Christmas 2011

To you and yours...


From me and mine...



Merry Christmas! Hoping that you feel the presence of God with you today and that any darkness in your world is overcome by His amazing light.


"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." John 1: 1-5

"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:14

"She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" (which means "God with us"). Matthew 1:21-23

Christmas Eve

Christmas gifts wrapped?

Check.

Pies made?


Check.

Cookies for Santa?


Check.

Cutie patooties?




Check.


Time for my favorite day of the entire year! Only wish all of our family was together...

Our days in pictures

Jake's birthday.



Decorating gingerbread man cookies.


Live nativity.





Buda trail of lights.


Cinnamon roll day.






Sea World!






Sea World continued.

Christmas stuff

Now that Jake's birthday is over I feel like we can officially get down to Christmas. I had most of our shopping done before Thanksgiving but I felt like we hadn't done any real "Christmas-y" things with the kids.

We got out our elf on the shelf and read the book. However, we are really bad about remembering to move him from spot to spot. If you haven't read this blog post about over achieving elf on the shelf parents you should do so right now. I couldn't stop laughing and couldn't agree with her more! Needless to say, we're lucky if Elfis manages to change locations once a week. He fell over on the curtain rod three days ago and has been there ever since. I told the kids he must be really tired from his late night trips to the North Pole. Sad.

I haven't even baked any Christmas cookies this year. Bad little mama! But, thanks to my sister we did get to decorate some gingerbread cookies this year. She brought some cookies she had baked for her kindergarten class over to Jake's birthday party. She even brought the icing so I really had no excuse for not decorating them with the kids.

We tried to make a Christmas craft that Mike's mom sent for the kids to do. I discovered that I'm really good at gluing things together and that the kids lose interest in gluing things after about 45 seconds.

Sunday night we took the kids into "big church" with us to see our church's Singing Christmas tree performance. It was incredible. Emma Mae lasted about fifteen minutes before Mike had to drop her off in the nursery. Jake lasted the entire performance and it actually made me cry to see how interested and excited he was about everything. He loved seeing baby Jesus' birth and kept asking me when the mean king was going to show up. I love that his heart is so tender right now.

Tonight, we plan on taking the kids to our local trail of lights and we will be going to Sea World on Thursday to see how marine mammals celebrate Christmas. Let the festivities begin!

FIVE!

Well, Jake turned five on Dec. 14th and I'm just getting around to documenting the big day. That Wednesday was also our last day at Mother's Day Out for this semester. We have a nice three week break coming up. Anyway, his teachers let me bring in donut holes for the class snack on his birthday and they all sang happy birthday to him and he got to wear his very own birthday crown all day.

My mom and dad came to visit so they could be here also. We had a family dinner to celebrate. My sister was able to come which was so nice. I made baked potato soup, salad and sour dough bread. For the pi'ece de resistance, we bought Jake his very first ice cream cake. It was in the form of a soccer ball even. He couldn't have cared less. I think he was just birthdayed out. He didn't even want a piece of cake after dinner. What?! He has since tasted (and loved even) the cake so I feel that was $35 well spent. Who knew it cost so much to slap a little ice cream on some cake?

Jake was rewarded for making it to five with a TICKET TO SEA WORLD from my parents! He is counting down the days until Thursday when we will actually see our beloved Shamu in whale again. My sister (supposedly by way of recommendation from my niece Katie) bought Jake his first gun. Sure it's one of those Nerf things that shoots soft bullets that can't hurt anything. I'm just gonna say that Mike ambushed me while I was, ahem, using the potty the other day. Totally defenseless. Cheryl neglected to think about what my hubby would do with a gun in the house. I live in fear people. Fear.


Mike and I bought Jake a Leap Frog Explorer so he can play games and get ready for pre-school all by himself. Oh, I kid. I will totally play that game with him. Today, we had a minor scare about it though. The volume wasn't working. He had dropped it in the parking lot of WalMart the other day so I just knew he had already broken it after just five days. I was about to go on a litany about how important it is to take care of our toys and how I wasn't about to shell out more money on a brand new game when I googled the problem and discovered that there is an actual volume button on the toy that was just turned down. Problem solved.

All in all Jake had a wonderful birthday week. I can't believe he is five years old. He is the busiest, most talkative, most imaginative, funniest, most handsome and loving five year old I know. I'm pretty proud of him.

Birthday Bash

My sweet baby boy is turning 5 on Wednesday. Let's not discuss the ramifications of this particular birthday. Like the fact that it means he is required to start Kindergarten next year and leave me alone with little girl who is already having mood swings that are the emotional equiavalent of a pre-menstrual teenager who just got dumped by her boyfriend and discovers there is no ice cream in the house. All I'm saying is that Emma Mae is a bit moody. I need a little testosterone around in the day to counter balance her.

This year we decided to invite all of Jake's classmates at mother's day out to his party along with our neighbors and other friends. And that is why we decided to have his party at an outside location to prevent me from having an aneurism burst in my brain from the stress of having so many people in our house. I also decided not to make anything from scratch and not to worry about decorations. I wanted to keep it simple.

So we arranged to have a swimming party at our local YMCA and I think the kids had a ball. We ended up only having about ten kids show up but they had the pool all to themselves and between Mike and another over zealous dad they played sharks and minnows to their hearts content.

Jake decided he wanted to have a Spiderman theme again this year. Mike baked the cupcakes for me while I tried to mix up some red and blue icing to make Spiderman cupcakes. I learned a very important lesson Saturday morning. Red icing is one of the hardest things in the world to make. I won't tell you how much red food coloring I put in that icing because it's probably against all FDA regulations, but it was a lot. And the cupcakes still looked hot pink to me. Of course in the picture, they look orange. Whatever.

Jake had a great time with his friends and has been playing non stop with all of his new toys. In fact, he told us that he doesn't want any more toys when Santa comes. So there may be a rather unhappy plump gentleman visiting us in a few days. All he wants is a "ticket to Sea World" and this nearly five year old boy will be as happy as Spiderman in a room full of super villians.

Jalapeno's, naughty bits and DNA

1.) Tonight I found out what it feels like when jalapeno juice squirts in your eye. The words hellfire and brimstone come to mind. Also, torturous and someone please gauge out my eyes. On a brighter note, the Chuy's creamy jalapeno ranch dip I made is delicious. Turns out I can still taste even without my eyesight.

2.) The other day I found myself in the rather uncomfortable situation of naming the parts of our body that pee comes out of for Jake. And how the parts are different in girls and boys. Every ounce of my being wanted to give him cutsie names like "pee pee" and "hoo hoo" or even "peanut" in honor of Amy's cute Jack. But I put on my big girl panties (that's right I said it!) and I told him penis and vagina. ICK. Then I thought I might as well go get Emma Mae and make her watch a video about getting your period to see if she had any questions. But then I squirted jalapeno juice in my eye and decided to hold off for twenty more years.

3.) Is anyone still reading? If so, I finally scored a Hot Wheels Wall track set for Jake at Target the other day. This toy is the crack of Christmas 2011. I guess everyone wants one because the stores have been sold out since just before Thanksgiving. I left our hotel room in Kansas City at 12:45am on Black Friday to go across the street to Kohl's to pick one up because I saw they were going to have them on sale. They had four left when I got there. I got mine and wandered the store for the next ten minutes looking for the end of the line. It was insane. I waited in line for about 15 minutes and then I started sweating profusely. Next, my stomach started cramping up and I felt like I was going to pass out. I couldn't even carry the toy anymore because I had no strength in my limbs. I debated for about five minutes about whether or not I could continue to sacrifice my body for a Hot Wheels set. In the end, I set my toy down and walked out into the cold night air in shame and humiliation. I just don't have what it takes for Black Friday shopping. It is clearly an event that proves the theory of survival of the fittest. In a world of malls and over crowded stores my DNA failed me. Which is why my DNA decided to finish my Christmas shopping online. Evolution, look at me now!

A little recap

Oh, let's see. Where to begin? I'll start with Thanksgiving. We took the kids on a 13 hour road trip to Kansas City to see Mike's family this year. Jake and Emma Mae did surprisingly well on the trip. I'm thankful for portable DVD players. We ended up staying at a Fairfield Inn in Kansas City the first two nights of our trip. My friend Kara works for Marriot and got us a good deal on a room. I'm thankful for friends who work for major hotel corporations.


Jake and Emma were stoked about their first hotel stay. Well, technically Jake stayed at a Hyatt resort with us once for approximately six hours when he was nine months old. It was a trip that ended in us checking out of the hotel in shame at midnight because he wouldn't stop crying. This time, it was Emma Mae who decided to serenade us with the melodious sounds of "I CAN NOT GO TO SLEEP!" and the like for an hour and a half before she finally passed out from exhaustion.

On Thanksgiving we went over and had dinner with Mike's dad, his wife Sally and Mike's sister Mickey and her family. Sally made a Thanksgiving spread like I have never seen before. Except maybe at a restaurant buffet. There was so much food I couldn't even taste it all. Incredible. They let me watch the Cowboys play football afterwards so I was very happy. We were also able to visit Mike's grandma who lives in a retirement home there and his mom was there that day too. That night we took the kids swimming at the hotel and they passed out by 9pm instead of 11pm like the night before.




On Friday we all went to the Kansas City Zoo. It was very cold outside so the crowds were at a minimum. The kids loved it! We stayed pretty much all day. They rode on their first carousel and thought that was pretty much fun. Emma Mae had the biggest smile on her face!






For once the lions were happy and didn't try to attack Jake. Sweet.



This guy was one of the main attractions.



We spent Saturday visiting with Mike's mama and with his friend David and David's sweet mama Shari. Shari invited the kids to go swimming in their new, fantastic indoor olympic size pool. They were in heaven! We had such a good trip and it was great to see everyone for a little while. We started the 13 hour ride home late Saturday night, stopped in Oklahoma City for a few hours of sleep and got back home Sunday afternoon. I'm tired just thinking about it! Thanks to everyone in Kansas City and Bethany!