Boxing Day

For our American Friends, Boxing day is the Day after Christmas Day. It has some origins relating to boxes, but basically it’s an extension to Christmas Day!

On Boxing Day, we got up, packed up the car and went to Nana’s house (Sal’s mum who lives one hour drive south). We got there around 9:30am. We spent the day having a second Christmas with Nana, Aunty Shell (Sal’s sister), Uncle Michael (Shell’s fiancé), Aunty Linda and Heather (Linda’s mum). We exchanges presents and ate and ate and ate. It was a great day. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t so good and it was cool and rainy all day. That was a shame as we would have loved to have gone swimming in Nana’s pool. The rain stopped for a while, and the boys had fun playing outside with Nana and her dogs.

Ethan pushing Nana’s dog Cassie in the pram. That pram used to belong to Shell when she was a little kid. It is about 20 years old and still going strong!

Ben and Ethan with Nana and Cassie

Ethan with his new pram pushing his teddy.

Ben and Ethan

Ben

Ethan and Ben 

Ben in the pram, Ethan pushing him! 

Ben and Ethan

Mummy (Sal) pushing both boys.

Merry Christmas

We had a wonderful second Christmas with our little boys. We tried to teach the boys about the concept of Santa. They sat on Santa’s lap at the local shopping centre. (Pic coming) We told them several times a day for the few days leading up to Christmas that Santa would bring them presents. On Christmas Eve Aunty Linda came to visit. We had roast pork and vegetables for dinner, a “swim” in our outdoor spa and then the boys went to bed. Before they went to bed, they put cookies and milk out for Santa.

When they woke on Christmas morning they instantly noticed all the presents that appeared under the christmas tree. The expressions of joy on their faces were great. We had fun unwrapping presents.

Getting stuck into presents… 

Ben examining his new Wiggles DVD and telling Aunty Linda about it.

Ethan

Mumma (Tracie) and Ethan playing with new toys

Ethan and Ben

Ben and Mummy (Sal)

Ethan

Mumma (Tracie) and Ben reading Ben’s new wiggles big red car book  

Ethan – Still examining those wooden animal toys

Ben and Mummy (Sal) opening another present

Mumma (Tracie) and Ethan – With Ethan’s new chair.

Aunty Linda and Ben looking at a new car, sitting on a new chair

Ben on his new chair

Ben and Mummy (Sal) opening a Thomas Train 

Cheeky Ben

Ben and Mummy (Sal) with the Thomas Train

Mumma (Tracie) and Ethan opening another present

Mumma (Tracie) and Ethan with the new blocks

Ethan and Ben playing with the new blocks

Tracie opening her chocolates

Ben – who was intently playing with his blocks when I told him to “look up” to get his picture taken!

Messy Living room

All the Christmas paper and toys!

Ben – sitting on his new chair, with his new dolly, watching his new wiggles DVD

Ethan – sitting in Ben’s dolly’s stroller, with his dolly and stroller.

Ben’s dolly and Ethan’s dolly – they chose those dolls them self about a month ago.

Messy Little Toddlers

Life is very messy with toddlers. We feel like we are forever feeding them, then cleaning up the mess from meal time. Here are a few pics of messy eating!

Ben eating chocolate pudding.

Ethan eating chocolate pudding – he’s much neater than Ben!

Ben’s “bath” in the kitchen sink after the chocolate pudding

Ethan cleaning up his mess – like I said, he’s much neater!

Ethan and Ben. Ben is eating a plum, see it all over his legs too?

Ethan, cleaning his teeth. He ran into the bathroom ahead of us and climbed up to get his toothbrush.

See how high he climbed?!?! Both boys love to climb up onto the bath, then the cabinet, much to our disgust.

Early Christmas with Grandma

As I’ve posted before, we had an early Christmas with the boys’ grandma (Tracie’s mother) as she has gone to America to see her son for 6 weeks. Below is a video from “Christmas Morning” of the boys unwrapping their presents.

Cheeky Children

Sometimes our little darlings don’t feel like going to sleep. We listen to them giggle and talk in the bedroom for ages. In the video below, Ethan is blowing raspberries and Ben starts to laugh. By the end, both boys are laughing. The clock is shown, because on this day, they had been put to bed around 12:30pm. 45mins later during this video, they were still laughing!

 

Eating Rice Bubbles

Here’s a video of two messy little toddlers eating rice bubbles. They are using a dipping sauce bowl to eat from as Ethan saw it in the cupboard and wanted to eat out of it. Ben, of course had to have one too. . . . . Monkey see monkey do is a VERY BIG thing at the moment!!