Six!

 Jake is 6!  What!?!  It's super crazy, but also super fun!  We started his birthday off with the traditional special birthday breakfast.  This year it was pumpkin pancakes in the shape of a 6.

 Jake chose to go to Mighty Fine for lunch and Double Dave's for dinner, then we topped off the day with an ice cream cake!

Aledo Christmas

Our Christmas celebrations continued in Aledo at my parent's house.  Luke was especially willing to take a picture with his big, cheesy grin, so my pictures are a little Luke heavy, so here's the happy boy with some Christmas treasures...

I would have to say his favorite gift was a furry toy dog named Biscuit.  Luke LOVES dogs.  He always points them out excitedly when we see one, and on the occasions we dog sit, he's been in heaven.  Now, he has his own furry friend.  He can take him on walks...

 and cuddle with him...

 It was pretty cold in North Texas during our 9 night stay with family, but there was luckily one day when it warmed up enough to enjoy some time in my parent's beautiful yard.  The boys enjoyed taking walks, finding deer tracks, and riding their jeep...

 Jake and Luke both got some really cool building toys, and they have had a lot of fun with them...

 Don't want to forget Biscuit!

Cousins Christmas

 It's fun to see family over the break, and for Jake, it's especially fun to see his cousins.  Our time with them is limited, so it's all the more precious.  For one of our advent activities earlier in December, our family of 4 made party hats to celebrate Jesus birthday.  Jake was sure to make one for each of his cousins, so we brought them along for a fun birthday celebration...

We all sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus, then the kids blew out candles.  What we didn't realize was we had mistakenly bought trick candles, so the kids kept blowing and blowing, but the candles just didn't go out.  It was pretty funny because no one expected it, not even the adults!

 Cutie Campbell...

 Cutie Luke...

 Jake has one living great-grandparent, Mom Barr, and it's always special to get to see her.  It is the tradition on Mom Barr's side of the family for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to get together Christmas night for the "Barr party."  Of course, as the family has grown, not everyone can always make it.  We haven't been in 2 years, ourselves, but we were able to be in town for this Barr party.  It was quite a special event because ALL of Mom Barr's 12 great-grandchildren were there.  We were sad to miss one daughter's family who lives out of state, but all the Texas families made it with the great-grandkids.  That definitely deserved a picture!  Unfortunately, only 10 are pictured b/c Luke and Zaya were not in the mood for a pic.  Oh well, hopefully this will not be the only chance we get...

 Mom Barr and Jake...

 Channing and I discovered we had matching boots, so here we are showing them off...

Christmas morning

 Here we are Christmas Eve night before reading together as a family...

Jake and his stocking...

 Luke and his stocking...

 Luke was really happy about the lollipops in his stocking!

 Jake asked Santa for a reindeer costume, and Santa delivered...

1st Tooth!

 As I mentioned in a previous post, Jake lost his first tooth over the break!  Even though the time period leading up to it coming out was a little stressful (for me, not him) with the adult tooth coming in so quickly with little wiggling from the baby tooth, luckily it was pretty painless and low key.  Here's Jake's before shot (taken outside the dentist the week before)...

Here's the after shot...

 Jake was super excited about the tooth fairy.  He has a Tooth Fairy Tales book so we can document each tooth and write messages back and forth to the Tooth Fairy.  We filled it out before going to bed and the book asks "What I image the Tooth Fairy looks like:"  Jake replied, "Golden with long feathers and a golden hat, and a couple wings that are short  I think he's a boy and about [shows his fingers about an inch] this tall."

Jake also wrote him this note, "Dear Tooth Fairy, Can you make my tooth fly?  And make it have eyes? and a nose and mouth and feet and arms?  I want my tooth to have a Santa hat.  Thank you for coming to visit me.  Love, Jake"

I guess that's the kind of letter the Tooth Fairy gets when it's Christmas time and there are pictures of flying teeth in the Tooth Fairy Tales book!  Luckily, the Tooth Fairy was nice enough to write back a teeny tiny reply with an imprint of her wings and leave a special gift...

Keeping in touch

 On our way to North Texas for the holidays,we we fortunate to make a stop to visit some dear friends of ours who moved from Austin to McKinney 1 1/2 years ago.  We really miss the Davis family, and it was nice to reconnect and catch up.  It was also great to see Jake and the girls play together so well just as if nothing has changed, and now Luke can join in on the Lawson/Davis fun too!

Lights

Christmas just isn't Christmas without seeing lights, so off we went to explore some of the best neighborhoods...

Here they are standing in some 'bubble' snow that one of the houses had in their yard...

 and a shot from Jake of the fun lights...

Snow!

I saw on Free Fun Austin there was going to be "snow" at the Hill Country Galleria.  Since we don't see snow all too often, and I could tie it into our family advent activities, we decided to check it out.  In order for Luke to have a nap, we were there during the last half of the event so the snow was pretty packed down, but it didn't seem to interfere with the fun.  Jake had a BLAST and it was definitely worth it for him to throw "real" snowballs.  Luke was interested for a little while, but the excitement lost it's appeal sooner for him.  Here's the happy boys in the snow...

What is this?

Jake was still happily playing, but Luke was done so we set out to see the surrounding sights.  Luke was instantly drawn to the waterfall...

and we had time for a Mommy/Luke shot...

Cookies!

The Saturday before Christmas was time for our annual Christmas cookie making.  The past couple years, Jake has requested gingerbread, so we did gingerbread again along with some pumpkin cookies.  We always make a big batch to pass out to our neighbors so it's fun to see the boys doing something with others in mind.  This year, I had two happy helpers so cookie making was twice the fun!

 Jake is a REALLY great kitchen helper.  He's old enough to do most everything on his own, which I can hardly believe!  He was very good at rolling out the dough and getting the cookies on the cookie sheet...

 Both boys were really great decorators. Luke maintained interest much longer than I expected and had a great time decorating.

Dentist Visit

 So, Jake lost his first tooth over Christmas break, which I'll post about later.  We really thought the dentist was going to have to pull his first tooth because his adult tooth was completely in, and the baby one was hardly budging, so I moved up his regular cleaning a month for the dentist to check it out.  Because I was expecting him to leave with all teeth and come out missing one, I was fully ready with my camera.  Fortunately, the dentist gave us the go-ahead for his tooth to come out at home, but since I had my camera, I captured some cute shots of Luke in the waiting room.  Luke LOVES brushing his teeth, so it was perfect for him to find over sized toothbrushes to use...

 There's something more I had to include from the dentist.  Those who know me well, know the Lawson's definitely can't resist a dentist with this sign posted in the lobby...

Who knew a love for Ice, Ice Baby will draw in a customer!