Christmas Eve and Christmas

Since we've been in Colorado, our family tradition is to go to my grandparents' house on Christmas Eve. We have dinner together, read the Christmas story from the Bible and some other Christmas stories, and the kids get to open one gift. The gift is always my pick because I usually buy them new pajamas that I want them to wear that night. 

On Christmas morning, the kids gave us a present by sleeping until 7 a.m. Then we all got up and they began the gift opening. After each present, they wanted to stop and play with their gift and put it together. It took almost two hours to open everything! It was nice not to see them ripping everything open with abandon. Santa brought Eli a Lego Technic excavator and a remote control car. Eli (and Justin) spent all day putting the excavator together, taking some small breaks in between to put together smaller Legos. Benjy got a Spiderman Lego, which was the only thing he asked for, and some other things that he didn't ask for but Santa knew he would like.

We just stayed home on Christmas and relaxed. My dad arrived late in the evening and we got to spend some time with him Thursday night until Saturday morning. All my brothers and sisters, my family, and my parents went to Benihana (my dad's favorite restaurant) on Friday and we got some fun pictures.

I love Christmastime! I'm sad it's over, but also a little relieved that life can go back to its normal pace now. 

Emmie's Birthday, Parties, and Bella Notte

Whew! We got through the holidays. It was quite a whirlwind for awhile-- I think there was a week and a half solid where there was something going on every night... now we are enjoying a little downtime and Justin time. He has this whole coming week off. Hooray!

Backing up a little to some of our holiday fun, we went to our church's Christmas party and the kids got to take their picture with Santa. I was surprised Emmie let us put her on Santa's lap without screaming. The program was really nice-- they had a short musical program and they showed a Christmas video by the Piano Guys. It really brought in the Christmas spirit and reminded us all of its true meaning.

  The Piano Guys Christmas Video

Emmie turned one on December 15th. We had family over to celebrate that evening and had a little party for her. I made a yellow layer cake with orange raspberry whipped cream filling and pink buttercream icing. She was very dainty with her slice and managed not too get too messy. We love this little lady and can't believe she is already one year old. Seems like just yesterday that my water broke at Burger King. She has grown so fast!

Eli had his class party the Friday before Christmas. I volunteered to go and take pictures, but I got there later than intended because I was held up in a long line at the post office. Their movie was well under way by the time I got there, but I was there in time for the kids to present Mrs. Zerr with a nice photo book that one of the parents had put together. 

This year I've been singing with a bunch of other ladies on Friday mornings. A friend in my ward who was a vocal major organized the group, and there are eleven of us who get together to sing. Between the eleven of us women there are twenty nine children! Some of them are in school so they are not all there on Friday mornings, but there is still a lot of chaos going on in the background as we practice our notes. 

We had three performances this month. We sang at a retirement home a couple weeks ago and had a fun time visiting with the residents afterward. The weekend before Christmas we had two performances with the Longs Peak Barbershop Chorus up in Longmont. It was such a blast to sing with all these wonderful women, and it was an honor to perform with the Long's Peak Chorus. After the Friday night performance, some of us went out to dinner since we were all starving and our kids were all in bed anyway. 

We have so much fun! It is such an honor to sing with these ladies every Friday. They are all amazing and beautiful inside and out!

Christmas Advent, spelling, and Emmie's words

It's the fifth of December already... only 20 days until Christmas! We're doing an advent this year to help the kids count down until Christmas. I wanted to do one last year but Emmeline was due on December 8th and that's all I was really thinking about. I'm surprised at how helpful it is for Benjy. He will go up to the calendar and point at the number we're on and say, "This is today, and then there's this day, this day, this day, this day..." and point at all the days until he gets to the very end and then says, "and then it's Christmas." 

I slipped pieces of paper in the pockets with Christmasy things to do. Some activities are just fun, like making s'mores and hot cocoa or watching "A Muppet Christmas Carol," and some are more service oriented, like writing a letter to a friend or calling a relative. Eli likes to peek so I have only been putting the papers in one at a time and on the day they are to be done. If he pulls one out he doesn't like, he puts it back in and lets Benjy take it out. The joys of having an older brother.

Last week when Justin's parents were here, Benjy said, "Look, I'm writing my name," and then proceeded to draw a bunch of scribbles. He has shown some other signs of being ready to learn some more about letters, so this week we started working on the letters and sounds of his name. In the last several days he has gotten pretty good at writing BEN. 

In addition to the letters, we started working on his pencil grip-- he has been using a strange overhand claw-like grip (I don't even know how to explain it), so I had him practice "pinching" things with his thumb and 2nd/3rd fingers. After he had gotten the coordination down, I put a pencil in between and told him to "pinch" the pencil. He picked it up so much more quickly than I had expected. I had a wonky pencil grip when I was younger and I remember being so much more stubborn about holding it the way I wanted to. I can thank this child at least for not giving me pay back.

This is a picture of Emmie with her special blankie. She loves this thing so much and can't go to bed without it. She actually can't even be without it for very long. She has to take it with her when she gets out of bed in the morning, and thus begins its daily journey around the house. She eats breakfast with it tucked in her high chair, she holds it while she's having her diaper changed (keeping it out of the biohazard zone sometimes proves challenging) and she takes it with her from room to room as she goes about her baby day. Sometimes when she sees it lying on the ground, she goes up to it and flops down on top of it and just snuggles there for a minute. I love this picture because it captures one of these moments.

Emmie has started saying some new words. Her absolute favorite thing to do (she does this all day long) is to point at things and say "Whazzat?" or "Whazzis?" Then she grins from ear to ear when you tell her what she is pointing at. She also loves to say "eye" and poke her little finger in your eyeball. She was watching me cook yesterday and I kept pointing to the steaming pan and saying, "hot." After a while she pointed at the pan herself and repeated, "hot." 

Thanksgiving Break

Today Eli is back to school and Justin back to work after a great Thanksgiving break. This past week was extra fun because Justin's parents, Dave and Teresa (aka Grampy and Grammy) flew in on Tuesday from North Carolina and got to spend the holiday with us. They fly back tomorrow morning, so we have been able to avoid the Monday blues. :) 

We usually do Thanksgiving with my extended family who are in the area, and this year we did it on Wednesday because my aunt Robin and her family were here from California (but leaving on Thanksgiving day). We had fun visiting with family we don't get to see very often and enjoying delicious Thanksgiving food. I don't know why, but I can't get enough of Thanksgiving food. Turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, pumpkin pie... the whole shebang. Although I am not one for cooked cranberry sauce, so I usually make a raw cranberry-orange relish instead (which is DE-lish and good enough to eat with a spoon).

Unfortunately, Teresa was not feeling well on Thanksgiving Day so she was in bed pretty much that whole day. I had already invited Justin's cousin and her husband to spend Thanksgiving with us, so I did my best to prepare the food solo. This was the first time I prepared a turkey, and Justin and I had fun one night looking up different cooking methods online. One of the methods we read about was "spatchcocking," where you cut out the backbone and flatten the bird so it all cooks faster. Faster sounded good to me so that's what we did. I got before and after shots of the spatchcocked bird, and boy they were not kidding- it cooks super fast! I put the thirteen pounder in a 400 degree oven at 9 am, and when I checked it at 11, it was very brown and crispy on the outside and the red popper thing was out. My challenge was trying to keep it warm until we were ready to eat!

One of our family's traditions is to go see the Nutcracker the day after Thanksgiving. We all went on Friday (sans Grampy, who was not feeling well that day) up to Boulder to see it performed at the Macky Auditorium. I did not get any pictures but it was a wonderful treat. This is the fourth year we have gone, and this was Benjy's first time going. The kiddos did a great job sitting through it. Eli's favorite part was when young Clara was reading the book at the beginning, and Benjy's favorite part was when the cannon fired during the fight between the Nutcracker and the Rat King. It was pretty loud and startling!

Saturday we took a trip on the Historic Georgetown Railroad. None of us had ever done it and it sounded like something nice to take the family to. We took the "Santa" train where the boys got to meet Santa and show him their lists. Santa gave each of the kids a jingle bell and we got lots of snacks and treats from his elves. 

We also put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving. I love having the tree up so much and want to get the most out of the short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas to enjoy it. There's nothing better than sitting in the living room at night looking at the illuminated tree and enjoying its festive glow. 

Emmie is so close to walking. She stands up on her own, without holding onto anything, and stands indefinitely without losing her balance. She likes to take steps when she's holding onto someone's hands, but she's been timid to take those first steps unassisted. It's gonna happen as soon as that little girl is ready to go for it.