Christmas 2010

We had such a great Christmas this year. Honestly, this has probably been my favorite Christmas since we got married. We kept everything really simple and low key, so there was no pre-Christmas stress and we were able to just enjoy everything. 

The night before Christmas Eve, we went to Jon's parents house to spend Christmas Eve with them. We did a lot of hanging out and visiting. In the evening we had a delicious dinner, and then had a little Christmas program. We sang some songs, and read Luke 2 while the kids acted out the nativity. After that we did a white elephant gift exchange and then opened presents from Grandma and Grandpa. Then we headed home to spend Christmas with just our little family.

Matthew LOVED this candy cane headband.

Everybody gathered for songs

Mary

Mary and Joseph (Owen) had two babies this year. :)

Jon's mom made a tv blanket for each of the grandkids. They LOVE them.

And this was by far Matthew's favorite gift this year.

Christmas morning was PERFECT. The kids slept in until 7:30, so we got to wake up on our own and then get ready. When the kids woke up, Emma said she wasn't feeling very good. Her exact words were, "I don't feel too good. See, my arms can't flap like a bird" (as she flopped her arms around). We took the kids out to the tree and she didn't want to have anything to do with it. She really wasn't feeling good. We decided to eat breakfast and then try presents after that. We finally started opening presents and as we went along she started to feel better. After she opened her new laptop and played with it for a little bit, she looked up and exclaimed, "Look Mom, I'm not sick anymore. See, my arms can flap now!"

Emma opening her little laptop, which was just what she always wanted. This is what she has been asking Santa for all month.

And then we got to the Wii. Matthew actually unwrapped it and couldn't figure out what it was. I love the look on his face in this picture. Emma knew exactly what it was and was thrilled.

We spent a fun, lazy day in our pajamas playing with new toys, games, and of course the Wii. It was a perfect day. While I love spending Christmas with extended family, it was so nice to just be us this year. To not be rushed and to not have a lot going on. We didn't have very many gifts...I think each kid had 3 and Jon and I each had a couple...but we took our time opening things, playing with them as we opened them. I loved being able to soak up the kids' excitement over everything. I felt so much gratitude and love. I am so blessed!

That night we had a couple over  for dinner and games. It was a perfect way to end Christmas.

Jon has this whole week off (LOVE paid vacations!) and it has been great. We've (well, mostly Jon) been able to get some little projects done around the house, but mostly it's just nice to have all this time together. Monday night we had Jon's whole family over for dinner and games. It was so fun! And it was nice to not have to do the traveling for a change.  :)

This morning Jon left to go snow camping with his brother. We're hoping they're having fun and staying warm. He has been wanting to do this for so long, so I'm glad they were able to go.

I love Christmastime. I love the special feeling of this season and am grateful for the opportunity to remember the birth of our Savior.

Getting Ready For Christmas

December has FLOWN BY this year. I cannot believe it is only 3 days till Christmas! We kept Christmas really simple this year, mostly because we got our free Wii and knew that would be exciting enough that the kids wouldn't care if there wasn't much else. So, shopping has been done for well over a week and we have just been waiting for Christmas to come.

 On Saturday we made a little gingerbread village. Matthew kind of decorated his house, but mostly just put candy on it and then took it off to eat.

Emma carefully placed each candy and made sure the house looked perfect. 

The finished products, done mostly by Emma

 The kids in their Christmas outfits for church. Emma actually has a really cute red dress with a matching fur lined jacket....super cute and perfect for Christmas. But this is her favorite dress and she wouldn't wear anything else. Still works though.

 

And Matthew just looks so cute in his little suit. I actually got this on clearance at JCPenny's for $4! I was SO excited. 

She LOVES to twirl

On Monday we made some sugar cookies. Our little artist, Emma, loves this kind of stuff. She was so proud of herself for making all the shapes. Her favorite part though was rolling out the dough with the big rolling pin.

Matthew would cut out shapes and then pick up the dough and eat it. 

Later in the afternoon, we had our friend Brady over to help us decorate the cookies. Again, Emma was so careful to make sure her cookies all looked perfect. And Matthew, true to character, skipped frosting the cookies and just ate the frosting straight out of the bowl. In between bites he would pour some sprinkles on his plate and eat some.

The finished products...though with all the pink and purple sprinkles, they look more like Easter cookies than Christmas. :)

Last night, we drove around looking at Christmas lights. A friend told me about a street nearby that gets all decked out every year. It was really cool...I wish we had thought to bring the camera. There were some really impressive homes.  For those of you in the area, you should definitely go see them. It's Eucalyptus Ave (the section between Orange and Tamarack St)  in San Carlos.

And now that we've done all the traditional Christmas things, Christmas is welcome to come any time!

Fallish Winter Fun

 There's nothing like raking and playing in leaves on the 2nd day of winter to make it feel like Christmas. :)  While I don't miss the Idaho snow at all, once Christmas rolls around I find myself wishing we could have it just one night. Just one perfect little, peaceful snowfall....without the slush and ice and window scraping. But I guess you can't have it all. So, the leaves will have to do. And the kids had a BLAST.

Emma helped me rake while Matthew supervised

 We got a great pile

Ready, set, JUMP!

Matthew's favorite part was throwing the leaves

Quotes

I was taking pictures of the kids when Matthew looked up and said, "Mom, stop picturing me!"

Emma's Song Practice

On Sunday the Primary kids sang a couple of songs in church. For the second song, Mary's Lullaby, they had one girl (Amy) sing the beginning of the second verse, and then Emma and two other girls joined in for the second half. It was SO sweet to hear their little voices singing such a beautiful song. They did great! These videos are just from the practice...and they don't do them justice. But it was all I could get. So, for those who missed out here is their song.

The first video is the whole second verse. The second video is just the part where the 3 girls join in. You can hear them much better the second time, but Amy's singing in the first video is so sweet!

Play Time Videos

Just a couple videos of mostly Emma. The first one captures the two kids perfectly (when the don't want to play together). Makes me laugh. The second one is Emma feeding her play animals. She played this game for at least half an hour. Her different animal voices crack me up!

A Loooong Overdue Update

 It's been a long time since I've really updated this little blog. In all honesty, it's been a long time since I've had the energy or motivation to do much more than the basics. The kids have been watching a lot of movies...way more than they should...but I have also been getting a nap every day. So I'm okay with it for now.  :)

Emma has really gotten into rhyming lately. Several times a day she'll shout out a random word and then start saying all the words she can think of that rhyme with it. It's been fun to see her mind at work. She is very creative and loves to do anything art related. She and Matthew are getting better at playing together...though they can also fight pretty good. Matthew can hold his own now and Emma knows it, so it can be pretty entertaining. They really are good friends though and it's fun to watch them grow up together. Emma loves giving Matthew nicknames. She rotates through Buddy, Bucky, Brady, and an assortment of characters from her favorite shows (usually one of the Backyardigans). He answers to all of them and occasionally will try to give her a nickname too....usually a Backyardigans character.

Matthew is talking so much these days and says so many funny things....though  I can't remember anything off the top of my head. He is still very cuddly and loves to give kisses. He also asks for kisses any time he gets hurt, and miraculously they make it all better. I love it. He is generally a really happy little guy, but he can also be strong willed when he wants to. Matthew has recently started waking up early most mornings. He wanders into our room and climbs into bed with us and just lays there and talks and tries to play. I would love it a lot more if it weren't 5 in the morning. But we love him anyway. He is such a sweet little boy.

I can't believe how fast Christmas has come this year. Nine more days! This is the first year Emma has really understood the Christmas story and she loves trying to tell it to us. Both kids also love all the Christmas music. Their favorite Christmas song is Jingle Bells. They are getting excited for Christmas. They love sitting by the tree, trying to guess what is in each of the boxes. Emma is sure that one of the boxes is MarioKart...she's going to be disappointed! We did use our Amazon credit from buying our Wii to get a couple games, one of which is Madagascar Karts...same concept as MarioKart but with the Madagascar characters and much cheaper. Hopefully that will suffice.

Anyway, here are a few random pictures from the last few weeks...about all the pictures I have taken!

 Getting ready for Christmas

This is the extent of our Christmas decorating this year. A tree, a couple nativities and some garland, and the (mismatched) stockings. We have LOVED having a fireplace this year. Just makes it feel so much more Christmasy. 

A couple weekends ago, Jon got free tickets from work to see Shrek the Musical. We took Emma and her friend Andrew. It was at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco...my first time ever going there. We had good seats in the orchestra section and enjoyed the play. The kids were really getting into it...it was really entertaining.

 The four of us (Andrew is hiding behind Emma)

 Last weekend we watched our friends kids while they took a quick weekend trip. Saturday was so nice and we were all feeling a little stir crazy, so we took the kids to the zoo. It was the perfect outing. Everyone had a great time and the two younger kids ended up sleeping for 2 hours afterwards...success!

Matthew LOVES playing on these frogs

Andrew the turtle (...or tortoise)

Emma and Madeline

Brushing and petting the goats is definitely Matthew's favorite thing to do at the zoo. He's  only been there once before, but he remembered exactly what to do and where to get the brush.

Saturday night was our ward's Christmas party. The kids didn't really know what to think of Santa. Just kind of sat there for the picture and then waited for their candy. No requests...guess it makes his job simple.  :)

14 Weeks

So, I'm officially 14 weeks today. It's actually hard for me to believe. I know I still have a ways to go, trust me...I definitely know. BUT, when you're feeling gross and sick and nauseous, etc the weeks seem to drag on and on and on. So I was happy to realize today that I have hit the 14 week mark. I am officially out of the 1st trimester. Woohoo! I do have to wonder though...does morning sickness really end at 12 weeks for anyone? Because that has never been the case with me. It lasted 25 weeks with Emma and 15 weeks with Matthew. I was hoping the 3rd time would be the charm and it would end that soon, but it just didn't happen. In fact, (in case you were wondering) the last time I threw up was just this morning. Ah, the joys...I am definitely seeing a light at the end of the tunnel though. Mornings are rough, but as long as I keep my stomach full and get a nap in, I am usually okay the rest of the day. And the one bright spot to the sickness is that I know everything is still going good. So, I'm okay with it.  :)

I have been to the doctor twice. She did an ultrasound both times and everything looked perfect. Baby is measuring right on and has a good, strong heartbeat. We find out what we are having on January 10 and I cannot wait!

Anyway, I decided to take periodic belly pictures this time around. I didn't take any belly shots during my other two pregnancies and honestly I kind of regret it now. In fact, I have almost no pictures of me pregnant and that makes me kind of sad. I was just always too worried about how fat I looked and I was just too self conscious to ever do it. So, I've gotten over that and this time I'm going to document....for my sake more than anything.

So, here is the first picture (as completely unflattering as it is) at 14 weeks. And on a funny note, I jokingly told Jon not to get my head in the picture, because I felt kind of dumb. I figured he knew I was kidding, but he obviously didn't. Oh well.  :)

I am definitely getting bigger. I finally had to put away my favorite jeans and pull out the bigger sizes that I outgrew when I lost weight earlier this year. And honestly it's been a little depressing to see the numbers on the scale slowly creeping up, because I worked so hard to get them down. But I know it's for a good cause. And I feel good about that fact that, at 14 weeks, I'm still below my pre-pregnancy weight with both other kids.

We are so excited for this new little one to join our family!

We got a FREE Wii!

And you can too! Here's how we did it.

We have been using Swagbucks for the last year, earning points that we just redeemed for our free Wii.  So, what is Swagbucks???  Swagbucks is a search engine, just like google, yahoo, bing, etc. However, when you search through Swagbucks you can win points (called swagbucks) that you can redeem for prizes...and there are TONS of options. We chose to redeem all of our points for Amazon gift cards that we then used to buy our Wii. It took us about 13 months to save up enough, but in the end we didn't pay a single penny AND we still have Amazon gift cards left over to use on other Christmas presents. (And as a bonus, we bought the Wii on a day that Amazon was offering a $50 credit with every Wii purchase, so we're going to use THAT $50 to buy an extra remote and another game...woohoo!)

Swagbucks is SO easy to use. They don't spam you or anything like that. We have had a great experience using their website and search engine. Really, there's nothing to lose! So, check it out. You can sign up here. When you sign up through my link, I earn every time you earn (which I greatly appreciate!). And when you sign people up you earn when they earn. Simple as that. No strings attached!

After you sign up, go to their home page and download their toolbar. This makes searching really easy. To increase my chances of winning I use the tool bar every time I go to a website, even my email, facebook, etc.

So, head on over, sign up, and start earning!

A Day at the Beach

 We have had GORGEOUS weather this week. Sunny, weather in the 60's and 70's. And for it being the middle of November, I'll happily take it. On Monday a friend invited us to the beach, so we packed up and headed out.

Matthew wasn't feeling great, so he sat and played with cars for awhile. 

The other kids went straight for the water.

 This one's for you Kristina. She got some serious air!

A perfect day at the beach!

One Little Indian

 Emma made this Indian costume at preschool today. She was one proud (and adorable) little Indian.

She's a sweet big sister too.