December 31, 2008

Happy Birthday Liam!
Just born!

One Year!

Two-day!

I can't believe my baby is 2! Liam is the sweetest little guy, Marcus and I were just talking last night about what a great kid he is and how blessed we are to have him as a part of our forever family. He makes me laugh every day, just today he has made me laugh twice in the hour he has been up! He was playing with his GeoTracks (another funny story, last night Marcus asked Liam if it was his birthday tomorrow, not really expecting a response, but he said, very excitedly, "Choo-Choo train! Grandmas House! There!" pointing at the GeoTracks My mom was picking out a train for him at Target about 2 weeks ago and she asked him which one he wanted. I guess he remembered. :) Anyway, one of the trains had dead batteries so it was barely chugging along, Liam jumped up and yelled "I fik it....new Babries!" and ran over to where dad keeps the kitchen tools and batteries. I immediately thought photo opp! and of course this is the result:


Well worth it I think.

How many ways can the word egg nog be pronounced by a 2 and 4 year old in one Christmas season? Lets count...
*Egg-a-nog
*Egg mog
*Egg-a-mog
*Egg Ogg
*Egg....NOG
*bubble gum juice

Christmas Eve 2008
FIRST!
The nativity...

Joseph and Mary with donky in background.



Holy family with a shepherd come to adore.



Heavenly tablecloth bedecked Host!



My wise man.


NEXT!
The program...

Our kids sang....wait for it....Rudolph the red nose reindeer. Quickly becoming my least fav. Christmas song, and yet the only one that gets any kind of positive reaction out of my kids. Liam yells: "Ru-Goff!" after its over. Singing is not one of my kids fav. things to do, and I’d forgotten that I had bribed Neil to sing so he jumped down off the piano bench after their song, that he did add a word or two to the singing of, and said: "Hey mom, can I have my treat now?" Next year we will have to think up something different.
Then we opened our matchy jammies Grandma Evans makes every year. Ruth and Sawyer just happened to be wearing the same shirt (Grandma Evans bought last year...) so they were the little twins. Thus ended Christmas Eve, except for the part where mom and dad when home and after shuffling the kids off to bed wrapped and assembled the surprises.

Christmas Morning!
The kids slept in till 8am, (moms gift from the kids) and Neil was the first one up this year.

Neil got a bike and a remote control car.
Ruth got a camera and an Easy bake oven, Liam was actually most excited about the little blue truck at the bottom of his picture.

Here is Neil and I trying outour new presents.

Ruth took some pictures with her camera too; here she is running through the middle of the street chasing him down for a great shot. She just may be as annoying as I am with her camera when she gets bigger...

Grandma and Grandpas!
Grandpa installed a tire swing for the kids; they were all quite excited and stayed out for a long time on it. Liam learned a new phrase... "Frozen Solid" is what he told me when he came in. Probably should have zipped him and put on the hood.

We only stayed there for a few minutes, we thought Auntie (Sister Evans) Aubs was calling, but she was calling later, so we went to...

Grandma Holly's!
Uncle Myles was in town with his kids! We opened presents first, Grandma got all the kids marshmallow guns and a fun golfing game.

They also got these great clipboards from someone she knows at work.

After presents we ate a delicious yet painful (for my gallbladder) dinner.

My mom has been watching QVC lately so she got all the food, the new serving dishes and the sliver wear from the show. (she also got the gifts off QVC...she is on good terms with the UPS guy, in fact they were having quite the animated conversation about the wonderful things they both saw on the show the previous night because she now has him watching it...) Of course after we ate it was time for:

This is when we left for Grandma and Grandpas again.
more presents:

We ended the evening with pictures in our matching jammies (sorry no picture) and lots of visiting. It was a long fun day! (Thank goodness it’s over!)

December 21, 2008 Ruth was so excited about this curl, I had to finish blowing out her hair and style it without damaging it. It made her day when we were successful, even though I made her wear a shirt she was not happy about and she had to wear pantyhose to church. Tell me again why I can't perm a 6 year olds hair? It would make life so much more pleasant. We had Christmas with Travis and Callie today since Trav works and wont be down for the big day. My mom jokingly told them we would be having 'Roast beast and who hash' she did make it,(well she made hash) and it was really good! She said she made it all the time growing up, Id like to know why she has never made it for us! That and the home made cranberry sauce she made for Thanksgiving. We have always eaten the jellied kind from a can. *harumph* We had them in the name draw so they all got home made beanie hats, corn bags movie tickets for Trav and Callie and a microscope kit for the boys. Not too exciting but I needed to use up that corn. Anyone else want a corn bag?

December 20, 2008
Christmas with the Goffs. No, we dont sing carrols or reinact the Christmas story, we eat good food and beat the heck out of a pinata! (add you own squiggle above the 'n')



And Santa came. (Neil lost his gift as we were leaving, it was a little glider he glided it up into the citrus trees.)

It was fun seeing family I hadnt seen in a while.

December 19, 2008
Ruth was supposed to be cleaning her room, but as usual she was playing, coloring or looking at books, anything to keep herself from cleaning. She came to me with this list after about an hour and a half:

It's a "To Do" list. That's about all I could decipher without help, but she told me what most of the rest of it said.
#1 on the list is: "Dad thave berd" (she gets the 'th' and the 'sh' mixed up sometimes)
#2 "Porde (mcuces seenme)" I think it was supposed to say 'Christmas Party' Or now that im looking at it, maybe it says ‘Party Marcus and me’ (?)
#3 "Dad sgrub tuelet" (woo hoo mom hates scrubbing the toilet!)
#4 "Crafts raat Gramos" not sure if she got lost writing 'at' or what but I'm sure grandma is excited (right? :)
#5 "Tent ledrs" she was going to make a tent under the table and write more letters.
I love it when she makes lists; she is also practicing her cursive (self taught no less)

December 19, 2008
We were getting ready to leave the house and Liam was the last to come so I was calling him and he finally came around the corner holding Neils pet cockroach...which surprised me because he is usually scared of it.

He looked at it in his hand for a minute, tossed it on the ground, then my sweet, sweet baby opened his mouth and said: "doopid crock-croach" and walked away. I was a bit speechless. When I told Marcus about it that night he thought it was hilarious, then he told me if the thing is right side up Liam will turn it onto its back and call it: "dead crock-croach" Where does he learn these things?



Another time we were coming into the house and Liam was dawdling in the garage and completely ignoring me when I was trying to hurry him along so I shut the big garage door knowing it would make him come. He is so funny, he looked at it, said "Ahhhhhhh!" in a not at all scared voice and turns to run to me saying "cwazy mommy!"

December 17, 2008
Ruth had her Christmas Program at school tonight.
We got crappy seats and I got CRAPPY pictures. I'm mad at my camera and have vowed to buy a new one with my next bit of puppy money.

(Anyone want one, they are ready to go home on the 23rd, just in time to put a bow on and throw under the tree...)

I really enjoyed the program, My child didn't sing much,
no big surprise there, but they sang to my fav. singer Raffi.

It was awesome; Ruth was a reindeer so their song was obvious, She spent most of her time checking to make sure we were watching and waving when she found us. One group of kids sang Feliz Navidad,(or 'fleece bobbi-dod' as they sang it) it was hilarious. 4 little girls sang the Spanish part solo into the microphone and the rest sang the chorus and rang bells in the background dancing a jig. I couldn't stop laughing, Kindergartners are the best.



December 18, 2008 Neil had his Christmas Program at school today. I got a great seat and okay pictures.

I'm still buying a new camera. He did really good, as he takes singing a bit more seriously than Ruth does.

Mrs. Kerry said he is doing much better at not being silly at school and she even heard him say to another little kid 'no, Mrs. Kerry wouldn't like that...' so I have some hope. :::fingers crossed::: I cant believe school is 1/2 over for the year. *sigh*

December 17, 2008
I've finally gotten into the Christmas spirit this year! Its been about 3 years since I was excited to decorate and prepare myself for the big day, maybe its all my new things I get to put up for the first time this year, (I love after Christmas Sales)I will have to keep that in mind this year, for next year. Some of my new exciting decorations are:

My tree that I bought after Christmas last year decked out in my fav. jingle bell garland and freshly spray painted dangly earrings. (I figure since I cant wear them myself, I can still enjoy them:)


My Angel came last year right before Christmas, but I was still excited to see her again this year (when I found where I had put her). I have been looking for 5 years for an affordable Madame Alexander Tree Topper I liked. Hooray for ebay!

Some of my other new Holiday items are:

"the Stockings were hung..." plaque.
I thought I was so clever to think this up, I had it all planned how I would create this with stensels and such, then I walked into the Rustic Hutch (were I bought these:) and there it was. vinyl lettering all ready to stick to a board. So much for good ideas...


my everlasting jingle bell mistletoe and 2 new pine trees that I added to my little tree collection.

I will just add to my Forrest each year, were a bit sparse right now but with the ensuing years we will fill out quite nicely and probably have to do some pruning.



And last but certainly not least:

My nativity addition for the year. Mark Mabry's Reflections of Christ really moved me i knew when I saw this picture I had to have it. Not sure if its because it was photographs of actual people that made the stories of our Savior really come alive to me, or the fact that it was pictures of the Easter Pageant (probably both), but I have been faithfully awaiting the day he would sell his prints. I (borrowed) the frame from Marcus' picture of Christ walking on the water so the little plaque says "Peace be still" instead of "Fear not..." but I think it worked out okay and it sure beats paying to have it framed at Michael's. So Hooray for Christmas, and Hooray for New Christmas decorations!