Sunday, December 30, 2007

Christmas Fun!

I love Christmas Day! I wish that it lasted more than one day! Here are some of our Christmas day highlights...

Here are our stocking. I know, there are 7 stocking and only 4 people in our family. We had to have two extra for Grandma and Grandpa and then we have a special stocking for Baby Jesus. One of our traditions is to write down a "gift" (or rather a goal) that you are going to give baby Jesus over the next year. Now you see why we have 7. But of course, I have always felt the more the merrier!

And here are our two Christmas sweeties! Chap got up at 6am and was kind enough not to wake us until 7am. (What a good boy!)

Every Christmas we make donuts from scratch. We usually cut them into triangles like beignets (New Orleans Donuts). This is always great fun! (If you want a bit of history... My grandmother used to make donuts from scratch on Christmas morning. When I was growing up the tradition was adjusted a little and my Dad would go and pick up donuts from the donut shop Christmas Eve to eat on Christmas morning. Well, when Robby and I got married he decided that if we were going to follow tradition we had to do it right and make them from scratch! And so we do.)

Here are some of the chocolate covered ones. Yum! Yum! In our house we have to eat breakfast before we open the gifts under the tree.

Wrapping paper ripping fun!

Oh look, a book!

Robby has been extremely busy with school so he has had very little time to come up with a gift for me. I have really been wanting to go shopping for some new clothes, so he decided to give me money to spend. I was disappointed because I knew what I was getting for Christmas (I really like surprises), so Robby surprised me by folding my money into shirts and dresses. Very creative!

Little Robby and Jenna really loved the quillows that I made them. ("What's a quillow?" you ask. It is a blanket that has a pocket that it can be fold-up and stuffed into. When it's folded it is a pillow, when it is unfolded it is a quilt. Hence, it is called a quillow!)

Cousin Matthew made something special for Robby and Jenna. Thank you Matthew!

Jenna got some dress up clothes and decided that she had to try three of them on... at once!

More fun surprises!


Bonus pic: On the Sunday night before Christmas my parents and our family had a great time visiting the Temple Lights. We had a lot of fun! (I know it is hard to tell from this picture so I will mention that my dad is wearing a Santa hat that has a very thick fuzzy white brim.)

Gingerbread House

When the Christmas season rolled around, Little Robby asked me if we could make a gingerbread house. Since I love making fun memories for the kids we did just that...

Here's our little house.

We assembled this while my parents were visiting and they helped with the building and assisted the kids in the decorating. Jenna put the candies on this side of the roof. That was a perfect Jenna job. Little Robby did a lot of the other decorating.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Arizona snow... for real!!

No really, there was snow! You will just have to read along and find out...

Saturday morning we attended a Santa's breakfast at the recreation center...

We had yummy pancakes, sausages, and milk (chocolate milk for the boys).

Jenna got to visit with Santa and have her picture taken. (I guess Robby is too old for Santa now as he didn't even want to pose for a picture with Jenna and Santa.)

But then the surprise was playing in real snow! Okay, so it wasn't created naturally, but it was as close to snow that falls from the sky as the desert of Arizona can get.

Poor Jenna didn't have any mittens, but thankfully they got cups in their goody bags and the cups made it easier for the kids to shovel up the frigid white stuff.

I love these next two picture. Look carefully because Robby is sticking his tongue out at Chap.

Then Chap retaliates against Robby with a snowball. I was pretty lucky to catch this shot, the snow ball is in the air flying on its way to the target -- Robby!

Jenna has the look of, "What is this stuff?"

That grin says it all! Little Robby loves snow!

Christmas is here again

I wanted to share moment from one of our Christmas traditions with you. Each year on the Monday after Thanksgiving I set up the Christmas decorations and get out the Christmas tree. Then our Family Home Evening activity for that night is decorating the Christmas tree together. The kids really love this. It was especially fun setting up everything this year and seeing Jenna's eyes light up with each new surprise. Her favorite part was helping me set up the Christmas train that circles our tree.

Jenna enjoyed helping to hang the ornaments. (And now she loves to rearrange the ornaments on the tree over and over!)

She was so proud of herself!

Robby was a good big brother and helped her hang the ornaments.

Dad serves as the official "Hook Putter On-er." (Do like my title for him?!) Every year Dad takes this job while the kids and I place the ornaments on the tree. (You can tell he's concentrating on his job.)

I love Christmas time! It's my favorite time of year. The night we decorate the tree is one of my favorites. I get warm fuzzies being gathered with my family, listening to Christmas CDs, and decorating the tree together. What fun!

Karate Advancements

Once again we had karate testing a couple of weeks ago. This time we had the fun of having Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Logan, and cousin Matthew come to watch us do our stuff. Here are the highlight videos.

I am the lowest belt in the older group, so I get to go first at all of the tests. These two videos are of us doing our forms. The forms are choreographed movement that you have to memorize. There is a lot more to testing than the forms, but this is the only thing that we do by ourselves during testing.



And here we are with our new belts! (We had a hard time getting Robby to smile for this one. He was trying to have a Calvin and Hobbes moment where he makes a funny face right as Dad clicked the picture.)

What we did on our day off

So I have some blogging to catch up on! Between the Grand Canyon trip, my parents visiting this past weekend, and Christmas shopping I haven't had the time to sit down and do this. So here it goes...

This is from our day off around Veterans Day. Since we didn't want to sit around the house bored, we decided to take a day at the museum. The kids really enjoyed checking out the new exhibit called "Strange Matter." There were substances like this liquid iron mixture that when it was magnetized would be come more like a solid. Very interesting.

Jenna is finally old enough to enjoy pressing buttons and trying to interact a lot of the exhibits.

I thought this was a cute pic. We were waiting to see the IMAX film, and Robby took Jenna over to show her this aquarium of sea creatures. What a sweet big brother!

Here we are in the IMAX theater before the movie started. I thought Jenna would really get a kick out of it, but some of the images were a little too "larger than life" for her. She got scared with all of the loud sounds and some of the visual effects. So much so, that she crawled into my lap and shut everything out and went to sleep! I couldn't see how she could have possibly slept with the sound!

Later she recovered and enjoyed checking out the xylophone made of different materials so you could hear the differences in sound.

Working together!

And lastly, Robby loves this part of the museum. Here you can make sand barriers and see if you can direct a flow of water. I think he just likes the fact that it is almost like playing in mud!