Between Christmas and New Years…

We had a fun, relaxing couple of days between Christmas and New Years playing with our cousins and Julie and Jake.

One evening while the other kids were playing, Vivian decided she wanted me to take her picture so what did she do.  Lay on the floor and grin.  Too funny!

Here’s my handsome man relaxing in the rocking chair.

Christian decided he wanted a picture too…this is Lillian’s doll that Vivian had run off with.  Her eyes look scary here but they were cute at any other angle.

For family night, each family decorated their own gingerbread house.  Here is Julie, Jake and Lily’s house.  I love the chimney of peppermints.

Isn’t their lattice roof cute too?

I also love the star in and North pole on the back (poor roof point).

I was lazy and just slapped some icing on top as snow and Christian and Jared decorated it as they would.

Our House:

I was very proud of my marshmallow roof I must say. :)

One of the days Christian, Lillian and Vivian spent a lot of time coloring pictures.  Vivian was very happy to smile for me but I had a tricky time even getting Lily to look up she was so intent.

I love that Vivian loves to color so much when it really seemed to take a super long time for Christian to even be interested in coloring.  He does love to draw now though….

This is next picture is of Vivian in her panda shirt that she got for her birthday (next post).  She liked it so much she wouldn’t look up until she had her sweat shirt zipped up.

After almost a week of lots of playing, (some fighting on the older kid’s part), coloring, movie watching, crafts, shopping (on Julie and my part) and just good old hanging out, Jake and Julie decided they better get home and back to real life again.  So, on New Years Eve morning we were sad to see our company leave.   Christian got up in the wee hours with me to say goodbye to Lily, Julie, Jake and Kate.

Lily looks wide awake but Christian looks hung over.

This one was a little better  but Christian’s crazy curly hair makes me laugh a bit….it’s a little 1980’s if you know what I mean.

We were glad to hear that they arrived home safe later that night around 9 pm.  Thanks you guys for coming!  We sure had a lot of fun having you!

Christmas 2011

So between the time of my last post and this post, a few things that were in my perfectly laid-out plans went the way of the snow here in Arizona….non-existent, and not going to happen because we all got the flu.

Christian was luckily able to attend school up to the last day where he ran in the Reindeer Run and I helped out at his class party where he  and each child made their own gingerbread houses.  Here is a picture of him in his antlers holding his gingerbread house (complete with a drawbridge). 

My sister Julie and her kids drove into town to visit us the day before Christmas Eve, but because I wasn’t sure if we still had germs we arranged for them to wait an extra day before showing up to our house.

Christmas Eve

My sister Julie and her husband Jake and their two little girls Lily and Kate came to have Christmas with us.  We had a wonderful time with them here.  The first line of business is Julie and I took Christian and Lillian to see Santa.  It was pretty much the world’s longest line.  Then we went home and started making dinner and because of my own oversight, we ended up having a Thanksgiving-like meal minus anything but sides. :)

That night was very fun as we sat around the tree listening to Jared reading the Christmas story.  Vivian and Kate are very alike in mannerisms and it was so fun to actually watch them play together while he read.

Here’s Vivian with her favorite little panda bear doll.

This is one of my favorite photos of Kate and Vivian rocking in the rocking chair together.

Jared was intent on reading the kids the Real Christmas Story and Lily and Christian were trying very hard to listen so that Santa could see them being good. 

Here are the Two December Birthday girls.  So cute!

Christmas Morning

It looks like Santa decided to stop by….

Right: Christian and Vivian’s loot and Jared, Ginger and mine.

When we lined up the kids to come into the room, Vivian refused to come in until I turned off the train (she apparently is terrified of it).  After that, the kids were pretty excited to run in and check out the magic.

I just love the look on Christian’s face as he blurts out “This is what what I always wanted!”

Vivian was very intent at unwrapping her gifts.

Kate looking darling in her new barrettes Santa left her.

The girls looking at their new toys together.

Later that day…

We decided to take some Family Photos for Christmas.  The kids seemed to have another idea.  Lillian would not stop hanging on Christian and he was getting rather embarrassed.  She kept laughing and saying “It’s like I’m he’s husband.”  Christian was not amused. Here’s an illustration of Lillian hanging on Christian  

We tried adding the other little girls up it seems that the more kids you put in a photo the problems get exponential of getting kids to pose together.

 

Everyone has decided to lean on Christian in this photo.

In these ones we tried to get the older kids to hold the littler ones but that didn’t go over too well…

Sweet Vivian is the only one I could get to pose alone…and she didn’t even know I was taking these.

Here are the cute photos Julie took of Jared and I.

These are the ones of Julie and Jake and their family that Jared took with our Camera.

It was so fun to have them here for our Merry little Christmas.

Christmas Time 2011

This year Christmastime seemed to go by so quickly.  We had set up our Christmas tree for the kids upstairs with my parents for a family home evening when they were here so that was done pretty soon in the season. 

Our big project was to get the front two rooms re-painted.  Jared was very sweet and helped me clean the rooms from all the things we got from Grandma and then he helped me prep and paint the walls for about four or five days.  After that, we set up the the tree downstairs. 

We had some lovely evenings just sitting by the tree and reading as a family.  I really reveled in the just “Being” with my little family.  I guess that’s why it went so fast and I didn’t even get to all of “extra” things I probably should have done.  Sorry about the lack of a Christmas card this year…we all got the stomach flu the week Christian got on Winter break and all of my plans for last-minute Christmas doings went pretty much out the proverbial window.  Other than that little glitch in our plans, the weeks leading up to Christmas were lovely. 

On Saturday the 10th we went and saw Santa at the Mall.  I love this Santa.  He has such a handsome look about him.  Vivian was not happy when I set her on this mans lap and tried to get her to smile.  It wasn’t until I picked her up that she burst into tears though and wouldn’t let me go for quite a while.  I think we traumatized her though because every time Santa was mentioned after that she would stay “Santa.  Bum.”  And point at her bum to tell you that she had sat on his lap.  It was kind of funny until she had to tell everyone at the store who asked her about Santa all about her bum. 

I was asked by Christian’s Kindergarten teacher to make a giant Gingerbread man that they would “hunt” around the school for.  I made two, one out of dough that they put in the oven of the teachers lounge and then a swap-out.  Christian didn’t have any idea I was going to do this for his class.  When he came home from school that day he kept asking me “How did you make a magic Gingerbread man that dressed itself?”  It was very satisfying to have him so thrilled about my skills.

   

I really especially like how I did the eyes because I have a thing about feeling like eyes should have whites in them.  So I cut the end off of a small marshmallow and colored the rest with edible markers to look like eyes.  They’re not perfect but I think it gives it a more whimsical life-like look.  Jared was a huge help to me that night to get everything done when Christian wouldn’t be aware of what we were doing.  (like the shirt Jared has pulled out of hiding?  This is from when Jared went to visit BYU-I-do to decide if he wanted to go.  It reminds me of the time I dabbled with the idea of going to BYU Idaho myself which makes me wonder if we had both decided to go there if we would have met there instead of at SLCC…. questions I may wonder forever).

The day after the Giant gingerbread man, I held a recital for my music students.  I have 13 students in all if you count Christian who was practicing his pieces daily so that I would let him be in the recital.  The day of the recital I had a brain-storm that I should make ornaments for the kids to take home since my order that I had made to reward them for their progress has never shown up.  So I made ornaments of each kids’ initial and stamped them with treble and bass clef stamps I’ve had forever.  The kids were very excited to their ornament home after the recital (though I’m not to sure how happy the moms were).  Here’s a photo of my tree covered with the letters that represent my students.

Here’s Christian playing his pieces.

He’s such a handsome little guy.  I was so proud of him for being motivated enough to practice because I really just left it up to him.  I don’t  want him to feel like I’ve pressured him into playing the piano so I end up playing the devils advocate a lot of the time.

Here is a photo of the thirteen kids I teach.  They are all such a joy to teach.  I really enjoy working with all of them.  They are all progressing so quickly it’s delightful to me.

The day after the recital was the last day of Advent (how did this happen so fast?).  As well as our friends’ son’s missionary farewell talk.  They gave the kids both Christmas pj’s so when Vivian wanted to wear hers for Advent and story time that night I decided I should pull out the camera.

This is Vivian’s most favorite book of all.  It’s the Little People Christmas book and she wants to look at it daily.  Some of these are random (like Christian’s evil look below) but they show how funny the kids’ personalities are so I just had to share.

Our kids in early December 2011

December came so quickly this year.  Where did it come from? (And where did it go?)  Maybe part of my lack of keeping up with my blogging has been that I spend a little too much time in a certain room of our house.  Here’s a picture to illustrate my point:

 

We are totally not at the point of trained or close but she will randomly announce she needs to “go, go, go” and then run into the bathroom and go.  It’s not at all consistent but along with all this has been a surge in “Strip wars” where Vivian strips down to nothing and I have to chase her around to get dressed and then she’s undressed shortly after I dress her again.  I’ve been surprised by the agility in which she can slip out of her clothes.  I’ve found that the best way to get her to stop is to let her run around in the buff for a while and just ignore her until she starts trying to get dressed again…at least in boots.  Luckily it has been cold on and off here which has kept the clothes on more frequently as of late.

Another thing that has changed in our house this month is that because my parents brought my grandma’s television from Utah, we put our old TV in our room.  Now our kids favorite place to be is in our bed watching TV. 

Vivian has learned how to operate the DVD player so one thing I have to monitor is how often she turns on movies she’s decided she wants to watch…we’ve have a lot of tantrums because of this TV thing.  The sad thing is, when she chews me out in her own little “language”  it’s so cute and feisty looking that I usually end up laughing so I have to leave the room laughing as quietly as I can while she’s throwing a fit.

One evening in December, we met up with our friends Claudia and Burke and their little boy Greyson and went to dinner at Café Rio (where a bunch of our previous ward’s members magically showed up at too) and then went to the Mesa Temple to look at lights.

Vivian LOVED holding Greyson’s hand and kept saying “baby” the funny thing is that he’s her same size and 11-months younger than her. 

Doesn’t he just have the best smile?!

Here’s a photo of Claudia and I that Jared took while we were looking at Burke taking a picture of us.

This is a random photo of Jared with the kids on their way to bed after family prayers.  Both of our kids are always wanting to be held by the same parent.  If I’m cuddling Christian, Vivian thinks I should be holding her.  If Christian changes places and goes to cuddle Jared instead, Vivian screams and thinks Jared should be holding her.  It can be quiet annoying at times (unless I’m trying to get things done. )  It also makes me wonder what will ever happen if we had more kids…

This is a funny photo of Vivian’s first attempt and getting her clothes back on!  I was so excited that I had to take a photo…even if she resembles a fish a bit…at least it’s not a naked little mermaid! She was so proud I couldn’t have been happier.