Ramblings From the Bradshaw Nook

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Dear Santa...We Have Been Awfully Good This Year

Dear Santa,

When you make your list and check it twice Ethan and Carter have been awfully nice!! These boys worked super hard on making their letters special to you...

Here is what they asked for:

(Translation of Ethan's letter to Santa: Dear Santa, I have been good. I want a turbo set and turtles. I love you Santa. Love, Ethan Bradshaw)

These kids are the light of my life, so sweet and so precious. I loved watching them meticulously decide where the stamps and stickers were going to go!! I hope you remember how sweet they are Santa when you hurry down our chiminey this year!

xoxo - The Bradshaws

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Deck the Halls

We've decked the halls with lots of lights, snowmen, reindeer and moose, a countdown to Christmas, red ribbons and all that glitters...Fa La La La La La La La La!!

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Las Vegas Fun

As you all know we celebrated Thanksgiving in Las Vegas with Trevor's family! In the 5.5 years Trevor and I have been together this was our FIRST Thanksgiving in Vegas. We agreed last year that it was time to start rotating the holidays between our two families. I got to cook with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law which was so much fun. We mulled over fun things for the family to go do. We figured out some really fun things, starting with seeing Frozen!

We followed that up by racing over to the Las Vegas Speedway to drive through their Glittering Lights! Unfortunately we did not snap any photos of this as Ethan was driving on Yaya's lap through the obstical course of lights!

I think the kids' favorite thing during our trip was going to Opportunity Village where they rode on a train, went down an "icy" slide, rode a magical carosel, and met Mrs. Clause.

Then of course as I have talked about before we finished off our trip with the kids meeting their new friends...the Scout Elves.

I just love how everything fell into place and we had such a wonderful and magical trip!

Holiday Magic

The holidays are here!! Our lights are on our house; we are happily tree hunting; Christmas music is on full-blast; decorations are going up; and, most importantly, Santa brought us a Scout Elf...Olaf!!

Olaf has been bringing treats each day to the boys, I wanted to avoid giving them just candy and sweets. So far he has brought the boys a few new Christmas movies and some yummy breakfast treats. He will be bringing them different things throughout the month so you'll have to tune in for updates on what our sneaky little elf has been up to!

We kicked off December by having a fun breakfast with our cousins Madison and Bronson. They too received a Scout Elf from Santa on Sunday morning! Olaf brought the pipsqueaks two new Christmas movies for our long trip back to Reno, Scooby Doo a Winter Wonder Dog and Prancer (my favorite). The boys thought it was great fun!

Yesterday, Olaf had made the boys breakfast...which neither of them ate!!! But today, we had had a Snowy Breakfast complete with snow covered donuts and snowman poop (marshmallows) in our hot chocolate. The boys absolutely LOVED it, I think Carter just licked the powedered sugar off of each donut and didn't acutally eat them, but he's cute nonetheless!!

Tonight we are going to be decking the halls of the Bradshaw Nook with all of our non-tree decorations!! Olaf was found playing in the decoration box this morning!!! It's a good thing our boys are SO good...or rather that their parents are so forgiving!

I will post pictures of the elf and of our wonderful trip to Las Vegas in the next post...I have two more that will be popping up later this evening!!

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Hello December, Good-bye November

Today is the last day of November, we have had some ups and downs this past month keeping the blog updated! After keeping you all up to date on our comings and goings I'm so excited for what December is bringing!!

We kicked off our holiday season in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving. We took the kids to see Frozen on Thanksgiving night. Then Friday we drove through the Speedway Light Show and tonight we took the family to The Magical Forest at Opportunity Village.

Ethan and Carter went to bed hoping Santa will be sending us a scout elf...stay tuned to see if they get their wish!!

Hope you're enjoying the beginning of your holiday season and that you'll continue coming on our journey on this crazy road called life!!!

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Snowy Morning In Reno

I clearly have not been doing as good of job this week of updating as last week.

It was snowing here this morning, and while I did manage to get myself and the kids dressed and out the door, I longed for a day of pj's, hot coco, and movies.

Don't they just look so thrilled having to be all bundled up like that?! In fact Carter refused to wear his hood so I'm sure his ears were cold!

I know that it is almost the end of November and we have been SOOOOO very lucky to have beautiful weather thus far, but for some reason I'm just not ready for snowy mornings and icy roads! It's so much easier to get up in the mornings when the sun is shining and it is going to be warm outside. The grey = melancholy.

In the same breath though I am so excited for the holiday season, we have so many fun things planned to do as a family and for the kids. I can't wait to share them all with you!! We've really stepped up our game with fun family activities in the next month (maybe years) to come!

Hopefully everyone is staying warm...it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Preparing To Travel With The Kids

I am not an expert on traveling with small children, but we have become accustomed to long roadtrips with the pipsqueaks. Not to mention the plethora of information and ideas you can find all over Pinterest and Google which do seem to help with ideas to get through any road trip.

For some reason though I always become a nervous wreck about a week before a trip. It's almost a given that at some point along the 450 mile drive to Las Vegas we will have two screaming children. Thankfully we have never had any real problems traveling whether it's driving or flying. I just prefer to have all systems in place so the pipqueaks are comfortable.

The Number 1 Rule of traveling with the Bradshaw Pipsqueaks:

MOVIES!!

We have discovered that this is the best line of defense in keeping them distracted and happy. We always have them pick out enough movies that they don't have to watch the same twice. Of course we have the typical bag of toys (which never seem to be played with), the diaper bag, and our snack bags, but those things just don't seem to distract them long enough to make a long trip seem short.

We are gearing up for our trek to Las Vegas next week for Thanksgiving. We are so excited and cannot wait to see our family! My fingers are crossed that the kids are as well behaved and ethralled in just watching movies as they were in September on our 1200 mile road trip!!

I will keep you all posed on how we do!!