Year in Pictures

Christmas Recap

We had a great Christmas this year. There’s nothing like a house full of Santa Claus believing kids to make Christmas fun. Christmas Eve was a busy day. The kids got up first thing to clean their rooms. They were genuinely concerned about Santa tripping on something while he was delivering their gifts. The rest of the day was filled with sledding, snow forts, making sugar cookies, singing carols around the Christmas tree, new pajamas, our annual Christmas movie marathon/junk food feast, and tracking Santa on NORAD. The kids were actually excited to go to bed so Santa could come.

We started a couple of new Christmas Eve traditions with the kids. Ben insisted that we make reindeer food (oatmeal and glitter) to put on the front lawn to make sure Rudolph could find our house. Emily learned in school that kids in Holland leave their wooden shoes by their beds so Santa will leave treats in them, so all of the kids lined up their slippers by their beds. We must have tricked Santa into thinking he was in The Netherlands because he filled up their slippers when he stopped at our house.

Christmas morning didn’t go exactly as planned. The kids always get a new book from Santa on their beds after they fall asleep on Christmas Eve. The idea is that they will stay in bed on Christmas morning until we go and get them. It’s always worked in the past. Not this year. Nate and I got up at about 7:00 and Ben and Emily were both sitting in the family room. The conversation went something like this:
Me – “What are you doing? You’re supposed to stay in your rooms.”
Ben – “Ma-om (the 2 syllable mom), I’ve been awake since 6:30!”
Me – “Did you wake up Emily?”
Ben – “Ummmmmm . . . I think she was waking up when I went in her room.”
Me – “Did you look under the tree?”
Ben (without a hint of excitement) – “Oh yeah. Santa brought us a Wii.”

Ben has been asking for a Wii since last Christmas and I happen to know that Santa bought one in April just to be sure to have one under the tree on Christmas morning. This was not exactly the response we were going for! Oh well.

Abby wasn’t too thrilled with the whole Christmas morning scene. We woke her up at about 7:30 so we could start opening presents. That’s a good 2 or 3 hours earlier than she normally wakes up. It showed. Luckily she cheered up pretty quickly once things got going.

We got about a foot of new snow on Christmas day. We were glad that we had planned to spend the whole day at home since we couldn’t really have gone anywhere if wanted to. We spent the day building Legos, playing with new toys, coloring, and playing games. We had our yummy once-a-year Christmas Brunch Casserole (the girls didn’t love it . . . more for us!) and used the new shaved ice machine from Grandma Reatha to make iced lemonades. Nate made a fabulous turkey dinner. It was the first time we have cooked a turkey with crispy skin and moist and juicy white meat. I felt a little a bad about the turkey we served on Thanksgiving. It was nowhere near as good. The whole day was full of food, fun, and family time. I couldn’t have asked for a better holiday.

Holly and Shane brought their kids out on Friday to go sledding. Abby wasn’t a fan of that fresh powder blowing up in her face, but everyone else had a great time. We stayed long enough for everyone to get freezing cold and then came back here for hot chocolate and scones with honey butter.

The rest of the weekend is kind of a blur of Wii games, sibling slumber parties, and movie watching. Having Nate home for five days in a row is a rarity and we all loved it. It felt a little weird to have him go to work again today. The kids missed his video game expertise today when they were playing. I’m no help. I am Wii challenged. Elise even beat me in a couple of MarioKart races. Ben on the other hand is a Wii savant. His top bowling score is 219 . . . significantly better than my 106.

Quality Neighbors

We’ve gotten 15 inches of new snow in the last two days. One of these years we will buy a four wheel drive vehicle. Until then, we are grateful for good neighbors. The school bus took the kids to school and the kindergarten bus brought Emily home, but the roads were bad enough that they didn’t bring the older kids home. If the school bus can’t make it up the hill, there is no way that our van can. After doing a 180 on the way to Emily’s class party yesterday, I was not feeling up to attempting that trip again. Thank everything for Jennie S. (and her Sequoia) for bringing Ben home. She is good neighbor #1.

After everyone was home from school, Claudy brought Korbin and Maddie over to play in the snow. The kids were so excited to get out and play in the deep snow. We made a miniature sledding hill in the backyard and the kids took turns going down. Ben and Korbin built a snow fort in the time between their turns. Abby was a trooper and was happy to just hang out and eat snow and watch the kids play. Everyone had a great time. Good neighbor(s) #2.

While we were warming up and drinking hot cocoa, our neighbor across the street came over and snowblowed the rest of our driveway (I had run out of energy after shoveling enough for Nate to get his car in). Good neighbor #3. Nice people rule!

Busy, Busy, Busy

It says a lot about my life these last couple of weeks that when I type those words I hear the voice of Professor Hinkle from Frosty the Snowman. There are times when I get so busy that I actually encourage my kids to be couch potatoes. Frosty has been Elise’s favorite movie to watch when Abby is asleep and Ben and Emily are at school. One of these days I will be a good mom again, but for now I just really need those two hours of work time.

Blogging has certainly taken a backburner to everything else that has filled up my time these last couple of weeks. This is a random, catch all post/novel to make me feel caught up.

Last week it was my turn to teach preschool. I was excited when my name landed on Christmas when we were making the schedule. It added a little extra work to my already busy week, but it is always a fun time. They are cute, sweet girls. My favorite part was watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas with them. They had lots of funny comments. My favorites were “It’s not a square, it’s a rectangle” (said indignantly after the “first little house on the square” line), and then the comforting “don’t worry – his heart is going to grow” at the end.

Friday was Emily’s kindergarten Christmas program. She was really excited about it and did a great job singing all of the songs. We had a slow start and got to the school later than I had intended. After our Halloween parade experience, I thought I would be okay being 15 minutes early. Wrong! Apparently kindergarten programs draw a bigger crowd than Halloween parades. Luckily my mom was more on the ball and got there in time to save us a seat or we would have been on the back row.

Friday night we got to babysit Zack and Austin so Aaron and Heidi could have an anniversary date. Those boys are pure entertainment for my kids (and me). They are hilarious. They picked up some new skills while they were here involving ping-pong, lightsabers and doll strollers. The funniest part of the night was when Austin started tackling Emily. He is half her size, but he was determined and managed to take her down a couple of times. Then Zack decided to do the same with Elise. It was so funny to see their football faces and their great moves.

Saturday was our family Christmas party. We had yummy soup for dinner, a quality nativity reenactment, and the kids opened presents. We finished off the night with boys vs. girls Outburst and Mad Gab. We schooled them in Outburst and they squeezed out a win with Mad Gab. It was a good fun time.

Yesterday was certainly a day of rest. Abby started with a super snotty nose on Saturday, so my mom volunteered (after I asked her) to sleep over and keep her home from church since we couldn’t take her to nursery. It turned out to be the easiest babysitting job ever since Abby slept until after 1:00! She’s been missing naps lately and I guess she needed to catch up. She is a girl after my own heart. The best part of having my mom here is that Nate and I got to take a Sunday afternoon nap . . . hardly ever happens in this house. After dinner, we watched The Nativity Story (the 2006 hour and a half one, not the five minute church one) with the kids. It was a lovely Sabbath day.

Today is another exciting day for the kids. Ben gets to have a pajama party/read-a-thon. I was “the best mom in the whole wide world” and let him open his new Christmas Eve pajamas two days early so he could wear them to school. Emily’s class is having their Christmas party this afternoon. I get to go help them make a fun little Christmas craft. I’m hoping that the snow stops before then so I don’t have to shovel six inches just to go to the school. Right now it looks like a snow globe out my window.

Here are a few other random photos from the last week.

Company Christmas Party

Nate’s work parties have always caused me a bit of anxiety. They are unlike any other company party I’ve been to/heard about. They typically involve breaking into random groups (never in the same group as your spouse), being given a garbage bag full of “props,” and performing a skit/song/dance. Two years ago I got to blow up two surgical gloves, hold them to my belly (while kneeling down . . . six months pregnant) while some other lady pretended to milk me for the “eight maids a milking” line of the twelve days of Christmas. Public performance/humiliation is just not my cup of tea. Last year, they did a little mystery dinner theater. It was lots less pressure and lots more fun. I was afraid it was a onetime aberration, but now I think it was a turning point. The party last night was the best yet. They handed everyone an electronic keypad and we played a mix of Jeopardy, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and other random game shows right from the comfort of our seats. A few people got the chance to perform a little karaoke/ventriloquism/Rock Band, but I wasn’t one of the “lucky ones.” Not only was the party fun, but we finally won a door prize in the raffle. We are now the proud owners of a Cuisinart Frozen Yogurt, Ice Cream and Sorbet Maker . . . less desirable than the HDTV, but loads better than the puppy calendar left over from the white elephant exchange.

Gingerbread Houses

Last night we made gingerbread houses for our Family Home Evening activity. They were just simple little graham cracker houses, but the kids had tons of fun decorating them and did a great job. We were pretty amazed with Abby’s fine motor skills. She was a pro at getting those little candies exactly where she wanted them. She was the first one done and ate a ton of candy while she was waiting for her brother and sisters to finish their masterpieces. Elise got her fill of sugar by sucking on her frosting bag. It seemed like every time we turned around she had that thing in her mouth.

Weekend Update

Saturday we went to Christmas Village with the kids. It was freezing cold, but we had a fun time. Abby showed us a little more of her independent streak. She needed us to lift her up to see in the windows, but as soon as she was done, she wanted us to put her down so she could walk to the next house and yelled if we even tried to hold her hand. She wants to be a big kid just like her brother and sisters. She’s going to wear me out! After we had seen all the lights, we went to Arby’s for dinner and shared a couple of free mint chocolate swirl shakes. It was great day.

The best part of the day for me was that Nate decided to clean out our old filing cabinet and found a calendar/mini-journal from our first six months of dating. It was fun to remember all the stuff we did together and to get a little look into how Nate saw things. The highlight for me was seeing that we called and got a temple reservation on January 5th even though we didn’t get engaged until February 12th. Hmm. I didn’t really remember that. Nate remembers it being my idea since I was set on June 12th and I didn’t want to have to get up at 4 a.m. on our wedding day. I guess we figured it would be easy enough to cancel if things didn't work out. We are funny to me.

Sunday was Joey’s baby blessing. It was great to have a leisurely morning after a year of 9:00 church. There was so much time to get everyone ready. Abby was in love with baby Joey. She doesn’t get much baby exposure and was pretty fascinated with him. Ben was the entertainment for the upstairs crowd with all of his stories. It makes us laugh that once upon a time we worried that he would never talk.

Quote of the Day

“David O. McKay was swallowed by Joseph Fielding Smith” - - Elise, singing Latter-day Prophets

The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care

So we don’t have a chimney, but we do finally have all six stockings for our family. I finished Abby’s today and I’m so happy about it. Now I can move on to the other six projects on my list. One of these years I’m really going to finish all of my Christmas projects before December. This is not that year.

I know that Abby is young, but I think she was feeling a little moted about not having a stocking. She was sure excited when I hung it up by the others.

These boots . . .

. . . are the reason that I got out of bed at 4:30 a.m. on Friday.

Shopping Black Friday sales is a long standing tradition in this house. Nate hasn’t always been a fan, but once he saw the great deals to be had on electronics, he was hooked. That being said, we almost didn’t go this year. We found some quality deals online for a TV, a computer monitor, and a hard drive the week before, so there wasn’t much in the ads to justify getting up before dawn to face the cold and the crowds. I was sorely tempted to just sleep in, but some part of me was sad to not keep up the tradition. Nate left it up to me and was a good sport about getting up to go with me even though he was far from excited about it.

We were at Sears at 5:00 so I could get these quality boots at an awesome price. They are normally $75 a pair, but with the sale and a coupon and signing up for a Sears card, I got them for $17.50. It was such a great deal that I bought some brown ones too. It made my day. Since we were up, we stopped by Staples for some “free after rebate” remotes and a year’s supply of DVD-Rs. We ran into Home Depot for some tape measures and then went to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart was surprisingly fruitful. We found lots of random things that we wanted up by the checkout lines where other people had dumped them. It was a fun shopping day. Not quite as memorable as the year we camped out at Best Buy, but LOTS more pleasant (and successful).

We got home at 8:00. The kids had just woken up and five of them had crawled into bed with Grandma. Nate made us all pancakes and the kids got in a little more playtime before their cousins went home. We spent the rest of the day decorating for Christmas (in between kid tantrums/fights . . . they were tired and grumpy and it showed) and went to bed early.

We certainly don’t have a Martha Stewart Christmas tree. We have lots of handcrafted, preschool ornaments. That’s okay with us. We’re just glad the kids are getting taller so ALL of the ornaments aren’t on the bottom three branches.