::christmas eve part 1::

As I've probably mentioned many times before on this blog, Christmas Eve is one of my favorite holidays. In fact, it may be my most favorite. Max asked me why this year and I couldn't really explain it, but I think it has something to do with the suspense and magic of Christmas before everything is all unwrapped and revealed. When I was little it used to seem like anything could happen the next day. Not so much now, but it's still a magical fun day. And now that Kris and I set our own work schedule I've been able to give him Christmas Eve off the last couple of years which has been really nice.
We always get out the penguin race set that my parents got for us sometime the week leading up to Christmas. They are so cute, but the squeaky sounds they make require us to ration their use. Anyway, this time we actually waited until Christmas Eve and pulled them out. The boys were very happy to play with them, and only fought over them a little....or a medium.
Sandy really loved them. He may or may not have even remembered playing with them before.

Captain Hook came out to join the party and kept calling the penguins things like "scurvy swabs" and "codfish"



In the morning Kris went out and did a few manly things outside, like cleaning out more of the garage and cutting down a humongous cactus. I did a little more wrapping and some of that kind of thing. I was helping Max wrap a present and in the process cut the sleeve of the jacket I was wearing with the scissors--not sure how that happened--so I got to do a little mending too.

We facetimed with my mom and dad for a while, and with Kris's mom. It was fun to do that before actual Christmas because we actually had time to talk and play around, Christmas is just way too busy.
The most delicious thing we did that morning though, was work on our traditional Christmas sugar cookies--yes these are the same puffy and yummy cookies it seems like we make every holiday, but they are dang good and they deserve to be repeated.

The above picture is Sandy, being delighted that I had given him a peanut butter cup cookie. "For me??! A COOOOOKie?" He was hugging it to his chin and loving it. Cute little cheeseball.

Here's the cookie making. So, looking at these two clowns, do you think they helped make the process easier for me or tougher? How helpful do you think they _really_ are?

They were supposed to be the decorating crew. I finally had to call Kris in as my backup because I couldn't keep an eye on the sprinkles and finish the cookies at the same time. Every time I looked away there was some sort of spill or overdecorating disaster. Sandy took the job very seriously though and worked hard--as hard as a 3 yr old can, with all the messes that come along with it.

These cookies' sprinkle levels all look good because they were heavily policed. There were others that looked like they were growing hair or something, they had such heavy sprinkle layers.


The green penguin is definitely on the edge of being one of those. And yes, if you think the cookies look yummy, that's because they ARE.

When we got the cookies all done we packed up our entourage and headed out for a late lunch. That's where I'll pick up the story for part 2.

::christmas card 2013::

Here is our Christmas card from this year--though I think any of my fans who are still hanging on and reading this blog already got one in the mail! If not, enjoy. I like making these cards for us, and this picture turned out extra nice down behind our house in Eldorado. The self timing remote we bought recently was a great investment.
And thanks to my mom who did a little photoshop magic to tone down the clash of the boys' hawaiian shirts, the flowers and Kris's plaid. We didn't plan ahead too well before we just ran down to take a few shots.
Merry Christmas!!

::matching christmas boys::

I just can't keep trying to catch up on backlogged posts or nothing will ever get posted! Here are my boys today in their matching Christmas finery---no it's not Christmas yet, but it is the sunday before when we always try to look extra nice and cute. And Max thinks he's too good for smiling these days.











Funny to compare these to this and this (you have to scroll down a bit to find the pictures on that last one). And THIS!!! AHHHH!!!

::work party::

Since I had some fun photos on my phone of our Christmas dinner party for work I thought I'd post 'em up here.
We did a big combined party for both office this time--last year we split the offices up. It was fun, but dang was it a huge group of people. We filled up a special banquet room in the back of the restaurant and even spilled out into the hallway.

More than 20 people! And that was just employees plus our kiddos. Nobody else.

It was a fun evening. Lots of delicious food and good company. We also did a white elephant gift exchange this year which turned out quite fun. A few of the staff had never been involved in one before. I think they all enjoyed it.

Max wore his "party shirt" as we like to call it.

Sandy was plied with cookies from all sides. Everybody loves him. He's the office pet.

And Kris, stylin' it up as he lays down the rules for the white elephant.
And there you go.

::sandy & santa::

Sandy got to meet up with Santa at the ward party. He was pretty excited at the concept of it--sitting in Santa's lap, etc., but when the guys actually showed up he just wasn't so sure anymore.

"Santa" and "his Elf"--looking like trouble to me.
He was the first kid in line because we had other places to be that night, and once it was time to actually climb up in Santa's lap he was just not so sure.

But he did it, and just stayed silent the whole time.

It didn't help that when he wouldn't say what he wanted for Christmas, Santa asked him if he wanted a new baby. At that point the answer was most definitely no, so that was the end of the interview, and off Sandy scooted as fast as he could.

::christmas tree hunt 2013::

On the saturday after Thanksgiving, after Cammon's family headed on home from their visit, we packed up and went out into the woods to find ourselves our traditional New Mexico desert forest Hendricks christmas tree.

The hunt this time was hard and long. And because there had been a pretty significant snowfall about a week before, the roads up the mountains were muddy and goupy and sticky and slick. It was a little bit treacherous from time to time.

Our good old Land Rover had been out of commission for a long time, but Kris bartered an ortho case with a dad who fixes cars, and after a looooong time the car came back to us, pretty functional (just a few stalls from time to time that scared me), and the perfect car for this kind of crazy activity.

We went up higher and higher without seeing many good candidates for our tree. All the trees had such scraggly bottoms, or had grown up so closely with another tree that taking one from the other would leave you only with half. When we came across an big old dead tree blocking the road I was discouraged, but Kris took matters into his own hands and busted the thing up and got it out of the way.
We finally found ourselves in a big open field at the end of some small dirt road. It sure seemed like there had to be something out there in the woods surrounding the field. I went for a walk and just still couldn't find much.

It was frustrating. Finally, after searching hard and long Kris saw a lone pine mixed up in a stand of something else. It was a big one and it was really hard to see how full it was because of how it was mixed up with other stuff. But Kris was convinced the tree would work once it was out, so we went for it. We let the boys and dog out of the car to explore and Kris got to work.


Kris finally broke down this year and bought a chain saw, but this tree was cut down with the good old fashioned hacksaw with a little saws-all action thrown in.


The boys had a set of walkie-talkies that Kris bought for skiing, and they were having a blast blabbing to each other and making different paging sounds.


And of course they were enjoying getting just a little too far away for my comfort.


I wish Kris wasn't so out of focus in the above picture, but oh well. He was enjoying his manly role of lumberjack and four wheel drive expert.



Above is original tree, straight after it was cut down. Below is the revised version after a little trimming of the bottom. After we got home we did some top trimming too--maybe a foot or even two off the top really brought the shape together nicely.

A much better shape if you ask me.


Tying the tree on the car always seems to be the toughest thing and take the longest, but maybe that's just because at that point everybody is always cold and hungry. The boys eventually got tired of exploring and climbed back in the Rover, looking forward to our eventual lunch.

We were all set and ready to go, and the drive down the mountain didn't take terribly long even though the roads had melted and gotten even more goupy during our search. We had to blast through a couple of pretty deep rutted puddles that made me very nervous.

On the way home we bucked tradtion and didn't stop at the ghetto Pecos Dairy Queen for lunch. Max was pretty bummed, but Harry's Roadhouse tasted a whole lot better and was much closer to our new house!
It was a good day, and we even got the lights on the tree on sunday. Gotta move quickly when the Christmas season is so short!

I'm glad we have some fun traditions, even if they do bump you around a little more than is to my taste. That's what I get for being the only girl in a family of crazy boys I guess!