Christmas Pictures!

Ava getting into the spirit, ready to open gifts on Christmas Eve at the grandparents' house!

Aidan is not too sure what to do with all these boxes yet!

Ava and Daddy rip into their gifts - Bounce Back Racers remote-control cars!

Lots of fun additions to the dress-up wardrobe!!

Aidan with his reindeer antlers *and* Santa hat!

Too many sweets + No Nap + Too much holiday excitement =

Christmas Eve Meltdown!!

Christmas Morning! Ava shows off on of her favorites -

The "Dinosaurs In A Rock House"!

Dinosaurs everywhere!!

And we must line them up!

The Whetzel family Christmas tree. Notice the incredible lack of

ornaments on the bottom 1/3 of the tree!!

Ava delivering the goods!

Trying out her very own digital camera. Say Cheese!

Only on Christmas morning is it ok to completely devour a Reese's

chocolate peanut butter tree at 8:30am (straight out of the stocking!)

in a total of four huge bites!

Aidan and his new basketball game

It's the Inchworm!!

A new sandbox for Ava!

Whew, all this holiday excitement. Can you

see the tiredness in his little blue eyes??

Merry Christmas to all of our family and friends, near and far! We hope yours was

as joyous and memory-filled as ours was!

Happy Holidays, 2008!

This year, in an effort to be more financially conscious, we decided to forgo getting our family portraits done at a studio for our holiday cards, and instead made use of our recent investment of an upgraded Nikon camera! Good intentions... yes. Worth it? Hmm, not so much. The end result, after several repositionings of the tripod, several different posed "spots" around the house, setting the timer well over 100 times to run back to said spot in the nick of time for the shutter to go off. Well, let's just say this year, Photoshop editing software was our friend.

Always wanting to help, Ava got in on the action in the kitchen the week before Christmas to help Mom with the cookie baking.





Of course, when you're 3, "help" means taste-test the dough, as often as possible, until the looming sugar high kicks in, and you no longer have the patience to help!





This year's new-recipe winner in the Whetzel house: Red Velvet Christmas Cake Balls!! Golf-ball sized balls of moist red velvet cake, dipped in white chocolate and drizzled with red and green chocolate. One word = Sinful!

The holidays are stressful..

Apparently it is even starting to affect Aidan. He has been caught hitting the sauce a lot more than normal lately!!

It is a sad day when you get to the bottom of your empty margarita glass...

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! Chris and I enjoyed the day at his mom and dad's house this year, with great food and the kids had a good time playing together. We even got Pam and Steve to try out the Wii! (Sorry, no pictures of that!)

Caramel-Pumpkin-Gingersnap cheesecake, courtesy of The Pioneer Woman Cooks!

Mmm.... chocolate cake pops, decorated to look like little Thanksgiving turkeys!

Thank you, Bakerella!

There is no shortage of posing when Ava gets in front of the camera!! And check out how green our grass is? Not bad for the end of November. And now I'm rambling...

Ava in her holiday best, trying SO hard to be good. Can you tell? It is killing her!

Aww, my sweet boy! Look at all those teeth!!

This is Aidan's new favorite thing at Grandma's house - flying through the family room, holding on to his walker.... grinning like crazy and cracking himself up!