The kids love Pet Shops!

The kids have been into the Littlest Pet Shops for a few years now and have quite the collection going! They have had SO much fun together creating all kinds of story lines for their pets' lives, as well as making homes, villages, etc. for them to live in. We love that our children can play so well at make-believing and enjoy doing it together!

Stylin' thanks to Grandma!

We've all known for some time now that Sarah is following in her Grandma's footsteps of being fashion forward. She LOVES cutie clothes and has found a favorite clothing store which many of her friends also prefer. Not surprisingly, she and Grandma had so much fun in there on one of her visits to CO! Grandma had that memory in mind, I'm sure, when shopping for Sarah's Christmas gifts at Justice. Paris also received her gifts from there, much to her delight! Parie definitely picked up on the fact that clothes from that store are COOL!

Advent Gifts from Gammy and Popsy=FUN tradition too!

The kids love the tradition of opening advent gifts from Gammy and Popsy instead of waiting until Christmas Day. This year they loved (!!!) the soft, little farm animals and sleep and play with them daily. "Baa-baa" (Fletcher's lamb) and "Snow" (Paris' lamb) meet up for morning playdates while Sarah's pony (Laughy Taffy) and Tommy's rooster (Cockadoodle) are never very far from either of their hands. The kids also love their drawing activities and wallets/purses. It was a very fun advent season!

One of our most treasured traditions started this year. We bought and started to read last year a book called Jotham's Journey. We were able to successfully complete the advent readings this December. We LOVED reading this book each day and couldn't wait to see what adventures Jotham got into or out of for that day. We often couldn't stop reading and spent at least a couple days in December reading a good chunk of the day away! SO fun for us to bond over this book! We ALL loved reading it out loud together! We got Bartholomew's Passage as a gift for ourselves for next year's advent season. Many families just rotate reading out loud one of the three books in this series each year during advent. We can't wait for next advent season to discover what adventures lie ahead for Bartholomew, a character we met in Jotham's Journey this year.

Favorite Parie quotes of Christmas

"MOM!!!! I got baby JESUS!!! Hey guys, I got BABY JESUS!!!" as she ran from the kitchen through the house announcing to us who was in the felt pocket on December 25th! (I guess when you are newly 5 years old, you haven't yet figured out that baby Jesus will ALWAYS be in the last pocket b/c we always celebrate the day of His birth on the 25th! I was SO glad it was her turn in the rotation schedule for the 25th when she had such unbridled joy at her discovery of Jesus in the pocket that morning!)

On the 27th Paris melted me when out of the blue as she's taking her bath and playing with princesses in the tub, she asks, "Mom, who is Jesus' queen?" I guess in her mind every King needs a queen!

the Beloved Advent Calendar

The kids had a ball for the second year in a row with the homemade Advent Calendar that Gammy created for them. I so loved the family tradition of not only the chocolate advent calendar we got to open each day in December until Christmas but also the felt pocket Advent calendar with little goodies to discover each day and pin on the Christmas scene. Well, Mom was SO thoughtful to make one for our kids when I voiced how much I'd loved ours growing up. She even made a nativity scene at the base of the felt Christmas tree so the kids could add each character to the stable leading up to Christmas Day. Well, the advent calendar tradition lives strong in the hearts of the Colgan kids. They love to each open their own calendar's window revealing the chocolate treat for that particular day in December. This usually happens right after breakfast each day (which is in and of itself a treat...to have chocolate that early in the morning is not something that Mom would typically allow save for a month of Christmas fun!) Next, the BIG treat comes! Each child rotates through at a turn to reach inside the felt pocket for that date in December to find a little goodie to velcro to either the felt Christmas tree or manger scene. This year the children decided on their own that the rotation would go oldest to youngest, minus Tommy. So every third day would be their chance at discovering the hidden goodie in the felt pocket. I didn't know whether to intervene and request that Tommy be included in their rotation schedule but decided in the end that if he became aware of the fun of this tradition at some point in the rotation schedule, then we'd work him into it. Luckily for the big kids, he remained oblivious to the fun not requiring him to be worked into the schedule until next year's rotation! They were thrilled not to have to wait FOUR days to get their turn again at the fun!

a Tommy Christmas crack-up

Tommy had us all rolling (not unusual!) in his reaction to the singing, ear flopping doggie that Poppy and Alicia gave him. We could tell he LOVED it (he is a HUGE dog lover!), but we laughed as we tried to guess whether he was "dancing" with the doggie or wrestling it with WWF-style moves! He even did an encore performance later in the evening (after his second nap of the day!) for our family friends, the McBrides, who came for Christmas dinner and dessert. Our other Tommy crack-up (besides him wearing his "hat" around which was really the girls' barrette) was him trying to hang with the big boys' activities involving stair sliding at lightning fast speeds and stair jumping (seeing how many steps they could ascend in one leap). Tommy's attempts at these athletic endeavors were hilarious as he'd watch the 10, 8, 7, and almost 7 year old boys perform them with ease and try his best to copy them, loving every minute of our peals of laughter at his 21 month old version of these feats.

Tommy's Christmas also involved wearing a hair clippie!

Tom Tom's bangs have needed their first trim but we've just opted to sweep them (often!) out of his eyes with our hands throughout the day. I do get tired of wiping them over with my hand (and often think of my cutie Popsy who just can not abide hair in children's eyes...of which I am in complete agreement!) So, I finally found one of the girls' clippies and popped that barrette right in his bangs for the rest of the morning! He was so funny when he looked up at me after having "installed" the clippie for the first time and said clear as day, "Hat!" as he touched the barrette. I said, "Yes, hat!" just to save his developing manhood!

a Christmas of VEHICLES for Tom Tom!

Tommy is our kiddo obsessed with vehicles (an obsession he shares with his precious cousin, William!) None of our other kids were as into driving around vehicles as Tommy has been and is currently! He can be found scooting around our home on his knees as he "drives" from room to room with any number of favorite vehicles. He doesn't seem to have preferences based on size, color, make or model! How lucky for us! He is pretty much WELL satisfied with anything that has wheels (or wings!)

An 8 Person tent was a HUGE hit from Tio and Tia!

My funny story on the tent is that I took the cardboard box holding all the contents of the tent out of the green fabric bag upstairs and carried it into our unfinished basement to set it up so I could practice and understand how to do it (and for the kids to play in!) I didn't see any directions or labels for any of the mulitiple-sized tent poles, etc. But no problem, I could and would (!) figure this simple tent out and by golly, I won't go upstairs until it is up correctly. So after multiple trial and error test runs with poles of different lengths in different slots, I finally achieved my goal and viola, the tent was up and ready to play in, much to the kids' delight. Well, I ascended the basement stairs with my chin held high ready to brag to Charlie that I'd just put up my first eight person tent by myself and with NO directions when I saw the beautifully illustrated and carefully detailed instructions for putting up our tent right on the inside of the green fabric bag staring me in the face as I opened the door from the basement into our kitchen. Oops! My stubborn persistence won out but instructions would've been welcomed had I bothered to search for them!

Fun gifts from family

Sarah loved her Barbie from Poppy and Alicia and sure looks cute in her froggie robe from Uncle Ray and Aunt Lisa!

Fletcher loved making aliens from lunar lava that Grandpa and Pat Pat gave him (the girls and I had a blast making them with him for hours on Christmas Day!)

Stockings (gifts from Mom & Dad) are opened first thing in the morning

This year we had the family chat on Christmas Eve and reminded the kids of the "rule" that they don't wake us up until 7 a.m. on Christmas Day. (This is the same rule the Thompson family observed for my entire childhood!) The funny thing was I was the first one awake and SO excited. I was awake in the 6 o'clock hour just waiting for someone else to make a peep. I was so glad when I heard Tommy make the slightest noise at quarter 'til 7. I went rushing down the hall singing "Happy Birthday to Jesus" and squealing "Merry Christmas" at the top of my lungs!! The kids and I did happy dances around the upstairs while we waited for Charlie to get his shower (our family all knows that Charlie doesn't descend the stairs on any day before he's had a good morning shower!)

Colgan and McBride kids blowing out Jesus' Bday candles

so Jesus needed birthday signs too!

We had the birthday signs hung for Paris on Dec. 6th to celebrate her 5th bday and then signs were hung on the 25th to celebrate Jesus' birthday! We weren't sure how many candles to put on His bday cake so the kids just decided on "a lot!" They put as many as we had on the cake they decorated for Him. By far and away, the highlight of His cake was getting to light these LOTS of candles with Daddy's new flame torch! Of course, the only thing Charlie wanted for Christmas was a new gadget. The gadget of the moment happened to be a Creme Brulle flame torch which also brags on the box of browning restuffed potatoes and other food items which are easily browned in an oven! Charlie had his eye very heavily on this torch for his cigar smoking "hobby" and just to get laughs out of his friends when he whips out the flame torch to light up their cigars! I have to say, he and the kids did a number on our red Christmas candles...they lit them for our evening meal and I'm guessing half the candle was melted away in just the lighting up ceremony they performed!

setting the table and birthday signs are a MUST with Colgan kiddos

The kids absolutely look forward to waking up to read the bday sign on their bedroom door and at the kitchen table, as well. They expect to see the table festively set for the occasion and so our birthday mornings begin with Mom and Dad decorating the night before! The birthday "tablecloths" are a fun tradition in our family that begins with an inexpensive sheet that gets decorated on every birthday for that child with the names of friends or family that were able to celebrate with him/her that year. We start the tablecloth with that child's birth statistics and then add fun stories or memories from that past year. Mom's "signings" are always the longest! We love going back to read the names of friends and family members who we celebrated with in Dallas, Virginia, NC and CO. What a great way to enjoy our wonderful years of life together as a family!

lots of princesses and then Fletch and Tom!

Celebrating Fancy Nancy Style on Friday, Dec.4th 2009

This is Rachel, Paris' favorite friend from Classical Conversations. I'm pretty sure she decided she's her favorite right from the get-go because Rachel played princesses (Ariel is Rachel's favorite princess, too) and has horses at her house! Of course, Paris is gonna love this girl! Rachel is also a sweet heart, so that helps too!!

More pictures from the party

Tommy loves Emma Schindel (from Paris' Classical Conversations class). She is SO sweet to him and always includes him in everything. She is a big sis to Aaron who is Tommy's age and couldn't be sweeter to these little guys! The highlight of the evening for Tommy was dancing with Emma Schindel and "dining" with her at the tea party on the floor!

The Webb girls are SO special to ALL of us!

We SO love the Webb family! Gabrielle and Chantal were both able to come and help out and participate in celebrating Paris' birthday! They were a HUGE help! The best part is they just look around and figure out what would be most helpful. They are also very precious when they ask, "Mrs. Colgan, how may I help you?" Is that a Mom's dream question or what?!?! How precious that they ask and that they genuinely enjoy helping me. I adore their hearts!

Paris' Fancy Nancy 5th Birthday Party

The kids had a blast dressing up "fancy Nancy style" which just means anything glittery, sparkley, fluffy, feathery, etc! Nothing has to match, it just has to be "fancy." So fun! Tea parties, painting nails, make-up stations, and crown decorating were some of the fun activities of the evening. It was our first Friday night bday party for any of the kids. Luckily, we had all day Friday to prepare. We had just gotten back from our 30 hour cross country drive from the east coast for Thanksgiving the day before! Linda and Sam flew in to CO on Thursday and were a HUGE help getting ready for all the festivities on Friday. We had such fun at Paris' 5th birthday celebration!