Christmas Parade

 The day after Thanksgiving, Whitefish Bay had their Christmas Parade. 

We headed down with the neighbors, jamming all three in the same wagon.

 There were characters from The Nutcracker on the street

 

 and dancing in the windows.

 The kids were quite fascinated by the dancers in the windows.

 They attracted quite the crowd of kiddos.

 We found a place on the the curb for the kids to watch the parade.

 Or to just sit and eat snow.

 Monkey see, monkey do.

 We had a little issue this year with the "big kids" standing in the street, blocking the view and the candy but Calvin didn't care because he knew which store was giving away candy.

 We got to see our buddy Chip with his parents.

 And we had our first Santa sighting of the year.

 A nice beginning to the Christmas season.

Snow!

We had a decent snowfall the other week. Luckily we had just got Calvin some boots, a hat, and a winter coat. 

 Calvin was very excited to go outside and shovel.

 I wasn't about to stop him.

 After some backyard shoveling, he wanted to shovel with the neighbors out front.

 They showed him how to throw snowballs.

 He still has some work to do on his snowball throwing skills.

 Surprisingly Calvin was fine getting snow piled on top of him.

 Then it was time for mowing the snow.

 Why not?

We love the snow up here!

New Things

First, I have to let everyone see my adorable new nephew, Hugo! We are so excited to have a new little man in the family.

 Second, we went back to the local children's museum and while they still had some of the good old standbys like the motorcycles

 and the grocery store

 and trucks,

 they had some great new things to play with.

Calvin was very excited about this baseball game.

 He was quite interested in the golf area, too.

 All these great areas were from an around the country exhibit.

 There was a horse ride through the country

 and fishing in the lakes

 and skiing in the snow

 and checking out the caves.

 As well as working for NASA,

 building his own cactus in the desert,

 and whitewater rafting.

 A nice quick trip around the country!

Holiday Season

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!

Calvin was more excited about his turkey shirt then eating the real turkey but he still ate a lot of of food (mainly olives). 

The weekend before Thanksgiving, the local mall had it's Christmas tree lighting celebration. We headed over to check it out. 

 There were lots of pretty lights and music playing.

 And there were huge toy soldiers to say hello to.

 Calvin is definitely starting to warm up to mascots/people in costumes so fingers are crossed for our Santa visit this year. 

 Then there was a train ride for the kids.

 We waited

 and waited

 and waited in the very cold

 to finally get on

 and ride in the caboose just like he had hoped for.

 He was so excited. He would just squeal loudly every couple of minutes while we waited.

 Then off they went!

 Around the streets of the mall.

 Chugga chugga choo choo!

 Here comes the caboose!

Worth the wait in the cold (but we were NOT waiting in the other long line for the carriage ride).