48 Weeks Old

48 weeks old. Our baby boy celebrated his first Christmas this week and now it is only a month until he will be turning 1! I can't believe how time flies!!! He loved playing with all the toys and cousins while we were at Grandma Wendy's house for the last few days, although there were a few baby fights that broke out between him and Taylee-who is just a little bit older than him :). 

Merry Christmas

We haven't left town for Christmas for several years-because packing up all of the gifts can be a chore-but the kids really wanted to go to Grandma Wendy's this year, so we decided to give it a try.

Before we left the kids opened up their Christmas Jammies and Ornament (our tradition-they get a special ornament every year to add to their collections).

We finally made it to Grandma's house...

Christmas Morning came early but not to early the kids all jumped out of bed at 5 and were ready to go.

Here they are waiting to go see what Santa brought them.

Chloe was so happy that Santa was able to find her the Beethoven dog she had requested.

Ripping into her next present...

Santa forgot to put together Bryce's Jeep so Daddy had to...

Tanner got the Disney Infinity Game, lots of clothes, a ripstick, and an i-tunes gift card.

Christmas Smiles...

A few more picts Daddy took with his phone...

It was a great day!!! The kids enjoyed the next few days playing with all of their new stuff and their cousins to their hearts content. 

The day after Christmas we loaded up all of the cousins and went to see the movie FROZEN-it was a great show and the kids had a blast!

Every year Landon's Grandma gives the kids Church Clothes for Christmas here they are in their new duds...

WE had such a Great Christmas!!! Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

47 Weeks Old

Every week I do one of these posts, it is one week closer my little boy gets to being a year old. Though he is a joy most of the time, the one thing he is not good at is sleeping through the night. He still wakes up like three times during the night and wants to eat. I think a lot of this is my fault because I am not good at being awake late or during the night so I usually just bring him to bed with me, feed him, and then am too lazy to put him back in his own bed, so there he stays with us. My goal is that after Christmas I am really going to work on getting him sleeping in his own bed for longer and not getting up so much during the night, which means I will have to give him water or a binki when he wakes up and he is not going to be happy about that-wish me luck!

Bryce kind of has his own little language-we call it caveman speak. He makes all these different little grunts and gestures with his hands. We can tell he is talking to us or trying to tell us something, but what we don't know. One of the things he does almost sounds like he is saying "that" and he always waves his hand at something when he does it, so we always say "What's That?" when he does it and try to tell him what it is if we can tell what it is he is pointing at. One of his favorite things to see is Landon's stuffed deer Charlie. He loves it and always points at it-I wish I would have gotten him a stuffed reindeer for Christmas.

Spirit Week

Last week at Chloe's school it was Spirit Week. It was kind of a blah spirit week, due to the fact that they are having some kind or crazy lice epidemic there, they put a lot of stipulations on what could be done. For example no crazy hair day which is always a favorite. And they let them have pajama day, but the kids weren't able to bring pillows or blankets to watch movies or have a read-a-thon. Chloe was a little disappointed, but she had fun dressing up like a reindeer one day and also wearing Christmas socks another.

Neighbor Gifts Given and Received

The past few weeks I have been busy trying to finish up all of my Christmas Projects and Gifts. The top of my list was the yearly video I make for my Grandma every year. I finally finished it up yesterday!!! In between working on the I have made 4 levi quilts for Christmas and put together a few white elephant gifts.
I also made some things to give out to neighbors and Chloe's friends. Oh yes and least I should forget a friend and I also put together 70 gifts for all the teachers/staff at Chloe's school. It has been a busy couple of weeks! I kind of feel like I work at Santa's Workshop-LOL

These are the teacher gifts...

 It is a Snowman Tag attached to a frozen yogurt gift card it says "have a cool yule"!

Some of the neighbor gifts...

 "Have a Magnificent and Marvelous Christmas."

More Neighbor Gifts...

 "The season is here so we rush all about. If your feeling a bit NUTS then enjoy these while you take a timeout"

More Neighbor Gifts...

 "Have YourELF a Merry Little Christmas!"

More Neighbor Gifts...

 "Enjoy the Scents of Christmas"

For Chloe's friends we got packages of Jolly Ranchers and made a tag that said "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" we also added a chap-stick. It was cute and easy. 

Chloe also did the 12 days of Christmas for her teacher. She helped me come up with each day and made a little tag for her day with a saying that we tied onto the item for that day. She took in different classroom supplies her teacher needed as well as some of her favorite treats. I think it was a fun idea, and Chloe had a great time sneaking the thing onto her teachers desk everyday. On the last day she handed her teacher the gift, which was too hard to hide-it was a 12 pack of diet coke, and said the poem that went with it to her. 

We have had so much stuff dropped off at our door. Most of it is yummy things to eat-so I feel like all I do is eat sugar all day long-haha~~~ One person got creative though and brought by some goldfish along with a tag that said Have a Merry FISHmas and a GUPPY new year. WOW!!! REALLY?!

At least Chloe was excited about that one.

More of Ellie

Here is a little bit more of what Ellie has been up to the last little bit. She has been a little bit mischievous at times as you can see from the toilet and Christmas Tree!

46 Weeks Old

46 Weeks Old. Don't you just love this little Under Armour fashion model? And yes he is wearing socks that don't match-I swear he is always running out of socks, but we have tons in his size with no matches, so some days I break down and just put mis-matches on him. Hey don't judge at least his feet our warm right! He ran a little fever for a few days this week, but seems to be doing better now. He is getting pretty good using his hands to do things. He can throw a ball and will play catch with you. He also has a little basketball hoop and he will put the ball in the basket. Not only can he throw good but he can also swing things around pretty well. Watch out if that something happens to be a wooden spoon or something hard ;)

O Christmas Tree the 2nd

So this year was the first year since we have been married that we didn't go out and cut down a Christmas Tree. There was just a lot going on and with an infant, we decided to try something a little different and just buy one at a Christmas Tree lot. So the day before Thanksgiving Landon and the kids picked out a nice one. Well about a week later-we realized that tree was simply not going to make it-it was dying right before our eyes and losing about a pound of needles a day-so we called up Lowe's, where we bought it from, and they told us to bring it back in and they would replace it. So that's what we did decorated it and traded it for another. So the kids were pretty happy they got to decorate two trees this year instead of one :)

Candy Man

Landon decided that he just couldn't live without the Christmas Candy his Mom would make when he was a kid, and since I just don't have the patience to make candy, he bought himself a candy thermometer and did it himself. 

The first batch of toffee burned, but the next two he made as well as the divinity turned out perfectly. We have all been loving snacking on these yummy treats. I'm sure now it will be a tradition-in fact next year we might have Landon make candy to give out to all our neighbors for Christmas :)

Record Snow

Last Friday we had a record breaking snowstorm hit St. George. It was the 3rd most recorded amount of snow to fall in the past 125 years-WOW!!! The even more impressive thing is that there is still after a week-tons of it left on the ground-now that is unheard of, because even when it snows in St. George it usually melts by the end of the day. That just shows how freezing cold it has been around here this week. BRRR!!!

The day began with us heading up to the church a little before 9 in the morning. It was our Ward Christmas Party-which was a nice Pancake Breakfast. As we left the house we caught sight of a few snowflakes beginning to fall, by the time we left the church about an hour later-there was a winter storm in full force.

Of course the kids immediately donned gloves and hats and went out to play...That was the story the rest of the day until late in the night-way past dark. Go out and play come in and warm up with some hot cocoa and then head back out.

 The storm finally abated about 9 pm the night-but the snow was here to stay for awhile.

In fact Saint George doesn't own snow plows or have ways to salt the roads, so there were people stranded and running off the road everywhere-and Church throughout the town was canceled.

Sunday afternoon we ventured out to let Bryce experience the snow-he thought it was really fun to eat.

 Dave helped the kids build a slide-Landon said it had nothing on the Giant One his Dad built for them as a kid.

It was a fun couple of days in the snow, but honestly now I am ready for it to melt and this cold spell to be over-I really like the snow-but I like my Saint George weather too-snow is supposed to be for when we go out of town :)