::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!

Merry Christmas Eve--Jingle Bells by Max

Max found the music to jingle bells in one of his books this morning. Merry Christmas.

::go max!!::

Max is doing awesome at karate.
A while back he was awarded a little "most improved" patch for his uniform (we haven't put it on his uniform yet, much to his annoyance). Technically he's not the MOST improved because there are other kids with the same patch, but oh well. He really has improved since he started though, and we're really proud of him. I think the patch applies quite well.

Then yesterday he came out of class with another patch. An exciting one!

I like the dragons. Evidently this is a promotion patch and it means he's making progress towards the next belt!

Isn't this so classic karate--"Here's a patch for you! That'll be $10 mom and dad!!"

We're very proud of him though, and I can't wait until he learns enough to test up to the next belt. It's nice to see him learning something physically challenging and especially we like to see him learning discipline. Now if only it was less complicated to get him to karate after school now that there's the little Sandy. We'll get the logistics figured out though. Eventually!


Go Max!!!

::smiles::

::week 5 highlights::

Here's a little of Sandy's week five for you.
It was a busy one, what with the snowstorm and the football game and getting ready for Christmas. We still got some fun pictures though of course!
This week Sandy got to take his first "real" bath. He loved it. He would've stayed in there all afternoon if he could've.

You've seen a couple other of these carseat ones, but I thought this one was just so cute. I love the stripey suit and his silly face.


Ok, here's the funniest thing I have for the week. Kris wanted a picture of Sandy with his dental books for something, so we did a couple of little photo shoots. Since I don't have lights, it's complicate to get things looking right, and they're still not where I wanted, but they did turn out pretty cute. Sandy was patient for about 3 minutes and then he wanted off the shelf, dang it!!


So we got him off before he got too mad.

And last but not least, Sandy sitting in the rocking chair that is currently in our room, waiting for me to do something like dry my hair or brush my teeth. Little guys sure have to wait around a lot.

5 weeks already? Yikes, time flies.

::new mexico bowl::

Saturday was the New Mexico bowl--BYU vs. UTEP. We really wanted to go, I mean a BYU football game an hour away from our house?!!
Luckily, the big snow storm didn't keep us down and we made it to Albuquerque right on time. In fact, the snow probably helped because we had to cancel work on friday, so we were able to leave even earlier than planned.

We started our outing by going to the football team's fireside at a stake center in ABQ. It was really fun to see the team up close and to hear a few of them speak and sing. The coach spoke last and he gave a great talk. He's such a good guy. He talked about how after the team struggled so much at the beginning of the year people were starting to doubt that the team could be run the way he runs it--with emphasis on the honor code and being a good person--and succeed. And then he talked about successes and where they come from, and the right reasons to do the things we do. It was quite inspiring really.
The boys behaved really well too, which made things even better.

Then we stayed the night in a hotel not far from the stadium. In the morning we got up and headed over to the stadium for the alumni tailgate party. The moment we got to the stadium I realized we'd left the tickets to the game at home. I was just sick! So as soon as we parked at the stadium, we hurried over to the will call and begged them for some help--inadvertently cutting in line on the way and getting yelled at by an angry BYU fan texan. He was mad.
Anyway, they gave us three more tickets, thank goodness, and then my weekend wasn't ruined anymore!
We went over and Max got to spend a little time in the bouncy houses, which is the stuff of dreams to him.

We ate a big southwestern breakfast complete with BYU catering's mint brownies and hot chocolate. We listened to the band for a bit.
Then we headed over and took our seats in the stadium. Max got some awesome stickers for under his eyes so he looked really intense.


Sand spent the whole time sleeping on my chest in his carrier. He was warm (super duper warm) and snuggly and seemed pretty happy. And the awesome baby carrier that I have is pretty easy on the back, so I survived the experience.



He was a trooper. Actually both boys did great and instead of ruining our fun, helped it along for once!
We stayed until half time and then left. It was good timing really and considering the game was a blow out we didn't miss much.
But we did stay long enough to see Santa, who apparently is a UTEP fan. Who knew?!


It was really fun and we'll do it again. Too bad BYU won't be coming to NM regularly anymore for football, but that's just how it goes. All this did was just strengthen our desires to come out to UT for a BYU game sometime in the fall!

::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.

::speaking of::

Speaking of cozy fires, (we were speaking of those at some point, right?) weren't you wondering where we got all that wood to burn??

Well, I hope you were wondering, because I'm going to tell you.
Early this week Kris bet up with a friend from the ward who works for the Forest Service. He's like a genuine mountain man (well, sort of), and he's awesome. He had a permit to cute firewood--which are evidently very affordable--and he took Kris out into the middle of nowhere to find a great big deadwood fallen tree that he had run across at some point. I guess it was crazy getting there--no roads or anything of course.
They chopped it up with Gilbert's chainsaw and axe and then filled the back of the Land Rover with chunks of (extremely aromatic) wood.


No--that chainsaw doesn't look very safe or secure--we'll assume they moved that after the picture and before driving home, right? They both made it home with heads intact anyway, that's the important part.

Kris was pretty proud of his load of wood.
And rightly so, it's quite impressive.

Sultan was less impressed and more distressed--the wood was in his spot. What's a dog to do?

The wood smells amazing and it's been really fun to have cozy fires on cold days. And I think the cutting of the wood satisfied a need for adventure in my husband--well a bit of that need anyway. Feeling like a real mountain man is pretty awesome.