Jingle Bells

Whew. What a month it has been so far. We've been BUSY. We've had Christmas parties, shopping, I was the "room mom" in Trev's KG class (an experience I don't care to repeat any time soon), art classes, and speech therapy--along with all the other stuff that needs to be done on a regular basis (and apparently laundry is not one of those things--I have had volcano-like piles of clothes around my house. They would start out like big mountains of clean laundry just waiting to be folded. They would explode any time someone needed to find clothes to wear, and then they would build back up with more clean loads of laundry.)

But, as Christmas is getting near, I thought I would share what we have been up to picture-form.
So without further adieu this is what I call
It wouldn't be Christmas without...

Stockings:
Here is Lydia's new stocking. So beautiful. My Grandma is amazingly sweet for indulging me in this. I know she doesn't like to make them. And yet she still does. Thanks Grandma!!

Christmas at Grandma's house:
Usually a week or so before Christmas, my dad's side of the family gets together for a pre-Christmas. It is so much fun. This year, my dad wasn't able to come, so we are planning on getting together with him after Christmas (eh, dad, I hope that is still okay). But my Aunt Dona and her family was there. My kids love their girls, but who wouldn't? They are really good kids. My cousin Jeff and his girlfriend were there as well.

A visit from Santa to our house:
A family in our church does this every year, and we are lucky enough to be on their good list! He dresses up as Santa, and his son comes along as the elf to hand out candy canes and take pictures. Lydia, was unfortunately sleeping. Ben was decidedly too old. Trevor, I think, was needing his older brother to lead the way, so he was a bit hesitant. And Karmin was unusually shy. She is never shy...anyone who knows her knows that she is the exact opposite of shy. I should have known that something was up. Which brings me to our final sign of Christmas...

It wouldn't be Christmas without one of our kids getting SICK:
I think it started about 4 years ago. Ben got chicken pox right before Christmas, and then Trevor came down with it on Christmas day. A couple of years ago, we were going to have a big Christmas (the last one with Elys before they left on their mission) and Trev got croup so bad that the doctor was close to sending him to the hospital on Christmas Eve. And last night I had the pleasure of staying up with Karmin half the night because she has croup. At one point, I wanted to take her to the hospital, but luckily Grant knew what to do since he had worked in the hospital.

And so now we are ready for Christmas! We hope you have a very Merry Christmas! (This is a picture of Trevor and Karmin at Trev's pj Christmas party at school)

Bon Appetit

To my good friend Sheri: You may want to skip this post--given Derek's current employment at a certain company that makes frozen foods.

So we have two picky eaters in our household--as you may have previously gathered from prior posts. (See Ben's story here.) Mr. Trevor has asked for Kid Cuisine (you know the frozen kids meal) for many months now. I told him there was no way that he would eat all of the Kid Cuisine if he doesn't even eat all of my food. I'm not saying that I am the best cook; however, I do think that my cooking is a bit superior to frozen dinners. As a compromise, I told him if he ate everything I cooked for a whole week, I would buy him one. And he did it. I even put him to the test by cooking split pea soup (which, by the way, is my new favorite food to make--it reminds me of my Grandma's house, mmm smells so good...). So yesterday when we went to Wal-Mart Trevor got to pick one out.

When he cooked it, he got it out of the microwave, looked at it, and quickly decided that it looked pretty gross. He gave his main dish to Ben, and then proceeded to eat the pudding. After a few bites he said, "They lied!" After questioning him, he said that on tv it looked so delicious and yummy, but it was disgusting. I told him that you can't always trust everything you see on tv. Bummer buddy. It is a hard lesson to learn, but it has to happen sometime.

And for good measure, here are some pictures from Thanksgiving. We went up to the cabin on Wednesday and Thursday. Grant had to work Friday, so our weekend was cut short. We got together with Grant's sister during the weekend. It was an enjoyable relaxing weekend. We have a lot to be thankful for.