Christmas Festivities

The weekend before Christmas (Yes. I know its March. Lets stay focused here.) We headed up to Idaho Falls for a fun filled day of partying.

It started out with the Kelley party (my dad and Penni). Last year we went bowling as part of the party and it was a hit. Mason asked all year long when we could go again. They decided to do it again this year and I think it shared the same results.

After bowling we headed over to Papa Tom's for pizza, then to my dad and Penni's house to open presents. It was madness I tell you. Kids everywhere, wrapping paper flying all over the place, toys being pulled out of boxes and assembled amongst the chaos. It was really pretty fun and my kids really loved it. Sage got a super cute princess castle and Mason got his first set of Lego's. Penni also made the kids and incredible binder full of all kinds of activities. For example, she laminated a bunch of coloring book pictures and put in dry erase crayons. She put in puzzles and games and pretty much everything imaginable into this thing. And it was all organized so that everything had a place within the binder and so it can travel with us. Its really cool and the kids think its awesome.

Immediately following the Kelley party we headed out to my mom and Kim's for the Holland party. This party has been a tradition since I can remember and with both my grandparents gone, my mom has worked hard to keep the tradition alive. I love seeing my aunts, uncles, and cousins. They are all really great people and I just enjoy being with them.

Kim with Jonas on the left and my cousin Karlee's son Brinkley on the right. My cousin's kids area all pretty close to the age of my kids. She also has a son, a daughter, and a son. Pretty cool.

After the Holland party we headed up to the Country Club for the Hall party. Not sure why but I didn't get any pictures from this. Its a pretty huge party with over 140 people in the family (crazy!), and its always fun to catch up with everyone. My Grandma and 

Grandpa Hall are extremely generous people and they throw the party and spoil everyone down to the youngest great grandchild. 

After the Hall party we headed back to mom and Kim's so that all the grand kids could open presents (again!) My kids have had the chance to really get to know Justin and Nicole's kids through trips to Arizona and they just adore them. I wish we had a chance to see all the other cousins more.

After all the cousins left we opened Christmas PJs from my mom, and Muncle Matt read the Polar Express (also a tradition).

This is the only picture where one of the four participants didn't have their finger in their nose. Just kidding Matt. Only not really.

I look forward to this crazy weekend of partying every year. I might worry or complain about having to be everywhere at once, but I really love seeing family. Especially the ones we don't get to see very often. And our kids love it too. Not to mention that they get spoiled rotten by everyone they come in contact with. I think they kind of like that too.

After the weekend party binge we headed back to Utah to spend Christmas in our own home. This made for some complications this year as we hadn't celebrated Christmas with the Pierson side of the family yet. But Nic was a good sport and gave into my wishes to make more than one trip to IF so we could have Christmas at home.

On Christmas eve we headed to one of our favorite markets/restaurants Tony Caputtos. Nic bought some fancy (stinky) cheese, I bought some chocolate, and we ate some of their awesome sandwiches. Then we stopped at the bakery next door for some dessert. It was actually quite picturesque since it was snowing (heavily) those big huge snowflakes and people were bustling about downtown. Its a good memory for me.

After lunch we braved some pretty crappy roads and headed down to the new Scheels store. (A random adventure for Christmas eve, I know.) But much to the kids' delight we found that they have a ferris wheel inside the store. And not only that, but they also had a dead and stuffed elk (that the kids were certain was a reindeer) that they could sit on. It was a success all around.

That evening we headed over to my Aunt Julie and Uncle Paul's house for some Christmas eve festivities. I was so grateful to them for inviting us over because with all the partying we had done the few days before I was a little ill prepared for Christmas eve. We had soup and ate crepes and had the kids re-enact the nativity scene. Below is my cousin Tyson's son Tag and his daughter Alta.

Sage was the angel and she spent most of the time crawling around on that window seat singing "Happy Jesus to me. Happy Jesus to me." (In the Happy Birthday tune.)

After Paul and Julie's we headed back to our house for our own Christmas eve. We set out our stockings, left Santa his cookies and milk (and the reindeer some carrots), read some Christmas stories and scriptures and headed to bed.

Nic is going to love that I put this picture on the blog, but I think its funny.

Then Santa came.

This sweet baby's first Christmas. Makes me teary thinking about all these "firsts" that are flying by.

Sage is a bit like her mom. Not a morning person. I think we would have had just as much success in the present department if we had just bought her candy canes. A few of those babies and she did eventually warm up to everything else and was her usual funny self.

This is the crown Mason picked out for Sage. She "yoved!" it and Mason was so proud.

My dear friend Deb sends the kids a package every year. She is possibly the most talented person I know and one of her many talents is knitting. She knitted the kids these cute hats.

(Mason's is actually a fish and the opening for his head is its mouth. Its really cute and funny.)

This is how all of the pictures of these three together ends up looking like. Sage eventually starts "kissing" Jonas and if you've ever had a good kiss from Sage you know that they can be pretty powerful kisses.

We ate breakfast and the kids played with their toys for a bit, then we headed back to Idaho for the Pierson family party. We had a great dinner and opened presents (Again, I didn't take any pictures. Not sure what was wrong with me). Then Shawn somehow got conned into helping the kids make cotton candy with Chloe's new cotton candy machine. By this time I had gone home with a tired baby, but I'm sure it was fantastic.

The next few days after Christmas were spent hanging out at my mom's. (By then my mom and Kim had gone back to Arizona). A pretty big snow storm hit Utah and made the roads getting home kind of gross, so we actually stayed an extra day in Idaho and to avoid the stress of trying to get home in the storm. It was nice to slow down after a long weekend of craziness.

The fact that I am not writing this post anywhere near the Christmas season does not change my feelings about the meaning of Christmas. I am truly grateful for my Savior not just at Christmas time, but all the time. And I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for giving me faces like the one above to look at and love every day.

Thanksgiving in Arizona

We spent Thanksgiving this year with my mom and Kim in Arizona. And we were not alone. It was us, and my step brother Justin and his family, and my great aunt Judy and her husband, and Shay and her family, and Matt, and 3 dogs. All together there were 19 people and 3 dogs staying in the house. For dinner itself we increased that number by 7 when my Grandma and Grandpa Hall and aunt Jan and her family came over. I had some serious anxiety over the ability to happily house all of these people in my parent's house, but it actually worked out beautifully. My family was assigned to the biggest room (with the phantom bathroom, which is an entirely different story) and it worked out great. Nic and me on the bed, Mason and Sage on the pull out couch in the room, and Jonas (Harry Potter style) in the closet. Oh- and Nell in the corner. Surprisingly it didn't feel cramped at all with all those people and honestly the kids loved every second of it. Mason and Sage would disappear first thing in the morning to go play with their cousins and I wouldn't see them until bedtime. Cody is only a year older than Mason and they loved playing together, and Brinley and London took both Sage and Jonas under their wing and nearly completely cared for them (other than the whole nursing bit). Older cousins are awesome. That, combined with Sage figuring out how to stay afloat with her life jacket on (thus allowing to me to sit by the pool and not actually be in the pool at all times), made for a very relaxing trip for me. The kids and I stayed for 2 weeks. Nic stayed the first week, then flew from Mesa to Chicago to go to the ACR conference. He then flew back to SLC, worked a couple of days, then flew back down to Phoenix so he could make the 11 hour drive home with me the next day. I so appreciate him being willing to do this. Having a nursing baby, a 2 year old, a 4 year old and a dog would have made that drive painful. The potty breaks alone would have been misery. So the help was beyond appreciated.

So here are some pictures and a run down of the 2 weeks.

Wake up, watch a cartoon until everyone else is up, wear goggles while doing it.

Sage and London. Two seriously awesome girls.

Beautiful Brinley

My Jonsie baby.

I only wish London lived closer so she could be my live in nanny. Or even just my babysitter. She loved holding Jonas and when she wasn't holding him, she was completely entertaining and loving Sage. It was awesome, I'm telling ya.

The boys.

One day, the kids, Nic and I decided to check out the Phoenix Zoo. Its funny because we have been to more than one zoo in Phoenix, but never the actual Phoenix Zoo. We got discounted passes with our Hogle Zoo membership and it turned out to be a really nice afternoon.

It was the day before Thanksgiving, so the kids thought it was great to see the turkeys. Mason kept telling them they should feel lucky because they were safe at the zoo this year.

We paid to feed the giraffes. I was a little disappointed with this because there is a zoo in Phoenix where you can just feed the giraffes for free. You can even pet them and just hang out with them as long as you wish. This was a little more controlled. Which may not be a bad thing for the giraffe's sake, but I still enjoyed the freedom of the other zoo.

Back at the house, this is what the evenings often looked like.

For as spastic as Nell can be, she sure is sweet with the kids. She didn't move for over a half an hour while Jonas just hung out with her.

I love this blonde haired boy.

Swimming + cousins + 19 people in one house can wear a girl out.

In fact, it wears everyone out.

One night, after Nic left, we went to see the Mesa Temple lights with Grandma, Shay, Casey, and Bubba.

This picture cracks me up. That would be Shay, running through the garden after Brighton. Love it!

Cousin love.

 

 One day Nicole called us and told us to meet her at this indoor tree house place. This place was insane. It had corkscrew slides, slides that dropped at nearly a 90 degree angle, and some crazy netted tubes that dangled very high in the sky. Shay and I climbed up in the tube seen below with Sage. It was swaying and I was so afraid that our weight was going to break it. I made Sage go way ahead so that if it did break, she wouldn't go down with us. Then I took Sage down the crazy steep slide and ended up losing the majority of the skin on my elbow in the way down (a major friction burn). Nicole waited for us at the bottom to get a picture and we couldn't stop laughing at my mangled elbow. Well, that night I wasn't laughing when it hurt so bad I couldn't sleep. I can't believe they don't have some kind of regulation on that thing. It was fun. But I didn't do it again.

Brinley was sweet and took Sage down the corkscrew slide over and over again. I didn't let her take her down the other slide for fear of both of their hides.

The crew.

Toward the end of our stay, something very unusual happened. Kim got in the pool. In fact, he stayed in for a few hours and played with kids. I think he caught Sage coming down the slide like 50 times and played "Diver Down!" with Mason 100 times. It was great.

Nothing like getting out of the pool and warming up under some industrial heaters.

And then having S'mores.

While wearing princess crowns. (Mason and Brinley worked long and hard at the arcade games at the tree house place to win Sage this crown. It was sweet.)

Kim even got in on the crown action.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was just spending time with these guys. No house to take care of, no schedule, no real responsibilities.

Shay, my mom, and I decided to take the kids to the Scottsdale train park one day. This is the very park where Nic left our camera 3 years ago. And once again, we didn't leave unscathed. I left the wipes case that goes with my diaper bag. Not a big deal, but also not replaceable and kind of disappointing.  Oh well, the kids had fun.

Mason is on a seed collecting kick and hit the jackpot collecting all sorts of seeds in the park.

Shay and I took the kids on the train while my mom stayed with Jonas. The train is an open air train, except for the little cattle car at the back. Of course the kids wanted to ride in that. So Shay and I scrunched in. See the top of the window in the picture below? That was the top of the car. There are a few pictures I took of Shay scrunched inside, but for her sake I won't put them on here. You're welcome Shay.

Also, this window was directly behind the car in front of us, so the people who were sitting there had their butts directly in front of the window. So Sage thought it was funny to spend a large portion of the ride crying out, "Help us please. Help us." to the rear end of some fellow passengers.

When she wasn't requesting rescue she was mooing like a cow in its cattle car.

Overall, the trip was perfect. We played games and ate obscene amounts of food.

The kids swam everyday.

Nic got his obligatory photo of Nell poolside.

And we made some great memories with some great people. All of whom we love dearly.

Thanks for a relaxing, fun and (thanks to the awesome new pool gate) safe holiday mom and Kim. It was perfect.