christmas, part 5

8:11 PM:  Wesley broke his first Christmas toy. Sigh. Poor garbage truck. Shane tried to super-glue-fix it, so we'll see.

christmas, part 4

5:45 PM: Dinner ready. Wesley ate a roll and drank some Martinelli's, then declared he was done. Meanwhile, Laurel ate half the green bean casserole. We told Wesley if he ate 5 bites of chicken he could have new batteries in his train car after dinner. It was a struggle! Sigh.

6:25 PM: Second load of dishes starts getting cleaned. I am grateful for dishwashers.

6:30 PM: Baby girl in bath. Shane is testing batteries with his multimeter.

6:50 PM: Baby girl gets to read some of her new books. Time to wind down.

7:20 PM: Third Christmas poop (Laurel).

7:30 PM: Girlie is in bed, Wesley is headed to bath -- Shane's in charge of this one.

7:31 PM: I brush my teeth for the first time today. Hey, it's Christmas! It's not like I left the house!

7:52 PM: Laurel is crying... not going to bed... hmmmm.

Shane said he wants to watch his new DVD, Dark Knight Rises. Ooh a date with my hubby? We also haven't had pumpkin roll, our dessert. And maybe I'll get to read my book????? I'm headed to see why little lady isn't asleep. I guess it's just been to wonderful of a day for it to be over so soon. I got to talk to all my family today too, so I win :-) 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

christmas, part 3

We are snacking on Trader Joe's treats from Santa, cookies from last night, Doritoes, puppy chow, mint M&Ms, etc.

3 PM: I've probably already assumed my allotment of calories for the day.

3:05 PM: I start putting things away. I stick things in kitchen cabinets. Load the dishwasher. Make a pile of things to be washed.

4 PM: Turkish game hens in the oven. Working on dinner.

4:30 PM: Second Christmas poop (Laurel). First Christmas pee accident (Wesley).  (Looks like I can start that load of post-Christmas wash.)

4:35 PM: The new batteries in the new train are dead. Wesley begs for more batteries. We tell him his train needs to "take a break."

4:36 PM: First complete Christmas meltdown.

It's been an awesome day. Dinner should be done in 45 minutes. Then bedtime. THEN my book? (For any and all inquiring minds, we are reading Pride & Prejudice. I thought I'd HATE IT, but I'm totally into it. I've got about 100 pages to go. I can't even BELIEVE that I like it. But I do.)

christmas, part 2

Let the present-opening begin.

11 AM: Laurel goes down for her first nap. Mom, Dad, and Wesley begin opening presents.

11:05 AM: Laurel is not going to sleep and is screaming at the top of her lungs. I go get her so she can join in the festivities.

11:10 AM: We notice it's snowing a little bit.

11:15 AM: Wesley declares he is all done opening presents and refuses to open any others. He wants to play with what he has. (Is this a good problem? Who knows. We've had this issue for past 2 years. Two years ago, in the condo, we had a pile of presents that sat in the corner even after the tree was taken down. He finally unwrapped them all 7 days later.)

12:20 PM: Laurel is a pro at unwrapping presents. We get this:

Gifts are lovely. We really um, went a little too crazy. I don't feel like I spent a lot of money, but there are LOTS of things to play with now. A HUGE box of new (used) books. Awesome stuff for my kitchen (a 6-in-1 bowl!!). Two new pairs of lounge pants for Shane. Laurel got a girlie purse, pink sippy cups, and Disney Princess Little People. Wesley got a Cars beanbag (handmade by me!), and um, that's about it for now.

12:45 PM: Laurel is finally ready for a nap. There are still 8 presents for Wesley under the tree.

1 PM: I start working on dinner. Pumpkin roll -- in the oven!

1:45 PM: Wesley's bored. Everything is on hold while I entertain him so he doesn't destroy all his new toys.

2:30 PM: Shane to the rescue. We set up the card table and put the new train tracks on it. Awesome.

All I want to do is read my book. Hmmmm..... I also still haven't had a shower. It's a wonderful day!

christmas, part 1

Blogging live today. YAY!



8:40 AM: I wake up. Shane was already awake and got Laurel. Lucky me! Wesley was still asleep, seeing as how he was STILL UP at 11 PM last night. I got to bed at 1:15 or so. "Santa" was finished with his business around midnight, but "Santa" was so wired with Christmas cookies and adrenaline he decided to read some of his book club book. Santa even had the energy to assemble the entire nativity. (Reminding us not to forget Jesus.)










8:50 AM: Laurel is enjoying the contents of her stocking and her Santa gifts. She has mostly trainwrecked the nativity by now. (Her PJs are from Grandma and they say, "I've been good all year, just ask Grandma." Haha!)





9 AM: I had two Christmas cookies. We made "Twining" cookies last night, Wesley and me. Hear that dad? Santa got plenty of cookies and a nice mug of milk.



9:15 AM: Wesley's up! He LOVES his trains!



9:30 AM: I check the tracking on one package and find it was delivered yesterday. Oops. I run out to the mailbox in the pouring rain and then slip it into my stocking, haha.

9:39: Aunt Bonnie sends us a video that cousin Evan loves his gift. YAY! Christmas is so happy! 

9:40 AM: We had breakfast (and I've even started dinner). Biscuits & gravy and eggs & sausages. (The bib says "My First Christmas" which isn't entirely true.)



9:50 AM: Wesley has eaten half of his M&Ms from Santa and no breakfast.

10:22 AM: Shane exclaims, "Wow, look at it go! New batteries are great! It even has a light!"

10:27 AM: First Christmas poop (Laurel).

christmas countdown

We've got lots of advent calendars here this year.

My favorite, of course, are the stockings. I've been working on this for awhile. I bought the mini-stockings at an after-Christmas sale for a dime apiece in 2010, I think. In 2011, I was too tuckered out with a big belly and new baby to do anything about it. In 2012, I finally got my act together.  The beauty of the "stockings" concept, instead of a similar little house with doors, etc., is that you can fit a buncha stuff in the stockings. This year, the stockings have a piece of candy for Wesley, an ornament for our cool gingerbread house tree, and an activity to do. In the future, I can have two pieces of candy for both kids, scriptures to read, puzzle pieces (I tried to do a puzzle this year, but the one I bought had pieces too big to fit in the stocking! oops!), etc. The possibilities are endless.

I "scrapped" the numbers 1-24, which was fun and all but they've been ripped to shreds by my children. Many of the little embellishments have fallen off. The duct-tape on the windowsill is pretty hokey too. Oh well, we're learning here.

The gingerbread tree is really cool. I love it. There are only 17 ornaments though, luckily we've missed a couple days so it's no biggie (I'm surprised that Wesley totally forgets to check the stockings), but I need to be on the lookout for 7 more ornaments to make a set of 24. I want them to look similar to the ones we have though, so we'll see.

Similarly, since he forgets to check, there have been days when we didn't do an "activity." I wracked my brain to come up with 24 decent activities, but a bunch of them we didn't even do. It's OK I guess, I'm stressed enough and I will survive if we don't make it to the Gingerbread Houses downtown this year. There's always next year. So far we've done things like make snowflakes (fail... he struggles with scissors), buy a new Christmas CD and listen to it, go to a Christmas party, take Christmas treats to our neighbors, eat birthday cake with Laurel, etc. I keep a bunch of them on the counter, and the night before or the morning of I stuff the activity into the day's stocking, since at that point I know what I can be capable of that day. It's worked really well and been fun.


Before Wesley can eat his candy, we have to read our Christmas scripture and Christmas story, which came to us from Uncle Kurt and Aunt Melani and their family....

The stories are cute and the scriptures are perfect. I'm glad I finally settled on the "rule" of "read your scriptures, THEN eat candy." That has helped a lot :-)

Another fun advent came from Aunt Leslie and Uncle Brad.... aweeeeesome!! She "scrapped" this too, and it's stinking adorable. They are cards with magnets on the back, over a mini-muffin tin (which is also awesome since I didn't have a mini-muffin tin and now I do! yahoo! I've been wanting one!). We put peanut butter and plain M&Ms in there for our daily treat.

Again, I am surprised at how often Wesley forgets. Which is fine with me. Then I eat three days' worth at a time. Heehee...

I have two more advents that are really more Mommy advents, with scriptures and activities.

The first I made a couple years ago.... it's in a cool tin, with cards. 

I suppose the questions are easy enough I could do them with the kids. It's just a chance to read a little bit about Christmas every day.

The last was a gift from Wandering Nana, who served in YW with me several years ago. Hers has scriptures and activities on each card, and you turn the card over when you're done. It's not a 24-piece advent, it's a 12-days-of-Christmas thing, plus they are not numbered so you can ponder/work on whatever you'd like. It's cute, too.

Although I haven't been diligent about these two advents, I am grateful for the opportunity I have had to ponder Christmas. Any chance I have to meditate and chill out, I need to take it. Maybe these next few days, as Christmas anticipation comes to a fever pitch, I'll cherish these even more.

It's been a fun month, counting down until Christmas.

santa & my babies

More pictures to love. LOVE.

These are from our ward Christmas party. They're fabulous! I love my kids.

preschool pictures

My kid is stinking adorable. Here are some of the awesome preschool photos we had done a little bit ago.

Love it! Of course he isn't asleep right now and I'm about to pull my hair out, but I love him so much. He's growing up so fast.

a witness

When I first heard about the shootings in Connecticut, I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to deal with it. Honestly, I tried to ignore it.

But it's real, and it happened, in an elementary school. This is so awful. In a kindergarten class. What kind of awful person shoots children in a kindergarten class? It's terrible. So terrible and scary, and every time I found myself becoming impatient with my kids today, I quickly changed my tone and gave them a hug.

When these things happen, the only comfort I get is from the Book of Mormon. Alma and Amulek were preaching the gospel, and the people were so wicked they made a huge fire and burned the wives and children of the believers in the fire. Read particularly the last line of these verses from Alma 14:

10 And when Amulek saw the pains of the women and children who were consuming in the fire, he also was pained; and he said unto Alma: How can we witness this awful scene? Therefore let us stretch forth our hands, and exercise the power of God which is in us, and save them from the flames.

11 But Alma said unto him: The Spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth mine hand; for behold the Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory; and he doth suffer that they may do this thing, or that the people may do this thing unto them, according to the hardness of their hearts, that the judgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just; and the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them, yea, and cry mightily against them at the last day.

This is the only comfort I get, that I believe the Book of Mormon is true and it teaches me this. If nothing else, those innocent children will stand one by one and witness against the awful person that ended their lives. It's not fair.

birthday celebrations, take 6

5:30 PM: Dinner is served. Laurel has a total meltdown. Not sure what that was all about, usually she is quite the eater. She eats acorn squash while sitting in my lap, then proceeds to grab mixed vegetables off my plate.

6:30 PM: Everyone is finally settled down and we decide to do presents. She is most fascinated with the hairbow from Krysti & baby Rosy. SUCH cute gifts. She got two loveys (one from mom and one from dad), some handmade babylegs, a onesie & matching bow, a Janie & Jack outfit from Janet & Sara, some PJs from Grandma, a cool star stacker toy, and purple & pink bath squirters. Much fun ensued playing with tissue paper.

6:45 PM: Finally, CAKE! YAY! We sang. It was festive. Laurel got a pink balloon. Girlfriend loooooved the frosting. She had pink frosting on her diaper by the time she was done. Wesley finally got a cupcake.

 

 

7:09: Two kids in the bath. While the tub was filling Laurel got pink frosting fingers all over the tub and toilet. I thank heaven for Clorox wipes.

7:15 PM: We had some post-bath, pre-story playtime, during which Wesley kept running things over with the circus car, violently, and the circus car went into time-out. It's been a long day.

 7:20 PM: Stories. No one really cared. Wesley was busy playing with Laurel's new star stacker, and kindly letting her hold a star every once in awhile.

7:30 PM: Bed for everyone.

7:45 PM: Me and Shane discuss how crazy our day was. Our baby is one. Wesley is crazy.

8:26 PM: Both kids still not asleep.

9 PM: I give up and go get Laurel and let her play downstairs with me for a little bit. We play with her star stacker. It's fun. (Maybe she's all hopped up on sugar?) I'm fiddling with the computer since the Internet is wacko, and when I'm not looking she gets ahold of my cell phone and rips it in two. It's completely separated. Doesn't work at all. Shane's going to kill me. Guess I'm getting a new cell phone for Christmas after all. My heart is just sick. Ugh. (I've been trying to get this blog post up for over an hour. I should have just given up and let the computer rest, but I was persistent. It'll get done, but I'm frustrated and sad and have no phone to boot.)

9:07 PM: She goes back to bed.

Well, happy birthday, my sweet Laurel. I love you. I am so glad you're in our family. What a year it's been!

Now, on to Christmas!