Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  We had a great Christmas, and a fun week leading up.  Here we all are in front of the Christmas tree after we got home from church.  It's not every picture you get everyone facing the camera!  Trust me, this was the only one.

We had a cold snap hit on Thursday.  The high was -5 for the day.  I don't really know what the weather was like everywhere, but I do know the crazy weather was pretty wide spread.  Anyway, I don't remember a day before that things got this cold here. The times I headed outside, it reminded me a bit of Mongolia.  I even had to head into work for some laser testing.  I really love our van's heated seats!

We made and decorated Christmas cookies.  Of course you can't make cookies and not eat them right then and there, right?

Here are all the cookies we decorated... maybe minus the one Grayson is eating, and maybe a few more...  Anyway, we decorated the cookies during his nap.

I took the kids out to play in the snow on Christmas Eve.  We went to a park that was on the trail because Grayson wanted to go on a walk by the creek as well.  There are two parks, one on each side of this bridge, so we headed across to play.

After playing on the playground for a little, we went to the other park and played in the snow in the field.  Winry made a snowman all on her own.

And I was trying to roll up a huge snowball.  I made it to this size before Grayson was bored and had to head home.

While we were out the Smiths stopped by and dropped off PEZ dispensers for the kids.  They were very excited about them when we got home.

Christmas Eve evening we headed down to main street to see the decorations and drop off letters to Santa.  Here are the girls heading across the park towards Santa's mailbox.

There was also a little Santa's Workshop there to look at, which was fun for the kids.  There were a lot less decorations on Main Street, I don't know if it's just because it was so close and companies cleaned up their decorations early, but outside the park there was not much compared to usual.

And then of course, Christmas morning.  The kids were VERY excited to come down and see what was out.  We all had to wait for Grayson to wake up before we could go down.

We spent the morning opening presents and doing typical Christmas morning things.

Grayson got a bag of freeze dried yogurt puff snacks, and he ate the WHOLE bag for breakfast.  They must have been tasty!

We brought a little Christmas present with us to Church.  You remember how I said the Smiths brought over those PEZ dispensers?  Well, we prepared a PEZ dispenser for him!  I 3D printed his head, and Monica painted it.  He LOVED it!

After Church Grayson took a nap, and once he woke up we headed to Tyson and Tina's house.  We stopped at the airport on the way to pick up my dad too!  We had a fun time hanging out together and stayed there until it was already bedtime.  Oh, and we forgot to bring the bag with the kids pajamas in it... oops.

And when we got home on Christmas night, when Grayson got in bed, he found his flashlight!  He doesn't stay up too late fortunately, so no problems here.

We had a fun Christmas and week leading up.  I feel like I should have had more stories... but missing writing this post for a week seems to have muddled my memories. :) Merry Christmas!

The Christmas Cool

Things were not quite so crazy this week as they have been the last few.  It's nice to have a more relaxed week every now and again.  There was still plenty of fun to be had, especially this weekend, but we'll come to that later.  But here's a picture of Brooke and Winry with their friends Eleanor and Clara at the Nutcracker!

Grayson has been NEEDING things in his crib when he goes to sleep lately.  I think a babysitter (or Monica) sometime recently let him have some books in his bed, which isn't useful once all the lights are off.  Well, eventually he wanted the firefly book in his bed, and it has a flashlight with buttons that play animal noises, and now he's "ready" for bed every night.  The real issue is that he'll cry and cry until you help him find his flashlight, but it auto-turns off and I don't think he stays up that late looking at things, so I guess it's not a big deal.  Here's a picture I took of him looking at books while I sang him his bedtime songs.

Grayson re-fell in love with peppers this past week.  He saw them while Monica was making dinner and had to have them.  He bites into them like apples, and was enjoying the SO much!

So much so that his dinner plate ended up looking like this.  It's kinda hard to complain when he's eating so many vegetables, and we just cut up the rest of them that he didn't eat, so it wasn't a big waste either.  He was very excited about his pepper feast!

I picked up the girls from school one day this past week as Monica wasn't feeling the best, or was worried about ice on the sidewalks, or something.  Doesn't really matter why, I'm always happy to go if I can.  Anyway, one of the girls in Winry's preschool class just got a new puppy, and the puppy came to pick her up, so we got to see it.  It was amazingly calm for the swarm of kids around it.

Grayson was playing music on the xylophone and singing "Jesus wants me to wear sunscreen."  It's one of his bedtime songs I alluded to singing earlier.  Unfortunately when I started taking the video he stopped playing the xylophone.

On Friday Monica and I went to a Handel's Messiah concert.  I, as you'd guess, was there to listen, but Monica was there to SING!!  They ended up splitting up the choir, and Monica was in the back.  Technically she's in this picture, but I was pretty far away from her, so the picture's not great.  Anyway, she did amazing, and the concert was a great listen.  I did tell her after that I wished it wasn't so many solos, unless of course she was a soloist, and it sounds like in the future her concerts won't be.

Monica took the girls to see the Nutcracker here in Parker on Saturday afternoon.  The girls were SO excited, and they absolutely loved it.  They were telling me all about it the rest of the day, and they even practiced dancing the rest of the night.  They really want to try out to be a dancer in it next year, so they're planning to work extra hard and dance every day until then.  After the mini Nutcracker we saw at the tree lighting a few weeks back I'm not surprised that they had such a great time, and Monica said there were not behavior issues even though it was a full 2 or so hours long.

Last night we drove around and looked at Christmas lights again.  The kids also watched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" in the back.  I really wanted to see lights, and Winry was saying no, so I bribed her.  She wanted to keep practicing dance.  Anyway, it was a fun time and I'm really glad we got to go out.  We've got a few things to tick off between now and Christmas, and some of it I'm pretty excited for so I'll have to try to document things well to share with you... next week-ish.  No promise I'll be writing this up on Christmas day!  Have a Merry Christmas, and don't forget about Christ!  The gift given to all man, who brings us salvation.  I am so grateful for our redeemer, and for knowledge of the gospel and of a plan which can bring me back to live with my Heavenly Father with my family!  Have a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Parties

Christmas continues to be upon us, and it's GREAT!  We've had a fun week, which included both of my work Christmas parties.  The children's Christmas party was on Wednesday, and was as terrific as ever!  They've actually done a sign up for pictures with Santa, and it staggers people arriving and there's no longer a huge line for pictures!  Thanks COVID, some of your after effects are great.  Anyway, the kids were so excited to see Santa, and Grayson even went straight up to him, which is a turn around from last week.  My work gets a present for each kid as well, and they were all very excited about that.  Grayson got a stuffed dinosaur, Winry got a toy bird that tweets and records your voice and plays it back, and Brooke got a design your own water bottle with a bunch of gem stickers.  We had dinner there too, and all in all it was a fun night.

Earlier in the week our new nightstands and bed frame came.  Grayson helped Monica put together the nightstands, and then after dinner I put together the bed frame.  We don't have any final pictures of our room, but our new bed has storage drawers under it, so we were also able to get a bunch of stuff put in there.

On Tuesday, I believe, the girls made paper snowflakes.  Brooke also woke up a little sick on Tuesday and stayed home Tuesday and Wednesday.  Anyway, I think this is the first time the girls have made their own snowflakes, and they did great.  They both made several as they had people they wanted to give them too.

And here's Brooke calling it in sick.  I will admit, she seemed fine in the morning, but she spent basically the whole afternoon laying on the couch and did end up with a fever, so in the end I'm glad she stayed home.

Grayson is such a stinker sometimes.  This is a perfect example, and this one bothers me quite a bit.  Whenever he gets the chance he LOVES to dump Jelly's food into her water bowl... grrrr...  So we have to keep him closed out of our room all the time.

Jelly comes and naps with me during the work day most days still.  It's unique to see her crossing her legs though.  Also, one day she stayed down there sleeping until like 9:30 at night!  I had to go get her before I went to bed because we don't leave her in the basement at night, especially because the door gets sucked shut when the air turns on.

At dinner on... a night this week.  Probably Thursday, we had a CRUNCH off!  Brooke was crunching her cucumber as loud as she could, and Winry came in to challenge her with a carrot.  I'll let you be the judge of who's loudest.

And Grayson had some tea!  That boy likes it HOT!

Friday was my off day, and after Brooke went to school we all went grocery shopping together.  The kids were really good, so we rewarded them by heading to Costco and letting them play some NFL Blitz!  Winry definitely doesn't understand how to play, but she was having a blast.

Grayson got his hair cut, and to help him sit still we got out the old clip in high chair, and gave him a sucker to keep him still...er...  The haircut went pretty well, except that I had to keep washing hair off his sucker!  He finished his sucker after, and even found a handy holder.

Friday night we had family movie night, and watched A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Grayson snuggled up with Brooke on the couch to enjoy the show.  I'm glad our kids all get along so well together and love each other so much.

Saturday we got out my old Teepee!  My mom made this for me for Christmas, and I got it sometime around when I was Brooke's age.  I don't remember if I was 6 or 7, but right in there.

I took the kids out to a park Saturday morning.  It was... somewhat warm, and we had a good time.  We spent a lot of our time on the swings, and the girls eventually started getting crazy.

Saturday night was my work Christmas party.  Instead of having it somewhere interesting, they just had it at an event center, and it was... not great...  The food wasn't quite out when we got there, and they had a lot of stations.  It was a serve yourself, "standing dinner" event.  After wandering around and trying things we ended up leaving because... well... there just wasn't anything to do.  We stopped at Pinkberry on the way home because 7:30 at night was apparently still too early to get desserts out.  We don't have a better picture than this, but look, there's a person sitting on that chandelier behind us.

And today the girls sang in church.  It's always so much fun to get to hear the primary sing!

And that's all my updates for this week.  Have a merry Christmas!

Christmas is in the Air

Ho Ho Ho! Christmas is fast approaching.  Monica and I even got to go to A Christmas Carol on Friday night!  It was great, as usual, and we had a great time.  There was quite a bit of traffic, and for a bit we were worried about getting there on time, but in the end we got there with a few minutes to spare.  They have a sled set up for pictures, and it wasn't that busy during intermission so we snuck in.

It snowed this past week, and Winry and Grayson really loved it!  I think Brooke got out there once too.  Grayson seems like he's just built for the snow.  He went out to play in the backyard, and eventually Winry got cold and came in, but he kept playing.  When I finished work I went out with him for a bit, and eventually had to coax him inside because it was getting dark.

Grayson also found this... fake plant thing somewhere, and went about waving it like crazy!  No one got hurt, so that's great, and everyone was having a good time as well.

Michael came back out this week to do some more work at his dad's house, and part way through the week Oriah and Niki came to join him.  They all stayed here for two days, and it was great to have them all come by.  Oriah brought some outgrown Halloween costumes, and Grayson loved the three headed dragon.  it is 3T, so hopefully it still fits next year.

To kick off the month, the girls wrote letters to Santa.  Brooke wrote hers all on her own this year.

And Winry needed words spelled, but wrote it all down herself.

On Friday we had Santa pancakes for breakfast!  They were so beautiful.

But once you start going custom there's no stopping.  Here's a Winry pancake, for Winry!

In the end many a shape were made.  We had a great time together, and the whipped cream was to die for.  This was Michael, Oriah and Niki's last morning here with us, and we all said goodbye after breakfast.

Grayson has had some interest in the potty lately.  Not so much that we really think he's ready to start, but enough that he wants it down to sit on from time to time.

Saturday morning was our ward Christmas party.  Unfortunately, Winry woke up with a little fever.  I had to run in the morning to pick up all the French toast (150 servings!), so Monica dropped off Brooke and Grayson, and we had a fun morning together.  There was of course French toast, and there was also a gingerbread house kit in the middle of the table.

A little later we got to go see Santa.  Brooke was excited, but Grayson wouldn't go over.  At this point Brooke managed on her own, and spent most of the rest of the time doing various crafts.  I followed Grayson and we paced the halls of the building.

As things were winding down ,Winry came back to see Santa, and this time Grayson got on his lap!  Monica took the kids home with her, and I stayed to help with the clean up.  It was a really fun party all in all.

That night, as I was putting Grayson to bed, I turned off the lights to sing him songs, and it turns out he'd snuck a toy into his bed...  It goes with a book and plays some animal sounds, and also has a flashlight on it that you use to make shadows of the animal that will be on the next page.  Let's just say it wasn't too subtle when he turned on the light in the dark.

We are ramping up and getting ready for Christmas here!  I hope everyone out there is having a wonderful time!  Merry Christmas!