She's so excited, she just can't wait!

With the new year, one of the things I've been looking forward to is changing the time we go to church. Last year we went from 2-5 and I absolutely dreaded it. But this year we've got the 8 spot. It's a little early to be out the door in the mornings, but being home by 11:30 is WONDERFUL!

So, we've been talking a lot with Kiersten, letting her know that she's going to have to get up early (for the past few weeks she and Tanner have been sleeping until at least 7:30, if not later - it's been wonderful) and get ready quickly for church. Kiersten has been very excited to wear this dress to church that Aunt Angie sent her. So was so excited, in fact, that she came out Saturday night wearing the dress, and then pulled her pajamas on over it. That way, when she wakes up in the morning all she'll have to do is take off her pajamas and she'll be ready to go to church. Nate and I laughed so hard - she looks like she had a pretty large growth around her middle! (And Angie, you were worried about the wrinkles from shipping it. That was nothing compared to being bunched up in her pajamas!) We finally managed to convince her that there would be plenty of time to get dressed in the morning and that she didn't need to sleep in her dress.

Then the next morning when the alarm went off at 6 I noticed that Kiersten's light was on. I figured it was left on from one of her many gettings up in the night and didn't think much about it. As I was doing Kiersten's hair she told me that she woke up really early (it would have still been dark out), and thought it was time to get dressed, so she got up, turned on her light and put her dress on. Then she decided she was still tired, so she climbed back into bed and fell back asleep.

Maybe next time we should just let her wear her dress to bed!

New Year's Eve Skookie Party

For New Year's Eve, we decided to have a fun family party. My brother, Todd, and his wife gave us a skookie for Christmas, so we decided to have a Skookie party. Skookies are the 7-inch cast iron skillets you see in the pictures. We let each person make their own personal pizza . . . well, except for Tanner. He got to help put some of his toppings on (more like he threw what toppings I gave him onto his pizza!), but I didn't think letting him go at the pizza sauce was that good of an idea! Kiersten, though, had a great time and felt very grown up, making her own pizza.


Tanner LOVES playing with the spatula, and when he found this round of pizza dough just sitting on the counter he couldn't resist getting out the spatula and helping!
We had quite the festive dinner - Nate bought matching paper cups, plates and napkins (my way to do dishes!), and Martinellis (although, now as I think about it, we forgot to have a New Year's toast!). Kiersten really liked the Martinelli's, and I think we let her drink too much because after dinner was over, she told me that it felt like there were bubbles trying to come up her throat!
I even gave Tanner some of the Martinelli's (I figure he likes grape juice, so why not?), but he didn't like it so much. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of the horrified face he made after a couple of sips. But, when I let him keep his straw to play with, he was in heaven!

After dinner we had a race to see who could put on their pajamas fastest - I don't remember who won. Probably Kiersten, she's quite competitive! Nate put Tanner to bed and then we played a game of "Somethin's Fishy," a card game Kiersten loves. Then we got out the blowers, and rung in the New Year (at 7:15 pm!). I must have ended up with the dud, though, because everyone's but mine made noise as you blew on them.
After that we put Kiersten to bed, and Nate and I played several rounds of a game Santa brought him for Christmas, Sequence. Let me just tell you, I LOVE that game! Nate is very analytical and thinks all the possible scenarios through before ever making a move. I, on the other hand, tend to make the first move that looks good. Needless to say, he almost always wins whenever we play a game. But, with this game, I won 3 of the 4 rounds we played! I love a game I can win at on a regular basis, and I really LOVE a game where I win more often than not!

We finished around 10:30, and were ready to head to bed. Nate got on the computer to check something "real quick" and I was going to read "just a couple of pages" while I waited for him. Yeah! At 12:05 Nate looks up from the computer and says, "Happy New Year" and then we get sucked back into what we were doing for another half hour until we realize it is MUCH, MUCH later than we should be up and head for bed. We're such the party-ers, huh? :)

(Unfortunately Kiersten didn't sleep well that night, and I was up from 2:30-4:00-ish with her, and then up for the morning with Tanner at 7:30, and Nate slept through it all! Oh well, he made up for it - he got up with her the next 2 nights.)

Santa borrows our wrapping paper

WARNING: Don't read this with children who still believe in Santa!

I had hid a role of wrapping paper in our closet a few months ago, planning to wrap all of the presents from Santa with it. I had done really well keeping it hidden from the kids up until Christmas Eve day. That afternoon Nate had taken the kids out to do something and while they were gone I pulled out a present for Kiersten from my parents that I'd hidden in the back of my closet. In the process of getting the present out, I had to move the "Santa" wrapping paper. I fully intended to put it back in it's hiding place before they got home. However, I got busy and forgot.

After Nate and the kids got home, I assigned Kiersten the job of wiping down all the door handles with a Clorox wipe (we really didn't want to spread Kiersten's pink eye!). The first door she heads off to do is my closet door, and right away she spots the "Santa" wrapping paper. Not knowing why I would have wrapping paper in my closet, she says, "Mom you have pretty snowflake wrapping paper in your room." I try not to make a big deal out of it and agree with her. As soon as she leaves my room I go in and hide the paper, but the damage is already done.

Nate and I try to decide what to do. It's too late to go buy another role of paper and re-wrap all the presents from Santa (I'm too cheap and lazy!), so we figure we'll just hope for the best.

Christmas day arrives, and she doesn't say a thing. But, the day after Christmas she and I are headed to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of things, and out of the blue she asks me, "Mom, do you think Santa borrowed our wrapping paper?" "Yes I do" is my answer - that was a better solution than I had come up with. To that she says, "Wow! He must have been really quiet when he was wrapping presents, because he didn't wake me up at all!" I told her he didn't wake me up either, so he must have been really quiet!

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning came bright and LATE to our house! Our children must still be too little to get truly caught up in the Christmas morning anticipation because they slept the latest they did all of our Christmas vacation - Kiersten slept until 8:45 and Tanner woke up at 9. What a wonderful Christmas present they gave Nate and I - letting us sleep in, and wake up when we were ready to!

Kiersten was very excited over all the candy and presents (she was amazed that Santa gave each of us a different candy cane in our stocking. Thankfully she didn't notice that they all looked like candy canes from last year or the ones Santa gave them at our ward party!), but Tanner was pretty excited by the banana that Santa left in his stocking! He wouldn't let go of it until Nate put him in his high chair so he could eat it (which wasn't that much later!).


Back when I first started my Christmas shopping, I asked Kiersten what she wanted for Christmas, and she didn't have any ideas so I picked what I thought she'd like. As Christmas got closer, however, she found a set of princess dolls at Target that she really wanted and started telling everyone that is what she hoped Santa would bring her. A few days before Christmas I really started to worry that she was going to be disappointed by the Doctor kit Santa was bringing her. I even sent Nate to Target 2 days before to get the princesses, but no luck for us . . . Target was out (or, he may have been looking in the wrong spot, I don't know!). So I prayed really hard that she'd be happy with the 1 princess doll Tanner gave her and the Doctor kit Santa gave her.
And thankfully that prayer was answered - she was delighted that no longer did she have to find things to pretend to play doctor with her babies. She now had the "real" stuff! We decided that Santa must have known how much she liked to play doctor with her babies, and that Tanner was going to give her a Belle doll.

Tanner has the funniest look he gives us on a regular basis, but we've never been able to capture it on film. This still isn't quite the look, but it gives you a pretty good idea of what he looks like. (By the way, this was a random face - I was taking pictures because he was so excited sitting on Nate's lap opening the truck from his cousins Brooklyn and Savannah.)

I was a little worried that it would take about 15 minutes to open presents Christmas morning because it was just our small little family of 4, and we only got each person 4 presents (1 in their stocking, 1 from Santa, 1 from the kids/their sibling and 1 from Mom and Dad, and that was a combined present for the 2 of them). However, Grandparents, Aunts, and cousins came through and filled under our tree, and it took over an hour and a half to open presents Christmas morning. Of course, not all of that time was opening presents - we stopped and got Tanner a snack (his stocking banana and some Nutter Butters that Santa had left), and we'd stop opening presents and let the kids open the toys and play with them for a bit before going on.



After we finished opening presents and had breakfast, Kiersten organized another rendition of the Nativity. This time was different than the night before because we had different costumes (I've never known Mary to have such bling, have you? And Joseph has never looked so good in pink, don't you agree?)
Tanner really didn't have a role in this rendition of the Nativity - he just jumped in where he wanted. This time I got a little more for my shepherd's costume - instead of just a hair bow like I had the night before, this time I had a blanket to wrap around my shoulders.

After naps/quiet time Nate took the kids out back and set up the trampoline we got for them. I'm hoping to save my couches and mattresses from all the jumping they've seen over the last several months! Unfortunately our back yard isn't big enough to accommodate a large trampoline, so hopefully they won't mind sharing and taking turns until we move into a house with a bigger back yard (no, I'm not making an announcement - we don't have any plans to move, we'll get a bigger back yard "someday int he future!") and can get a bigger trampoline.

Later that evening Kiersten was so excited to set up her easel from Grandma and Grandpa and get to work. She's colored and painted so many pictures. Watch your mail - you may be the lucky recipient of some of her original artwork one of these days!

All in all it was a wonderful Christmas day. We really enjoyed being able to spend time as a family. While we missed our family and friends, we were also glad we couldn't share our sicknesses with you (Kiersten had pink eye, Tanner had a fever, and Nate and I had colds!). And, Kiersten has done a wonderful job of keeping the Nativity story in the forefront of our thoughts, as we've now had to act it out 4 times in the past week (and that's only because we've put her off several times! If she had her way it would have been at least daily!)