Merry Christmas 2009

This year Christmas came and went much too fast for me.  I was ready and excited and everything, but I just feel like it passed us by too quickly.  Christmas Eve was a great day.  It was more relaxed than normal for some reason.  We had family over for breakfast like we do every year and I made our homemade marshmallows myself this year.  Ethan spent a lot of time outside playing.  This year both Ethan and Ezra had colds.  That meant that we had to get to bed earlier and also that we didn't spend a lot of time with too many other people.

My parents came over for Christmas Eve.  It seemed to just fly by!  After we had soup at thier house we tried to drive around to see Christmas lights, but we had to stop and find an open store to get cold medicine for Ethan.  Ez and Mase were tired so we cut it short and got them to bed before any of the fun even started.  Ethan was once again surrounded by grown-ups!  He doesn't mind.  We had our hot chocolate and marshmallows and whip cream and played some serious Uno before he set out his present and cookies for Santa.  He really was excited this year.  He struggled getting to sleep.  It's fun though!

In the morning we had Santa traps all set out so that Ethan or Ezra couldn't escape and go peek without everyone.  Ethan broke through once, but then we trapped them all in our room.  Did I mention that Christmas at our house starts around 8:30 or 9?!  We had all of the kids line up to walk into the family room together.  Ethan is holding Ez back!

I love this picture!  Ethan is trying to find his present and Ez just looks like he hit the jack-pot!

Ethan got his sweet new bike with hand-brakes.  It even came with a new helmet that has an autobot on the back!  Lucky kid.

Ezra got a shake-n-go car that he LOVES!  He gets so excited to shake it up and watch it drive away.  He likes to show everything he gets to Ethan.

Mase got his super dooper stroller.  (mom got a super dooper stroller!)  It's really nice and he actually seems to like it.  It's really hard to collapse though...  lame.

Ez got a trike from mom and dad.  He was really anxious to get on it and try it out.  The only problem was that he likes to lean forward and for some reason that tips the bike over!

The boys get new PJ's every year from both grandparents.  They opened the PJ's from my parents on Christmas Eve and wore them all morning and these PJ's from Spen's parents on Christmas night.  It worked out for us because we never finish opening our gifts on Christmas.  We really take our time!  We still had a bunch to open the day after Christmas.  So really it was like a 2nd Christmas morning!

Ethan gave Ezra some slippers.  Ethan actually bought all of his presents for his brothers and contributed to the cost of the gifts he gave to me and Spen.  He's 6!  He was pretty insistant on getting something for everyone and wanted to use his money so it was from him.  So sweet.

Mase was the real winner.  He really just wants the paper.  His aunt and uncle (Karie and Mikey) acutally gave him 4 rolls of wrapping paper as his gift to just rip apart!

Ezra really got into the presents thing.  He wanted to open every single one of them.  He got really good at it too.  We had an amazing Christmas.  Hope you all did too!

Christmas Nativity

One of the things we do every year with my family is we dress up and read the nativity together.  I should say we act it out, but mostly we dress up and play then we read from Luke 2.

Our family looked a bit more like pirates I think than people from biblical times, but we had a good time!  Ez actually was the funniest.  He wore his suit all night and never tried to take it off once!

Seeing Santa

This year our kids got to see Santa 4 times.  I only have pictures of 2 of those times...  Spencer's new work had Santa come and visit the kids one day after work and we took our kids to go to see him.  Ethan was so excited about it.  Mason actually was the most interactive with Santa.  Ez freaked out and wouldn't go near him unless he pretended that he wasn't there.  It was pretty chaotic and crazy, so Ethan kind of got lost in all the picture taking part.  He didn't really get to talk to Santa as much as he had hoped.  Luckily we saw him a few more times so that he could say all that he wanted to say!

All of the kids with Santa.  Ez isn't really into it.  Ethan didn't get to really talk to Santa like he had planned.  He took that sack puppet to show him.  It has Santa on it.  He wanted to tell Santa all about it but was pretty rushed to be done with his turn.  sad....

Me and Michelle are the 'stand-ins' for Santa while my dad sets his camera just how he wants it for the big moment.

Since I was a baby we have gone to see Santa Claus every year of my life.  After my sister and I had our own kids we tried to get the kids to the mall to visit Santa.  We hated it.  She is lucky enough to know Santa!!  Thank heavens for that.  He has been nice enough to come to her house every year to visit our kids without the confusion of the mall, and we get to have good pictures with Santa!

Ethan saw Santa several times this year and he was very suspicious of which one of them was the real Santa.  He understood that Santa had to have a lot of helpers to get out to see all of the kids of the world but which one was the REAL one...  well, this was the real Santa.  He wasn't wearing a watch like a different Santa was and he had the right gloves that another Santa didn't have.  There were quite a few things that Ethan was paying attention to to decipher if this was the right Santa... and he was.

Mase was super happy to sit with Santa.  He liked to feel his coat and his beard.  He even gave it a few hard tugs!  Must be the real Santa.

Ez was excited right up until it was his turn.  He kept trying to sneak over and see Santa out of turn, but once it was his chance he wasn't so sure anymore!

One of my favorite Christmas decorations I have in my house is a framed picture from every year of my kids visiting Santa.  They are getting so big.

We all got to see Santa this year...

Can you believe these are all of the cousins together from my side!  Fun for Christmas!

Outing to see the Christmas Lights

It's been a while since we have had a chance to go and see the Christmas lights at the Salt Lake Temple.  This year we were able to go.  It's so beautiful and CROWDED!

We planned it well I thought.  We got there really early.  Most of the lights weren't even on yet when we got there.  It was also a very foggy night and so I was loving taking pictures.  I'm nowhere near a photographer, but I love to take pictures.  So I've posted a few.

Ethan is a very big help anywhere we go.  He loves to push one of his brothers and no longer tries to ride somewhere on the wheelchair!  It's nice.  We also were prepared and bundled up really well.  At first we thought it may be overkill, but turns out we could have even done more.  It was chilly.

My kids aren't really the kids that love to be in pictures.  I can catch Ezra and Mason every so often , but to have Ethan look at the camera is very rare.

The lights finally came on!~!

Mason did pretty well with it all until it started to get crowded.  Getting there early was great because of the crowd issue.  As we were leaving it was a nightmare.  Had we arrived at that time I think we wouldn't have stayed.  Instead we walked all around and had a great time.

I tried to take most of my pictures without my flash so that you could get a better effect of the lights.  Not so good for people pictures though.  We did both...

May I point out Ethan hiding behind me to avoid a picture?

It was interesting to us that they still only use incandescent lights.  Does anyone know why they aren't adding any LED's?  We loved this big tree.  It had little reflective circles paperclipped to the light wires to add more sparkle.  It worked!

Bathroom break.

Here are a few of my favorite shots I took from the night.

I love the nativity they put in the reflective pool.  Very cool.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Diggin a Hole~

A few weeks after Mason's conference in Las Vegas we ended up there again for a long weekend.  Those are the types of things you do when you are unemployeed I suppose!  Our friend's invited us to come and stay and while we were there they planned a big hole digging in their backyard to sink their trampoline.

The only problem was that as soon as we got there Mason started to have problems and spiked a fever and was having excessive seizures.  That meant it was time for me to call around and decide which hospital to take him to.

He was admitted for 3 days with seizures, a mild case of the swine flu, and they thought he had an illyus but it turned out OK.  That didn't stop the boys from digging a hole.

Poor Mel got to feel the fun of having 5 kids 8 and under.  It was close to Halloween so I guess the costumes all came out to play.  It was nice for me because I had a visitor everyday and she even brought or sent delicious meals!

They all went to the Elementary school Halloween party all dressed up.  Aren't they cute!

I don't know why Ethan will let Mel take pictures of him.  He never lets me!  Isn't he a tough Spiderman?

And finally here it is, the finished product.  We never actually got to see it all set up, but the hole was sweet!  And we got rid of the Angel......