Christmastime 2014

Christmas is over already?  It snuck up on me this year, I think because it didn't really snow at all until Christmas Day.  As Coldplay tells us, "When you're still waiting for the snow to fall, it doesn't really feel like Christmas at all."  But we did our best anyway!

Cora REALLY wanted to put together a gingerbread house this year, so I picked up a kit at Costco one day.  The kids had a great time putting it together, even if it didn't turn out to be the most polished-looking house ever.  All they really wanted to do was put enough candy on it so that I could declare it done and let them pull it apart again and eat it.  Which they did 5 seconds after I took this picture.

 We went to the lights at Temple square one night in mid-December when the temperature was in the 50s.  It was crazy warm.  Dax even took his coat off for a while, until his mean mom made him put it back on.  The kids sat on the ground and watched the Nativity presentation, which is usually unthinkable.  We walked all around Temple Square, through City Cree, and even all the way down past the Gallivan Center and saw all the lights and the skating rink down there too.

I must admit, that even though I was missing the snow for most Christmas activities, it was pretty awesome to hang out at the lights for a couple of hours and not have anyone complaining of cold ears, toes, fingers, noses, etc. was pretty dang awesome.  

Before I knew it, it was Christmas Eve.  We did our traditional pizza at Grandma's, and then headed home at bedtime.  The kids were really excited to go to bed, since they know that the big guy doesn't come until they are asleep.  Even Cora, my little night owl, was trying so hard to go to sleep as soon as she got in her room.  I walked by her room to check on her, and her eyes were closed as tight as she could close them.  The storm was blowing in and it was windy outside, she opened her eyes and told me "Mom, I am trying so, SO hard to go to sleep, but the wind is stopping me awake!"  I turned on some soft music in her room and that was the last I heard from her.

I had a lot of wrapping left to do, so I was up until the wee hours of the morning getting everything ready.  I always like to take a picture of the tree on Christmas Eve, with all the presents ready to go. Here is the 2014 edition:

I finally got to bed between 1 and 2 a.m.  I got a blissful couple of hours of sleep, until Arden woke me up at 4 a.m. wondering if it was morning yet.  I told her NO, but I didn't trust her not to go wake up the other kids, so I made her climb in bed next to me and go back to sleep.  She proceeded to wriggle and wiggle, she was just so excited!  Preston was smart and headed for the couch.  Arden tossed and jiggled and turned and wiggled, she just couldn't hold still.  FINALLY, around 5:15 a.m., she dropped off to sleep and I followed close behind.  Without Preston around to keep her off, Olive decided she wanted to snuggle too and jumped up on the bed and laid down with her nose right in my face around 6:00 a.m.  I rolled over and went back to sleep...until Cora came in about 20 minutes later.  I was so, SO mean and told her it still wasn't time to go downstairs until the first number on the clock was a 7.  So, Cora climbed in the bed and joined the party.  One mom, two girls and a dog tried to sleep (or at least pretended to) until 7:00:00 a.m. when I finally gave up and agreed it was time.  We had to wake Daxton up, smart boy.  

I tried to get a picture of them running down the stairs (notice the dog in the back), but it was too dark and my flash didn't go off.  They didn't want to go back up and recreate the moment for some reason, so this is all I got: 

Dax had been walking the line between naughty and nice for pretty much the entire month of December, so he wasn't sure what he would find in his stocking.  He was so glad that it wasn't coal!  Cora was so glad too!  She screamed, "DAX!  I'M SO HAPPY YOU DIDN'T GET COAL!" and gave him a big hug.  Awwww.

 Olive had a stocking too (well, it was a random stocking we had hanging around, and Arden taped a piece of paper that said "Olive" on it), and so Santa left her some rawhide "candy canes."  She was happy.

Arden got a friendship bracelet maker, which was just what she had been asking for:

Cora got a singing Elsa doll!

And Dax got his Zoomer Dino!

 The kids exchanged presents, and Cora was so happy to get a little fuzzy Sven the reindeer from Arden:

 Dax got a Baymax (from Big Hero 6) action figure from Preston and me, and was so, so happy!

After we opened up our family presents and had our traditional healthy Christmas morning breakfast of cinnamon rolls and candy from our stockings, we headed to Grandma Haun's house to open more presents.  Here is Grandma with little baby Emmy in her cute Christmas outfit:

 After Grandma Haun's house, we went to Grandma Wilson's and Grandma Zaugg's too, but my picture-taking slacked off considerably as the day went on for some reason.  We made one last stop to see the Layton lights on our way home, since we hadn't done it yet.  The lights were so pretty with actual snow on them!!!

The next day we packed up and headed out of town...you guessed it.  To the cabin we went.  We took Olive sledding for the first time..she liked to run up and down the hill after our sleds, so Preston thought he would try to take her down the hill ON a sled.  Turns out, she didn't enjoy it so much.

The snow up here is way to powdery for snowman building, but Arden found some big ice chunks and piled them up and called it a snowman:

 It is cute and she is cute!

It has been snowing for the last couple of days, so we have just been watching movies, doing crafts, playing games, and venturing out occasionally for sledding.  We will probably venture out skiing sometime this week if it gets warm enough (forecast for tomorrow at Beaver Mountain is a high of 4 and a low of -13 with 20-30 mph winds gusting to 40..doesn't sound like good skiing weather to me).

It was a great Christmas and we are looking forward to lounging around until New Years!  Merry Christmas everybody!

Santa 2014

We had the annual Christmas party last weekend with my side of the family.  It is always fun to see everyone, since we all don't get together very often anymore.  The kids were mostly excited to see just one person who usually shows up at the party..you guessed it.  The big guy himself.

Santa called up all the kids one by one...Cora was the first of my kids to get called up.  She was so excited, but she was a little bit shy.  She just sat and giggled when Santa asked her what she wanted for Christmas.  He said, "I bet I know, you want an Elsa or Anna doll."  Cora's eyes got really big because she has been wanting an Elsa doll from Santa for weeks, and even wrote him a letter about it a couple of weeks ago.  Great job remembering, Santa!  Is this guy good, or what?

Then he asked her if she had been good, and she truthfully said, "Sometimes."  He then asked her if she could make sure to be good and go to bed when her mommy told her to, and even got her to do a "pinky promise."  I caught it on film, so that I could show it to her at bedtime!

 Thank you Santa, that will be a great Christmas present to me (if it works!)

Arden was up next, and unfortunately it is a little blurry :(.  Arden is still all about the Santa, and told him she wants a friendship bracelet maker for Christmas.

Dax patiently waited as cousin after cousin after cousin got called up to Santa.  He was starting to look a little concerned.  We had kind of a "naughty" week from Dax leading up to the party, so I think that my boy was thinking that maybe he had pushed it a little too far, and that he really might be on the dreaded naughty list after all.  I let him squirm, it is good for him.

Of course, Santa called him very last, but he had a big basketball as a reward.  

It was so fun for me to watch the kids with Santa this year.  I am not sure how many more good 3-kid-Santa years I have left, so I tried to soak this one up for all it was worth.   Thank you Santa!!!

Catch Up

Whoa, so wow.  That was a long time with no posts, sorry!  I have no excuses, so here is a catch up post to try to cover, well, most of November.

In mid-November, we took a trip to the cabin.  It was a blizzard on the drive up, and the canyon was quite the adventure.  The kids were happily watching a movie in the back, but me and Preston were a little concerned up front.  We got there okay, and the next day, it was a beautiful (frigid) winter wonderland!

Silly me, I hadn't expected this much snow, and I was not prepared, The kids had (of course) grown out of their snow pants, and I and hadn't got any new ones yet.  So, no sledding for us, as my kids are complete wussies when it comes to cold.  But we still went on a few wintry walks with the dog.

Olive had never seen snow before, and she LOVED IT (except to piddle on.  It took her quite a while to stop looking for some nice, dry grass to do her bidness on.  Every time.  It was not my favorite thing to stand around outside and freeze my buns while waiting for her to figure out that it was snow or nothing)..  Olive had so much fun running through the snow and kicking it up and just doing the whole puppy frolicky thing.

 Cora frolicked a little too:

 Silly puppy.  That puppy is getting bigger every day too.   She can put her paws on Cora's shoulders and look her right in the eye now.

While we were at the cabin, Dax finally lost his other front tooth.  Well, Preston pulled it out when it was hanging by a thread.  Preston had been dying to pull it out for days and weeks, and Dax didn't want him to do it "until it was looser," so it was a relief to finally have it gone.

He was singing "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth" for a while, but those new, giant teeth are coming in fast, and he will probably have a whole new smile by the time Christmas rolls around.  I miss the baby teeth when they go!  Silly boy.

The next morning was COLD!  Like, low-single-digits cold.  The whole lake was steaming:

 It seems weird to remember how cold it was, since it has been crazy warm these last few days down here, but more on that later.

Cora and I were shopping at the Tar-jay, and they had a little "Frozen" background next to a bunch of Frozen shirts and stuff, and Cora wanted me to take a picture of her so she could "fool" everyone into thinking she was really there.  Silly girl.

Were you fooled?  Cora enjoyed November, which at kindergarten is pretty much all about Thanksgiving.  She got to have a Native American name, "Silver Girl," and wear a feather headdress and a fringed vest made from a paper bag!  She LOVED her necklace made form pasta and Froot Loops.

She brought all of this home on Tuesday, which was the last day of school before the Thanksgiving break. She talked about how she wanted to wear the necklace to Thanksgiving dinner.  Later that night, however, while she was at her tumbling class, I saw that the necklace was on the ottoman, and was somehow missing all of its Froot Loops. I asked Dax about it, and said the dog had done it.  When I pointed out that the dog would have eaten the pasta off of the necklace too, he fessed up.  We ran to the store before we picked up Cora (after an extra long time-out, of course) and grabbed a box of Froot Loops.  We broke the news to Cora after her class,, and after a small but understandable freak-out, she was okay with it and quickly rebuilt it.  Both of them had Froot Loops for breakfast the next morning, which they were pretty excited about.  Actually, Dax probably thought the whole thing was worth it.

Wednesday the kids were out of school, it was 60 degrees, and it also happened to be a free day at the zoo.  So, guess where we (and everyone else on the Wasatch Front) headed?  We saw the new African Savannah area, and I liked this new giraffe statue (giraffes are my favorite!):

Dax is as tall as an adult male orangutan!  He is also as tall as Arden, but don't tell Arden that, she gets mad.  It was bound to happen sooner or later, Dax eats easily three times as much as she does.

Cora's favorite was these two bobcats all snugged up together, and she insisted I take a picture and put it "on the puter" so everyone could see it.  Okay.  Silly girl.

 My favorite is always the seals and sea lions, and Arden agrees with me.

 I somehow didn't take any pictures of any of the actual Thanksgiving festivities, but it.  Was.  Awesome.  I love me some Thanksgiving.  The turkey, the sweet potatoes, the family, the pie, the football, the pie!  I think we should do it more often.  I had fun holding my new niece Emmy and feeding her a bottle.  It had been a while since I handled a newborn, but everything came right back, just like riding a bike.  I even got a nice burp out of Emmy, like a boss.  It was so fun doing the baby thing again, and it was also fun handing the baby back to her mom when she filled up her diaper.

The next day, we headed up the cabin again.  This time, I was prepared with snow pants, so naturally there wasn't enough snow left to sled on.  But the sunset Friday night was amazing:

We had fun watching movies and making Christmas crafts and shopping online (well, maybe that last one was just me.)

I took Olive for some long runs during the break.  She likes to take long naps after long runs.  Dax shared his blanket with her.  Awwww!

Olive is doing great, and still puts up with the kids' shenanigans pretty well.  She misses them while they are at school, and always watches them drive away in the mornings with a sad look on her face.

Today was another crazy warm day, it was 60 degrees again.  On December 6th!  The kids are DYING to go sledding.  I was edging the lawn, and Arden got out her sled, and was asking me to find her a long stick.  She found one, and tied a milk bone to the end of it, and tried to get Olive to pull her around. Someone has been watching too many cartoons.  It didn't work very well in real life:

They had to find another solution, so they took turns pulling each other on the sled behind their bikes. Silly kids.

Yup, Cora is wearing shorts.  As nice as the weather is, I gotta admit that it doesn't feel especially Christmasy!  I hope it snows before the big day comes.  And I hope I can do better on the blogging!