A Little Bit of Christmas

This is how we spent the few days before christmas. The boys and I flew to Colorado early and this is what we did... Visited Santa at the BLM where my dad works

Spent a day visiting the train museum and enjoyed climbing ALL over the trains.

Andrew and my mom put together a ginger bread train. He wanted his to look JUST like the box. Friday night Bob flew in and we spent Sunday with his family decorating gingerbread houses.

Andrew got his own little one made of graham crackers. So FUN!! Thanks mom!

We even got to spend the day before Christmas Eve with my parents riding the light rail ALL over Denver. The boys thought it was SOOOO Fun! Well, Andrew did, Benjamin was done about 5 minutes into the 20 minute ride, oh well.

Then Christmas Eve morning while setting up the AMAZING dinner table with Bob's mom, we realized we needed one more childrens house...we HAD to make things even you know, so, Benjamin got to make one as well. He really enjoyed himself, i was amazed at how well he did. He especially liked to suck on the candy and THEN put it on the house, in turn coloring the icing whatever color the candy was. Check out that TABLE!!Yes, those are candy trains for name plates, 21 to be exact. Can you see all the cool ginger bread houses! What a FUN tradition!!
Just a ramdom cute picture of Benjamin. He found a book and decided the perfect place to read it was hanging out with Grammy in the kitchen while she did dishes.

We hada great Christmas and I will post more later. This is just the beginning!!

Finally!!

After MANY hours... (I started these LAST year)I finally finished the Christmas stockings. NOtice there are only 2. I haven't even started mine and Bob's...next year right!Can you tell they're excited for chocolate chip muffins... Andrew was wanting to be Mary, I showed him how he could be a shepherd instead.

Thanksgiving

So, I realized I missed Thanksgiving. We had a blast! We celebrated with our friends Kenna and Jayson. (Kenna and knew each other in High School) It was a lot of fun being able to spend it with friends. Kenna and Bob are pretty competitve, so we have a lot of fun playing games. This time, it was a Scene It for X Box rematch. Here's the out come..

Can you guess who won? I"m sure there will be another rematch again soon. Then of course we had to play a 'Bob' game, one that actually involves strategy, Can you guess how THAT turned out?

And to top it all off, we had great food, great fun, great friends, and A LOT of PIE. NINE!!! YUMMMY!!!

We had a great Thanksgiving. Thanks Kenna and Jayson for a wonderful day.

Celebrating Christmas

Last Saturday was the Puyallup Christmas parade and ward christmas party. Sorry, no pictures, we were running late to the parade and I left it in the car. Because we were late, our spots weren't that great, or so I thought. They had the parade participants coming in from three different directions, we were standing at the intersection these places. The boys LOVED it! We happened to be where the floats come out. Benjamin was in AWE of the colorful floats. And we could see all the cars driving onto the parade route. The boys thought it was pretty exciting. We wanted to stand at the beginning so that we could see Santa before heading over to the ward christmas party. But, the parade was running late and so we had to leave early, but guess where we parked! Right by where the Fire truck ws bringing in Sanra. I was SAVED! Andrew still got to see Santa. Then it was on to the ward christmas party. We had a very enjoyable time. And, instead of Santa, they had the three wisemen. According to the MC, in Mexico santa doesn't bring the presents, the 3 wisemen bring the gifts. The children got to sit and listen to the story of the wisemen and then meet them and recieve some treats. It was WONDERFUL! In fact, yesterday I was reading the story of the wisemen to Andrew, and he recognized the story! YEAH!!

Christmas Decorating

We actually put our tree up early this year. We're going to Colorado and so we turned our advent calendar into a countdown to Colorado calendar. Well, that led to ALL the christmas decorations going up. Andrew was really excited to decorate, he did a really good job too and was very proud of himself. He has actually since added candy canes. Benjamin wasn't too interested in the decorating. This is what he did,watched Thomas the Tank Engine and then The Polar Express. The boys love trains.Then,when all the decorating was done, it was time to be silly! At least Andrew thought so.

WHEW!! Decorating was hard work!

Some fun things

Here are a few fun things that have happened recently. It's a little long, but it's more for posterity sake then anything.
Benjamin is at the age where he LOVES to help. He's ALWAYS putting his empty wrappers in the trash,as well as pieces of his apples. And loves to put his empty cups and plates in the sink. Such a big helper! We do have to check every now and then to make sure things have gone in the right spot, he's been known to throw his plate in the trash and empty milk jugs in the sink but he's getting better. Yesterday Benjamin and Andrew were laying on my bed with me while I was trying to wake up. Benjamin crawled over Andrew and found an empty string cheese wrapper on Bob's side of the bed. He promptly crawled off the bed saying "trash, trash" headed out the door, down the stairs, into the kitchen and threw it away, then came back upstairs and climbed back on the bed. All in the dark!(it was REALLY early) I had to laugh. Such dedication!!
Today we found a mouse. Bob had seem something a week or so ago while we were watching tv. He said he saw something small and dark run across the living room. I thought he was imagining things, but we set out to look, couldn't find anything, so gave up. We thought maybe it was a cockroach, it was small and dark right. Yet I don't think big cockroaches can survive in Washington. Anyway, we forgot all about it...until this morning! Bob was getting ready to head out for work, all the lights were off except for the christmas lights, tv and computer, so it was still pretty dark. Andrew was sitting on the couch watching tv and I was sitting at the computer. Bob jumps! He sees it again!! I thought he was just seeing something again. Then he sees it AGAIN! A mouse and it ran right past me! I still didn't see it yet, but told him we'd look into getting traps when he gets home from work tonight. Just amusing him, we couldn't possibly have mice! Andrew was wondering what was going on.... a mouse in primary? (we had just been talking about primary) Poor Andrew was confused. Then, while I was standing on the stairs making my list (I had moved from the computer, remember, that was the last place Bob had seen it.) I SAW IT! A LITTLE BLACK MOUSE!!! I jumped so high!! Andrew said he saw it too, and that it didn't bother his christmas village, he seemed pretty happy about that.He also told me it was blue. He wasn't too concerned so I was trying to be calm. Then Bob saw it 2 more times and jumped both. It's a little unnerving having a mouse in your house. By this point, with all our jumping, Andrew has decided he doesn't like it and won't get off the couch! Bob had been planning on taking my car with the car seats, it gets better gas mileage and he had lots of driving to do. I looked at him and told him he'd better move the car seats so the boys and I could go and get traps. Yup, the urgency for traps increased significantly as soon as I saw one for myself. Andrew later told me he saw it run downstairs. We haven't ventured down yet. He thinks it left with daddy and we'll leave it at that. I'm still going to go get traps, humane ones though, NOT the snapping kind.

It's that time of year again and I'm sending out christmas cards. Please send me your home address. Either here, facebook, or email. Thanks!