Christmas Morning!

Johnny got a racing game for the Wii that is LIGHTING!!

Leo Monkey with is monkey pillow pet!




Kyla couldn't wait to use her sewing kit, we had to talk hard to get her to stop for breakfast.



We had a fun morning. We took a long time opening gifts because we had to play with everything for awhile before we could move on.

Kyla is writing a letter to Santa to tell him thank you for the scooter... what a sweet girl!

Nativity

We stayed home this year for Christmas, the first time EVER for Steve and I. Even when we lived 15 minutes from my parents we stayed at their house. I wasn't sure what we would do with ourselves but it was a really wonderful time. We missed being with out family but loved the special time with just our little bunch.

Our Christmas Eve Nativity. Mary and Joseph.

Leo was our happy Shepard.

We did something new this year, we made a bed for the baby Jesus. When we did nice things for each other we put a piece of "straw" in the manger. (I went with paper, a little less messy...) The kids really liked it. When our neighbor shoveled our driveway for us they got all excited and said "Jeff needs to put a straw in the manger, he did something nice for us!"

Mesa Temple Lights

We went down to Mesa to see the lights. It was raining but warm still!

Johnny decided this was his favorite tree.

Ky and her best bud, Jade. She sure misses her! We used to be able to tell them apart because Jade always had long brown hair and Ky started out with short blonde hair. Ky has opted for the long brown look too, so now it is a little harder...

Right when we got there Steve broke Leo... :) They were playing and Leo twisted his leg funny. Leo wouldn't walk on it, he had us all in a panic that he broke his leg a couple days before Christmas! We calmed down and made it through the night, he still wouldn't walk on it the next day so we took him into our pediatrician. They did an X-ray but didn't find any fractures or anything. YEAH! He still wouldn't walk on it though, until FINALLY Christmas Eve when the kids opened their traditional new jamies present Leo was inspired to try and walk again. He was off and running after that. I guess he just had to get over his fear that it might hurt... He is a bit of a chicken, can't imagine where he gets it...

AWESOME! Johnny was pretty excited about his Lightning jams.

The Rain Diet...

After our little snow storm, we had another couple days of rain... Our snowman decided he needed to shed a few inches, the rain helped him out with that.

Funny skinny snowman!

By Definition

"Mom, when Dad gets home... I'm going to tell him you called me a TATTLE TALE!"

Once there was a SNOWMAN!

Some of you may not know Steve is the KING of cheesy jokes... the snowman reminds me of one of my favorites, it goes like this,

What happened when the primary chorister got snow tires?

In the sun they melted, melted, melted!

Good, right?!

Now Kyla has picked up on the jokes and tells them all the time, sometimes they are funny... She told us one recently that was pretty good.

Why do chickens sit on their eggs?

Because they don't have any chairs!

Back to the snow... it snowed yesterday and today the kids and I made a snowman.

For some reason Johnny didn't want to stand next to the snowman... too bad the snowman was facing the wrong direction, the lighting in this pic is awesome!

I have been dreading the cold and snow BUT thanks to our warm snap last week and with it being so close to Christmas, I was actually happy about this storm!

Kyla still says snow means Christmas, when it started yesterday she said, "NOW it is Christmas time!"

LIGHTS!

Little America here in Flagstaff put up a TON of Christmas lights every year. We love to go, this year was the BEST EVER! It was so warm!

Kyla and I love the BIG RED tree. We were sad when we went to Temple Square and saw that they don't do their "red tree" anymore. Good thing we have a back up... :)




Ky, giving her favorite tree some love!!




The kids wouldn't pose by the Ginger Bread house for me, but they would all climb on this rock...

Johnny, Kyla, Zack,

Leo and Max.

It was still cold, just warmer than other years... but I guess the kids have been suffering from some cabin fever with all our sickies and quarantines. They would have stayed at the play ground all night, we had to drag them away with promises of hot chocolate.

Leo LOVED the slide and swing!

John Dude




Proof. Steve always gives me a hard time about all the pictures I take, he says, "if you don't take a picture, it didn't happen..." What? I just like pictures, OK?!




Kyla and one of her best friends, Zack.

They have a big fire, a few Christmas trees and Santa inside to warm up with.

Can you see Leo, he is trying to take off with the HUGE teddy bear!

Saturday at the Seamons'

Our Saturday was pretty low key this week. Kyla and I went to the Lollipop concert at NAU. It is just the Suites from the Nutcracker Ballet. We love it! It is only about an hour long so it is perfect for littler ones, and well, for me too... :) Ky really wants to take ballet, I guess it is time to find some classes... Any ideas Flagstaffers?

Dad and the boys hung out at home and worked a little and PLAYED a little too. One of Johnny's favorite games right now is Mario Cart. He is getting pretty good!

I thought this was funny... Ky and John both "plugged in" playing games...

Can't Catch Me, I'm a Ginger Bread Boy

We made our ginger bread house this week. It happens to be G week so it works well, except that the G in ginger makes a J sound... yeah, thank you English language, way to confuse my preschoolers!!

We didn't get the camera out until we were almost done and I was the only one still interested in working on the house... Kyla had moved on to ballet, Johnny was busy taste testing all the candy, and Leo was loving that he could climb on the table and no one made him get down... :)





See: candy eating and table sitting...

I learned a new trick, you can roll out gum drops... cool!

Kyla did the icicles, pretty cool, eh! She also wanted ginger bread people, we found these ginger bread marshmallows, strange? yes, but they work!

Kyla was begging ALL DAY to do the ginger bread house and "we are waiting for daddy to get home" only works for so long... So one time I suggested she draw a picture of how she wanted to decorate it, this is one of her "ideas." :)

Deck the Halls!!

Have I mentioned that I LOVE Christmas?! I love everything about the season. I will even store boxes and boxes of decorations, which totally goes against my "clean out and throw out" nature.

Steve calls our tree "the bush"... it is kinda short and fat. I say, PERFECT!











My favorite of favorites in the boxes of decorations are our nativities. I have always loved them, I remembered putting out my parent's nativity each year, carefully unwrapping each peace and arranging it just right.

Kind of by accident I started to accumulate nativities and now, I officially collect them. Steve gets me one each year.

These are a few of my favorites.

This is Steve's Grandma Hansen's, she passed away two years ago right before Christmas, it is a special one in the collection.





Steve and I got this one in Scotland.




My parents brought this one home from Mexico. It is made in a little gourd and closes up, super cool!

I LOVE that they can play with this one AND it has 2 shepards... 99.9% of nativities only have 1 or none at all. Shepards people, it says shepardS.

I hope seeing these will help my kids think more about Christ during Christmas time.

Fair Trade

I was trying to be festive, so I put some treats out on a plate on the table. Leo caught sight of them and climbed on up and had one. The problem was he was still munching on his lunch... Why was he wandering around with a mouth full of turkey? Well that is another story, which involves stools, a small table and pretending to be in a fancy restaurant, but the punch line is that Leo wasn't in his high chair.

So when he went up for the treat he just made a quick swap... I don't really blame him. Lunch meat or double butter pecan chocolate squares... hmmm, I'll go with the chocolate! They really were double butter, I made them in a hurry and DOUBLED the butter!! And not just 2 tablespoons instead of 1... more like one cup instead of a 1/2... Once I figured out what I had done, I was surprised they turned out at all... Steve says they are even better. But that is coming from the guy who thinks butter is one of the 5 major food groups.

Turkey trade.

Happy treat eating boy!

Just a Little Allergic Reaction

Johnny was taking amoxicillin for an ear infection he had last week. On day 7 of the medication he woke up with a rash, turns out it was an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin.

Thankfully he says it doesn't really hurt, we are keeping him on benadryl, and he is finally starting to look better.

It got worse before it got better.

POOR BOY!!

the plague

Yeah, we are headed to the doctor...

Tree Cutting

Our annual tree cutting... thanks to the Goodman's we actually have pictures of it this year.





We stopped to look at the Grand Canyon, OK the "Little Colorado River Gorge" but give it a couple miles and it is the Grand Canyon.

Notice Steve's grip on Ky... 1000 feet sheer cliffs tend to make us nervous parents.

Grand or not is is pretty cool!





We started walking back to the car and Kyla started crying... it took us a couple minutes to figure out what was wrong. She had pushed on a loose tooth with her tongue and IT FELL OUT! We spent a few more minutes looking for the tooth on the ground.

She was a little upset about the whole thing...

Here is her "Grand Canyon tooth"... we never did find the tooth, there were tons of these little white rocks though...

So now Ky has lost two teeth and lost two teeth. The first we replaced with a paper one and now the second is a rock, poor tooth fairy!

Ky decided it was OK because now she can say she is always at the Grand Canyon... at least a part of her is. :)

Seamons' Christmas Chaos

We got together with Beave's family for a little Christmas party while we were in Utah. The kids all had a great time, they LOVE being with their cousins!!

Kyla, Erika and Tess. Most of the cousins on Steve's side are boys, hence the chaos... :) Not really, my girlie girl can bring some chaos with the best of them!!

Johnny got an electric toothbrush and couldn't wait to use it... hey he wants good teeth OK?!

Our little CHEEKY MONKEY with some new monkey rain boots, he looks pretty pleased with himself, doesn't he?!

And our little holiday fam.

Best part of the night was talking with Grandma and Grandpa Seamons on their mission! We are super proud of them and LOVE them so much!!!

We ended up driving home through the WORST storm and road conditions EVER because we didn't want to miss this time with our family, definitely worth it!

SNOW

It snowed while we were in Utah... Yeah for the first snow of the year!

Ky and John ran right out to play in it!

SNOW ANGELS!!

"Hey kids come stand under this tree..." -Steve

Yeah that's Steve shaking the snow on Ky and John... he is such a fun dad!