Brandon here,
1.
Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper, you can't shake a gift bag to0 easily.
2.
Real tree or Artificial? Real. Real. Real. Artificial are for hyperallergenic or old people.
3.
When do you put up the tree? The morning after
Thanksgiving at the earliest. December 1st at the latest.4.
When do you take the tree down? After new years.
5.
Do you like eggnog? I love Wilcox eggnog because if it's incredibly high cream content, but they closed their dairy farm down here, so I can't find it, but other brands aren't too shabby.
6.
Favorite gift received as a child? Heman! I have the POWER!
7.
Hardest person to buy for? Parents. What do you buy someone who has everything.
8.
Easiest person to buy for? Evan, he wants everything, it's hard to find something he doesn't want.
9.
Do you have a nativity scene? Yes, we have Fisher Price's Little People nativity (totally childproof!) and a second one with wooden figures from Mexico.
10.
Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail. But it's tempting to just put one on the blog.
11.
Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Socks and underwear. Come on, we gotta buy that stuff anyway, don't put it under the tree!
12.
Favorite Christmas Movie? It's a Wonderful Life13.
When do you start shopping for Christmas? I've started as early as September.
14.
Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Hmmm, I don't think so, except those special treasures from white elephant parties.
15.
Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Homemade almond rocha, chocolate pecan turtles, and (as always) mashed potatoes and gravy
16.
Lights on the tree? multi colored, but thinking about switching to white next year.
17.
Favorite Christmas song? When My Heart Finds Christmas by Harry Connick Jr.
18.
Travel at Christmas or stay home? Home.. every other year.
19.
Can you name all of Santa's reindeers? Yes, but I giggle when I say one of their names, because it's a dirty word in German.
20.
Angel on the tree top or a star? Neither, it's a creepy Santa Claus that has fiber optic lights in it's beard and robe that change colors. Becca says it looks evil when it's red.
21.
Open the presents Christmas Eve or Christmas day? Christmas day. Where's the anticipation of waking up at 4 am to see if Santa filled your sock if you do it on Christmas eve!?
22.
Does Santa Wrap your presents? No, they are left under the tree with a bow, pre-assembled if appropriate. (what if they recognize the wrapping paper?)
23.
Snow, Love it or Dread it? Love it initially, white and clean, makes everything beautiful. After a few days, when it's brown slush, then the dread comes.
24.
Candy canes: Yuck or Yum? Yum. If I get one of those miniature ones, that's all I need for the year.
25.
What the most important thing about the season? Family and the general feeling of love and charity and remembering the birth of the savior.
We were hanging out at my parents yesterday when Brandon spotted these friendly creatures out the back window. The one just stared at all of us while we took pictures and stared at them. The other two showed off by biting eachother and running up and down the branches. It was very fun to watch, but I'm glad we were inside and not somewhere where they could attack us.
Just a few more pics of the snow at our house. It is hard to measure now because of the ice on top, but we have over a foot easily.
I don't know how bushes survive this much ice. It looks pretty cool though.
These are kind of backwards, but oh well. Here are a few pics to show how much snow we have at our house.
Discussing the route back up the hill.
My mom was so excited to go sledding. I can't believe my dad actually got her to go.
Check out all the snow in the background.
This was our last night. We made a snow man on it then destroyed it.
Kyle's first real trip out in the snow.
Evan decided that he wanted to have spiky hair for church on Sunday. We're thinking the bangs may have been a bit long, but we did it anyway. He rubbed most of it down by the time we got there, but a few lucky people got to witness his crazy hair.
It prompted yesterdays haircut, which he says makes him look 5. The spiky look is much better when your hair isn't 3 inches long, and no, we did not tell him to pose like that. We asked to take a picture of his haircut and this was the pose he chose.
We took Kyle off a bottle, and he now insists on taking all of these things to bed with him. I guess he is cozy, but it looks crowded to me. Hopefully he doesn't add any more accessories because the crib is only so big. He also demands taking both blankets every place we go now, which is making him very difficult to carry around.
This is what I get when I tell Kyle to say "Cheese" or really just whenever I point a camera at him. I'm not sure why he is determined to not have eyes. I guess those cheeks are just too big to smile and still have sight as an option.
Here he has eyes, so I know it is possible.
This is what I got when I told Evan to smile. 
This one isn't awful....I think they are yelling Cheese. At least they are both in the picture.
Here we have Pirate Kyle. Really not sure what he was doing. Arrrrrgh!
These are the ones out of the 100 photos we took that day (seriously 100).
Not smiling.... but not crying, or screaming, or running at the camera.
Evan did pretty well.
Evan loved Santa and was sure to tell him that he wanted a Diego Scooter ( he has been sure to tell every Santa we have come across since.)
Kyle, not such a Santa lover. Not even a Santa liker....or just casual acquaintance of Santa. At least I didn't end up paying for it, and we captured the event for his scrapbook.
It is now officially a tradition to make a gingerbread house for Christmas (this was our second year). Evan has been so excited to make the "muffin man house" since we bought the kit a few days ago, and he worked hard on it. We all helped, and in the end it turned out pretty well.
Don't they look proud. Brandon even sprinkled powdered sugar on it for that added snow look.
We set out Monday in search of the perfect Christmas tree. I took a lot of searching but 2.5 hours and two Christmas tree lots we found it.
The boys looked through some toy ads to determine what we needed to go under the tree.
Here is the perfect tree out in the wild.
Here it is at home, all decorated and ready for Christmas. I do love the way it looks, so I guess Brandon's long hunt paid off in the end (we were looking for his perfect tree).
The house is decorated, now if I could just get the Christmas shopping done we'd be ready to go.
While we were in Hawaii Kyle decided to find some more things to be allergic too. He broke out in a rash, then his eyes decided to swell up so he only had tiny slits to see out of (way worse than in this picture). We ended up with every parents dream, a vacation trip to the ER. 
They ended up saying he was allergic to something, who knows what, and to give him some Benadryl. Can't wait for that bill. At least we got to get him all checked out and make sure nothing else was wrong I guess. In other Kyle doctor news, he had his 18 month check up. This boy is long an lean. He as 34.5 inches tall (just over the 95th percentile) and 28 lbs 4.3 ounces (80th percentile). His noggin continues to be off the charts, but as we say around here, it is just to make room for his big brains.
Kyle went everywhere with his blanket. I've started calling him Linus.
Boogie boarding and trying to not run into the turtles (they were coming up to us on this beach)
Both boys tried "surfing."
Little beach bums
This was the beach across from our condo. The sand there was amazing.
We hiked the lava tubes up by the volcano. 
Entering the lava tube. It is crazy that this part was rain forest, but to get there we drove through a desert.
Volcano...also freaked Evan out a little although he was very excited to see it, and to see there was no lava spewing out.
Black sands beach.
Evan apparently had tired legs and needed to catch a ride.
Bubba Gumps
Evan got to make his sand angel like he had talked about for weeks before we left.
We got up close and personal with the turtles, but we obeyed the law and didn't touch them. So tempting though.
One of many geckos we caught. They were everywhere.
