Christmas Eve at Aunt Sylvia's was such a treat! Paul had fun playing with his cousins, Hannah and Kayla (and let's not forget the black bear...),
and figuring out those Christmas poppers! Thanks for a great time, Aunt Sylvia!

Paul visits with his friend, Max, when he and his parents came for a visit from California.

There's nothing better than baking Christmas cookies in your jammies on the first day of vacation...

Except for decorating them...

...and eating them, of course!

We met our friends, the Austins, at The Garden Factory today- what a great time we had! Paul loved to watch the model trains (with his friends Owen and Kate), and he had the chance to engineer the kid-sized train! We also made sure to visit the "Holy Cow!" cookie stand on the way out!

Paul has been excited all week for Santa's annual visit to his school! Not only did he share in delicious Christmas treats with his friends, but he got a special gift from Santa Claus...a book about fire trucks. St. Nick knows Paul so well!

Our Tree...
One of Paul's favorite things about Christmastime this year is "lights." He loves the ride home from school because we are able to see quite a variety of Christmas light displays! As you can imagine, just the mere presence of a lit Christmas tree in our house is enough to push Paul to the brink of holiday excitement. He was a great helper in placing all of the decorations, especially his very own, which are clustered at the bottom!

Cookies with Clara!
Clara invited us over last weekend to frost Christmas cookies- what a delicious time we had! You can catch a small glimpse in the corner of this photo of all of the different icings and sprinkles that they used to decorate their masterpieces. Needless to say, no pics are available of the final products- as you can imagine, they didn't last too long :)

We visited the George Eastman House this weekend to view the Gingerbread House display. It was amazing- they had everything from the George Eastman House (pictured), to farms, trains, and even beach scenes created out of gingerbread and sweet treats. It was great inspiration for the creation of our own...

After our visit to the George Eastman House, we hit the bulk section at Wegmans to find the most perfect candies to stick to our "gingerbread" (er...graham cracker) house. Click PLAY to see Paul's careful consideration of the placement of his confections...

Note for next year...make sure the frosting is completely hardened and the pitch of your roof can support about 5 pounds of gumdrops...

Click PLAY to see Paul's new bed!