my new Elmo slippers all day long, thanks Greta, you know just what I like!

What a great Old Papa I have, getting on the floor to play with me!

Presents.....lots and lots of nice presents :)

A new trike, can't wait til' my feet can reach the pedals.

So.....last year I wanted to get a picture of our gingerbread family (courtesy of Sarah & Greta again, thank you very much ladies, delicious) and unfortunately Phil had eaten his cookie too fast for me to get a picture. Well.....guess what happened again this year?

Since Henry is the baby in the Krump family (by 9 days), he was the one to place baby Jesus in the nativity scene. Well done Henry, that's a lot of pressure :)

Once again, a very beautiful day outside. Once again, Henry loved to push Greta in whatever he could push her in.

Clark Griswold who? Check out this house in our neighborhood :) I love it!

Merry Christmas to all.....and to all a good night!

Merry Christmas Eve

I celebrated Christmas with my Grandma & Grandpa Olin and my Auntie Sonja today, and boy was I ever busy!

I had to keep track of where Santa was all day, thank you Norad for keeping tabs on the big man for me.

I was hard at it, you know, using tools to put things together, like my new table and chairs from my G & G.

I got pretty good at opening presents. I'm really good at throwing all the paper in the garbage too :)

I read all my new books!

More presents?? My 2 favs.....a guitar AND Elmo!

I started a posse of running-toddlers at church. There had to have been 20 different toddlers around my age in the hallway at some point. We ran up and down and up and down and up and down the hall again, and boy was it fun!

Merry Christmas Eve, gotta get to bed now!

My last check on Santa Claus before going to bed.....I wonder when he'll get here?

Minnesota Children's Museum

Henry became a member of the Children's Museum today, so now he'll be dragging us there all next year :) What a neat place! We spent about 2 hours there this morning and probably didn't even see half of the exhibits they have to offer.

Here was the "Habitot" room, especially for kiddos his age, just perfect for him.

He caught a big one!

Surprisingly, Henry had a blast climbing up the net wall.....

.....or climbing up anything for that matter.

One of the many views of downtown St. Paul.

A 5-second rest break.

My little gear head :)

I think we'll be frequenting the museum on these cold winter days ahead!

18 months

So, this boy just cracks me up more and more everyday! Apparently when I was at work this past weekend, Phil taught Henry how to do sit-ups and push-ups. It's hilarious, he really gets into it, grunting and everything :)

Push-ups

Sit-ups (or something like it)

Today, Henry had his 18 months doctors appointment. Here are his stats.....

Height: 33 1/2 in

Weight: 24 lbs

Head Size: 18 1/2 in

Dr. Sakkal said he was around the 90th %ile for height and 50th %ile for weight.

Oh Henry, can you even believe you're already 18 months old? I know I can't! Here's a little bit of what you're up to these days.....

You're charged up and ready to go in the morning, after sleeping 12 hours, usually from about 6:30pm to 6:30am. You still can't give up your morning nap most days, though some days you can get by on one nap. Your favorite foods are any/every kind of fruit, turkey and ham, cheese, baked beans, cheesy crackers, pretzels, and milk (and lots of it, please). Mama drags you along to run errands and you're quite a good sport about it, helping me find things and waving to everybody at the store; you're so kind to people and I appreciate that very much. You love running and climbing.....on everything!

You love reading books. You must have gone through 50 of them here, all by yourself :)

Along with books, you've been quite the fan of toy catalogs lately, with it being Christmas time and all - you love to find all the Elmo's and guitars in the catalogs. Your favorite character right now is Elmo, not really sure how this started but you LOVE Elmo and you don't even really know yet that Elmo exists on television too. You're so helpful around the house, you love helping me vacuum, fold the laundry, and put the groceries away. You love playing with trucks, reading about trucks, and watching the trucks go by. You will sit and color for a short period of time now! I can understand many of your words including mama, dada, help, up, milk, puppy, right there, cheese, please, more, car, bus, tractor, and I'm sure there are others I'm missing. There's never a dull moment around here with you, you love to keep busy :)

I love you so much, wild man!

My first graham cracker (gingerbread) house

I frosted together Henry's first gingerbread house with graham crackers one night this week, and let it set overnight. I figured it needed to be as solid as possible for him to decorate the next day, and I certainly was right when the first thing he did when I put it in front of him was attempt to rip the roof off!

For somebody who doesn't like sweets, he had no problem tasting/licking/biting every piece of candy before he put it on his house. Here you can see he was a big fan of decorating the lawn around his house!

The boy loves saying Cheese :)

I had 4 items for Henry to decorate his house with: Dots, M&Ms, marshmallows, and pretzels. As you can see here, he was not a fan of me making a door out of pretzels (his favorite snack by far right now), what a waste, he'd much rather eat them!

long hair.....no more

The before.....

.....the during.....

.....the after!

Someone is lookin' sharp for Christmas :)

Playing outside in December???

This grass-sledding stuff really isn't all it's cracked up to be.....I'm not even moving!

I guess I'll just have to settle for sprinting up and down the hill, leaving my sled behind.

Oh wait, I can give my snacks a ride, making sure they're strapped in first of course :)

You mean I can't bring the sled inside, why not?

MIA family day

We headed out to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for family day yesterday. The theme for this month's family day was "Dress to Impress" therefore Henry put his cuffed sweatpants away for the day, and busted out a sweater :)

Henry's favorite exhibit, the big white dog at the entrance. As we went through the museum, he kept pointing towards the stairwell to go back downstairs and saying "papa, papa" (puppy).

One of the kids' activities for the day was making paper doll chains.

Working so hard coloring his with markers, occasionally marking up his face as well :)

And for the big reveal.....

.....ta-da!

Goodbye art, thanks for a fun afternoon!

Elf Yourself

Thanks to Kathryn for Elfing us this Christmas season! Check it out.....

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/KJgdYpti3z9TVma8?cmpid=ey_url

Gosh, this make me LOL! Thanks Katie!

A Day in the Life of an Elf

Henry and I made our trip downtown to meet Daddy for lunch and see Santaland at Macy's yesterday! We even checked out Santa, aka the big man himself.....no pictures though, couldn't get Henry to get close enough :)

Check it out everybody, it's December! He's coming, he's coming!

Henry insisted on trying to climb on every single display!

Security, we've got a climber over here.

After climbing up, one must be escorted off of course!

Cheese:)

Don't worry, Henry made sure Santa got his letters from all the boys and girls.

A rarity, a picture of the two of us!

Hey, I thought the big man was supposed to sit in this chair.....how did you get up there and where is Santa?