10:30am finds...

Baby Colt sleeping peacefully.

 JMac reading books?  Ok fine, tearing the house apart. :)

Brothers

These pictures were taken on January 13th.  Colt is such a chubby, cute cute baby!  Jack adores him.  We are still working on hugging him from the side instead of laying on top of him, but it really is so cute how much Jack loves to hug him.  When we hear him wake up from a nap and started crying, Jack drops whatever he is doing and yells "Hurry, hurry!  Baby Colt crying!"  And he copies whatever I say to Colt.  It is so darling to hear Jack's sweet little voice telling Colt, "hi honey" or "it's ok baby."  When Colt starts fussing, Jack is the first one there shoving Colt's binky back in his mouth.  At first, I thought he was too forceful.  But it doesn't seem to bother Colt.  In fact, I've seen Colt smile several times while Jack is "helping" him keep his binky in his mouth.  Still...  I usually try to keep Colt very close when Jack's around. :)  Oh, and Colt definitely smiles at us now... it is still an occasional thing, though, and I really haven't caught a good one on camera yet.  

What a sweet baby and a big brother.... (poor Jack has a cold sore.  Bummer.)

Christmas 2010

Christmas was so fun this year.  Everyone except us slept at my parents.  We live so close that we just went home and came back bright and early.  It was so fun to have four little boys to enjoy watching the  magic of Christmas go to work on.  They were adorable!  We spent the morning opening Santa gifts, eating a yummy breakfast of Christmas eggs, bacon/sausage, and muffins, and then opening gifts to and from each other.  I even got a much needed nap in the afternoon!  It was an exciting, happy morning. And as for presents...Colt was our favorite Christmas one, of course!  My friend gave Colt this cute little Santa outfit, which he wore all day on Christmas.  I thought he looked so adorable.  And Jack called Colt the "Ho Ho Ho baby."   It made me laugh every time he said it.  Jack's favorite gift were two books I picked up for him at the DI.  He got lots of expensive toys, and what did he like?  The cheap, used books.  Just goes to show, right? :)  My favorite gift was two charms Griff gave me.  One was a little baseball player and the other was a little hunter.  Both have four little blue topaz on them (the December birthstone).  I love them!

Jack was a blast this year.  He got really excited about opening gifts.  He was especially happy when he realized that all the stockings had CANDY in them!  I had to keep his sneaky little hands out of everyone's stockings all day.  He was a bundle of ecstatic energy!  In fact, he ended up taking a nap around 11 am (two hours earlier than usual), because he absolutely wore himself out.  

In the late afternoon, we jumped in the car and headed into Tooele to spend Christmas evening with Griff's family.  We enjoyed opening presents with them, and then blissfully relaxing after such an exciting day.  Since I had a newborn, I didn't capture the best pictures.  But here is what I got...

Lining up on the stairs before charging into the living room to see what Santa brought us!  This is a tradition we've done for as long as I can remember.  I can still remember the almost palpable excitement in that line when we were little. :)

Our Santa baby and sweet little Nyah baby.

Here's Jack helping me open my presents. 

We pretty much got NO pictures of Jack.  He was too busy and excited to look at the camera, let alone sit still.  Argh!  Here is one attempt... and you can see that big lip!  You'd think the kid was having the worst day of his life. :)

Colt with his Daddy.

I love how newborns are just like little bean bag babies...

Griff showing off one of his gifts... a light for his bow.

  Love you Dad and Matt!

Wesley got Buzz and Woody dolls.  He loved them and was practically inseparable from them.  Gabe loved them, too. He was so sweet about it though.  He was very vigilent.  As soon as Wesley put one down he would hurry and ask if he could play with it since Wes wasn't.  So cute.

I loved this little smile!

My WONDERFUL parents!  I love you Mom and Dad!

Opening presents at the Christensens.  Jack was in heaven with so many presents to unwrap. :) And Colt was in heaven getting held constantly by his sweet grandparents.

And finally getting to relax a little... it was fun to lay around and hear about each other's holiday.  We trade off years spending Christmas Eve and Christmas day with one family and Christmas evening with the other.  It's been fun to enjoy each other's traditions and ways of celebrating Christmas.  I'm sure we'll end up melting the traditions together when we start doing our own Christmas celebrations.  But for now, we are just feeling SO blessed to have both of our families close by.  It makes me happy that my little boys will grow up surrounded by the ones who love them most. (And for my sisters who are reading this... don't feel sad when you read that.  You know we will always make sure your kids feel our love even though they don't get to grow up close by!)

We had Christmas dinner with the Sterzers on boxing day.  My mom is a fabulous cook and makes a big turkey dinner for Christmas every year.  I love eating on china and drinking out of crystal goblets!  It makes meals elegant and so special!  I really need to start using mine more!  

Christmas Eve 2010

Christmas was such a joy this year.  Our new little boy is absolutely adorable, and he made our holidays perfect.  I know I need to post some current pictures, but I have to catch up first!  These first two pictures were actually taken a few days before Christmas, but I loved them.  So I wanted to include them!  I can't believe how much older Colt looks when I see these pictures taken just one month ago!

Christmas Eve started early for us!  Griff's parents and Cassidee came over early in the day to visit.  This is the first time that Colt had met his Aunt Deedee.  It was sweet of them to make the long drive to our house just to visit for a couple of hours.  Jack loved the attention, too.  Poor kid has been a little stir crazy cooped up in the house more than he is used to.

It was a Sterzer year for Christmas, so we headed over to my parents in the afternoon.  Brittany and Eric were in town with their family, which was SO fun.  And of course, Matt and I live around here... so it felt like a good crowd, even though we really missed Mel and Erin's families.

I love our traditions!  I think traditions are what make holidays the best.  And my family is certainly rich in traditions. We start the night by eating a special dinner of Chicken a la King ~ "Chicken for the King."  My mom's family has been doing this for generations.   The Chicken a la King is served in bread crowns and is meant to remind us of the birth of our King, the Savior, the Prince of Peace.  It is a beautiful tradition and a perfect way to start the Christmas celebrations!  We also always have fruit salad and hot cocoa to go with it.  Jack, Gabe, and Wes thought that having hot cocoa for dinner was especially cool!  My mom always decorates her table beautifully, which I love.  And each person gets to have their own candle on their plate at dinner... a bit of a fire hazard, I admit, but one of my favorite parts of this dinner!

My cute family (minus Colt who was sleeping peacefully in his carrier at the moment).

Amy, Matt, Wesley, and Logan in the background.

Gabe, Brittany, Eric...

...and our little angel, Nyah, enjoying a spoon on the floor. 

Singing Christmas carols.

There is our little reindeer baby!  Erin actually gave this to Jack when he was born.  I never thought I would get to use this little newborn reindeer outfit again...

My mom always fixes a plate of homemade treats: shortbread cookies with fondant frosting, caramels, turtles, chocolate covered nuts, toffee... (all the recipes can be found on The Sisters Cafe!).  We enjoy these treats as we sing Christmas songs, read Christmas stories, and later watch "A Christmas Carol" (the George C. Scott version... the best!).  This year we finally had to put the plate up on the piano as we started to become alarmed at the volume of treats being consumed by these little boys.  Obviously this was not a good enough hiding place...

I didn't get any pictures of the nativity, but we actually had an angel this year!  Nyah was adorable!  Jack was a wiseman (for about 30 seconds).  Griff was in charge of getting pictures... he got one.  He's fired.  :)  Britt has better pictures on her blog.  We always read the nativity story from a beautiful little bible my great grandmother brought back from Jerusalem for my mom.  This is my favorite part of the evening.  The Christmas story is such a story of hope.  I always feel uplifted and hopeful myself reading it.  

Uncle Matt and Baby Colt

Don't you love those fat little cheeks?

Grammy and Colt

What a special night!  Pictures of Christmas day to come...

Sweet Baby Colt

My sweet friend Kari at Treasure Layne Photography took these precious newborn pictures of Colt.  I've been meaning to post them sooner, but apparently I had used all my storage space on blogger and had to buy more first.  (I didn't even know there was a limit!)  I couldn't just post a few.  I loved them all too much.  So I posted almost all of them. Oh, but aren't these pictures of my sweet baby just adorable?  I could look at them all day...

Well, for a quick update: 

Colt is now over 3 weeks old.  Crazy!  I am loving not being pregnant. :)  But I am really loving holding and even just watching our new little man.  Colt started out as a pretty big baby, and he is just getting chubbier.  It's so fun watching him change so fast already.  He is a serious snuggler.  He loves being held and is easy to soothe.  He likes Mam binkies and will not tolerate any other brand.  I don't remember Jack being so fussy about his pacifiers.  Colt hasn't lost any hair yet... thank goodness!  I love it.  He has had his days and nights mixed up with all night fussing until a few days ago.  I got up and fed him every 2-2.5hrs last night and was actually grateful, because he mostly slept in between.  It's funny how being exhausted most of the time really isn't that bad, because it's for Colt.  And anything to do with that sweet little boy can't be that bad.  I sort of wondered how I could love another baby as much as I love Jack... well now I know!  You just do. 

Jack loves his new "brudder."  Although I kind of have to protect Colt from his fierce little hugs.  Jack likes to kiss his head, "hold it," announce when he makes the slightest sound, and bring Colt toys (which I have to vigilent of so they don't get piled on top of him).