Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

While in Missouri I took 284 pictures. And there were some times I forgot to even take the camera out.
It's hard to pick just a few pictures to show what we did while we were there. Which was mostly hanging out with family, eating and playing games. So I guess it shouldn't be too hard.

Some highlights-
We had 2 Christmases. Awesome.
We got stuck for a few days in a massive snow storm with drifts several feet high.
Birthday parties.
I got to see my sisters new baby boy, Franklin!
We spent all of our time with family.
Keenan's Eagle Court of honor.
Good food. Really good food.
I loved watching our boys play with all their cousins, even if it took Jack until the day before we left to warm up to some (most) people!

#1 highlight...Giving Josiah is Christmas present.

Now, onto pictures.Yes, that's a giant onesie that Josiah is wearing. it's like a train wreck, you can't stop looking at it can you? :)

And he embroidered several linens that will be used in our house now. Also, some framed pictures of Josiah and me when I was a baby, which I love, that will hang somewhere in the house.

Since we've got home yesterday morning it hasn't stopped snowing. Good thing we don't need to go anywhere.
Now we just need to finish unpacking, mail off our Christmas cards (better late than never!!), get rid of the colds we have, and take down Christmas!

Happy New year everyone!

Merry Christmas!

This is my last blog post before Christmas Vacation! We fly out tomorrow night, it still seems like days away! blah.

Instead of doing what I should be doing (cleaning and packing), I am going to blog. :)

This week we went to Salt Lake to visit my Great Uncle Jack and then to look at the Christmas lights on Temple Square. The visits with Uncle Jack are always nice, but short. There are so many little things in his house my boys would love to get their crazy little hands on! We like to walk around Temple Square (even though it was FREEZING) and look at all the pretty displays. Avery always gets excited to see the Temple, and I love all the different colored lights. I know it's all basically the same lights/displays each year, but it's so pretty. And I think the boys liked it. They're good at the dead pan looks. My favorite part (besides a detour to the Lion House Pantry for Hot Cocoa...) are the Nativities they have set up. I love this chunky one the boys and I had our picture taken in front of.Then, Tuesday night we celebrated our anniversary a few days early (5 years!!! Wow!). We got some babysitters and went out to dinner and then over to some friends house to play games and eat treats. It was fun, and definitely nice to be able to play a game without pausing every few minutes to take care of kid problems!

Now we're getting ready for our trip, which I already know is going to be crazy. It always is a little bit. :) I'm excited to be with our families for Christmas, I just wish our flight was earlier than tomorrow evening!

Santa and Ginger bread houses

Yesterday we took the boys to see Santa at the mall. Avery did way better than he has the last 2 years, he sat on Santa's lap and talked to him. All he wanted to do was tell Santa "I am that hero!" and sing him a song. He didn't sing a song but he proudly shouted the hero line. He's pretty funny.Jack was excited to see Santa, exclaiming "Santa!" every few minutes, but as soon as we put him on Santa's lap he flipped. Pretty cute. :)After Santa we went to Andy's brother Jon's house for a family dinner and gingerbread houses (which were actually graham cracker houses). Avery kept calling them Gingerbread Man Houses. He was very excited to make one!
Andy helped Avery make his, Avery picked the candy and where to put it. He loved it.Jack ate graham crackers the whole time, and I watched and took pictures. It was a fun night, and to top it off we saw some pretty Christmas lights on our drive home!

Hats

The last couple days I've had the sewing bug, I need to make something every once in a while to stay sane. So, this morning I made some hats for the boys out of an old shirt of Andy's. I think they're fun and turned out pretty cute! I used this tutorial.

Avery loves to sing, we sing songs in the car, before bed, in the middle of the day. If we don't sing with him he'll usually sing by himself. Here are a couple of his recent favorites.

Snow Day

Today it is snowing, and so far it's showing no signs of stopping. Snow days are lazy days at our house. We still do housework, but it feels lazy. In a good way. The boys and I have been hanging out, cuddling under blankets, singing songs, watching the snow from our front window, reading books and eating treats. mmmm

Candy time!

One of our favorite things at Christmastime is making candy! We love candy all year round, but it's so fun to make Christmas Candy. We always give it to family, friends and home/visiting teaching families. This year we made a lot. Too much probably, but it's so yummy... We did Snickers Fudge, Cookie Dough Truffles, Caramel Truffels, English Toffee, Chocolate Mint Fudge and Chocolate Covered Pretzels.
Now we just have to give it all out before we eat it all!!!

Snickers Fudge, before we cut it. Yum.

Avery the Artist

We think pretty much everything our boys do is hilarious. Because, lets face it, they're awesome. Really awesome.

Avery is getting really good at writing letters. Here is a picture he drew as a gift for Andy's Grandparents last month. I can pretty much write any letter/word and he'll copy it pretty well. Some of the letters get a little jumbled, but pretty awesome for a 3 year old, I think.
(The second line says "My Family". Sometimes his m's have an extra bump or 2 :) )

Here's an adorable picture of Jack with his baby for the day, Mr. Potato Head. He loves babies.

Avery waxes spiritual....

So, we think Avery is pretty funny. He's been paying more attention to church and scriptures, and things of that nature lately, so I'll share a couple recent stories.

1) Mind on Conference - Avery enjoys when General Conference is on TV because he likes to identify Presidents Monson, Eyring, and Uchtdorf. It would appear that watching conference every 6 months has had more of an effect on Avery than we thought. Here are a couple examples:

a) Last night, we watched President Obama's speach about troops/etc in Afghanistan. (Avery was, by the way, able to accurately identify the speaker as "President Obama") However, I think he may have gotten his President's confused (which is unfortunate, since they are polar opposites in terms of good and evil!) because he asked when the song and prayer was going to happen.

b) Similarly, Kizzie told me today while I was at work that they listened to Christmas music this morning on her ipod. She said that, on several occasions, following a MoTab (or similar style) song, Avery would ask if it was time for the prayer.

2)"What's faif?" - Every night, before the boys go to bed, we read a page out of the children's scriptures and say our family prayer (it's always fun when Avery does that too... by the way). Last night, we were reading about Nephi and Lehi (the brothers) and it said that they have great faith. Avery said, "What's faif?" I explained to him that it is when we believe something even when we can't see it, just like we believe in Jesus even though we can't see him. Fortunately, he was satisfied with that answer and seemed to get it.

3) "What does Heavenly Father make out of people?" - Avery asked me this a couple weeks ago when we were just sitting at the dinner table. I'm pretty sure he meant "What does Heavenly Father make people out of?"... Nevertheless, I was pretty taken aback by this question and wasn't really sure how to answer it, especially in kid-speek. So... I just gave him the first answer that came to mind that probably didn't make any sense: "Heavenly Father makes people out of matter." (What is matter?) "Anything that has mass and takes up space." Thanks 3rd grade science... though I doubt this was a very useful answer for Avery.

Anyway, we love both of our boys, and we especially love hearing all of the crazy things that Avery says as he continues to learn and grow. We're often pretty amazed by the things he's able to put together and the questions he sometimes asks. Good times.

Christmas at our house

Our house is little, and we don't have a ton of Christmas decorations. But I love the way our living room feels after we put everything up, it's so festive and fun. Our boys love the tree and Avery is especially excited for all the Christmas happenings! Someday we'll upgrade from apartment/cramped/ultra child friendly/poor decorations.
Someday I'd like to have Christmas decorations in every room! We just LOVE Christmas around here!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Our tree this year. We opted to skip ornaments this year and I just tied strips of plaid fabric around branches. Jack gets a little crazy, so I thought this would be a good option. :)A Garland I made last year out of old Christmas Cards, strung on ribbon. I think it's cute and happy.Place mats. :) I've had them in our Christmas boxes for about 3 years and we never use them. So I thought I'd try something new.Blocks I made at RS Super Saturday.Andy stringing lights around the living room. We really like Christmas lights! :)And our Willow Tree Nativity. I love this and hope to add to it in future years.

Busy, busy week!!

This past week was busy. Andy's immediate family was in town for Chris' wedding and Thanksgiving. Then there was a Hinton (Andy's maternal grandparent's side of the family) family reunion. It was all fun, but it's so tiring and a bit overwhelming hauling 2 small kids around without naps for a week. Avery thrives off crowds (Where on earth did he get that from? Has he met his parents?!), Jack pretty much hates anyone who isn't Mom. Lucky me. So it was an interesting week.It was fun seeing family though, and Chris and Lauren's wedding was the highlight of the week! (Lunch at the creamery is a close second!) Avery is still talking about Lauren's princess dress, asking if she's going to sleep in it and wear it forever. He loves Chris and Lauren, so he was very excited about the whole thing!We also went to the Creamery for lunch, Jumpin Jack's, on a walk (well, Andy and Avery did), ate a TON, played games, there was a pinata, Andy played lots of Basketball/football, and we managed to squeeze in Christmas decorating!I barely saw Avery all week, he was off with other kids, being a big kid. I saw a lot of Jack.Overall it was a good week. I'm not going to lie though, I'm looking forward to our slow paced life for the next few weeks. Then it's off to Missouri for Christmas and more crazy, busy, fun, stressful events! We love our big families, really!! :)

Here's a picture of Andy and his greasy mustache. He grew it just for Chris' wedding. 5 years ago when we got married Chris grew a nasty little 'stache, that didn't show up in our pictures. Andy's was a little darker. He shaved soon after the wedding! :)