Holiday Season Part 4: Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is always such a highly anticipated day, almost as exciting as Christmas itself! For us, it means family, traditions, and togetherness. As soon as the kids eat the last chocolate out of the Christmas Countdown "thingy," excitement instantly kicks in! We always go to El Paso for our annual Christmas Eve family dinner and gift exchange, which was our plan for this year as well. We started packing, wrapping the last of the gifts, and loading up the cars first thing in the morning, and about 5 suitcases, 8 duffel bags, and 10 hours later, Sam got called into work! He promised it wouldn't be for long, so we waited for him at home. Felt like we were all dressed up and nowhere to go. It put a slight kink in our plans, but in the end, we still got to be together with family, which is the most important part!

Cousins playing together.
And a brand new cousin Landon getting his rest in so that soon enough he will be keeping up wiht the other three!

My two little Christmas cuties! It's not often that I dress them the same, but for some reason, Christmas is always an exception!

Jaden, Elijah, and Aubrey were so excited to get to open their first Christmas gifts. Jaden got a remote control moster truck and two very cool Nuts and Bolts Storybooks from his cousin Scarlet. These gifts were a combination of all of his favorite things - trucks, reading, and building! Thank you Scarlet!
Elijah was so excited to tear the wrapping paper off of his gifts! He got a Fix and Learn Speedy and a Fridge Wash n' Go from cousin Landon!
This year we decided to start a new Christmas Eve tradition for the boys. Once we got settled in at Nana and Papa's house and got all set up for Santa - cookies and milk ready to go - we let the boys each open two presents. One was a pair of matching Christmas jammies (see, there's that Christmas matching thing again!), and the other was a Christmas book and coordination stuffed animal. Jaden got "Llama, Llama Holiday Drama" with a little Llama stuffed animal, and Elijah got "Duck and Goose: It's Time for Christmas" with a duck and goose finger puppet. They were so excited to get their new jammies on and just sit and read together!

And while daddy stayed upstairs with Jaden to make sure he stayed nestled, all snug in his bed (while daddy was probably the one with visions of sugarplums dancing in his head), Santa was in for a long, busy night ahead of her!

Holiday Season Part 3: Letters from Santa

After visiting Santa at the mall, the boys were surprised with letters from Santa that came in the mail, straight from the North Pole! Fortunately for Jaden, he can't read yet so he doesn't know that the envelope reads El Paso, TX as the place they were sent from - thanks to our real-life secret Santa's, Nana and Papa!

Elijah was napping when the mail arrived, but I just couldn't wait to share Jaden's with him. I knew he'd appreciate it more than Elijah would anyway. He's at that awesome age where this is all so magical and exciting to him, which you can clearly see in his facial expressions in the pictures!

Santa must know how much he loves stickers!

He was so proud of his letter! The most surprising part for him was when Santa mentioned one of his buddy's names in the letter. As I read it to him, he gasped and looked up at me in disbelief and couldn't wait to tell his friend Seth that Santa said "hello."

The adorable letters and stickers that a very thoughtful and loving Mr. and Mrs. Nana and Papa Clause sent.

Holiday Season Part 2: Pictures with Santa

I was so excited when Jaden actually said "yes" to taking pictures with Santa this year! We were already out and about; otherwise I would have planned outfits that were a little more Christmas-y. But I didn't want to risk Jaden changing his mind if we decided to wait and do it another day, so we just went for it. And of course when we got there, all of the other little kids were all done up in their adorable Christmas outfits, down to the detail, and hair perfectly combed - as you can see by the picture, we obviously didn't have a comb to fix Elijah's hair and spit just wasn't doing the trick. Oh well, they're adorable anyway! And they both willingly sat with him (and later cousin Aubrey joined them) without a single tear!

Funny Story: As we were getting out of the car in the parking lot at the mall, I saw a rather homely looking, white bearded older man walking into the mall. I jokingly whispered to Sam that he just might be Santa. And just as we got in line for our pictures, the current Santa was getting up to "take a break." About 15 minutes later, lo and behold, the parking lot Santa arrives and takes over the job! Good thing he cleans up well! He turned out to be a very nice looking Santa I thought.

Holiday Season Part 1: Family Photos

As our family continues to grow, my mom has been wanting to get us all together for a family picture. We are all together just about every weekend, so it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult of a task to accomplish. But making sure that everyone has coordinating outfit colors and that all of the kids are napped, fed, and awake at the same time can be a little tricky. Finally my mom had to make an executive decision and told us all the meet at 'x' place at 'x' time because we were getting these pictures done! So glad that we did!

The Cordova Family - it took a couple of candy canes to finally get these pictures done.

Daddy and his boys! Elijah will do whatever his big brother does, so when Jaden climbed on Sam's back, Elijah followed suit.

The Cash (my mom, dad, brother Jeremy, sister-in-law Melissa, and nephew Landon), Lopez (my sister Angela, brother-in-law Beto, and neice Aubrey), and Cordova (us) Families...

Happy Holidays from all of us!

First Annual Girls Trip 2010

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Disney on Ice - Let's Celebrate!

I've been awaiting an opportunity to go to Disney on Ice and when their "Let's Celebrate" tour was headed to El Paso this fall, I had two perfect reasons to go - Jaden and Elijah!! I've never been, so I was just as excited as they were. I have always enjoyed live performances, and I think that the addition of ice skates made this so much more entertaining and magical. It was like a party on ice as they celebrated several different occasions and we had such a wonderful time! Thankfully, Buzz and Woody made an appearance at the end, which was the cherry on top for Jaden!

The show opened with the Dancing Broomsticks. This was Sam's favorite part and he must have You-Tubed this scene from the show for a month after. (And if you're curious yourself, here's a You-Tube video of this scene of the show: Let's Celebrate).

Halloween

Love/Valentine's Day

Summer

Chinese New Year

Mardi Gras

Christmas

And Jaden doesn't know, but this was just the beginning of more Disney fun to come! (On Friday we are headed to Disney World!! -- shhh, it's a secret!)