Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve day we went to Rob's sister Tara's house for a nice dinner and games.  The whole clan was there except my nephew Jayson (on a mission in Canada) and brother-in-law Walt (had to work :( ). 

We ate yummy food...

opened a few presents..

Matthew loved opening presents this year.  Madi looks on with great interest.

Yeah for jammies!

Weston and his huge deka Backugan.

Sarah is so excited about her butterfly garden.  She wants me to order caterpillars online for her.  What?!  I've never heard of such a thing (though I'm sure they sell them somewhere).  I told her she'd have to wait for spring for us to find our own caterpillars.

Once Matthew realized that Uncle Clint really wasn't going to spank him, (as Clint had joked) he had a great time playing with him.  Boy, he doesn't get jokes very well; he still covers his bum when he sees Clint.

Sena and Camryn

It was so much fun having everyone together.  Rob's dad was there too, but didn't have a very good day, and went to bed early.

Pretty much every year, Rob and I make pictures for the families we have for Christmas.  Rob builds the frames, and I cut the mats.  This year we did Salt Lake Temples for Rob's parents and Tara nd Steve.  When the Draper Temple comes available, we'll swap it out for them, since that's where they were sealed earlier this year.  Steve's got a funny look going here.

Oh, we finished smaller Christ pictures for Brandon and Logan (we started them years ago- it's hard to get everything done!).

Rob thinks the frames are too plain, but I love them!  He does great work.

We also did a "The Family- A Proclamation to the World" for Rob's parents.  And... we finally finished the Sacred Grove picture for Terri.  We had her last year, but she was in the Phillipines for Christmas, so we were slackers and didn't get it done.

I think they turned out pretty well.  On my side of the family, we have Linda's family.  Since we didn't see them for Christmas... well, their's aren't done yet. Linda, I hope you like what I have planned.  I can't cut mats when the kids are awake, so I had a lot of really late nights.  My 2 and 3 a.m. nights caught up to me, and I was a bit wiped out for Christmas.  That's what I get for my procrastinational (is that even a word?!) tendencies.  Ah well, it's worth it.  You'd think we'd have a bunch of these pictures in our house.  We really only have a few- I'll have to work on that.

We invited my sister Terri and brother Dan to stay with us for Christmas.  They joined us at Tara's, then Terri came up to our house for Christmas Eve.  Dan decided to sleep in his own bed and come up the next day.  It was so fun having them with us!

We let the kids open one present at our house on Christmas Eve.  What do you know, it was pajamas.

Matthew was so excited for another pair of pjs.  He has yet to wear them though.  He's a ding-bat sometimes, and won't wear new clothes.  I think I have lamented about that on previous posts.

Rob even got pjs for Terri and Dan.  Why oh why didn't I get a picture of all of us in our jammies?!

Sarah was so excited to have her Daddy open this present she wrapped for him.  It was a few random little toys from the basement and Halloween candy.  How sweet!

I love the wrap job on these presents from Nathan and Sarah.  I especially love the use of blue painter's tape.  I eventually had to end the wrapping up of multiple packages with little toys and Halloween candy in them, or I would have run out of wrapping paper.  They were so cute about it though.  I did give them a lesson on gift wrapping.

We finished up the night with our traditional reading the Christmas Oranges story and eating a chocolate orange.  It was so late that we saved reading Luke 2 until Christmas morning before opening presents.  I love Christmas!

Calling All Engines (and Engineers)

Rob was excited about our first Christmas in our new house, because he would have MORE room for his trains.  Every year he builds an elaborate train set-up  in a horseshoe shape, around the Christmas tree.  As he was planning it this year, he sheepishly asked if he could have a 12' X 6' area.  In our old house, his trains took up a good half of the livingroom, but here I figured we could do it.  Still... it's huge!

I love watching Rob figure out the layout of the tracks.  Every year it's totally different from previous years.  This year he has two seperate loops.  The one for Thomas the Tank Engine is all elevated, going up and down hills.  The larger loop is for the steam engine, and has several "yard" area, where they can dump loads and pick up additional freight cars etc. 

They all love it, and will play for hours coupling , and uncoupling cars, dumping loads, and racing.  Matthew loves that he can drive Thomas as fast as he wants- he won't derail.

What I love about getting the trains set up, is that then we can get a Christmas tree!

It didn't take long for Abby to investigate the Christmas tree.  I love this picture of her after trying to eat the tree.  You'd think, that after such a response, we wouldn't have a problem with her getting into the tree.  Wrong!  She still loves to pull lights off the tree, chew on lights, and I don't know how many times I've taken pine needles out of her mouth!

Matthew really got into decorating the tree this year.  He was so cute, and sooooo excited.  The kids all did a great job!

It took several tries for Rob and Sarah to get the star up.

Matthew's buddy Cole came to play trains with us.  He was so cute!

Sarah's friend Emma (Cole's sister) had a great time being engineer too.

What would Christmas be without trains?!  I guess we're a little too crazy about trains here, but the kids (Rob included in that) look forward to train season all year long. 

Thanksgiving

So it's almost Christmas, and I havn't posted my Thanksgiving pictures yet.  Such is life... I don't want to miss these getting posted, so here we go.  We had Thanksgiving with Rob's family at his sister Tara's house.

Madi loves Abby, and always wanted to hold her.Whenever I was nursing Abby, Madi would ask to hold her.  I'd tell her she couldn't, because I was feeding her.  She'd say, "nuh uh, you're not feeding her."  I'd say something about mommy's milk, and she'd say, "no...you don't have any milk"  Um... I'm not going to explain that one to her.

Here's the yummy dinner.

Sena and Abby

My kids loved the big meal.  They especially loved having all the pie.

Nathan, Weston and Madi

We have Clint to thank for most of the food.  Rob thinks he should have his own cooking show:)  After Thanksgiving, Clint made his famous "Grouchy Burgers," and it was the first time I got to try them.  YUM!

Abby and Cameryn

Matt was caught eating huge spoonfuls of corn out the the bowl.  I tried to get him to do it again for a picture, but he was too upset from everyone laughing at him.

Rob & Sarah, and Steve and Madi enjoying a friendly game of poker.

At one point, Rob was winning big.

...and Clint was borrowing chips.  He ended up winning though.

Grandpa helped Brandon with strategy.

Abby loved all the toys Tara pulled out for her to play with!  Tara sent most of those toys home with us.  Yeah!

The kids played school toghther, with Nathan as the teacher, of course.

Matthew is always in cars and truck heaven when we visit Tara and Steve.

I love this picture of Abby grabbing Grandpa's shoelaces.

Rock Band was a huge hit.  Sarah is playing drums with Jerany.  Cameryn and Tara are on the guitar and bass.

Staples

Last week at book club, we were talking about injuries our kids have had.  I made a comment about how my kids had never broken bones or needed stitches.  I pretended to knock on wood, but I guess I should have really found some wood to knock on.  Yesterday, at the end of school, I got a call from Nathan.  He said that they had stacked their chairs and he was cleaning the floor around his desk, when a little girl knocked his chair off his desk and it hit his head, putting a gash in it.  I woke the kids up from naps and raced to the school to pick him up.  The gash wasn't big, but it looked pretty deep.  At home I checked the web site of my sister-in-law docmisty, because I had remembered her having a post about determining whether or not to go to the doctor for stitches. The cut looked like it went through several layers of skin, and my gut told me I should take him in.  We have a huge deductible (basically it's catastrophic coverage), so I'm super selective about going to the doctor.  Someone has to be really sick, or I have to have a strong gut feeling for me to take them in.  People complain about co-pays, but they are much better than paying out for the whole amount of the office visit.  Anyway... So I wouldn't have to drag four kids along with me, I waited a half-hour for Rob to get home. I took Nathan to our friend Dr. F., and I'm glad I did.  The wound did need to be closed up, so he got 3 staples in the back of his head.  He was really good about it and didn't freek out at all.  He even made us all giggle as he was getting shots to numb the area. 

 I feel bad for the poor kid.  He's doing fine though, and seemed to get a little too much attention at school.  Hopefully they won't crawl around cleaning up the floor with chairs perched on their desks anymore.  

Merry Christmas to us! (sigh)