::festive part 2::

Here are some more festive scenes from around here--mostly from yesterday (Christmas Eve!)
Festive sunsets!
From monday:

From yesterday on the way to the methodist Christmas Eve service we attended (which was fun, by the way.)

The color of the sky was so amazing, and the clouds were really low and cool looking.


I showed Max the Santa tracker at lunch and he tracked the big man for the rest of the day. He loved it. I loved how it kept him occupied. I love how the mobile version of google maps got in on it this year--if you searched "santa" the phone would show you where he was. We saw him in Uzbekistan, Saudia Arabia, the Seychelles and Cape Verde. It led to some pretty interesting conversations about geography.

Here are the ornaments I made this year. I try to always make a Max ornament every year for the Grandmothers--and this year we got to add Sandy which made me very happy. I think it turned out cute--not anything too special, but cute!




We read this book together every Christmas Eve. It's a lovely pop-up book and kids love it. It's a tradition that I carried from my home growing up. I found this copy of the book for us at a second hand book store before amazon.com really existed--it was a triumph then! And wow, I just searched it on amazon just for fun, and they're selling used starting at $50. Crazy!
Anyway, we love it and it's fun to remember how I felt reading that same book when I was Max's age.

Boys in Santa hats are quite festive.

This one was usurped from work--the staff each had one and Max was really coveting them. One of the sweet ladies donated hers to his cause and wore it for two days straight.

Boys in Christmas sweaters are even more festive!

I waited all day to try and get a picture of them together where Sandy was awake, but he just had too sleepy of a day.
Max's sweater came from my mom and Sandy's came from Kris's mom. Thanks moms!! The boys looked so cute.

The nativity scene:

This is festive, but I'm just not sure what to say about it. Hmmmmmmm.

Luminarios/farolitos:
Lots of people have these on their houses out here--and especially businesses and big buildings. They're so fun looking and very different. This is a picture of a house on our street. I wish I would've been able to snag a picture of one of the big multi level places downtown for you. Next year.


And last, but certainly not least, my favorite festive activity for the day was Kris getting pooped on. We were trying to hurry and get ready to go to the church service and Sandy just couldn't seem to finish pooping before he got changed. Kris actually went through a couple of diapers and then finally just got a bad angle and was really in the line of fire. He shrieked (in a manly way of course) and had to go and completely change his clothes. Sandy was totally nonplussed, which cracked me up. And of course I took a picture or two even though the light was totally awful.


HAH!!

We've had a great Christmas Eve and a lovely Christmas day. The best part is spending time together as a little family as well as talking to all our loved ones. I hope everybody else had a great couple of days too.
Merry Christmas!!

::santa is awesome::

Why is Santa so awesome? Because he brought us this:

No, not the cute yet belligerent little boy, the digital piano!
And although it's a bottom of the line version we are only slightly (read extremely) worried that Max turning the power button off and on ten thousand times will cause it to short out and quit working.

But despite that we are so excited to have it. It's fun to have music in the house. It's fun to practice even though neither Kris nor I are very good. There's a lot of need in church for people to fill in playing hymns and such though, so hopefully we can get our hymn and primary song skills up to speed. And hopefully Kris will be able to get some accompaniments learned so we can do some instrumental stuff in sacrament meeting. And hopefully Max will learn to play something besides hot cross buns!
Whew. Lots of hopes. We'll have to also do some work to go along with the hope I guess. We'll keep you posted.

But it's really true. Santa is awesome. And as we said to Max on the morning of the 26th, yes, it's really too bad he doesn't come every night.

::explanation and santa::

So good guesses everybody! I think my favorite was Matt's, with the American Growth Hormone Association. But actually, everybody that guessed gets a big high five from me! Alright!!

So the real explanation is this. We went to the zoo on saturday with Melissa and Grant. Santa was flying in on a helicopter to make an appearance, and we thought we needed to see that.

So there were these funny little old ladies wearing felt christmas tree headbands and jingle bells, carrying around a huge set of reindeer antlers. (they were supposed to be reindeer antlers anyway, but who knows what kind of deer they belong to!)
They would let kids pose under them for a photo op. I couldn't get back far enough to get all of the antlers and all of Max in the picture. Pretty exciting, right?

So there we were, waiting for Santa. Max wore his very christmassy skeleton hand gloves.

Festive.

As I think I mentioned, Santa flew in on a helicopter. Pretty new fangled if you ask me. It was pretty fun to see the helicopter fly in and land though. Max enjoyed it.



He kept motioning for applause. "Ho ho ho!"


And then up came the little train that was going to take good old Santa around the zoo for a parade. I specially include a picture of this train for Grandpa Ken. I know he'll love it! Check out the lawn mower or whatever is pulling it. It totally looks like an old train engine!


And off went the parade. Here are Max and Grant waiting for Santa to come by.

Just two dudes sitting on a wall, hanging out.


And Santa rode by in style, at the very end of the train. He doesn't actually look that comfortable if you ask me.
I think he was heading to his "breakfast with Santa"--only $35 per adult. Totally affordable, right?


And since we were at the zoo, we figured we might could see some animals.

A kind of creepy camel.
We actually saw real camels. Max really enjoyed seeing the camel relieve itself. Yuck. He also was lucky enough to happen upon a giraffe reliving itself and was very interested. Is he a boy or what?


Can you see the snow leopard? He was pretty.

Here's a fuzzy cute little red panda sleeping among the bamboo. So appropriate. And cute.


It's so nice that Melissa has a zoo membership and brings us along with her. We love it. And of course we like Santa too, breakfast or no breakfast.

+) A Christmas First (+

Max had his first Santa experience this year. We'd never had occasion to have him sit on Santa's lap before, and honestly he probably wouldn't have been able to handle it until this year.
We have some good friends at church that were very anxious to have pictures of their kids with Santa. They invited us to come out to their YMCA for a santa/Christmas fest. We had a good time. Max told Santa he wanted "Big Cars". Santa looked up at me questioningly. I was like, "What's confusing about that? The man wants big cars!"

Secretly I was thinking how glad I was that I had bought him a toy camper for christmas, because otherwise there would be no big cars to be found.

After Santa the kids frosted a cookie and ate it:

Max and Michael and Katie all hard at work, all with messy mouths:

Then the kids decorated little popsicle-stick frames for a polaroid of them with Santa. It turned out cute!
It's nice to have friends with kids who Max enjoys.
See you next year Santa!