Austin's First Christmas

You hear people say it all the time that Christmas was magical as a child but was simply the best watching it through the eyes of your own children. Andrew has certainly made this a true statement in our household but there is a level of cuteness and magic that I am not sure I can capture in words when I try to explain to you how sweet it was watching Andrew share the magic of Christmas with his baby brother. Every decoration, ornament, Christmas card, and gathering was so sweet watching Andrew try to explain to his brother. It put things in perspective for me and definitely helped me realize what Christmas meant to Andrew.

It seemed to be a common conversation with the majority of my friends that Christmas was done minimally this year, particularly in the decorations. I know for us, we went very minimal on decorations. For one, I tried to decorate when Austin napped during the day. This little boy is FAST and gets into EVERYTHING! So, I was able to make progress while Austin was sleeping. However, when he was awake, I realized that I had to undo my "typical" spots because unlike Andrew who was 4 months old at Christmas, this busy little crawler wanted to see, touch, and eat anything in sight, including the Christmas tree. We had "that tree" with zero decorations on the bottom branches because he wanted to pull them all off. I also had to resort to writing the To/From labels on the packages since Austin loved to pull the tags off. It was a busy process just trying to get ready for Christmas. By the time I finished the tree and the stairs, we I was DONE! Minimal it was! And honestly, I was okay with it!

This year was an especially busy one for the Wallace Family. It seemed like we had some holiday gathering to attend almost every day! We are so fortunate to have such a full dance card but man, we were wiped out from all the fun! Unlike most of the 16 years Kyle and I have been together, our Captain was home this year!! It was great, especially since it was Austin's first Christmas! And Andrew is at such a great age right now for Christmas. Our elf, Buddy, made sure to tell Santa that both of the Wallace brothers had been very good this year.
Some of Buddy's shenanigans:

Round One: Christmas with Uncle JJ and Auntie C

Caught Red Handed!

"Are you kidding me??"

Round 4: Christmas Morning

Santa had come!

Andrew was SOOOO excited

Santa had set the scene

The after math

Merry Christmas Family and Friends!

Ten month fun!



With all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, if you blink for just a second, you will miss this little boy change. He changes everyday!!

 

We are teething...again!!

Pretty accurately depicts this little boy's personality! Such a silly and sweet boy!

Kyle's Birthday: Doheny Style

For Kyle's birthday this year, the big 3-5, I should add, all the man wanted to do was camp! So you can imagine his surprise when on a whim, an entire week at Doheny State Beach became available. Welp, looks like we are going camping! Never mind that I had to work everyday that week, we were going camping! And what a beautiful, perfect week it was! The weather was absolutely gorgeous and we had the entire beach to ourselves! The first day the campground was full but for the remainder of our trip, there was only half a dozen other campers there in the entire campground.  And Andrew could not have been any happier about spending his days with his toes in the sand and beach bum days. It was pretty picture perfect and I think the birthday boy was pretty happy too!

A boy in paradise

Having a great time...

I mean, come on!! Does it get any better than that?

Little man had his own chair.

The sunsets were pretty spectacular every night!