Holidays

The last few weeks have been crazy for us with all the holiday parties and family events going on. So I will try to give an update of everything. My brother was able to come into town the beginning of December and we went to the bounce house with him. I didn't know how much bouncing I would actually do since I had just had a baby a little less than 2 weeks before but I was feeling good and went ahead and joined the kids and my other siblings in racing the obstacle course and climbing the everest wall along with just about everything else. It was a blast and I highly recommend this activity to anyone looking for a fun activity for their kids or themselves.

Me & Jett on one of the slides

Marianne and I

Steve, Raleigh and Mike playing arcade games

Jett thinking he is really playing an arcade game. (Look at the excitement in those eyes)

We also went to Temple Square to see the lights. It was really cold but fun to see the beautiful lights and temple with my family.

Raleigh had his preschool Christmas song program. He had been singing the songs to me for weeks but when it came time to sing them for the program he got really shy and would hardly sing.

Doesn't Raleigh look so happy to be here

As Christmas drew closer it was pretty much all Raleigh talked about. He was so excited and he finally really understood about Santa this year and it was so fun for me to see and experience his excitement. Sometimes I think I enjoy Christmas and get just as excited about it as the kids do. On Christmas Eve morning Raleigh came to me and informed me that we had to make cookies for Santa and that night we needed to sprinkle the reindeer food out in the yard so they would know where to find us. It was so cute. That night we went to Steve's parents house and had a wonderful Christmas Eve filled with a fabulous dinner, spectacular Christmas message given by his Dad, and fun gift exchange. On the way home that night it was fun to tell Raleigh and Jett they needed to quickly go to sleep because Santa would be at our house soon and if they were not asleep he would not leave them any presents. They definitely went to sleep pretty quick. Christmas morning came early at our house as we heard both of the boys awake at 6:20am. I loved watching Raleigh quietly come out of his room and look over the upstairs railing to see if Santa had come yet and then go back and forth between his room, our room and the railing trying to decide what to do. After a few minutes he came into our room and asked us if it was Christmas yet. We said yes and that he should go make sure Santa had left us some presents and check to see if he had eaten the cookies we left for him. He quickly ran down the stairs and you could hear him gasp as he notices the presents under the tree. I can't say enough just how much I enjoyed every second of this.

Cookies and Milk for Santa

Waiting to open presents

"Cool swords"

After making the kids wait patiently for about a half hour to open presents we finally all made it down around the tree. Jett was excited but still didn't really understand what was going on he just saw some things he thought were cool. Raleigh on the other hand couldn't wait to tear into all of "his" gifts. He would specifically look for the gifts with his name on them and if it was someone else name he would set it aside. The boys thoroughly enjoyed Christmas morning.

The Loot

Jack's not sure what is going on

When the presents all seemed to be opened I told Steve to go check the closet upstairs to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Little did he know what would be waiting up there for him. I surprised him with a blu ray dvd player. He had talked about wanting to get one and I acted like I was never listening, all with the intent to surprise him. It worked like a charm. He had no idea. It was awesome to see the look on his face.




My favorite gift from Steve was a homemade coupon book. Inside it had coupons for back massages, doing the laudry, cleaning the kitchen, dinner coupons, finding a babysitter for a night out etc. It was a great gift and I fully intend to use all the coupons. The rest of the day was spent at my parents house where we played games and opened more gifts. Steve and I both agreed that this was one of our best Christmases.

Other events or should I say incidents of the week include Raleigh smashing his finger in the door and later in the week falling off a stool at my parents house and cutting his eye.

The bruised finger is now more black then purple

For New Year's Eve we went to my parents house again to have a long, fun night of games and lots of junk food. I am not one to stay up late very often and I can usually fall asleep at the drop of a hat after 10pm but amazingly I was able to stay up until 3am. I also started my New Year's solution to get in shape. I had my awesome brother-in-law Doug, who just became a personal trainer in Idaho fit me with my own workout plan. so I fully intend to get myself in shape, lose all this baby weight and make myself look GOOD again. Wish me luck on this. Anyway, I wanted to wish you all a happy new year and I hope that 2009 is at least as good as 2008 if not better.