Holiday updates

Lots of new posts tonight- guess you can see that I'm a little behind on my December updating!


Hamming it up in his santa hat!



Trying on Mommy's boots!



Aaron has discovered the love of opening gifts! We got him a couple of big things that we didn't really want to haul all the way to Iowa and back again, so Aaron got to open some presents early. Here his is opening his new table and chairs and easel. Looks like the 'toy area' is full now! :)












Opening the fun gifts that Auntie Karen and Uncle Steve sent from England!

Still love the train

Trains are definitely the new obsession in the Coenen household. Here are a few shots of some morning train time with Daddy on a weekend!

Family date night

Sharing some photos of a recent Friday night family date night. We have a membership at the Chicago Children's Museum at Navy Pier and spent a recent Friday night having dinner and attending an open house for one of their new exhibits called "Play It Safe". In the exhibit there is a fire truck that the kids can climb on, hoses, hats, coats, boots to play with, 'fires' to put out, and even a fire pole to slide down. Aaron loved it! My 2 favorite boys also had a great time 'building' a nice lean-to in the construction exhibit! We watched the fireworks over the lake and had a great dinner at Bubba Gump's. Yay for family date night!!! :)

Big boots to fill....

Ok, I realize that I shot these little videos in the wrong orientation, but they are much too cute not to share! Aaron loves to put on shoes and boots that belong to other people and are much too big for him. In these videos he pulled out my big, tall, rain boots and wanted me to help him put them on. He was definitely bothered that he couldn't walk in them!! So funny.

Train...

We decorated the house for Christmas this past weekend and I wanted to share Aaron's new object of affection. Aunt Beth passed along a Christmas train that belonged to Aaron's great grandpa, Papa Coenen, before he passed away. Aaron is in LOVE with the train and talks about it constantly! If he had his way, we would run the train every minute of every day, but some boundaries have had to be set. The train is now "resting" in the closet during the day and when Daddy gets home from work, he and Aaron get to start it up! This seems to be working pretty well, aside from the fact that Aaron is still talking about the train most of the day! He's added some new words to his vocabulary with the introduction of the train and can now be heard saying "engine, coal car, caboose, and tracks"! Here are a couple of shots of the beloved train.

Aaron and Ingrid

I just had to share this video of Aaron and his little pal, Ingrid. This was taken at our Halloween party and I had just taken Aaron's costume off, which is why he is running around in just a diaper. Aaron and Ingrid always get along well, but Ingrid is especially fond of Aaron when she can touch his soft skin! Prior to this video, we were all laughing so hard because Ingrid was following Aaron around the house touching his skin!!! (I can't say I blame her- I love his soft skin too!)

This video shows the two of them doing some dancing and some loving in the kitchen. Aaron was VERY willing to give her hugs and even a little smooch! I'm just hoping that later in life he ends up with someone as darling as Ingrid! (Ann and Eric- maybe we should make sure that these two end up together- I think we could all have a lot of fun together! He, he.)

October

Warning- this post has LOTS of photos!!! I'm pretty behind on my blogging, so this post is going to include Halloween and all of our fun events leading up to it in October! We had a great month full of fun activities.

We decorated a pumpkin with the 'push in parts' that Nan and Papa gave to Aaron. We had a of fun with the decorating and even more fun looking at the pumpkin that we created on our front door step every day! We made a pig on one side and a cat on the other.





We had a really fun time hosting our first Halloween party for all of our neighborhood friends! There were 6 children ages 2 and under (Connor is the oldest, Aaron is the youngest, and all of our other friends fall in between) and 7 parents to try to keep things under control! We dressed up (some of the kids did- some for almost all of the party, some for just a few minutes), ate snacks, decorated little pumpkins (with the 'push in parts'), decorated pumpkin shaped brownies with frosting and candy, and played! It went very well and everyone had a great time. Can't wait to do it again next year! (I wanted to post a picture of all of the kids, but figured that I probably better ask their parents first, so I'm just sharing the ones of Connor and Aaron! There weren't a ton of great pictures because the kids were in constant motion from all of the sugar that they had eaten!)






For Halloween we went to Fort Dodge to visit the family and had a great time. Aaron had a couple of hand me down costumes from Brett and Claire. He started out as a pug dog (which he also wore for our little Halloween party at our house) but it was VERY tight on him! So much so that the zipper wouldn't stay up and it fit him like it was his second skin! It was such a cute costume though! We decided to change him into the bigger lion costume, which seemed to be much more comfortable! Aaron went out trick or treating with Brett and Claire to 3 houses around Nan and Papa's- it was chilly and we really weren't dying for them to get lots of candy! Emma, Jacob, and Olivia (and Tony and Angie, ofcourse) came to join us after they were done trick or treating and we had a party at Nan and Papa's! We decorated pumpkins and cupcakes, ate dinner, and all had fun celebrating!