Christmas Eve Dance Party

Christmas Card

Here is our holiday photo and card!

Goals for the day

1. Clean up at least some of the zone of destruction that used to be my home. (I'd rather have a Santa who comes down the chimney the night AFTER Christmas and cleans up all the mess!)
2. Eat something besides cookies or candy.

Merry Christmas!

Chick-Fil-A kind of day

I forgot to feed the boys breakfast today. What is wrong with me? So I compensated by taking them to Chick-Fil-A for lunch. Yummy shakes PLUS an indoor play-place. Double bonus because it is so COLD out here. Ok, so it was in the 50's. That is SO COLD for us!
Tomorrow will be a good day. I'm trying not to make it so hectic. Whatever we get done, I want it to be happy and fun, and if it isn't, well, then it probably isn't worth doing.
Our secret-agent missions are at an end, and tomorrow all we have to do is deliver 12 plates of bread-wreaths. No problem, right?

Brigham's first recital

Joseph's first recital

Pause for a breath

Well, the past week was a total whirlwind.
Ben had his work party at our house Monday night. Fun night, but the kids were up until 11:00. Not good.
My big goal for the week was to get my Christmas cards made, ordered, and mailed by Saturday. I really loved the cards I made last year and I've been stressing about not measuring up to the standard I set for myself. But I'm ok with how it turned out. It's totally different from last year's. Of course, the day after I submitted it, I read a post on Segullah about Christmas newsletters, and in the comments, the idea of writing a poem for your newsletter was thoroughly mocked. Yes, I wrote a poem in lieu of a newsletter this year. Oh well. So if you HATE poems in your Christmas cards, just don't tell me about it because I spent a ridiculously LONG time composing the darned thing. I managed to get the thing submitted in time to be delivered by Friday, giving me about 18 hours between delivery and the time they needed to be at the post office.
My other big task was to get 2 presents mailed off, also by Saturday. These presents took a fair amount of work and preparation which involved other people doing certain things, so I also didn't get everything I needed until Friday night.
Long story short, I was up until 5:30 AM Saturday morning getting those presents ready and addressing and stuffing Christmas card envelopes. I didn't write ANY personal notes on my cards, which I normally make a big effort to do. No time or energy this year.
But I got it done, and it's a huge relief. I feel like I can really enjoy Christmas now.
I've also been baking up a storm, making at least one kind of cookie each day this week (so far, lemon bars, chocolate-chocolate-chip, peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, snickerdoodles, and hersheys kiss cookies). We've been doing ding-dong-ditching with cookies every night this week. The boys call it their "secret agent missions," and they're unbelievably excited and cute about it. Lots of work for mom, but totally worth it.
Rewind a bit. Last Saturday was a fun, busy day. We went to the ward Christmas breakfast. Mosey was Joseph in the primary nativity pageant. So cute.
Then it was the big boys' first piano recital. Brigham played "Silent Night" and Joseph played "Joy to the World." They did a good job. I was a little nervous on Brigham's behalf, not because he wasn't ready, because he definitely was, but because I knew he really wanted to play perfectly. He told me on our way to the recital, "I really hope I don't make a mistake because I won't get to do the performance over again." He's such a perfectionist. But he played perfectly and was very happy. Joseph wasn't nervous at all, I don't think. But he's not the perfectionist Brigham is (I'm still trying to convince him that accurate rhythm is just as important as accurate notes), and therefore not as inclined toward nerves. He did a nice job, too. Later, they reported their favorite part of the recital to be the refreshments afterward. Of course.
After THAT, Ben and the boys went to their post-soccer-season party at Chuck-E-Cheese, and I went to a baptism at the church where I spoke on the Holy Ghost. There is an awesome family that found the church, and the mom and one of the daughters got baptized. I believe the dad and the other over-eight child are also going to be baptized. They have five kids and everyone always asked them if they were Mormon, and now, the mom jokes, she can say that they are!
I met back up with everyone at Chuck-E-Cheese and then we went to get our Christmas tree.
This was my first year not going out onto the lot myself to inspect trees. I just wasn't up for the walking on uneven ground. But somehow Ben and the boys managed to get a beautiful, nicely-shaped tree even without my input. Shocking, I know. :-)
The rest of the evening was spent decorating the tree until it was time for me to leave to go to a Christmas choral performance at the local high school. It was a very nice production (it included dinner), but it was THREE HOURS LONG.
I was exhausted at the end of that day!
Well, sorry for that boring, boring, boring laundry list of the week's events. That's what happens when I don't keep up with my blogging.
Here are some pictures for posterity.

I know I'm biased, but I think he's pretty much the cutest little Joseph there ever was.



Brigham announcing his piece at the recital.



And Joseph. I only noticed as they both went up to announce their songs that their pants are now at flood-level. Oops. They're getting SO big!



This is what Mosey did during the recital. Hung out on Dad's back.

So busy! (oh, so busy)

I would love to post.
But I have too much to do!
The boys had their first piano recital yesterday, they did great.
Mosey was "Joseph" in the primary nativity on Saturday morning. He was so cute.
We got a Christmas tree.
I am ALMOST done with my Christmas card.
Tomorrow night we're hosting a Christmas party for Ben's team from work.
I have to make 2 dozen cookies for it and keep the boys from destroying the house.
It is now 2:11 AM, only 4 hours past my bedtime.

Please disregard the previous post

Does anyone else have a 4-year-old who knows how to publish a blog post on his mother's blog?
No?
I didn't think so.
I could just delete the post, but I think I'll leave it as further evidence of my son's weirdness.

thepoop

pooppoopooppooppoop

The Birds

This is just weird. We went to Walmart earlier this week. When we got done with our shopping and came back out, it was about 5:45, we noticed this unbelievable cacophony of bird calls. Hundreds upon hundreds (probably thousands) of these blackbirds were flying all around, chirping and calling and crying. They were flocking to the trees in the parking lot from all over the sky, wave after wave after wave of them. It was like a mega-convention for blackbirds in the Walmart parking lot. It's hard to see from the video, but the trees are completely, totally filled with these birds. I've never seen or heard anything like it.

Have you seen the old Alfred Hitchcock movie, "The Birds?" It was like that. So very strange.

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Austin has such weird weather. Yesterday was a really pleasant day. Jeans and t-shirt weather. In fact, I was out until about 5:00 yesterday afternoon, very comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt. Then about when we were putting the boys in bed, I heard it starting to pour rain outside. Weird, it hadn't looked like rain before.
Then this morning when I woke up, I looked out my bedroom window and saw this:


(well, not this exactly, Mosey was still inside in his PJ's, but we did see snow on the deck!!)

The boys were thrilled. Joseph went out immediately to try to make a snow angel, but the snow was really sort of a crusty ice, no good for snow angels. The last time the boys "saw" snow was 2 years ago when Austin had a freak ice storm 2 weeks after we moved in. It didn't really snow then either, just a few flakes. But we had 2 inches of ice on the ground.
Anyway, they were very excited, but soon got VERY cold (Mosey came in just after I snapped this picture and changed his clothes, LOL).
We spent the rest of the day inside, warm and toasty. Man, am I NOT cut out for cold weather! A few days of this is fine for the diversion, but any more than that? No thank you!

On a different note, here's another fun science project/Christmas craft. We learned about growing crystals by making Christmas ornaments! Dissolve a bunch of borax in boiling water, and then suspend pipe-cleaners bent into Christmas shapes into jars of the solution. Within an hour or so, the borax crystals start forming. They're very sturdy and pretty!


Here's one of the shapes that got too crystallized to be able to get out of the jar. Oops!


The borax makes large, pretty crystals.



And here's some of the ornaments we made, hung up in my kitchen window. I took (too many) pretty, sparkly closeups of them too, but won't bore you. Try it! It's fun and easy! And not too messy, either, which is a HUGE plus. (and you see the plant on the left? That's our bean plant that is now about 2 feet high. We germinated it from a pinto bean and it is growing in a jar with a paper towel and water. It still amazes me that it grew out of nothing but water, air, and sunlight. Science is cool.)

Lightning Bolts!

The boys' soccer season ended yesterday. They ended up with a winning record! Lost 2, tied 3, won 3!
Yesterday we played the hardest team in the league; they beat us easily three weeks ago. They had a couple of real super-stars, and their coach had to actually pull them out at the end so they didn't run the score up.
But yesterday, we benefited from their misfortune. One of their super-stars was out, and they had two games in a row. We were their second game. Every team in the league had one day where they played two games, and we lost our second game as well. It's hard for those little kids to play hard for 2 hours straight! (although in our defense, it was HOT the day we had 2 games in a row, and yesterday it was downright chilly, for Austin)
Anyway, we beat them 2-0, and it ended up being the only game the other team lost all year. I felt bad for those little players, but mostly I felt happy that my boys ended the season on a win. They had been saying all morning that they were going to win the game, and I was worried they were setting themselves up for a fall. I kept saying that I didn't care if they won or lost, as long as they played clean and did their best.
But they won!



This is what Mosey does during games. Makes faces at me and tries to block me from taking pictures.



Here is Joseph about to kick the ball. Brigham is right behind him, catching air.
The two of them are a pretty formidable force on the field.



Here's Brigham after the game. He was happy, but decided to give me his tough-guy look.


On a different note, we also got the boys' soccer portraits yesterday. I opened Brigham's envelope and saw this cute, sweet picture of him:

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And then I opened Joseph's envelope, and saw this:

The world's best soccer picture ever.

Ooh, he had been a serious pill that day. The photographer was not happy with him. I wonder why? He refused to cooperate or smile. This is the lovely team photo they got:

Luckily, there were only 7 kids there that day. I took the top photo yesterday after the game, we had all our players but one yesterday. And Joseph was in a slightly better mood.

Anyway, Joseph is the ultimate photographer's child. And the ultimate pill when he wants to be.

But in a secret sort of way, I can't help but think his antics were worth it, just to get that priceless picture of him glowering with the soccer ball.

Totally worth the $15.

Sssseen me anywhere?

Joseph found two little garter snakes up by the lake yesterday afternoon. He took them home and made them a cozy little home in a cardboard shoebox.

This morning, only one of them was in there.

Where, or where could you be, little snakey?

I'd rather find you now, and not slithering between my sheets one of these nights...