Santa Came

 The kids were up Bright and Early Sunday morning since that is when Santa came to our house. Caleb woke everyone up at 5;15 saying that he heard sleigh bells and hooves on the roof. Robb and I managed to hold them off until 5:45ish and then it we gave in. We all headed downstairs to see if our kids were on the naughty or the nice list. I think the boys may have been a little nervous about what list they were on because they kept asking us if they had been good enough. We found that Santa had left gifts (sigh of relief that they made the nice list) and quite a mess with his cookies, milk and carrots. I'm not sure but it looked like he may have even brought a reindeer in the house.
Caleb was Super excited to see that Santa had brought him the guitar he had asked for. He spent the rest of the day playing his version of Sweet Home Alabama.

 

 Bryce also got a guitar from Santa. He was excited about the guitar but he was beside himself excited about the little Star War character stocking stuffers. He spent the rest of the morning playing out scenes from the Star Wars movie.

 Abby got a baby set that came with Dr/Nurse stuff. She loved it! Due to an Abby wardrobe malfunction we don't have very many pictures from seeing Santa stuff. She also got a lot of girly girly stocking stuff. By 6 am she had already put on every chap stick she had got and had massive amounts of sparkle eye makeup on.

 After seeing what Santa brought and playing for an hour or so, Robb and I fell back asleep on the couch while the kids watched the new Ice Age movie. Caleb even crashed for a little bit.

 At 9 or so we were finally up and ready to go for the day. A much more reasonable time than 5:15. We ate a nice breakfast and played with every ones new toys. We packed up later that afternoon and headed to Norfolk to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas with our families.

Our Christmas

 This year Christmas fell on a Tuesday. While that may not have been very convenient for many people, it worked out really well for our family. This was probably one of the most laid back Christmases that we have ever had. We decided to celebrate our little family Christmas on the Saturday before. The night before we had got some snow so in the morning Robb was desperate to let the kids open a couple of their gifts so that he could take them to Pioneer Park to snowboard. We made them close their eyes and wait in the living room since these gifts were too big to wrap.

 It doesn't really look like it in this picture but Bryce was very excited about his helmet and snowboard. We had bought the boys ski helmets last year in Colorado when we had money that we had to spend at the ski shop. Our hope is that we will be able to take the boys on a ski trip to Colorado with us this year. The snowboards are just toy ones that they can use around here. I think we decided after talking to the people at the ski school's last year that they should learn to ski first and then learn snowboarding when they are a little bit older.

 

Caleb was so excited to go down the big hills at Pioneer Park.

 Abby got a pink sled and she thought she was really excited to go to Pioneer Park until she learned that I wasn't planning on going. She was all dressed up in her snow suit and had all of her gear on so I just pulled her up and down the street about a dozen times and then we came in and had hot chocolate.

 After lunch Robb and I finally gave in and decided we could do gifts. The kids had been asking about it since they had got up that morning and we were really excited to see them open the gifts too.

 

 Bryce was all smiles when he opened the gift with his 6 Star Wars movies in it and a Star Wars shirt. I guess I am going to have to learn a new set of characters now. Every time I start to understand what he is interested in he switches it up on me.

 Caleb was very excited about his motorcycle Lego set and a set of Knex. He opens gifts like his dad! He didn't waste any time getting the paper off. I realized that I didn't get any pictures of him actually opening gifts because he was too fast!

 Abby was thrilled to see that she had got a keyboard and a microphone. I guess we should be prepared for a noisy house.

 After we opened all the gifts the boys and Robb disappeared to the basement to watch the 1st Star Wars episode and put together the endless sets of Lego's that they had got. Abby and  I played with her microphone for a while and then dressed up her doll and played some games. Eventually Abby and I fell asleep on the couch and when I woke up it was 5:00. Robb and I had planned on making a nice supper but I wasn't feeling the best and Robb got wrapped up in Lego building so when I suggested that we got to our favorite place for Chinese everyone agreed. We went to Imperial Palace and had our usual 3 orders of Princess Beef. It was really nice and relaxing and the kids were very well behaved!
On the way home we drove around and looked at Christmas lights. The kids were exhausted when we got home but they woke up enough to put out the special cookies that we had saved for Santa and a big tall glass of milk. Oh, we didn't forget the reindeer either. They set out enough carrots for all the reindeer. After we got everything ready I was trying to decide where to set the plate of cookies and Abby said that it needed to go on the kitchen table because Santa is messy. I thought it was really cute that she remembered that Santa usually left a lot of cookie crumbs. We finished the night by reading The Night Before Christmas Story and then took 3 very tired kids up to bed.
After we were sure that everyone was asleep Robb and I (the elves) went to work setting up the Santa gifts. We were up pretty late getting everything set up and we knew that it would be an early morning with super excited kids.

(I almost forgot to stick this picture in. Robb got new wakeboard binding, which he was really excited about. I got a sewing machine which I was really excited about even though I really have no idea how to sew. The plan is that I will learn.)

Snow Day!!!

Bryce and Caleb got to experience their first SNOW DAY! They were pretty excited to find out that they didn't have to go to school and instead they got to lounge around, play in the snow and do a few extra fun things we usually don't do.
We were all outside playing in the 5+ inches of snow by 8 am. The kids were so excited to get outside that sleeping in was completely out of the question.
Bryce and Caleb were out for an hour plus this morning and then were out for another 2 hours this afternoon. They worked on scooping the deck off, played on the jungle gym and used spray bottles with colored water to make snow designs. They had a blast!
Abby played outside for a little while. She wasn't as sure about going in the deep drifted snow. She pretty much stuck to making snow angels on the deck and eating snow.

 After playing outside for a while they decided they wanted some hot chocolate and hot apple cider. Bryce has on quite the outfit with no shirt and just his cover all on.

Professional Pictures 2012

Baking Day

 Saturday was declared Baking Day at our house. We got started right when we got up. Jenny and I baked together last year and it worked out great. We had someone to chat with the entire time, and extra set of hands to manage the kids, and we each just bought ingredients for a few things and shared what we made.
The kids had fun making the reindeer crunch and of course decorating the cut out cookies. I think we may have ended up with more sprinkles on the floor than the cookies if that is possible.
Thanks for a fun baking day Jenny and kiddos.
When it was all said and done we had reindeer crunch, Oreo balls, cookie dough truffles, chocolate and lemon cake balls, cut out cookies, Rolo cookies and fudge. I had to get it plated and out to neighbors quickly before we eat it all.

Seeing Santa

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Last Friday night we made the trip to see Santa. The kids have been excited to see him for weeks now but time has flown and we have been so busy! We went to Southpointe to the Santa House there. It isn't the ideal "seeing Santa" situation but he is the only Santa that I knew of to go see. Luckily this year it wasn't busy when we went so we didn't have to wait in the cold. When it was their turn Abby got pretty nervous but she agreed to go as long as her brothers went with her.

 

Bryce asked Santa for a Star Wars movie and Star Wars toys. He kinda sprung this on us in the last week or so. Bryce is highly influenced by his friends when it comes to what he is interested in. This year it is Star Wars. We hadn't planned on Santa bringing anything Star Wars so we called in a quick favor from Tasha's husband for a couple of burned Star Wars movies. Thanks Ricky for being Santa's helper this year!

 

Caleb asked Santa for a guitar and Lego's this year. Whew,  we were good on at least on of the kids.

 

Abby got pretty nervous and when he asked her what she wanted and froze up a bit. She really hasn't had any one specific thing that she wants this year and when we tried having her point stuff out at the store she ended up wanting everything in girl section of  Toys R Us. So her answer ended up being a star for her tree. This made us laugh! Santa probably thought poor child, you don't even have a star on your Christmas tree. However she meant that she wanted a pink star for her pink tree in her room. So the hunt was on for a pink star.

 

I didn't end up getting a very good picture because they had a photographer in the corner getting pictures. They allowed cameras but what they didn't tell you was that Santa would pretty much never look for a picture unless it was one you were paying for. We did end up buying a wallet size photo for each kid for their scrapbooks.

 

To keep last years tradition up we then went to the Christmas movie that was playing. This year it was Rise of the Guardians . It wasn't anything special but the kids always enjoy going to the movie. We didn't however take into account that they would be up way past their bedtime. By the time the movie was over the only one awake was Bryce and by the time we got home at 9:15 everyone was sound asleep. It was nice to finally have a Friday night that we got to do something fun.

Lice Scare

On Monday night a couple weeks ago now (I am pretty much always about 2 weeks behind) we were eating supper and Bryce said " a girl got sent home from school with a tick today". I thought to myself that is really odd this time of year and then it hit me. It was not a a tick, it was lice! Bryce is always a wealth of information about everything that they did at school so after talking to him more I found out that everyone got checked for "ticks" and 3 people got sent home.
By this time I was beyond grossed out and panicked! If you know me at all you know that I have a phobia of germs, bed bugs and I am officially adding lice to this list. I sent everyone up for showers right away and spent the rest of the night checking every ones hair, washing coats, bedding and itching my head.
After the kids were in bed I got a call from their teacher who knew I was probably a bit worried about this if the boys had told me. She is so sweet! She assured me that she had taken all the soft stuff out of the room (which in a kindergarten room is everything) and either put it in the shed outside to freeze or took it home to wash it. She said that her little girl had brought it home from school last year and she definitely didn't want a repeat of that for herself or anyone else.
The next morning when I dropped the boys off the teacher said that the school nurse and her would be checking every one's head before they go into class. That afternoon when I picked up the boys from school there weren't very many kids in their class and the teacher said that all the girls but 2 were out with lice. Yuck! That is 10+ people from their class with creepy crawlers in their hair. We also got the lovely note that day that lice was going around the kindergarten classrooms and to please check your child before bringing them. Caleb loudly announced that he liked it when all the girls in the class had fleas because then they had an almost all boy class. I couldn't help but laugh at that!
So being the crazy germaphobe that I am I went out and bought special lice repellent shampoo and made everyone in the house use it. It smelled terrible and Robb said we smelled like a herd of wet dogs but I would rather have odd smelling hair than have creepy crawlers in it. To make a long story short...we did NOT end up getting it. Thank Goodness!!!

Getting the Perfect Tree

This year we decided to break away from the usual tradition of getting the Christmas tree at the flower shop. Instead we really wanted to go to a tree farm and cut one down. We found a list of tree farms in town and headed out to one that was closest to us. All the kids were tired and crabby from Thanksgiving festivities but I was determined to push through and get the tree that day. When we got to Spikler's tree farm I was dissapointed to find out that if we wanted a 9+ foot Christmas tree there weren't any to cut down we would have to get one of the imported trees.

We headed into the barn to take a look at what they had. They had some really big and beautiful trees. Robb is always a bit of a Scrooge and wants us to get a smaller tree than the kids and I would like. My motto used to be "I need a tree as tall as me." Well, I'm not all that tall and our ceiling are really tall so I feel like we should make good use out of our space. This year was our opportunity, they had many 9,10,11 and 12 foot trees. We had a hard time deciding on which one to get.

Caleb was in a terrible mood and so any tree that anyone else wanted he immediatly hated. I think the kids and I made a good compromise and decided on this tree. I wanted the one that was a bit more symmetical but they wanted one that was a little bit taller.

This is the beauty we all agreed on. It was a little pricey for a tree and it was huge at 10 foot, but no one was stopping us not even the Grinch (Robb) so off we went to tell the owners that we had picked our tree.

My first clue that this might turn out disastrous is that it took 3 large men to move it to the shaker stand. But, so far so good, we will get to the dissaster part eventually.

The kids had fun seeing it get wrapped. I however was a little worried that is was going to break all the branches.
Two men carried it out to our car and tied it on. Now thats service! Most the time it is Robb and I, out in the freezing cold trying to tie it onto the car. Not to mention we are never very successful and usually someone ends up sticking thier arm out the sun roof and holds on for dear life all the way home.

We were all set to go but they offered free popcorn and hot chocolate so we had to take advantage of that first.

When we got home, luckily our nice neighbor Matt saw that there was no way that just Robb and I were going to get that tree in the house. We got it in the stand and Robb was ready to cut the net off. All I could think about was the National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation movie where they cut the net off the tree and the branches bust out a bunch of windows. Well luckily that didnt' happen but it was HUGE!

I definatley got my tree that was taller than me. In fact it was taller than a 6 ft 4 in Robb with an Abby on his shoulders. Look there is even ceiling space to spare.

Robb and I put all the lights on which is something that I just handle myself but this year that was too much of a task. With all the lights on the kids set about putting on the ornaments. Unpacking the ornaments is one of my favorite things about Christmas time. Almost all of our ornaments have a story to go along with them. I have ornaments from when we got married, when we bought our first house, when the kids were born and now that they are bigger we have ornaments that they have made us as gifts.

The kids did a great job of decorating and this year they even spead the ornaments out pretty well.

Our tree was beautiful! We all sat down to eat supper and about half way through I see Robb jump out of his chair. This was followed by a huge crash and some words that aren't usually allowed in our house. Our tree had fallen over! I guesss we did buy a tree that had a trunk about the same size as our stand. I was devestated! I was SO Done! I was tired, the kids had been trying that day, and all of our hard work was lost. Not to mention I could see some of my ornaments broken on the floor. I helped Robb stand the tree up and headed up to the bedroom to have a good cry. I know thats not very grown up of me but thats what I did. After I recovered a little I came downstairst to survey the damage. Only a couple ornaments had broke and although it was sad I decided I would probably live through it. Caleb was crying unconsolably so Robb took him and they headed to the hardware store to get sandbags to support our tree.

Abby and Bryce helped me pick up the pieces of ornaments. I guess (as much as I hate to say it) the Grinch may of had a point when he stopped us from buying an enourmous tree evey other year. Robb and I got it standing up and stable. It really is a pretty tree and and even better story to share with the kids when they get bigger.