I am 73-months old today!

Happy 2012! Another year (and month) has passed by. It was a good one for me. I had a great 6th birthday party and family celebration. We made homemade pizzas, my favorite, and had a chocolate cake for dessert.

With both my birthday and Christmas being in December, well, it should be no surprise that it is my favorite month of the year. We had lots of fun preparing for Christmas.

It was nice to wrap up the first semester of school the week before Christmas. Our school party was fun ~ Mommy is our room mom so it was fun to have her there. We made a Rudolph ornament, ate snacks and played “pin the heart on the Grinch!” Here is a picture of my class.

Our annual family Christmas party is one of our favorites. We go to Abbie and Emily’s cousin’s house and have fun playing, eating, caroling and seeing Santa! Cara still does not like Santa and refused to even go near him. We enjoy seeing Grandma and Nanny dressed as Santa’s helpers too.

We also held our annual cookie decorating contest at Grandma’s house. Every year, a week or so before Christmas, we get together and decorate cookies. Grandpap is the judge. There has always been a kid’s and an adult’s division. This year, my 9-year old cousin Abbie sneaked a cookie into the adult division. AND YOU KNOW WHAT? She won both the adult and kids’ divisions! Which is a bummer, because my dad usually wins! Congratulations Abbie! And, she is now officially in the adult division, so I think it will be a good year for me next year!

We got into the Christmas spirit by decorating cookies and our tree. We always wait until after my birthday to put up our tree, and we get a live tree. It is something special we do with our Dad.

This year, we decided to have an open house. Everyone brought cookies, we drank hot chocolate and Daddy played the piano.  We also had an author come who is a friend of Mommy’s, Carol Bullman. She read her book called The Christmas House. The whole evening was enjoyed by everyone.

Finally, Christmas was here! Cara and I were in our church’s Christmas pageant. She was sheep and I was a shepherd. We both sang our little hearts out.

Next we were on to Grandma and Grandpap’s house. My Uncle Mike and Aunt Melinda were up from Austin and of course everyone else was there. After dinner, we exchanged gifts. We must have been “very good!”

Close to midnight we headed home, hoping that Santa would come to our house. The next morning, we were not disappointed! He came! He left Cara and me Razor scooters! He did give Cara a “rope” something she asked for and I got a dry erase board. We also got a bounce house with a giant slide attached. It has been fun jumping.

We spent the rest of the break being together. We had everyone to our house for dinner one night, celebrated Aunt Beth’s birthday (thanks for the hockey tickets you gave me for Christmas!), went to the movies and relaxed and played with our new toys. We had a fun game night at Grandma’s house and I got to spend a couple nights at Grandma’s. I miss spending the night a lot now that I am in kindergarten. School definitely got in the way of my social life with Grandma! We also learned what Cara wanted to do with that rope! Doesn’t she looked pleased with herself?!

New Year’s Eve was spent at an Allen Americans hockey game with my family. It was a nice way to bring in the new year. We were cheering on our Pittsburgh Steelers until yesterday when they lost.

That about sums it up the holidays. We have been cleaning the house out a lot the last week or so to make room for our new toys. We took down the decorations. I am back in hockey skating lessons and I am hoping baseball is soon on the horizon. My new year’s resolution is “to be a better batter.” We had a nice week weather wise here so we enjoyed a lot of outdoor play time.

Cara is doing well and still misses me when I am at school. One funny thing she keeps doing is either closing her eyes or putting something over her head and asking, “hey, where did everybody go?” She cracks us up.

Happy 2012 everyone!

love, Sean