Christmas Day

Sadly, I do not have a single photo of Christmas Eve which is the day we spent with the Filleman side of the family - so those will come after I steal them from my father-in-laws camera :)

I love Christmas and my husband and boys all love Christmas. It is very fun and full of memories. The boys had lots of memories this years of traditions we have been establishing and I really enjoy seeing them excited about things they remember from the previous year. We do an advent calendar counting down to Christmas each day in December and it is a favorite. Parker also checked his stocking every morning after we hung them up. He tried to be all sly about it but I would watch him come in the kitchen for breakfast and just tap the outside of his stocking to see if it was empty. So precious.

Christmas morning the boys were very excited to open their stockings. Our tradition is to do stockings and one gift from Mom and Dad at home before heading out to the other houses of family.

If Grayson looks a little bewildered it is because his brothers woke him up after they couldn't wait any longer. He doesn't know quite what the commotion is about just yet!
Parker in his new cowboy get-up. This boys loves to dress up and really loves cowboy stuff.
Sweet buddies in their matching Christmas jams. Two months later I can hardly pull Parker out of these "kitty" jams and he has worn a hole in the bottom of the slippers.
Sporting their new Alaska jammies on Christmas night. They were missing the AK Johnson cousins!!!
Obligatory family picture at Gram's house.

Matt and Nicci looking a whole lot more pulled together than the rest of us. We shall see if they look that nice in a couple years when they have to drag babies out of the house on Christmas morning . . . . :)
All kinds of cousin happiness at Grandma and Papa's house!!! When it was all said and done the boys had a very fun day. Really the routine of spending two days out of the house is just getting easier and easier and much more fun. Davis was super excited about his Lego Police station and his new DS. Parker wanted a pillow pet more than his next breath and he got one so he was thrilled. Grayson couldn't quite process everything but enjoyed lots of new things - probably in particular his new Megablocks dump truck.

Random December Happenings

As I type, this is very old news but Phoenix actually did get snow this year and my kids thought it was very cool. It melted before it hit the ground but the clouds were impressive and the flurries were very fun. Obviously the snow on the ground behind Parker is not the product of that storm. My Gram's neighborhood did a thing for the kids were they covered the Community Center's parking lot with snow so I took the kids down to see it. It is sad when this is your children's first snow experience but we are hoping to fix that in the next couple of weeks.
Nonetheless, they thought it was novel and fun to see snow on the ground and play in it. Parker kept asking if he could lay in it and make a "sand angel" - haha - desert boys!
This is either documentation that I am old and boring or a really cool picture. My blog so I vote that it is a cool picture. These were the awesome clouds that eventually produced snow. They don't look as impressive in a photo but really it was cool to see how you could tell just by looking that it was going to be a crazy storm.
Little boys loving each other in the mall play center while Mark and I took turns Christmas shopping.
And sadly, the last iPhone picture is a commentary on the illness that struck our family in December and January both. My boys have really had a bad run with colds this season. This was a night in the ER after Grayson had had a fever of over 103 even 5 days after antibiotics. He was so sick that he slept through the long 3 hour waiting room process (and it wasn't even that late in the evening). The verdict was he was resistant to the strong antibiotics he was on for a bad case of strep so it did nothing and he just got worse. New drugs=healthy happy baby!! Yeah.

All Things December . . . .

Davis has been particularly aware of books talking about seasons and made the correlation to the unfortunate LACK of "typical" season type events in AZ. aka "Why don't we have piles of orange leaves?" "When will we have snow here?". Anyway - he was excited to see some slightly brownish leaves on one of my mother-in-law's trees. She let them shakes the leaves off the tree and rake them up into a small pile. They then threw them over their heads and lived out their "fall" dreams!! haha

So Davis wants absolutely nothing to do with the Santa tradition. He couldn't rationalize Santa even last year and asked flat out if he was real or not and wanted a full explanation of how that was possible. We decided not to fib to our kids about Santa if it came up and for Davis it came up early. The logic just wasn't there for him. Parker, however, still thinks it is fun. He wanted to go see Santa at the mall. After a very direct conversation with Davis about absolutely NOT mentioning anything about Santa wearing a costume while in line, I hauled the kids to see mall Santa. Davis was refusing to even go through the line - looking at me like it was insulting his intelligence to pretend. Once Parker got up there and Davis realized Parker was getting a photo, he decided he wanted to be in the picture too. Santa says to Davis, "So what do you want for Christmas?" Davis gives Santa an exaggerated wink (yes . . wink!!) and says, "How about I just tell my mom." - as if to make it clear that Santa was pulling anything over on him. Ahhhh, Davis. Classic.

Finally zoo lights with our neighbors. Davis took the picture of the lion - it was his favorite. My kids love Christmas lights and really, really loved them this year. Grayson would gasp like he had never seen a light before every time he saw a new lit house.

We also took the kids to walk a fun street in Mesa. They had a house on the street that opened up their backyard to a beautiful "walk through Bethlehem". They really did an amazing job. Each of the major events of the birth of Christ is portrayed with pictures, displays and scriptures all the way through to the death and resurrection of Christ as the reason why he was born. My boys all really liked it. Parker LOVED the sheep and shepherds. In a big grass area the guy had a fake camp fire surrounded by probably 100 little wooden sheep and it really did look like a flock out at night. Parker loves that part of the story and jumps in when the angel appears to add that the angel told the shepherds to "not be afraid". Davis asked later, "Do you think those people did that so that people who don't know Jesus would know about him?". I said, "well yes, I think that that is what they are hoping." He says, "Well how come we just lights on our house then? Don't you think we should get some big signs that say 'You need to read the Bible because you need to know about Jesus'." Yep - good thought D :) I love that is so simple and obvious to them.

sorry mom

it is super late and my computer battery is dying - I made an honest attempt to get all the way through Christmas - but I didn't make it. You should have enough there to read until I get it posted tomorrow. Christmas pictures are coming - I promise. I noticed that you have to click "view older posts" to go back to where I started tonight - how about all that blogging!!!!

Davis' on Thanksgiving

I don't know if you will be able to see this well without clicking on the picture to make it larger, but I love this. Davis had to write this for school and he did most of it himself with a little help. These people are important to me:

1. Mom because you make dinner.

2. Dad because you play with us and the Wii.

3. My brothers and my cousins. (He was upset that there was only one more line and he wanted to list the brothers and cousins - I convinced him it was okay to put them all on one line - love the brother/cousin love)

What are you most thankful for this Thanksgiving?

"Jesus"

When I think about Thanksgiving I think of: "sweet rice".

My best memory is: "going to Gram's house".

The classic turkey hand!

Davis writes this several times every day. He loves to color and to write and often writes the names of our family on his papers. He always wants everybody to be listed!

So this page I copied because it shows several things that I like about how he writes right now. 1. He dots his eye with a little "circle" instead of a dot - jr. high-notes-to-friends style:) Every time he writes his name, the "i" has a little circle.

2. He learned punctuation marks and love to draw question marks and exclamation points. When he writes exclamation points he thinks there needs to be several. Don't know where he gets that love for dramatic expression!!!! haha (note the exclamation points also have the circles instead of dots)

Happy Birthday Eli!

A belated Happy Birthday to my nephew Eli. I can't believe he is SEVEN! Crazy! We saw a movie and then lunch at the park with cousins and friends. It was very fun for all the kiddos. Eli is considerate, helpful, smart, a good leader and great friend to my boys. Each one of my boys looks up to him and asks to be with him often. I am so grateful for him. It seems like yesterday that I was spending as many work lunch hours as possible at my sister's Hermosa house to get my hands on my new nephew. It goes by so fast. One thing Eli does right now that I love is whenever ANYONE says "Hi how are you?" (even if it just a standard expression of a stranger and not necessarily an honest inquiry) He looks right at the person and responds, "I'm great and how are you?" I've heard him do it many times and it always sounds so grown up to me. My boys pretty much duck into a shell when someone talks to them so that contrast probably makes E's response stand out to me even more :)

Haircut

Okay so technically not his first haircut, but I either didn't take pictures of the first, or can't find them :( so this is probably more like the third official hair cut - but he looks super cute anyway. When he is older (assuming he cares, which he won't because he is a boy) I'll just tell him that this is his first hair cut :)