Family Sledding

We all went sledding together one evening in January. We dropped Sammy off at our friends house and then hit the hill. It was a lot of fun!  You can see the falling snow in the pictures. I have to admit that going down the hill was a little scary! My life flashed before my eyes a few times - thought I was going to completely biff it. The hill wasn't that steep really... I'm just a wimp!
Eliza gets a free ride up the hill every time. What a lucky girl!

 BIG SMILES!

Time to go home!  :) 

Post-Christmas Bliss

Our after-Christmas holiday was wonderful!  Jed took two weeks of vacation over Christmas, so we all just lounged around and relished in being home together and playing with our new toys. :)
The Monday following Christmas, Jed got a really cool toy. His favorite toy ever.  A 50-inch Plasma TV.  He called it his "Betty" and the name stuck. So now we all call her "Betty," and Jed dotes on her.  :)
You can see the square, heavy TV that got replaced.  That thing was a beast. :)

The family is gathered around Betty.  "Wow, check out that sweet resolution."

Jed and Ben enjoyed blasting Ben's rocket. It could go up to 200 feet!  

Jed got his own dart gun for Christmas, so that he and Benjamin could have real dart gun wars together. (Lately they've discovered that it's really funny to stick a dart on Sammy's forehead and watch him move around with it stuck to him. So rude.)

Eliza feels like a million dollars in this picture. Can you tell she has her makeup smeared all over her cheeks, forehead, nose, and chin?  She's so cute!  (She sends a big thank you for her new makeup to her Aunt Amy and Uncle Matt!)

You never know what she'll be wearing at any one moment during the day. Between fairy wings, necklaces, crowns, high heels, and princess skirts, she has many options. :)  Here she is one morning with her Tinkerbell costume over her PJs.  She is taking a picture of me while I take a picture of her.  :)

Jed and I took Ben and Eliza to see Tangled in the theaters over the break.  We had already seen it on a date a few weeks before, but we liked it so much that we took the kids to see it too.  They loved it!  It was so fun! Jed said that it was one of the happiest daddy-moments he's had, having Eliza snuggled on his lap enchanted with the movie.  :) This was her first theater experience. She was so sweet the whole time. There was a man sitting next to them on the other side (and Jed and I actually know him because he goes to our church) and at one point he made a sniffle noise during a tender scene, and Eliza looked up at him and smiled at him until he looked down and saw her smiling at him. Then she turned to Jed and said, "I love that man." 

When we got home, we downloaded the soundtrack to Tangled and we were all obsessed with it for weeks. And still are.  All we get to listen to in the car is the Tangled soundtrack, per Eliza's requests. Yesterday Eliza wanted to play pretend that she was Rapunzel and I was the Queen all day long. When I get all excited that my long-lost princess daughter is back, she just bats her eyes and smiles sweetly at me. She doesn't talk much when she's pretending to a be a princess. :)  And if I start to sing the Rapunzel songs, she quickly says, "No, that's a Rapunzel song, and I'M Repunzel! Only I sing it!"  Then she'll start singing but forget a word and she'll stop and say, "WHAT??" to get me to help her with the next word. So funny! And she loves brushing her hair and keeps asking me, "Is my hair like Rapunzel's?"  :) 


One day over the Christmas break Sammy was trying to see inside the empty Puma box that Jed's new shoes came in, and he accidentally flipped it over on top of himself. He couldn't get out of it! It was so funny!  Being the cruel mother that I am, I grabbed the camera and took pictures of my trapped baby as he crawled around with the box stuck on his head.

It was so funny watching him trying to crawl away from the box, but dragging it around with him. hehe!  Don't worry, I saved him before he got too sad about it.  :)

Eliza got to watch her new Cinderella movie one day while Ben was at school.  She was so excited!

As for Benjamin, I told you that he got that Mosaic Mystery pattern block design activity for Christmas... This toy that I bought for 50 cents at a garage sale over the summer was the hit of Christmas! He loved (loves) it!  I knew this would be something he would enjoy. When he saw the booklet of designs, he immediately set to work on the first one, and when he was finished with it I took a picture of him with it.  I don't know why, but he got it in his head that I was going to take a picture of him with every single design. There are 56 designs. After every design, he has to get his picture taken. So far I have pictures of him with 36 different designs. I have to show you a smattering of these. They are so funny!  It just shows how obsessed he is with this activity game. The week after Christmas he would come downstairs as soon as he woke up to work on it. We left it on the kitchen table nonstop for the first few days because he would go work on it every few hours during the day. He is really good at things like this.  He is so cute!  :)

 after church

 early one morning

very early one morning

the Artist and his assistant

Christmas 2010

The day has arrived!  It is Christmas morning!!
When I was growing up we always got all dressed before we went downstairs to see the gifts.  But Jed and I decided that we would just let the kids go down in their pajamas on Christmas morning this year. However, when Benjamin woke up, he was so super-excited to go down there as soon as possible, that he got all dressed and ready in a flash! So funny!
We had to get a picture of us at the top of the stairs on Christmas Morning!  It's tradition. :)  Poor little Sammy had woken up in the very early morning, and so I had put him back to bed before the kids woke up, and he slept right through the Santa part of Christmas morning. I regretted that, but not enough to actually go wake him up for it...

Santa left Benjamin an awesome Hydrogen Fueled Rocket.  This thing was the real deal. It had two rockets, a reaction chamber, a fuel generator, and a bunch of safety mechanisms on it.  Jed was just as thrilled as Benjamin was with this present!!

Rockets, wires, cords, buttons... he's in a boy's heaven. :)

Santa gave Eliza a little baby doll cradle with matching cushion and quilt. And books and movies and iceskates, etc. She loved it all. :)

Yay! Baby Sam has joined us!!  Santa gave him this LeapFrog learning table, and he was entranced.  :)
(In the background you can see my fancy-pancy new vacuum from Michel. I love it!)

I love this little guy!  We set him in his bumbo so he could enjoy his new toy. Later I just took off the legs to the toy so it was right on the ground, and then he could play with it as much as he wanted to.

Eliza pretty much got everything a little girl could ever want. In a nutshell, it all had to do with Princesses, Fairies, or Makeup.  For her, too much of a good thing is definitely a good thing. She was loving it all!  :)
I just love this picture.  While she is blowdrying her hair, Jed is pulling out the other accessories from the kit (perfume, fake lipstick, etc) while Benjamin has a straightener in one hand and a curling iron in the other, busily working on her hair. Seriously, she must have felt like a movie star.
(Gotta love that she is also wearing her new Tinkerbell costume complete with wings! Thanks Grandma Walker!)

Eliza gave Benjamin this game called "Mosaic Mysteries" where you make different designs using a bunch of colored trapezoid shaped pieces. It came with a booklet of different designs to try.  Benjamin immediately put together the first design, and the rest is history.  You'll know what I mean when I post the rest of our Christmas break pictures. :)

 

 We were opening up presents until 3 in the afternoon. No joke! It lasted forever! The kids just kept getting sidetracked... :)  They had to play with their toys before they could possibly move on, which was cute.  It was a very fun, relaxing, happy day! 

Christmas Eve 2010

 Christmas Eve was so much fun!  We packed in lots of fun activities and traditions. In order to do it all and still get the kids to bed on time, we started before lunch.  :)

In the mid morning, Jed took Ben and Eliza sledding while I stayed home with sleeping baby Sam.  Jed said the sledding hill was pure ice, and they had a BLAST.  He said you had to keep your footing at the top or you would shoot down the hill before you were ready. He said Benjamin went up and down the hill over and over.  And Eliza happily went down the hill with Jed and then hitched a ride on the sled going back up, over and over.  :) 

When they got back, we had hot chocolate and read some Christmas stories.  Then we got out our Gingerbread House Foam Kit and worked on that all together for a while. That was fun!  Jed took the job of glittering everything with the sparkles in the kit.

 
After our foam kit, we finished up some advent activities that we had been working on all month. Then I 'unveiled' our new 2010 Christmas decoration, which was a Christmas scene frame with a little family picture in it.

We had dinner of Chicken a la King, with little green sparkly votive candles lit around the table. The kids thought that was fun. (Thank you for the cute candles, Mom!)

After dinner, we listened to The Polar Express on audio (complete with sound effects) while Jed turned the pages of the book. The kids really liked this, and were so attentive the whole time. Last year we went to our friends home for Christmas Eve, and this is one of their traditions. Benjamin was absolutely enthralled by it last year, so I got a copy of the soundtrack and book so that we can continue the tradition. It was very fun again this year. They are so cute!

 

Ringing our bells!

After we put pajamas on, we watched the 5 minute Nativity movie that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints produced. I love this video; it makes the birth of the Savior so real to me. After this, Jed read Luke 2 to us and we 'acted' out the story with the Playskool nativity set that we have.


We had a tray of Christmas candy for our dessert.  The kids were in heaven, pounding down caramels and toffee and shortbread cookies.  :)  We made a plate of treats for Santa, and Ben was sure to put one of each thing on his plate. We went to get some carrots for the reindeer, but woops - we discovered we were all out. So we put a roma tomato on the plate instead.  :)  Ben wrote a note to Santa to go along with the treats.


Jed took the kids outside to spread the 'reindeer food' out on the lawn, so the reindeer could find our house. (Ben made the packet of reindeer food with Jed at parent hour in his Kindergarten class before Christmas vacation.)


We put the kids to bed and then Jed and I snuggled up together to enjoy A Christmas Carol, with George C. Scott in the role of Ebenezar Scrooge. We watched this movie every Christmas Eve when I was growing up, but I haven't watched it in a few years since we haven't been home for Christmas. So this year when we watched it I remembered just how much I absolutely LOVE this movie. Every single scene, every single gesture and word by the actors, I love. It is a wonderful, fabulous movie, and I think I had a smile pasted on my face the entire time, and kept saying to Jed, "Oh, I love this part!"  :)

It was a happy, memorable day. I felt truly content. We have such a sweet little family, and so much to be thankful for.
Before we went to bed, Jed duct taped off the top of the stairs just in case.  :) We went to bed excited for the big day tomorrow.  :)

Our annual holiday tradition - Gingerbread Sleighs!

Like we do every December, we set aside one evening for decorating our Gingerbread Sleighs!  The kids had so much fun. Benjamin got do decorate his first Sleigh this year. (In past years, he decorates Gingerbread Men.)  We took his sleigh (packed with homemade Christmas candy) over to his friend Eirik's house a few days later.  :)    (If you are interested, the Gingerbread Sleigh recipe and directions are here.)

Here is Eliza, happily decorating her Gingerbread Woman. :)

And Jed, concentrating on his artwork. Notice that sleigh that he finished - it is a sledding hill with people (and even a puppy) climbing up it and sledding down the other side. I love the winter scenes and designs he does on his sleighs! 

Sammy enjoyed sucking on the Playskool nativity and army crawling around while we decorated.  Surprisingly he never got into the presents, all month long.  That was nice!

Eliza's Tea Party

Jed took his two weeks of vacation over Christmas, so we were able to spend time as a whole family, just relaxing and being together.
One day Jed came downstairs while Eliza and I were having a Tea Party and videotaped a little of it. She was being so cute. My favorite part is at the end when she hollers up the stairs for Ben to come down. When she doesn't hear a reply, she heads up the stairs, saying with a longsuffering sigh, "Okay... I have to go up there..."
haha!  :)
(To make the video larger, click on the little square with the arrow on it, in the bottom right corner.)

It's a SNOW DAY!!

 Benjamin woke up to his very first snow day on December 15th!  Boy was he excited!!  Jed took him out to shovel the walks first thing, and when I popped my head out the garage door, he was busily pushing the snow off our driveway.  What a cutie!  They both deserved a warm cup of hot chocolate when they came inside!

After lunch the four of us went outside again to play in the snow. Actually, Jed was taking the kids out and I was planning on staying inside, doing my thing and staying warm.  But after a few minutes the fun of playing in the snow beckoned me out there to join them.  

Jed dragged the kids around in the sled.  (They are pictured here with Flat Stanley who is visiting us from Tennessee. (I think he is having a great time with us, Coleman!)  :)

I've tried pulling them in the sled before, and I can't even budge them! This definitely counts for Jed's workout for the day!!

Eliza is like the boy in A Christmas Story. If she falls down, she is so bundled up that she can't get back up. :)  But at least she never complains about being cold!  (Thank you, Emily, for making her those amazing snow gloves that never come off! They are miracle gloves.)

I confess that after about 15 minutes I ran inside because it was SO COLD out there! Jed and the kids played in the snow for quite a while longer.  What a good daddy they have.  Seriously, he is one of a kind.

Sammy's favorite friend

I have to share a cute little story about Sammy and his favorite friend at church. I wrote about this in his baby journal, and so I'll copy what I wrote:
Around the end of September a sweet lady in our ward asked to hold Sam at the beginning of Sunday School. After a few minutes I asked her if she would like me to take him back, but she was still enjoying him.  I could tell that she truly wanted to keep holding him, so I just relaxed and let her hold him for the rest of the class. After class I discovered that he had fallen asleep in her arms. (Incredible! I mean, yes, he was exhausted, but he never falls asleep in my arms- never!) I offered to take him and put him in his carseat so she could go to Relief Society, but she looked like she really didn't want to do that. So she took him to Relief Society with her. I made sure she knew where I would be (in the Young Women room) and that she could come and bring him to me any time. After church I found her in the foyer with Sam, awake, in her arms.  I thanked her profusely for holding him during 3rd  hour because I had had to teach YW, so it was nice for me to have someone taking care of him during my lesson. She told me that she just loved cuddling Sam and having him fall asleep in her arms. She said that she has some health problems that cause her pain sometimes, but that holding him today was a blessing to her because it kept her from having a 'pity party' in her car. I thought that was sweet, that having him cuddle and sleep in her arms had been a blessing to both him and to her.
The next few weeks we didn't see each other - there was General Conference and then once I fed him during Sunday School, etc. But about a month later we were in Sacrament Meeting again and he was so tired that he was fussing during Sacrament Meeting. After the meeting, she offered to  hold him. I told her where I would be and she just snuggled him and walked into the Gospel Doctrine class. He smiled at her when she took him.  After Sunday School I saw her in the hall and she had him in a baby sling in front of her, and he was fast asleep, snuggled right up to her. The sling was just 5 yards of stretchable fabric that she expertly tied around herself to create a safe sling to hold a baby. It was the absolute cutest thing I have ever seen.  He looked so angelic, warm, and happy, just peacefully sleeping. And she was just glowing, loving it.
After 3rd hour I was in the foyer and she came out of Relief Society, still with Sam in his little sling. He was awake and looking out. She said he had woken up 15 minutes ago and that he had smiled up at her when he woke up. That was a very long nap for being out of his crib and at church! I thanked her again because this time had been even more helpful than the previous time - I had gone to the missionaries' class for Sunday School with two investigators and had been able to sit by them and help them understand the class. Then I had talked to them between classes abut the feeling they had felt during the lesson. Then I had gone to YW and taught a lesson to the Laurels. So I told her "thank you so much for taking care of Sam!" She said again that she loved it, and her husband, who was helping her take Sam out of the sling said, "Oh, she just loves it. She brought this just for him!" and she smiled and nodded. I thought that was so sweet that she loved Sammy so much that she actually brought her baby sling to church with her, on the chance that she would get to hold him during church.
Ever since then she has held Sam during the 2nd and 3rd hours of church, and he has taken his morning nap snuggled up to her.  Once I had to feed him right after Sacrament Meeting, so I hurried to the nursing room after the meeting so he would still have time to snuggle up to her for a nap. After a few minutes, she popped her head in the room to see if we were in there, just wondering where he was. I thought that was adorable!
He is nearly 10 months old now, and getting kind of hefty, but she insists that he is not heavy at all when he is in the sling. They have a sweet little relationship - He loves being held by her and getting a warm nap, and by so doing, he is bringing her happiness and getting her mind off her discomfort.  Isn't that sweet?