Leading up to Christmas...

It's almost Christmas, and we've had plenty to do in the last two weeks.

Ronan had his Christmas concert at school the last day of school. His kindergarten class sang a few songs and I was so proud of my little man.

Ronan is in the back row, wearing the black and gray striped sweater. He was so happy to see me and his brothers watching him from the front row.

The whole class - I love the girl in the front row, right-hand side striking a pose!

We had our friend from Sweden, Patrik, come to visit for a few days.

The annual Santa visit. The older boys did great, but Finnian was not impressed!

After I rescued Finnian, the older boys stayed to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas. Ronan told Santa that he wanted a robot that did all his chores for him ("even clean the playroom!"), and Latham repeated the exact same thing that Ronan said.

Even though he was safe in his Mama's arms, Finnian had to keep his eyes on Santa.

Tonight was a late night for the older boys, and as I was rushing them off to bed, Ronan reminded me that we had to leave Santa cookies and milk. Since we had no cookies in the house - and I wasn't going to bake anymore just for Santa - we decided to just leave him some chocolate chips (a treat in the McLoughlin household) and milk. I wrote the note to Santa, which was dictated by Ronan; it read:

Dear Santa,

I love you. We made you chocolate chips and milk. We have a very good family and we have stories from the library. We had a good breakfast today. We have some tiny houses Mommy made. Please leave us lots of toys and we go to different McDonalds. Leave everybody presents and mean guys coal.

From Ronan and Latham

The little houses made by me is a reference to the little Christmas village that I painted this year - pics to come in a later post.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!