::christmas report pt 2::

I don't ever want these Christmas reports to turn into a big list of gifts received, but sometimes it's hard. We appreciate the gifts that the family sends so much, and I like to express that here! So you'll get to see at least a few of them.
Max loved his suitcase and Star Wars sleeping bag. What a great present Grandma & Grandpa!!

He's slept in it every night since on his bed. I don't know if we'll ever be able to talk him out of it.

We also got some fun pictures that we love from them and a photo book and a family recipe book. Loved them!!


Kari's family sent Max some pieces for his hexbug habitat. This was awesome because he got some other pieces from some other people and so now he has one big enormous fabulous habitat complete with bridge battle. It's very fun.


The bugs are really fun to watch. Lots of times it seems like they really must have minds of their own.
And Cammon & Lorri, omnisciently sent Max big packs of batteries. He was in heaven. One of his hexbugs immediately ran out of batteries, and we were able to start him up again. It was amazing. Nice work guys!!


Gram & Grandpa sent an awesome rainbow tent--you probably saw the youtube video below. It has a tunnel which just takes it over the top for coolness.

My mom has also been working her little bottom off making all her old analog photo books digital. It's billions of hours of work and when she gets done they look amazing. I look forward to getting the next installment of the family photo albums every Christmas, and she did not disappoint. Thanks so much for all the hard work mom!!

Lechelle made us the cutest ties for the boys. Max wore his to church the day after Christmas and it looked amazing!

It's the perfect size! Sandy's is perfect too, see?

I can't wait get him a little button up for church. Then he and Max can match adorably. And best part? I can match too!!

Love it!

We spend the rest of the day playing with presents and each other and eating yummy things like tomato soup and 3 cheese grilled sandwiches, and german pancakes. Mmmmmm.


(No we don't just leave the baby on the table, we were keeping a close eye on him. But he was loving watching Max play with his trucks.)
We were all exhausted by the end of the day, but a good tired. Everybody behaved themselves well and it was a great day. Well, except for little Sandy's hour long screaming fit at the end of the day, but that's to be expected when the day is way too exciting for good naps.
It was a great day, thanks to all the friends and family that contributed to it. We missed you all. We love you, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

::christmas report pt 1::

The best thing I ever did was make Max use an alarm clock a few Christmasses ago. Not so much to wake him up, but to show him when he was allowed to leave his room and come get us. It's worked awesomely for us each year since and we've never been waked up at 4AM (yet anyway). I told Max this year that 7:30 was his time. When the baby got me up at 7, or was it 6:30? He was still out. I fed the baby and showered. I went into his room and checked on him at 7:25 and he was SO asleep. 5 minutes later we heard the alarm go off and seriously 30 seconds later he was in our room, wide awake. It was hilarious. And just proved that all those school mornings where we have to drag him out of bed by his toenails are preposterous!

Boys in the morning, all stripey and sleepy. I can't tell if Sandy's begging me to save him from his big brother with his eyes or not. He actually loves Max and I think it's only going to get better as he gets bigger.

We headed into the living room to see the goodies. It was nice to hear Max's extremely delighted noises as he saw the half size electric guitar we got him and the fun bits of things that Santa left. He was very satisfyingly excited about it all.

I realized the other day that it is just SO darn light here compared to other places we've lived. Even in the winter the sun comes up before 7AM. I was surprised that it wasn't dark when we went out to the living room. It may be the first Christmas I remember where we didn't see the tree lights glowing because of the sun!


Here's Max with his awesome guitar. The half-sizedness of it is very cute, and seeing Max play it is even cuter.

I'm sure I'll have to post more pictures/video of him playing it soon enough.
Here are Kris and Max with matching bracelets made out of bike chains. Max had purchased the bracelet for himself a few weeks ago, and he was dead set on getting Kris one for Christmas. Luckily there were still some left when we made it to the bike store. It is a lucky bracelet after all--or at least so says Max.

Sandy got worn out very quickly and was ready for his first nap. We brought his bed out into the living room so he could still be with us. I don't think he got very good quality sleep, but at least he slept a bit and it wasn't in my lap the whole time.

Plus, he's adorable. I love seeing little ones sleeping with their hands above their heads like that.

And Sultan? Well of course he had to be in on the action. He came right into the middle of the little space on the rug we'd cleared and he lay down. He got himself all comfy on Max's new sleeping bad and fell asleep. It wasn't very convenient for us, but cute anyway.


That's all for now--more tomorrow. I'm regathering my energy after the weekend. Max wished on a star tonight that it would be Christmas every day. I remember wishing that myself when I was little. I don't wish it now though. Once is enough even though I'm always sad it's over.

::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!!

::festive part 1::

Just thought a fun Christmas Eve activity would be to show you some of the festive stuff happening around here.
Not all of these were either photographed or done today. Just so you know.


This is a fun gingerbread house that Kris helped Max make. Max did all the decorating. The kit was donated by a sweet friend.

The playful penguin race. This thing is super fun, but SO so SO loud and obnoxious. It squeaks and squeaks the whole time that the penguins are climbing the stairs and sliding down the ramps. Thus it is only allowed to be out a few days before Christmas. This results in a few solid days of squeaking penguins, but at least it's fun and hard won entertainment for Max.

Present wrapping with Boys. This was the other day after we went and got Max's present for Kris. They're cute, aren't they?


Our archway of Christmas cards. I love Christmas cards, so I send out a bunch and this year we've gotten a ton back which makes me very happy. I love seeing friends and family's faces up there!
Speaking of, in case you didn't get one, here's our Christmas card. The photo was taken by my friend Renatha in our ward, and I did the card design.

The couch in the desert was Kris's idea, and since he used the Land Rover to get it out there, he's pretty proud of it all. That is essentially our back yard, by the way.
We have another shot from this session up on the wall of the office. People like it.

I have more, but now we have to get ready to go out--Max's school teacher invited us to their church's Christmas Eve service and we're going to go and check it out, along with lights and festivities downtown. We'll be back home for scripture reading, Christmas Eve present opening and not sleeping (Max & Sandy). If I can get the rest of the festivities posted I will!

::advent::

I wanted to do something fun for Max this year for an advent calendar type thing since we have all the Sandy hype going on right now.
And speaking of Sandy, he really didn't want me to get this done. I had to do it all with him in my lap or arms, depending on his mood. I got really good at wrapping presents while holding a rather large sleeping baby.

Anyway, I did this same thing a few years ago. We had a playmobil nativity, and I wrapped up each piece of it, along with some treats and movies and different stuff like that. So he gets to open a little gift every night, and generally it's the nativity pieces. He remembered doing it before and was excited to do it again. And it's been encouraging him to play with each nativity character as they come out, which is fun.

So my favorite part of it is the little wrapped packages, they just look so festive.
Here's how it looked a couple of weeks ago, before he had opened a bunch of them:



Give me bowls full of little presents and pinecones and sparkly ornaments any day. They're just so fun looking.

And the master of the feast:

Just wait until Sandy gets old enough to want to open presents too--we'll see how it goes then.
I think that advent calendars are a really fun way to build up to Christmas, and they help little ones understand how long they have to wait until the big day too. Fun stuff.

::the tree::

We love our fabulous tree from the forest. It's huge.
Luckily we have a large front room with a high ceiling, otherwise there's no way it would've fit and we would have all cried.
But happily it fits, though we did have to trim the back branches a touch and take part of the very top off. I think it's about 10 feet tall now, and the bottom branches probably stretch about six feet. It's definitely the biggest tree we've ever had.
You know what's weird about it though? Unless your nose is basically stuck inside the branches, it just doesn't smell that piney. I've hardly smelled it in the house at all. But oh well, that's what Christmassy smelling candles are for, right?

Last sunday I put the lights on, once Kris's mom was in town to visit and could hold the baby. The poor tree had sat bare in the living room for four or five days, just begging for lights. But I could only do so much. It was great to have two free hands for a bit, though the hands missed the snuggly baby.
Here the tree is, all lit up.

I wish I could give you an idea of the scale, but you'll just have to imagine it. Well maybe this will help. Kris had to do the top lights for me, and he had to get a ladder to do it!

And of course he had to reenact putting the star on top so we could document it for posterity.

He's pretty cute!

So sunday afternoon we got out the ornaments and decorated the tree. First thing Max did was get out a glass ball and hang it on the tree. It directly slipped right off and shattered on the bricks. I decided at that point we'd go 95% non-breakable as far as ornaments. So we're missing some of our favorites this year, but that's ok. It gives some of the others a chance to shine.

Max likes to hang things in big clumps. I'd give him a few to hang, then look up and see them all bunched up on one branch. So after he hung stuff I had to go back through and redistribute. But he was very insistent that the Mama Fish ornament hang as close as possible to the trombone ornament, so she could play it whenever she wanted.

And the best part? Now we get to hang out by the light of the tree whenever we want. I love Christmas trees, especially busy ones with colored lights like ours. They're just so fun to look at, there's always something new to see. Sandy loves to stare at it too.

When he's not sleeping that is.

::the tree::

On monday morning we set out to find a christmas tree. We were all prepared for the adventure with cold weather gear and snacks. We headed south to the confusing areas on the little map where tree cutting was allowed.
It was a cold cold day.
We were excited and I was a little nervous, hoping we didn't get stuck or something up in the mountains with a brand new little baby and another sweet boy that whom I don't want freezing.

The dudes in the back:


We drove and drove and finally reached one of the forest service roads. We headed up the crazy bumpy road and I sat in the back and held little Sandy's head so I wouldn't have to worry that it would bounce off.

We kept seeing nice trees, but then we would realize that they were HUGE. Like really really big. Our sense of scale was all off in the mountains. We looked and looked and then finally saw a couple of good candidates halfway down a pretty steep gorge. We stopped and Kris went down there to check them out.

We were only supposed to get a tree that was 10 feet or under. We had to eyeball it because even though we remembered everything else, we didn't remember a tape measure.

Baby slept and slept through the whole adventure, thank goodness, because it was awfully cold out there. He was tucked in all warm and cozy and enjoying the extreme vibrations of the land rover.


Here is our tree. We also liked the one to the right.

It looked so small to us after all the others we'd seen on our way.

The scenery:


The crazy boys:


The slightly nervous mom and slightly obedient boy:

Why I'm letting him hold the saw here I'll never know.

Kris had to have Max's help cutting the tree down--they'd been talking about it for quite a while. So Kris rigged up a rather ingenious solution to the problem of the extremely steep bank.

Max looks like he's on his way down from Everest or something.

There they go--Sultan was freaking out. See him there in the picture zooming under the tow rope? He wanted to go down to the tree so bad, but was smart enough to realize it was just too steep for him.
But he was still sad about it.


They cut it down. "TIMBER!!!!" said Max. Then they had to get themselves and the tree back up to the car.
No small task, but Kris can do anything.


Luckily the tree isn't really too heavy. The trunk isn't super thick.

Then they had to figure out what to do next with the dang thing.

And up it went. It was snowing by this time and I wish you could feel the cold air. My hands were freezing!


Taa Daa!!
Then we drove him in a big snowstorm by way of Dairy Queen. Yes, there is a Dairy Queen in the middle of nowhere quite a way south of our house. It's pretty funny.
Sandy stayed asleep until we got home, such a blessing.
Then we got the tree in the house and realized it was HUGE! Definitely at least the 10 feet and probably more like 11. When Kris stuck it in a bucket to wait for our stand it brushed the ceiling, and our ceilings are really high in this house. I couldn't believe how big it was! So funny that our sense of scale was so off.
If only I had a picture of it to show you. Soon enough. It's sitting here waiting for me to put lights on it. Who knows how long it'll take me, especially since I'm going to need a ladder for the top part! But pictures will come.
And that's the story. Pretty epic.