Merry Christmas! From the Wolny's

Christmas Eve

Yesterday we headed downtown to St. Patrick's for Christmas Eve mass. My 50mm camera lens just so happened to come yesterday (thank you Mr. Postman!!) so I took my camera to church in case there were any photo ops - you never know... We sat on the side of the church, so I only got half of the alter, but it was done very pretty. St. Pat's is like 180ish years old and it one of the prettiest churches in New Orleans. Nick was a very good little boy. Ben left a little to be desired, but he did not take a nap yesterday, which was awesome. But he promptly fell asleep in the car before we had even pulled out of the parking spot.  Once we got home, we had dinner and then the boys got to open one present, their Christmas jammies. Ben got Dinosaur Train jammies and Nick got Superman. After putting out cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer, it was off to bed so Santa could come!

New Friends

Ben made some new friends on Friday. The neighbor and her grandsons came over to play and decorate cookies with Ben. Morgan is 7 and Baxter is 3, almost 4. The boys played together in May when we came down, too. They all got along very well and had a good time playing grocery store and watching Grandpa's choo choo train under the tree.

A Busy Day on the Mississippi

We took the boys down to the levy yesterday morning to see the river and the big ships. The river was hopp'n with lots of ship and barge traffic. And if you were wondering what happened to all the water that flooded Toledo a few weeks ago - I found it. The MS River is very high, which made me very nervous about Ben falling down the wrong side of the levy. If he went down the side, Adam was going down with him.

Grandma's Butterflies

Grandma now has some pet butterflies. She found the caterpillars in her community butterfly garden and brought them home to see if they would turn into butterflies. She ended up with two swallow tail butterflies. She is going to release them into the butterfly garden. Ben got a kick out of them!

Road Trip!

Wednesday was the big road trip day! We packed up the car (to the gills) and hit the road around 4am for our trip to New Orleans. We rearranged the car a bit so I could sit in the back with the boys. Ben moved into the 3rd row, temporarily. The boys were extremely good on the 17 hour car ride. We pretty much didn't have any crying, whining or fussing. Ben watched movies quite a bit and Nick slept quite a bit, which he needed since he has a cold. Once we got to Grandma's, that's when they had melt downs. But I'll take melt downs at grandma's house over the car any day!

Tent

The boys love their new tent. Ben got a camping play set from Uncle Kevin and Auntie Dre for Christmas. It came with a working lantern, camp stove, skillet and shovel, along with this tent. The boys love playing in it. In and out, in and out. Ben stored all of his toys in it one night. Nick drank a bottle in it. Even daddy got in and checked it out.

Spaghetti

Nick's first experience with spaghetti. Overall, I thought he was pretty clean, though I didn't give him a ton of sauce, either.

He still managed to get some in his eye, though...

Ta Da!

Now and it is time to reveal my most awesomest Christmas present...My Canon T3i camera!!! With some very generous Christmas gift donations, winning money from a Pioneer Woman give-away and saving my lunch money, I was able to purchase my camera this weekend! I was going to order it from Amazon and just get the camera body and a 50mm lens, but Best Buy had a good sale with a bunch of bonus things, like a telephoto lens, memory card, UV filter and bag, so I went with the lens kit at Best Buy (and I have it on good authority that Santa will be bringing my nifty fifty lens that I really really want :)  But this camera is totally awesome. Say goodbye to flash photography! These pictures below were taken in the kitchen with the lights on, which isn't super challenging light, but OMG - the pictures in the living room with just the reading light on - AWESOME! It's like daylight. I do get a lot of blurry pictures with the 18mm-55mm kit lens because the aperture isn't real low/high on the lens so the shutter speed is low, but I think the nifty fifty will fix that :) And the shutter response time is amazing! Yeah, I'm either going to have to learn how to delete pictures or I'm going to need another external hard drive pretty soon. Good thing I have a 16 hour car ride tomorrow to read the manual a few times over. These dslr cameras are complex pieces of equipment! But, ugh! I love it!

*Disclaimer: Before I could go to Best Buy, I was told I needed to make note of the fact that I have a super awesome husband that let me get my camera before Christmas and didn't make me wait to open it until Christmas*