Christmas and Beyond

My brother and his family came into town a few days before Christmas.  It was so. much. fun! Stephen and Boston love playing with their Quist cousins.  Every day went something like this: wake up, get dressed, go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, play, play, play, nap, play play play.

Christmas Eve we acted out the nativity.

Celsea was Mary and Stephen was Joseph.

I was the angel.  With a cell phone in one hand.  (I used it to look up the words to the hymns, ok?)

 

Some wise men and shepherds.

 

On Christmas Eve Santa came to our house.

 

At 6:30 am on Christmas morning, Boston was the first to see what Santa brought.  He was still half asleep.

 

“Wook Stephen!”

 

Santa brought Boston a tricycle and tiger slippers.

 

Stephen received the Imaginext pirate ship from the jolly old man.

 

New toothbrushes were a surprisingly bit hit as stocking stuffers.

 

You can’t beat a Christmas morning smile!

 

The boys opened a gift from Mom and Dad which turned out to be a treasure hunt to find…

The Lego table! For some reason I felt that it was a little anticlimactic but they do love it now. 

 

The rest of Christmas morning we spent opening gifts with the Quists.  Here is a picture of all of us girls wearing the beautiful aprons my Mom made for us.  They are seriously so pretty I almost hate to get my dirty.  She worked very hard on these aprons and they are so well made!

 

Christmas afternoon and evening we spent with the Smiths.  We opened more gifts and had Christmas dinner.  I feel horrible but I have no pictures of this!  We get to see them a lot more frequently so picture taking has kind of been done.  But still…I wish I had some pictures. 

 

After Christmas we had a few more fun days of playing with the Quist cousins.  Here they are wearing the cute shirts Aunt Rebecca made for them.  Stephen and Boston have ASU on one side and BYU on the other so they can represent both Mommy and Daddy’s schools.  Anna and Jeremiah are BYU all the way!

 

We got to meet my sweet little nephew James for the first time.  He was such a chill little guy and soooo squeezable!

 

Boston and Jeremiah, who are only 6 days apart in age, finally started to connect with each other and play together!  They were scribbling on this paper and then laughing maniacally.

 

Jeremiah really loved getting to know Grandma and Grandpa’s dog, Indy better.

 

We went to a playground that was built on top of an old landfill.  It had some of the craziest playground equipment I have ever seen including a giant spider web of ropes that was 20 feet tall.  It was big enough to support adults and so the kid in Scott took over and he had to climb it.  Here is Jeremiah and Anna on the tire swing.

Boston was in his element on the tall slide.

 

We decided at the last possible moment that we should take a family picture with everyone.  The kids were in their pajamas and we used a tripod, but hey we are all there!

And I think we look gooood!

Then suddenly, everyone left town and we were left with the usual skeleton crew: my little fam, Grandma and
Grandpa, and Allen.  Sigh.  We sure do miss all those crazy kids!

The party begins…

I am sure I am not alone in not wanting to post pictures of myself very often.  But, when the post is about my birthday, I have to make an exception.   

The fun in December really starts for me when my family starts rolling into town.  My sisters, Chery and Celsea flew in two days before my birthday and were able to celebrate with me.  Best birthday present ever!  I also got to see my childhood/for-our- whole-entire-lives friend, Kesseli.  We celebrated at my mom’s house where she made my favorite chicken chowder for dinner and pecan frosties for desert.  Sigh.  I ONLY eat them on my birthday because I would be 500 lbs otherwise.  I pretty much devoured that whole pile on my own. 

 

Kids are so much more fun to watch blow out candles but hey, why not?

Like you, I had no idea what could possibly be in that strangely shaped bucket that was a gift from my Mom and Dad…it turned out to be rose bushes for my front yard!  When we moved in to our house there were six rose bushes along the side of the driveway but three of them were dead.  These are to replace those three.  They are planted snugly in their spots now awaiting warmer weather to bloom and grow.

 

Along with the roses was this card:

I know it is hard to see but it is pictures of me as a little girl with my big brother, Aaron.  I am holding a red rose.  My Dad said that whenever he thinks of roses he thinks of me.  I had no idea, but how sweet!

Busy, Busy Christmas Elves

My two little elves, Stephen and Boston, were beyond excited to begin decorating the Christmas tree.  They were very proud of their work.

 

I love Stephen’s arm around Boston’s shoulder.  Totally posed, but still Mommy’s favorite sight!

 

The elves at our house weren’t always helpful….

In fact, sometimes they were quite naughty. 

One time, the mischief involved a sharpie marker.

 

We had another elf join the family.  His name is Claude and he liked to play while we were all sleeping.

He cut paper snowflakes as a surprise one night…

Can you see him there?  Rappelling from the fan?

 

The elves also enjoyed a bit of Christmas shopping…we valued their opinions.

 

More helpful elves…

Stephen’s job was cutting the wrapping paper.  He has excellent cutting skills!  I really like the wrapping paper with the grid lines drawn on the back.  Boston’s job was taping – I don’t have a picture of that but I will tell you there was PLENTY of tape used!

One of Santa’s busiest elves was Mama Elf.  I spent many hours working on gifts for the family gift exchange and helping my mom with some projects she was working on.  We both put together Sunday “quiet bags” to give as part of family gift exchanges.   The bags contained handmade activities including crayon rolls, coloring books (made from Friend magazine coloring pages), and popsicle stick puzzles made from pictures from Friend magazines (12 sets each!)  The projects turned out wonderfully and were a big hit on Christmas morning.  I don’t have a single picture of the finished projects unfortunately!   I also sewed crayon rolls for my boys as well as wallets for each of them from this tutorial. 

At the very last possible moment I whipped up these sock cupcakes and cards to give to Stephen’s preschool teachers.  Stephen’s thumbprints are on the card – that turned out to be trickier than I thought.  Both the sock cupcakes and card are ideas snagged from Pinterest.

 

 

Another busy elf was Scott.  He had to study for finals and took three finals in one weekend – one Friday night and two on Saturday afternoon/evening. Yuck!  He also worked on some secret Christmas projects including trays for the popsicle stick puzzles.  (Once again, no pictures!)  He also made this Lego table for the boys for Christmas.

Whew!  It is exhausting just writing about all of that!

Where’s the Butter?

We went on a road trip with my parents to Utah for Thanksgiving….

Stephen and Boston were sooooo excited for this trip they talked about going to Utah for weeks before we actually left.

They watched movies pretty much the whole way there.  The best part was that they had headphones which spared the adults from having to hear the movies the whole time.  Oh, and lots of candy helps the time go by…

 

We went up to BYU campus and explored the bookstore for a while.  There is much more than books to be found.  Boston was a big fan of the headgear.

 

Aunt Chery with Boston.

 

Stephen loved the giant Nutcrackers in the stairwells at the bookstore.

 

Of course we visited the BYU Creamery for ice cream and lunch.

 

There was a lot of walking involved…Stephen conned Aunt Celsea into carrying him.

He is totally faking, but it is still sweet!

 

We had Thanksgiving at my Aunt Sherryl’s house in Highland.

 

Aunt Sherryl and Mom doing dishes.  (Yes, I did help too).

There were a lot of cooks in the kitchen…the catch phrase was “where’s the butter?”

My talented and beautiful BYU coed sisters Celsea, and Chery!  I love them!

 

We made lots of new friends with second cousins.  Just now Stephen was looking over my shoulder at this picture and said, “hey there’s my friend Robyn!”

 

Stephen and Boston were incredibly well behaved the entire time we were there.  We only dealt with a few minor tantrums caused by overtired boys.  This picture does not depict a tantrum, merely a wrestling match.

 

The drive home is always less fun but the boys thought making smiles from French fries was the thing to do at Wendy’s in Kanab.

 

We decided to take the slightly longer and definitely more scenic road home.  We drove through Jacob Lake (beautiful pine forests) near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  There were some patches of snow so we pulled over to let Stephen and Boston check it out.

Look!  Wolf tracks!  Actually, they were dog tracks, but still thrilling to discover.

It was very very cold to us Arizonians up on this mountain.  Ironically, this snow was in Arizona!

 

We stopped again at the bottom of that mountain in this place…I don’t remember what it is called but it has really cool rocks all piled on top of each other.  Ancient and some not-so-ancient people used them to build shelters and homes in the past.  We used them to climb around and stretch our legs.

 

 

When we got home it was out with the pumpkins (from our garden!) and in with the Christmas tree!