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.