Christmas at the Toppings

The day after Christmas, we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Mike's house to spend the rest of Christmas day.  As you can see, we were the recipients of a matching set of black long sleeve Colorado Buffaloes shirts from Uncle Zach.  What a great gift, if I do say so myself!

The legendary Uncle Mike was also in town for the break.  He is in his second year at UCLA on the way to his PhD in Astrophysics with about four more years to go.  The kids always love seeing him and special respect for his "Power Beard".

Merry Christmas!

I always love Christmas morning with the family as we read the Christmas story, eat some monkey bread, and open presents together.  I think the kids are probably a bit more partial to the presents.  Gavin got right into things early with a quad-copter drone from Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Emily.  It was one of these gifts that stops the whole production so he could try to fly it instantly.  You can kind of see the green lights of the drone just a bit in front of him.

Gage followed up next with his very own minions art kit.  It was very happy to have a full set of crayons and markers that could stay with him in his room and wouldn't have to be borrowed from his brother.  He is also was a huge fan of minions...probably because they are kind of goofy like he is.

The final surprise was Gavin's very first road bike.  He had outgrown his mountain bike and we are riding more and more the older he gets, so it made sense to give him something that could keep up a bit more.  It had two sets of hand breaks so he could learn to ride in different hand positions while still being able to break.  It also was the first bike that he would have that has gears to shift in the front and the back.  As something that I love to do, I hope this bike inspires him to want to ride more and more.

Melting Snow

Still milking the snow from the first big storm of the year, here is Gavin piling up a pile for a slide off of the back deck.  You can tell its quite a bit warmer (though not entirely balmy) by his interesting choice of shorts for the whole endeavor.

Gage seems to be dressed a bit more for the occasion and has a full snow suit on.  He is just lounging away watching Gavin work.

I think it's fairly easy to predict how well this plan is going to work out.  If you can't see, Gavin is on a flimsy piece of cardboard with Gage trying to climb on his back.  Sometimes I need to remind myself that I need to let them find out for themselves and they seemed to be having fun.

As anticipated, this ended up in wipeout land very quickly.  After lots of laughing all around, they signed up for a few more trips down the 6 foot sledding hill before Gavin retreated to the warmth of the living room inside.

CU Buffs Game

Though I haven't had season tickets for any CU sports in almost 15 years, they were a huge part of my childhood as a kid growing up in Boulder.  I have even saved some of my old CU clothes and now Gavin is wearing my old ralphie stampeder shirts from when I was his age.  I finally had the chance to take Gavin to his first basketball game when a friend had an extra pair of tickets and I jumped at the opportunity.  We had watched quite a bit of basketball on TV but he has never been to a live game so it was quite the experience.  We started off with a tour of the offices and practice facility which is underneath the ground off to the side of the main events center.  We finally made our way up to the events center and here is Gavin on the way down to our seats.  You can see the court in the background. 

I was not quite sure how he would do, as both Gavin and Gage are still a bit squirmy when having to sit in once place for long periods of time.  Gavin did awesome, though he was a bit quiet during the game.  I think he was just taking it all in as he talks about it being one of the best experiences he had all year.  It was also quite a late night for him but he held strong.  We also ended up winning which makes it easier to cheer and be a fan at his age.  I was happy to be able to get to experience it with him.  It's hard to believe over 30 years ago I was likely in this same events center watching games with my parents.

Snow Finally!

It seemed like we waiting quite a while for some decent snow this year, but it family started to come down in a respectable amount.  Gavin and Gage were both all over shoveling the driveway again with their shovels, though the effort needs quite a bit of quality control still.  Above we have Gage working a single path down to the street.

Gavin quickly joined in with his matching top and bottom blue snow suit.  That shovel looks a bit small, though...

Later in the day these guys moved to the back yard and cleared a path to the grill.  The sun even came out to keep them warm, though the cold doesn't seem to effect them until they are absolutely frozen.  Then they hit this wall where they just have to instantly get inside.  What a great picture of these guys.

A Christmas Tree Appears

One of our truly favorite times during the year is getting the Christmas tree and decorating it.  We sometimes don't quite agree on how soon to get the tree (I think Tara wants one up the day after Thanksgiving) but we have always had one by Christmas!  Our adventure usually begins with a trip to King Soopers to see what the local selection is like.  This seems a bit funny, but good old KS has always been good to us.  I once looked up how far we would need to go to actually cut down our own tree and these days you have to travel almost two hours to a permitted place.  Maybe someday we can do this, but it seems a bit crazy.  Anyways, once we get the tree in then we do a pretty good job of tag-teaming all the ornaments and lights.  The kids love to hang the strings of lights on the tree and we try to get all the ornaments up without breaking too many.  Here is a picture of the mostly completed project with a happy crew.

Mom and Dad date with Gavin

Gavin often feels like he gets the short end of the stick when it comes to spending time with his parents as compared to Gage.  I am not sure that's really an accurate assessment, but it could be linked to the fact that he ends up needing a bit more time to himself in his room do to behavior issues.  In any case, Gage had a birthday party or some other even that kept him through the dinner hour and it gave us an opportunity to spend some valuable time with our son and the two of us.  We let Gavin pick the restaurant and he picked the Village Tavern.  Quite contrary to the belief of some people *cough Tara*, he chose the place all on his own out of a list of approximately 20 restaurants.  This picture shows him getting cozy with mom while we read some books with him and waited for dinner to arrive.  These times are so special.  I realize more and more each day how intentional we need to be to have more experiences like this in a more regular fashion.  Life just finds a way to get so busy and you can never go back to times like these.

A Hired Dishwasher!

Gage has such a gift for service and being an all-around sweet guy.  He is almost always the first to volunteer for a random job or task and often does it without much thought.  Here he is getting quite down and dirty with a scrub brush and some dirty dishes!  Tara seems quite amazed in the picture, as well.  I hope he never grows out of this servant attitude as it is such an admirable quality in someone of any age, let alone a six year old.