Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I'm baffled that it has already been a year since we moved into our new house and that Tragon is already 5 1/2 months old and loving solid food already, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I should start with Christmas. We had a great Christmas in St. George. We left on the 23rd and headed down after spending the 22nd working on the basement. We were able to make some good progress, but it was nice to be away from the house and not be tempted to work on it. It was a nice break for us and for the kids. The ride down was pretty uneventful, the kids did really well in the car and all took naps at various times and they did really well when we stopped in Scipio for lunch and went to Subway.
Damon loves trains! My mom has a singing train tree and Damon would just stare at it for a long time. If I ever heard the music playing and couldn't find him, he was usually on the chair by it watching it. He was very concerned though that the top train didn't move and always made sure to tell me so.
Someday I will get a picture of Damon with a real smile and not a crazy cheese. :)
Our days were filled with lots of fun and family. The whole crew was there, that makes 7 grandkids ranging from age 3 (Logan the oldest) and Tragon being the youngest. There was a good share of tantrums, but for the most part I think all the cousins got a long really well and had a great time!
Logan loves Moon Dough, it's kind of like Play Doh, but less messy, I might have to get some for his birthday that's coming up in a few months. :)
I can't remember a Christmas when we didn't have some sort of video game that was being played, this year is was a puzzle game on the Wii.
Every night we probably stayed up until 1:30-2:00 am and Christmas Eve was no exception. We got all the kids in bed (our favorite time of night) and read our Christmas Stories by candlelight. After that we played games until we could barely keep our eyes open. Traditionally it's me waking the family up around 4-5am to start Christmas, but this year I wanted to sleep in as long as possible...Tragon woke up at 4:30...then Logan woke up about 5:00....but Lincoln my nephew takes the cake, he was up at 2:00 (about the same time his mom and dad were climbing into bed) and wouldn't go back to sleep because he was so excited to open presents. Finally about 5:30-6:00 since most of us were up we decided to get things started. We had to wake Damon up, and boy was he unhappy. The poor guy just threw tantrum after tantrum, mostly because he wanted Logan's truck/car toy (above), but I think he wasn't feeling well either. He even threw a tantrum when we tried to give him a new present of his own. Lesson learned: never wake Damon up early, he gets very grumpy. That's good news for future Christmases though, hopefully my kids will want to sleep in until at least 7:00 when they typically wake up.
This was a toy that Logan picked out himself and then I wrapped it. His cousin got the exact same one. Logan was a champ opening presents this year, he actually did most of it himself. I think next year will be even more fun for him.
Damon is my puzzler. He loves puzzles almost as much as trains and he will spend hours doing puzzles...yes, really hours. I love it! He's actually really patient with puzzles and will spend time figuring them out for a while before asking for help, I think right now the most he's done by himself is a 35 piecer. We usually have at least a 1500 piece puzzle set up during the holidays and I even snuck Damon into the no kids zone to have him help me with the puzzle. I think together we put in about 10 pieces, I'd find the piece and tell him where it goes and he would figure out how to get it in. After about 10 pieces though I could see him getting a little anxious and wanting to push the puzzle off the table, I didn't want to press our luck, so we played something else.
I couldn't resist. Logan was getting dressed for the day, he can strip down by himself, but he didn't want Damon to get his toy while he got dressed, so he grabbed and ran upstairs to hide it until he got his clothes on. This one is going to be a classic butt shot for years to come. I can't wait until he starts dating...(well, yes I can).

We had such a fun time at Christmas, Morgan and I had a chance to have a little date and went and played pickleball. It's sort of like tennis and ping pong combined. You're on a court like tennis, but the paddles and ball are more like ping pong, it uses a heavier wiffle ball. It is more of a retirement game...I think we were the youngest by about 30 years. We had two nice old ladies teach us the rules and played a couple games with us...they were really good. We were starting to get the hang of it though and played a few single games. My legs were even a little sore the next day. That will have to be a new tradition when we visit is to go play pickleball, Morgan loved it.

This year was my year for the sickies. All my boys had some sort of cold on the way down or by the time we were headed home. They're all doing pretty good now though and Tragon is almost over his stuffy nose. By the time Sunday rolled around, they were all ready to go. I think I had reached my lack of sleep limit staying up too late and being up through the night with a baby that couldn't breathe, and the incessant whining of sick kids. It was crazy trying to get ready for church and deciding to go or not to go, in the end my mom helped me make up my mind and gave us all hugs and kisses and told us to be on our way to get our boys home and feeling better.

It really was an awesome Christmas, but it is always nice to get back home and get back into a routine. Thanks everyone for a great Christmas! Until next time....

Happy Thanksgiving

I can't believe I've gone from a once a week blogger to a once a month blogger....wait, yes I can, I have three kids, it's the holidays, and we're booking it to finish our basement. :) Come to think of it, once a month is pretty impressive right now. I'll start it off with Thanksgiving, sadly, no pictures, but we did have one of the best Thanksgivings ever.

My parents and my brother and his family came up to stay with us for Thanksgiving, it wasn't really a planned thing, it just sort of happened and I'm glad it did. We had great food and had quite the spread for hosting my first Thanksgiving, although I think my mom still gets most of the credit for it, I couldn't have done it without her. Whether it was her cooking or playing with the kids so that I could get stuff done. We had a delicious turkey, candied yams, green beans with bacon, homemade crescent rolls, thanks Kim, Morgan is still talking about them, juicy ham, of course some Stove Top stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, dixie fruit salad, coconut creme pie, pumpkin pie (made with a real pumpkin!), cherry pie...wow, just thinking about all of it reminds me that I could probably still go another few days without eating. :)

Secretly, we were really making a push to get the drywall and mudding all done in our basement before the company arrived and I'm happy to report that we made it, of course that was also one thing that we decided to hire out. They got done the day before everyone arrived. My brother and dad were planning on helping with the drywall, so I hope they weren't too disappointed that they weren't hanging it and mudding all weekend. ;) Seriously though, we got so much done in those few days with help from them and Kim with some painting too. We were able to get the bathroom all tiled, the doors hung, the electrical stuff all working (yay no more flipping the breakers to have light down there), we got the fireplace mantel put together and a whole lot of other stuff.

We did have some fun too, although they all did spend a really good portion of time in the basement working. We played games almost every night and brought out good ol Monopoly and Clue, of course there was the customary Canasta games as well as a few others. The kids played so well together and we only had a few minor tantrums with all of them having a few turns each. :) Once we have the basement done we're definitely looking forward to more get togethers; we had a great time.

The next week...well, we all got sick. :( Damon and Logan each took a turn with the flu, it only lasted a couple days and included only one messy barfing each...although, when they spread it out over a week, it does feel like I was cleaning puke and diarrhea all week. I didn't get the yucky flu and neither did Tragon, but we both got colds, his nose is almost clear and it's not quite such torture to clean out his nose so he can eat. Morgan was sick a couple days, but not enough to take a sick day, it's really crazy at work around the holidays. We are all pretty much feeling tip top now with only a few drippy noses here and there. I hope that we have gotten all our Christmas sick bugs out and done with (knock on wood).

We've been so focused on the basement...which is almost done, but all the little details sure add up to a lot of little projects and time in the end, so it will probably be another couple months, our goal is to at least have the bathroom done by Christmas and since we just got all our stuff delivered today, I think we can handle that.

I did finally get the tree out....today....December 10th....shhh, don't tell my family. Traditionally it's me begging to break out the Christmas music by Halloween and man, if we don't have those decorations out the day after Thanksgiving, it's too late. It's a little different with little kids though. I did let them help me decorate the tree, but then Damon spent the bulk of the morning in time out for hitting the balls off the tree....I may just take all those breakable ones down, or keep the tree in our bedroom and just read bedtime stories by it at night, and we are definitely NOT putting the presents under there, oiy! It really does feel like Christmas time now. And, the shopping is almost done too, I think I only have a couple more things to get, wahoo!

The boys did like all the snowmen ornaments. They like to find their favorites and show me.
I was surprised at how well Logan could hang the decorations, even if the tree is a little lopsided and droopy on the bottom. :)
It's going to be a great Christmas!