Christmas Miracles

I was blessed with a few special Christmas gifts this year, that were not anticipated by anyone. The first was my work when they called me Christmas Eve and said that they didn't need me, I would not have to go to work that night. Okay, that's not exactly what they said, but it's what I heard. I got to spend Christmas Eve with my two favorite boys, and got to enjoy a little tiny bit of snow too.

We had so much fun setting up Aiden's toys (there weren't a ton, but enough) after he went to bed, and he was so excited when he woke up in the morning and Santa had finally come to our house and left presents like we told him would happen. Santa got him a darling tool bench made of wood with wood tools- nuts, screws, hammer and screwdriver. We also got him a toy power drill and chainsaw to go with his tool bench and he spent the morning "sawing" the tree, the couch and momma. we had to convince him several times to open another present because he'd get so involved in the toy he had just opened he didn't want to take breaks. So Christmas morning lingered a little which was in no way a bad thing.

Later in the day Aiden gave us the best Christmas gift he could have. He pooped. In the big boy potty. Two separate times! We've been working on peeing in the potty, and have actually made some good progress, but when it came time to poop, Aiden would not go anywhere near the potty. Don't you love the poopy talk? If it bothers you, sorry. I am a nurse and am immune to poop. I had to restrain myself from taking a picture, because I know nobody wants to see that.

And now, we are headed to Moab where our Christmas festivities will continue and the weekend will be over way too soon.

happy holidays

Merry Christmas to y'all, and a happy New Year to your face!

a special visitor

We have awesome neighbors. Santa Clause just happens to live two doors down from us, did you know? Well since he lives so close and happens to be a semi-close family friend, we talked him into making a special appearance at our house for Aiden.Last year Aiden hated Santa, and would not go near him. This year, Santa is the bomb. Aiden was SO excited that Santa came to our house and gave him a hug, and he even got to sit on his lap!

Santa gave Aiden a little gift bag (provided by us) with candy and some play-dough (we carefully hinted to him that he maybe should ask Santa for some play-dough, then when Santa came over and Aiden asked for play-dough, wha-la! He handed him some). What a special treat it was for Aiden, who is so excited about Christmas this year. Even more fun, is watching him finally get the whole Santa and presents for Christmas thing. I can't wait to see his face on Christmas morning.

It's beginning to look a LOT like Christmas!

We have had a few very uncharacterisitc snow days this week. Right now as I type, I am watching out my window, there are two inches of snow in my backyard, and snow is falling to the ground-again.

Makes me want Santa to come visit sooner.

As soon as I saw it was snowing the other day, I ran around the house frantically getting dressed and getting shoes and coats on Aiden to go out and play in it. After all, how often do we get this chance where we live?

Aiden was excited about the snow, because apparently, snow means "Santa Claus is comin, to town". Aiden has caught right onto this Santa thing, and has taken a real liking to it. I wonder how we're going to get him to be good the rest of the year?

He tolerated the snow at first, thought it was pretty, made me turn on the lights, but as the little tiny snowflakes started getting his fragile little face, it got more and more iffy.

And soon, he wasn't a fan of the snow at all, and begged me to go in and get in a blanket. "Get me warm, momma, get me warm" he cried repeatedly. So, I redirected his attention to the fresh, hasn't been touched blanket of snow on the neighbor's driveway. Go make foot prints, I told him.

So, go make foot prints he did. And when he was sure I would be satisfied with the footprints he made, he was again begging to go inside and get warm. This child of mine has been spoiled living in such a warm climate. He can't even tolerate our cold laundry room.

Just so you know, we have really bad luck

We woke up yesterday morning, come downstairs for breakfast, and saw this. Our beautiful, perfect, lovely tree fell over sometime in the night. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe that none of us heard it crash to the floor in the dead of night. We tried for three hours to make it stand back up, but each time we got it standing again, and thought it was up to stay, we'd let go of it carefully just to see it ever so gradually tip to the side. After a couple of hours, we decided to scrap it and headed out to the dump with our sad tree. Ours was the first tree in the compost pile.

We were going to go out and find yet another perfect, real tree, but we decided two real trees in one year was a bit much, so we went out and bought a -gulp- fake one. I felt pretty stupid buying an artificial tree after being such a real tree snob to people, but we are now the proud owners of a "liberal tree". (It's a family joke).
We spent all day decorating the tree-again. What a pain in the butt to sit there and fluff out all those branches! I have to say, it's a pretty nice looking tree, but it definitely looks fake. It doesn't hold the same magic our pretty real one does, but it's a Christmas tree. Kenny threatened to make us go through Christmas without a tree altogether. Who knows what will go wrong next. Kind of makes life exciting doesn't it? Knowing you have bad luck, and not knowing what's coming?
But once again we have a tree. It's nice, and I realize I need to put the skirt around it. Now, does anyone know how to get tree sap out of carpet?

just a little late

We went right straight back to Moab the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend so that Kenny could participate in a coyote hunting contest. FYI. My husband is an avid coyote hunter, during his free time and spare moments, he heads out to the desert to try and shoot (to kill) a coyote. Why? I just really couldn't tell ya. FYI. My coyote hunting, gun shooting, dead animal loving husband has never, not once in his twenty six years of life shot or killed a coyote. Even though he goes all the time. So, when he went this weekend to participate in the contest with his dad as his teammate, my prediction was that they as a team would kill two coyotes, and that his dad would kill both of them. They came back after hunting from 4:00 am until 5:30 pm with not a single dead coyote. Poor guys. I really felt bad for them, but it was a little funny. I love teasing my husband. He has weird hobbies.



While they were off having their fun, Aiden and I got to hang out with my parents all day and have fun. We started the day off at the dam by my parents house (oh it's not a dam for a lake, or a pond or anything, there's just a dam and then more dry dirt.) throwing rocks from the top of the dam into the nothingness that is below the dam.

Luckily Aiden did not inadvertently pick up the word dam.



And then we went to let Aiden drive the loader. It's been my dad's goal to get Aiden onto a running tractor and have him like it, and this was the first time it was a success.

After all that, we went to the park and played on the playground, then went to the bridge to play Pooh Sticks. Aiden loves Pooh. If it's got Pooh in the title, Aiden is all about it.

He dropped his stick off one side,

ran over to the other side,

and waited until he saw his stick come out on the other side.

After all that, Aiden took a much needed nap and after he woke up we went to the light parade.

This Search and Rescue helicopter was my very favorite.

The highlight of the evening was seeing Santa on the fire truck. Aiden has just recently caught on to who Santa is, and is totally on board. When he saw Santa he immediately stretched out his arms toward Santa and said "Santa, presents please! Santa, presents!"

Oh, Christmas tree

The thing that makes Christmas for me, is the tree. I love the lights, the decorations and the smell. Everything else is great, but the tree is it for me. Aiden is definitely his momma's boy because he loves the tree too. He's even tried to give it "hugs", only to find out that it's prickly.



Every day as soon as we get downstairs, and he knows breakfast is on it's way, he tells me "lights on". And me, I turn on the kitchen light so he can see his breakfast, cause that's what I think he's talking about. Then he tells me "no, DAT one. Ober DER" (pointing to the tree). And so we turn on the Christmas tree lights first thing in the morning and only turn them off after we've all gone to bed. After all, it is Christmas season, and Aiden believes that Santa's coming at any minute, and we'd better be ready.

Kenny even strung popcorn and cranberries for me, even though (as I found out just this year, after five years of marriage) he hates doing it, and even hates the LOOK of it. Gasp! I had done some of it, but wasn't going to be able to finish until the next week, and of course you can't do the decorations until the garland is on, so he sat there all day (back when he wasn't working and had nothing to do) and did it for me so that we would be able to finish decorating our pretty tree. I have a great husband.

This is the best picture I could get of Aiden by the tree. After the tree hugging incident, he won't get too close, and when he does get close, he has a funny look on his face, as if he's waiting for another poke.

answered prayers

It's almost been two months since Kenny was laid off from his job and our lives were turned upside down. Since that day, I have been working as much as I can to keep our bills paid and keep food in our fridge and cupboard. Today, I was able to take a much needed deep breath and I think things are going to be ok again.

Kenny had a(nother) job interview on Thursday morning, and he got the call today that he got the job and he will be paid better than he was at his last job. The first couple of weeks will be a sort of "trial period" where if he does not perform to his new boss's liking, she can send him on his way and we will be back to things as they are now. Luckily I have lots of faith in my husband, and I know he is good at what he does, so there is not much worry about that.

I am so thankful for family and friends that have made our lives easier the last couple of months that have been so hard. We have awesome neighbors that are so great to watch Aiden when Kenny has to go to a job interview and I have to sleep. (That sounds so lazy, but I work nights). We have awesome family, they have been so supportive and encouraging. They've paid for our gas to travel multiple times, so that we can participate in the fun family activities.

Mostly I'm grateful that our Heavenly Father knows better than we do what is best for us and though it's hard not knowing what is coming next, it's good to know he's watching out for us. We have learned that our prayers DO get answered, just not in the ways we expect and not when we expect it. We know that we are blessed because we pay our tithing, and because we try to do what we are supposed to. Our lives may end up heading yet another direction, but I do believe that as long as we can hold on and keep our faith, we will be fine.

I am very much looking forward to being a full time mom, part time nurse again. The thing I missed the most was being the mom, and that's what I am most excited about.

We found the perfect tree . . .

and we chopped it down.

Disclaimer: I do not have time in my life to post pictures AND edit them, so none of these pictures are edited. They make my point, however.



We had a GREAT Thanksgiving weekend, and once again it was way too short. We decided to switch things up this year and go to my parents for Thanksgiving dinner rather than my Grandparents. We had such a great time, and I have to say it, mom made the best turkey gravy I've ever tasted in my life. I hope you can replicate that, mom. The only flop was the sausage and maple syrup stuffing. Really, what were you thinking? Only joking mom, I can make do with any kind of stuffing with gravy that good.



One of our best traditions is finding our Christmas tree the day after (or shortly after) Thanksgiving. We headed out on Saturday and hunted for and soon found, our perfect Christmas tree.

We've always been real tree people, and I hope that never changes. I love the real tree look and smell.
Kenny told Aiden to kick down the tree and he sure did try!
But then I decided to take a whack at it, and was most surprised when it started to give way. Then I was left doing part-splits (that's as flexible as I am) with my whole right leg stuck in the tree.

Now our tree is up in our house, and it's covered in lights, lots of lights, and waiting for the rest of our decorations to be fully beautiful. I am having no trouble getting into the Christmas spirit this year, not with the lights war (that sadly we are not a part of) that is going on in our little neighborhood!

I love Christmas time, and it's the best here in this warm town of ours that most likely will not have snow for Christmas. And that's fine by me. Snow just means cold toes for me. I love walking through the Christmas isles at Target this time of year, and buying too much for Aiden. We have our shopping pretty much done already, because we are only buying for Aiden this year (plus something little for each other, because I got my Christmas bonus I didn't think I would get). We are poor, but we are happy and healthy and there are people in much worse situations than we are in.

I'll soon (hopefully) post pictures of our finished tree, and probably one or two of our cute boy, and if you're really lucky, by then I will have time to edit them.

Have you ever been so hungry . . .

that you saw some good food on the TV, and licked the screen to get a taste?

No? Never?

Maybe we need to feed him more?

Attention neighbors!

You may have heard some loud, obnoxious sounds coming from our area of the neighborhood. No, that is NOT a cigar in my boys mouth, it's a coyote call. Yes, one of my husbands family's favorite sports is coyote hunting, and they've taught my child to blow a coyote call, they even bought him one of his own. To top it all off, Aiden loves the thing, and "practices" all the time.

Also, about the balloon and stickers. Aiden scored big time at Harmon's. He knows exactly what they have to offer him, and he plays it to his advantage. He always comes away from there with a balloon, and a sticker for each hand, and his forehead.
Anyway, sorry about the noise. Believe me, it's worse here in our house. Thanks for the "toy" Grandma and Grandpa, we love it!

Disney on Ice

Over the weekend we headed up north to stay with Kenny's sister and her husband, who were nice enough to let us stay with them for three days. Kenny's entire family was there, and his parents treated us all to a night at Disney on Ice.

Kenny's sister Karrina just happened to have gone to Disneyland not long ago, and since she had heard of Aiden's love for the movie "Monster's Inc." she bought him this "Mike and Sully" stuffed toy, just in time for our Disney on Ice trip. Unfortunately, Mike and Sully weren't in Disney on Ice, but Aiden didn't care. Not one bit.We, of course, had to find a park while we were out of town, because if Aiden goes too long without playing at a park, he has withdrawals. Of course, we (the girls) didn't realize how much fun our husbands would have on the toys. They may have had more fun than Aiden did this time.
I was a little chilly, and I took Kenny's jacket because he didn't think to remind me to wear one of my own. So, he did a little "jig" to warm himself up.
I was worried about Aiden sitting through Disney on Ice, because he's proved to us multiple times that he is unable to sit through much of anything. But he was SO good. Right at the beginning when Mickey and the all the gang came out onto the ice, Aiden just wanted to go down and see Mickey, and he cried and screamed and thrashed. But after a minute, he calmed down and sat for the whole two hours just absolutely transfixed on the show. He loved it. I probably could count on my two hands how many times he blinked. He (with a little help, but not much) ate two tubs of popcorn.

Ever time Mickey came out, Aiden got so excited. He LOVES mickey.

This is what he did, and looked like for the entire two hours. Eyes wide open, hands and mouth full of popcorn, and his little jaw chewing. He had such a great time, and it was so great for us to watch him. Thanks guys, it was so fun.

Running

Do you ever see a big open field of green grass and just want to run?

We came upon such a field of green grass the other day and we ran. A lot.

For like half an hour. It was great.

Getaway

I know it was a week ago, but I am lazy and slow and just now going through some of our pictures from our weekend trip to Moab. We had a lot of fun, and there are a lot of pictures to post. Probably more to come, though I will not promise anything.

This is one of Aiden's favorite toys at my parents house, the "dig" as he calls it. We (Kenny) piled up all the leaves on the lawn for him to dig and dump, he had a great time.
Until Kenny picked him up and threw him in the pile.

This was my backyard growing up. Well, ok. A ten minute hike from my backyard, but man we spent a lot of time there. It is known by all (family) as the "brown rocks" because they are the only brown rocks in Moab. All the rest are red.

And this is the view from the brown rocks in the fall. It was beautiful. Kenny and I got to take a little hike together while Aiden napped. It was so nice to get away for the weekend and not have to think about anything but which house we were going to have dinner at, and who got to sleep in while the other got up with Aiden. I usually win that one. The bad part was leaving, and coming back to reality. Reality is SO not fun.