Merry Christmas!

Christmas this year was interesting. Elizabeth was of course really excited. But Clay got it this year and understood so much more so he was just, if not more excited. They were always anxious every morning to add a tree to the advent calendar and remove a link to their count down chains. Even Analyn was excited for those thing, even though she had no clue what was going on. We were lucky and James got off at 2pm on Christmas eve. We spend the afternoon and evening at my parents for dinner and lots of lounging. The kids got to open presents from Grandma and Grandpa and their Christmas pajamas before we headed home for the night. Clay had been waiting for this for a while!!

Since this is the first year we weren't with my parents for Christmas since moving to Nevada we decided that we would get the kids in their pjs and then would drive around and look at lights. This was by far Analyn's favorite activity. In fact she still gets excited and yells, "LIGHTS" anytime we go outside and some are still lit up. Once we were home the kids put out some cookies and hot chocolate for Santa (we have an electric kettle so it's easy for Santa to get hot chocolate fast). I was excited for Christmas eve so that I could finally put presents under the tree. All our presents were sitting in the closet wrapped since the beginning of November. It is SO nice to have my closet back!

Christmas morning came and much to James and I's relief the kids woke up at about 5:45am. That is only about 15 minutes earlier than normal so we couldn't complain too much. Even Analyn was awake bright and early. Clay and Elizabeth were really excited to check out what Santa had brought them. Since Analyn didn't know what was going on she really didn't care. She found some chocolate in her stocking though and she thought that sounded like a great breakfast!

This Hello Kitty purse was by far Analyn's favorite gift. She loved it, and all us girl (myself included) got quite a few Hello Kitty things.

Once presents were done we had breakfast and got ready for church. In high school I was in the Choraliers (selective choir group) and I had the prettiest dress we had to wear for performances. Well Mom took my dress and used the skirt material to make Christmas dresses for the girls. They turned out adorable too! After church we had to deal with a lot of whining, crying, and being grumpy. In fact the kids all took naps by 11am. All in all though we had a great day celebrating our savior's birth!

Caroling

The leader of Lizzie's girl scouts troop is also a leader for another troop (one daughter in each troop), so they arranged for the girls to go to the senior center to carol for the ladies and gentlemen that were there to eat lunch. Lizzie is really showing an interest in singing so she was really excited for another chance to sing. Here is a small group of girls before they performed.

And here is all the girls.

She had a lot of fun singing and afterward some of the older girls were doing a song that had dance moves and Lizzie wanted to join in on the fun.

Christmas Program

The last week of school before Christmas vacation was Elizabeth's Christmas program. It was really fun for James and I to go watch. Elizabeth was so excited about it too! She had been practicing the songs and dance moves for weeks before the program. She practiced them so much that Analyn actually knows the words and motions to a song called "jingle bells 911". It was a fun program and Elizabeth really hammed it up on the stage. Here she is singing "penguin polka".

Jingle Bells

Jingle Bells 911 with nice big bandages

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

The program only lasted about 20 minutes and then the kids got to leave with the parents. This really upset Elizabeth because there was technically 40 minutes left of school and she was really mad she had to go home early. At least she likes school though. If I ever find the time to get the video off our camcorder I will post those...

Decorating the Tree

We finally got our tree up last week after we celebrated Clay's birthday. Clay and Elizabeth had a blast putting ornaments on the tree. I think they had just as much fun looking at all the different ornaments. I have a very good friend that gives them an ornament every year from Christmas so they had fun checking those out, and then all our ornaments we have accumulated over the years.

I put the tree up while the kids were all napping so that I could get it ready for ornaments. James was playing wii while I did that. When the kids woke up we were still waiting for James to get to a place he could save his game at. Clay was getting impatient, but it worked out since he was still in the process of waking up.

Analyn really had no idea what was going on. The best part about this year is seeing how excited Clay is about it all. This is the first year that he gets what is going on. So hopefully in 2 years Analyn will be at that point. For now she really is enjoying taking stuff off the tree.

Our new tradition we started this year is that Daddy gets to put the star on top of the tree. Elizabeth and Clay both wanted to put the star on and a huge fight was about to break out so we decided it would be James' job every year. That way the kids can't fight over who gets to do it anymore.

We are really enjoying our holiday season so far. James just finished his finals so he's a free man until the end of January! Elizabeth is almost out of school for her break, and Clay is going to attempt potty training again during the vacation break. As for me, I am going to be busy since I just got called into the Young Women presidency at church. They asked me to be the 1st counselor. I am really excited for the opportunity and am looking forward to starting all that fun stuff this week :)

Clay Turns 4

For the last 2 months every night Clay would say his pray and he would say, "please bless that my birthday can be in two days." Every night it was the same thing. This birthday was so much fun for all of us. It was Clay's first birthday where he knew what was going on and was excited about it! In January James and I went shopping to look at all the Christmas clearance. We found this cute train table on clearance for a lot cheaper than it was regularly. So what did I do? I bought it for Clay's birthday that was still 11 months away. We decided to set it up the night before his birthday so he could have it for the whole day (and this way we didn't have to rush to put it together after presents that evening). Clay was so excited to see it in the room.

Like Lizzie, Clay wanted donuts for breakfast for his birthday. I will take any excuse to go buy donuts. So I got up before 6 to go get some for the birthday boy. If you don't go to this donut shop early you don't have much to choose from. They are excellent, and the kids all loved them!

Ever since Lizzie's birthday Clay has been telling me different kinds of cakes he wanted for his birthday. The one I remember the best was he wanted the movie Rio cake. I enjoy making the cakes for my family for birthdays, but I doubted my skills in being able to replicate birds in cake. Luckily he changed his mind 2 more times after that and we finally settled on a Fire Engine. It came out super cute, especially since I was winging it.

For dinner Clay wanted to go to Wingers. I always have to laugh that they want to go out to eat just to get macaroni and cheese at the restaurant. But they love the popcorn you get while you wait. So Mom and Dad came with us and we all had a nice dinner. Clay gladly told anyone he could that it was his birthday. The waitress was paying attention and they brought him a piece of ice cream pie and sang to him. When he turned 2 we took him to Wingers and he freaked out when they sang to him and put the chicken hat on his head. We were glad to see he was excited for the attention and he loved getting a special treat. After a few bites though he was constantly asking if we could go home and have fire engine cake.

Clay was really excited to unwrap presents, so we did that before the cake.

I got Clay some big blocks to build with. When he saw them he got so excited. When Analyn saw them she got even more excited than him. I laughed and laughed at her reaction. I guess I know what I can get for her when her birthday comes along next month!

Finally came the cake. Clay was anxious to blow the candles out. So much so that James would get only 2 lit and Clay would blow them out. Grandpa had to intervene so that we could actually get them all lit. We ended up singing to him while James was still lighting the candles just so Clay would have less time to wait.

The cake was delicious. Clay didn't eat any of it until the next day. He was way to excited about his new toys to pay attention to the cake. I now know why I always do the cake before the presents. He had a really great birthday though and he's already telling me what he wants for a cake for his 5th birthday.

On a side note I finally finished his scarf too. Now I am working on one in pink for Analyn. She wanted to try on his scarf when I was making it more than he did, so I figured she would get a kick out of having one of her own.

Festival Of Trees

Since the kids are getting older now we are trying to get out more and do the fun activities around town that are available during the Christmas season. So we decided to take the kids to the festival of trees. Clay had trouble falling asleep the night before we were going to go, much like Lizzie because of her field trip. All day he asked about it, and I told him we were going to go after Liz got out of school. One of the main reasons we wanted to go was so the kids could see Santa. Elizabeth is the only one of them that has seen Santa and she was only about 3 months old at the time. So while I was on the field trip with Lizzie I asked one of the workers when Santa would be there so we could see him. He wasn't going to be there until 5:30, so Clay was disappointed that we now had to wait until after dinner to go, but he was a patient boy.

Once we had decided to actually go to the festival of trees we started asking the kids about seeing Santa. We wanted them to all be prepared so they hopefully wouldn't freak out. Clay adamantly said he didn't want to see Santa and we kept telling him that we wouldn't make him. Elizabeth was really excited about seeing Santa though.

Mrs. Claus got Clay to stand by them by giving him a candy cane and then we opened it for him. I was proud of him for standing up there for the picture and he actually told Santa what he wanted for Christmas. Analyn freaked out, but I figured she would. She cried until I was holding her again even after being given two candy canes.

Analyn and I waited to get the cd with the pictures on it while everyone else wandered around looking at the trees. I was talking to Analyn and she wasn't responding to me at all. Finally I asked her if she was mad at me. She quickly nodded yes a few times. I couldn't help but laugh that she was still upset.

The trees were even more beautiful to look at after it was dark outside. I love Christmas trees, so seeing so many decorated and lite up was really fun for me. And the kids were so excited to be out and get to see something new. Clay and Analyn loved the candy canes too. And after we were done with the festival we drove around for a bit and looked at lights.