Christmas lights

So down here we don't have many places to go see light displays like Temple Square or the DC Visitor's Center. But we do have some interesting people who put a lot of time, effort and I'm sure money into their yard where they do things like this...

The Berenstain Bears were my favorite books growing up, so I took a picture.

Lana's favorite Christmas song this year was by far "Jingle Bells". She also enjoyed putting on her own variation as "Tinker Bells".

Yeah, I think I owned most of these Care Bears pictured here.

My favorite people in all the world.

Merry Christmas!

The calm before the storm.

Tanner was excited for the new toys, but didn't quite grasp the concept of having to unwrap them first. He waited until Lana would finish unwrapping a toy, move on to the next present and then he would pounce on the newly unwrapped toy. Maybe he was just being smart and making Lana do all the work.

Lana was super excited about Christmas this year. She pretty much grasped the concept of Christmas, the Santa Claus side and the Jesus' birth side. Before going to bed last night I made her pick up all her new toys and put them away. And she said, "So Santa can come again and bring more toys?" Um, sorry babe, Santa only comes once a year. She was a little disappointed but still happy to have her new mountain of toys to play with.

Really, I'm not sure why I even bother buying this kid toys when he'd rather play with the wheel that broke off of our computer chair.

Lana

A cute picture of Lana Paul captured at the Ward Activity.

Popcorn Balls

This was our FHE activity/treat on Monday. Lana seemed to like playing with them (although she took a bit to get used to the sticky-ness...see her face below).

Tanner pictured here not too happy about being left out of the sticky fun. Popcorn+Tanner=not a fun situation (ie, gagging, spit up etc.). Sticky Popcorn+Tanner=even worse situation.

Our traditional Santa picture

Lana started crying the moment Paul picked her up to take her to stand in line. I tried prepping her before the party, telling her Santa was going to be there. We practiced saying what it was she wanted for Christmas. Then I asked her, are you going to tell Santa what you want or are you going to cry? Cry was her answer and she did.

We don't have full blown tears here yet. And I don't know why the bottom part of the picture is yellow. Oh, and I probably shouldn't tell her that Santa is played by one of her soon to be Sunbeam teachers huh?

There, we go, now that scene looks familiar! See Tanner on bottom right of picture casually lounging, waiting his turn.






Yeah, that didn't last long. Now both kids are screaming, poor Santa. Felt bad, but sure makes for a good picture! Everyone thought it was so cute.






I'm pretty sure Tanner was only crying because Lana was. If we'd done him first I think he would've been fine.



Thank you Lana for continuing our traditional cry on Santa's lap picture and putting up with our horrible parenting just so we can have a couple of pictures like this!

Making snow flakes

In honor of the snow last week (which was gone by noon), Lana and I sat down to make our own snow flakes.

Convenience Store Food

OK so Michelle and I were talking about some ice cream I bought not too long ago from the gas station on the corner. We didn't eat any of it as it was very disgusting. This experience reminded me of an experience from my not too distant youth. The names in the story have been changed to protect their identities. Me and two of my siblings...Skaught and Carin, were out either way late or way early one day and we decided to go to the local convience store, lets call it Savin Alavin. Skaught and I both got delicious big bite hot dogs. Carin, who has lived on an all pizza diet for quite some time, decided that she is going to get the pizza....When she asked for a slice the attendant says "please lady, don't buy the pizza, wouldn't you like a delicious hot dog?" well Carin wasn't having it...She bought this nasty looking day old burnt pizza that was warmed under the red glow of a heat lamp until all the moisture in it was evaporated out. This pizza looked more like an old prune on burnt toast than pizza, but she bought it and ate it. I think she actually enjoyed it. Well needless to say, I didn't learn my lesson, I am still out way too late or too early and the only thing I can find is nasty convenience store food.

Tanner's walking!

"Yay!" for Tanner and "Oh no!" for me! I am pretty sure Tanner is going to give me a run for my money. He was such a calm laid back baby, I'm just waiting for him to take off running and drive me crazy. He's been taking 3-4 steps together for a while, but not really doing it consistently. The other night I put him down on the floor and off he went, straight for the Christmas tree (it was about a 12 ft. distance). We weren't expecting it, so Paul ran to get the camera. He was kind enough to repeat the whole thing again with big smiles.

What does the witch say?

If you are at all familiar with Dora Saves the Snow Princess, then you will know where this is coming from. It is Lana's favorite holiday movie and book (thanks Tutu!). Well, in the movie the witch says "ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" but in the book it's only "ha, ha, ha!". Anyway, Tanner just picked up on this today and it was so funny I just had to post. And I have found that Tanner loves to watch himself on TV. I'm convinced that if I created an hour long video of himself that he would sit for that hour mesmerized.

Note to self...

Do not gamble on the weather man.

Atleast it snowed my favorite snow. The big, fat, fluffy flakes.

Stay tuned...

The weather people (who you know are always right) have put us under a Winter Storm Warning with snow accumulations of 3-5 inches. We're the most southern county included in the warning, so I'm not betting any money on seeing any white flurries around here. However, we may luck out and Lana might get lucky enough to go romp around in the wetness, we'll just have to see. Neither Paul nor I are huge fans of snow, but every once in a while it's nice to see it again. But only every once in a while. And not in large quantities.

We're improving!

...in some areas. Tonight we had a repeat lesson of "I can obey" but I changed it to "I can listen" because that seemed to be a recurring problem the last few days.

We had stopped by Target earlier and saw these Gingerbread kits. They had a Train, a House and Santa's Sleigh. Of all of them I thought Lana would choose the Train, but she preferred the sleigh even though she didn't know what it was. I say it was a good choice as it was the simplest one they had and compared to our last gingerbread kit (see Halloween FHE) it makes us look like professionals. Okay, not professionals but at least not incompetent.

Surprisingly even the candy and frosting were edible. We think our Haunted House was last years model because everything tasted so gross. If you look close enough you'll see I included Rudolph as one of the Reindeer. He is after all famous enough to get his own song unlike the other Reindeer.

Another funny story today: Lana was helping me make chocolate chip banana bread and her job was to peel and smash the bananas. I had 4 small bananas and helped her do the first one so she could see what I wanted her to do. She did #2 just fine, then asked me to come do #3. I asked her if she wanted to do the last one. She said "No mom. I'm very tired. You do it." Oh, okay. I didn't realize peeling bananas was such hard work. So I peeled it and started to smash them all together. Lana pipes up and says "No, no no! I do it!" So I relinquished the smasher tool and let her have at it. What a sly little character. She didn't want to bother with the boring peeling job, she wanted the fun smashing job.

Scaling down

I'm going to admit it. I'm not really that into Christmas this year. It's hard to get all excited when 3/4 of my decorations are still in the box because they won't fit in the apartment. There are lots of things weighing on our minds (and I'm sure everyone's) this year. Last year I was so excited for the holidays I made Paul put up the Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. (I was 9 months pregnant and could barely roll myself off the couch.) This year we just put up our decorations on Saturday. And no, that's not our actual tree, but we did have to revert back to using our old tree instead of our new one we bought last year. (sigh)

Okay, that's enough depressing thoughts for today. I will leave you with what we wrote on our thankful leaf garland 2 years ago (a family home evening activity)...which I found while going through my decorations.

Things Michelle is thankful for:

1. Kleenex. Without it I'd have more snot on my clothes than I do now.
2. Digital Photos. So I can take lots of pictures of my snot face covered child.
3. Modern Conveniences. I'm a wimp without them.

Things Lana is thankful for:

1. Paper. It's fun to play with.
2. The Word No. Otherwise she couldn't say anything else.
3. Post-it notes. They're good fun to pull apart.

Things Paul is thankful for:

1. Michelle. She keeps my life interesting.
2. Concrete. Because it has the same expansive properties as steel.
3. Toilet paper. "Otherwise I'd have to use my hand." (direct quote)

I'd also like to add that I am thankful for Paul and his ability to keep me laughing even when things get a little depressing.

Holiday Vent...

I have never encountered such rudeness at a Walmart EVER until last night. I was perusing the toy isles looking for Lana's dollhouse (which I didn't find, ugh). There were 2 Walmart employees in front of me cleaning up the isle and a lady coming towards me gabbing on her cell phone. She asks one of the employees to help her get something down from the top shelf while still talking on her cell phone and never actually stops walking. Well, the employee gets all confused not knowing if she was actually talking to him. The lady makes this snippy remark about no useful employees around. Then she proceeds to RUN HER CART INTO MINE! Excuse me, I say (and not in a rude manner in which I was sorely tempted). And yet she ignores me, doesn't even look at me and continues to push her cart which is scraping up against mine all while still talking on her phone. I really wanted to take one of those game boxes (which is what I was standing next to at the time) and fling it at her head and yell "Tis the Season, lady!". But I didn't and I won't but it's funny to think about and makes me feel better.

Thanksgiving Pictures

We hung out at Paul's sister's house for the weekend. There was a lot of laughing, playing pinochle and a lot of Mario Kart on the Wii. Thanks for letting us crash Shirley!

I can't get the slide show to work on here and don't have the patience to try, so just click here to see it.

Vulnerable

This is what happens when you have a daddy who likes to play with his new camera.

Obviously didn't phase her at all...

Happy Birthday Tanner!

It's a little hard to imagine that an entire year has come and gone already. Time goes so fast when you're having a great time. Happy Birthday big guy! We love you!!

Thanks to Shirley and Jared for hosting Tanner's birthday this year. (We really should stop having kids around the holidays.)

Tanner's extremely yummy icecream cake.

Tanner enjoying his extremely yummy icecream cake.

The crowd patiently waiting while we try to find a candle.

The Birthday Boy.

Posing.

Attacking.

One happy kid. He couldn't wait for me to cut the truck off the box. He recieved quite the load this year for being only one. He got a handful of little cars which he loved because right now he loves anything with wheels. He also got some blocks, clothes, a ball popper thing which makes him laugh every time it starts and some books.

Conversation with Lana

Me: Tutu sent you a package in the mail. Do you want to open it?
Lana: Tutu sent me a package for my bur-bur cake? (birthday in Lana language)
Me: No, it's not your birthday. She just sent you a present just because.
Lana: Oohhhhh....opens gift
Me: What did you get?
Lana: Look mom! holds up two $1 bills
Me: Wow! What is it?
Lana: I dunno, but it's Lana's!

I guess we haven't been too good at teaching the concept of money. And since we're all about the frequent flyer miles, we mostly use plastic when buying things. Needless to say we had an important talk about what you don't do with money (ie. no ripping, no cutting, no drawing, don't give it to Tanner etc.). She is so proud of her monies and keeps it safe from Tanner in her drawer.

Lack of pictures

You might have noticed that there has been quite the shortage of pictures on here for a while, or you might not have noticed at all until I just pointed it out. Either way, the reason for the shortage has been due to a broken flash on our digital camera. Now, as happy I was with that camera (it served us well for almost 2 years), it really came at quite the convenient time. We'd been talking for a while about purchasing a Canon Rebel, but wasn't quite willing to fork over the $800+. However, Canon came out with the Rebel XS (a slightly more econimical version) and we took advantage of a broken camera and bought the Rebel. It's been lots of fun playing with our new toy. Luckily Lana and Tanner are both very willing participants (snotty noses and all!).

Funny Commercial

This commercial always throws me into a fit of uncontrollable giggles. Best commercial I've seen in a while.

Food storage made fun

I really don't like food storage. It costs money, it takes up an entire closet of much needed storage space and it's a pain in the bum to move (7 times so far). However, I understand it's important and a necessity and I will be grateful for it when we need to rely on it. That being said I haven't added anything to our food storage since Paul and I got married (6 1/2 years ago). Our Relief Society scheduled a trip down to our Bishop's storehouse to can our orders. We had such a good time chatting on the way down, during the canning process and on the way back up. It really made the entire process more than bearable and a lot of fun. Wish I had brought my camera to snap a picture of us in our hair nets and plastic aprons. We were smokin'!

Ball and chain

After a year and a half of "freedom", Paul is once again shackled. Meaning he finally broke down and bought a new wedding ring.

Paul's first wedding ring is somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Kona probably acting as a fish toy. After finding out that to get an exact replacement would be $500 neither one of us was willing to make a decision. Finally yesterday after passing the jewelry counter at Sam's Club we came across a ring that was an acceptable replacement for only $100. And how happy I am to not have to listen to anymore "I'm single" jokes.

Baby Vic's facials

This is one of those not-funny-at-the-time-but-will-be-funny-later stories:

So last night I was at Enrichment, eating some yummy food and making some way cute christmas blocks when I get a text message from Paul that says, "Your kids are covered in Vics baby rub." Hmmm, that's funny I think to myself because the neither one of the kids seemed sick when I saw them less than 2 hours ago. So I reply via text, "why?" Apparently the kids had gone off to play in their rooms when Paul noticed after a while that they had become really quiet. I know from personal experience that when my kids go quiet that's when I start worrying. So Paul goes and checks on them and finds them in the bathroom. Lana has the jar of Baby Vics in her hands and is in the process of smearing it all over her face. It is not until after Paul has cleaned Lana off that he notices that Tanner's face is also smeared with the goo. Luckily none of it got in their eyes as neither one was screaming their heads off and everyone is fine today other than Tanner's face looks a little irritated. Paul commented that Tanner was remarkably calm as he wiped his face off. Needless to say that I have thoroughly searched the kids rooms today and everything and anything that could be applied to one's body (or another's body), wall or carpet has been removed to a higher more remote location.

Shopping!

We decided to go spend the day down in Gulfport since Paul had a little bit of work at a house down in that area that he needed to do. I did not realize how much I missed Outlet Malls until today. There's nothing like getting a $150 leather bag for $25 and a $200 jacket for $53. I [heart] Outlet Malls! Oh, and it's only an hour from our house!