Christmas Fun!

(Warning! Major picture overload!)

So, I had some free time today and, surprisingly, I made it through ALL of my Christmas pictures! So here we go...

Christmas Eve:


Asher's turn to open his jammies.




Evan's turn!




My three boys in their new jammies:


Christmas Morning:

Evan's big gift was a pirate ship that can be taken apart and put back together in all sorts of different ways. It even floats in water.


He also got the gun and transformer that he asked Santa for, as well as some army guys and a couple dinosaurs.


Asher's big gift was this huge garbage truck. It was a total HIT! He refused to leave it alone to open his other presents. It has little garbage cans and the truck actually lifts and dumps them.


He also got a basketball and hoop, a tow truck with a car to tow, a Nerf gun, and a couple dinosaurs.


And of course, with the gift of Nerf guns comes the inevitable Nerf war. Santa was nice enough to bring Ben one, too. Ben sat at the top of the stairs and shot at the boys while they shot at him.



Ben got me a one night stay at the Anniversary Inn with just him and me. I'm super excited! :) I got him some sweaters and a gift certificate to buy a bunch of stuff for his fish tank.

The day after Christmas:

We were supposed to drive up to my parents' house on Saturday to exchange presents with my family and see my new little nephew, Jaxon. We weren't able to go because of Asher's pink eye and the thought of sitting around at home all day long with nothing to do just seemed so horrible. I decided that we should go down to Salt Lake and see the lights on Temple Square. Ben was nice enough to humor me and so we went. It was COLD, but beautiful!





These floating bubble light things have always been my favorite Christmas decoration at Temple Square. They're floating in the reflection pool, and they're so pretty!






As we were leaving, I realized we didn't have a picture of all of us, so we ran into the visitor's center and had a missionary snap this quick shot.


And that was our Christmas! The boys really made it so much fun for me. Hope yours was great, too! :)

Merry Christmas!!!

I hope you all had a fun, safe, and wonderful holiday! We had a nice, quiet Christmas here at home, which I loved.

This is the time of year when I take TONS of pictures, but don't have time to go through them and process them! I'm way behind, but I'll share a few and come back later with more! :)

On Wednesday, we made cookies for Santa. I tried a sugar cookie recipe from Pioneer Woman and they turned out so yummy! I really recommend this recipe if you still haven't found your favorite sugar cookies.

Cutting them out:


With this recipe, you paint the cookies with an egg yolk glaze instead of frosting them. It's fun because you can make all different colors. Well, I thought we had food coloring, but we didn't! So ours are boring yellow, but the kids still had fun painting anyway.

I love the looks of concentration on their little faces. :)




Since we didn't have colored glaze, we did sprinkles instead.


Finished cookies!


The boys admiring their handywork:




You might notice Asher's watery red eye in that pic.... We've had quite the string of sickness here at our house, just in time for Christmas. In my last post, I mentioned that Evan and I were sick. Asher and Ben were sick shortly after that, and (as if that wasn't enough), Asher also came down with pink eye.

Poor baby.


He's been a trooper, though, and Christmas was still lots of fun. We weren't able to go visit my parents because of his pink eye, which we're really bummed about, but other than that, we were still able to have a really nice Christmas. More pictures to come, of course! :)

Busy time of year!

Wow, it's been longer than I thought since I last posted! I've been busy enjoying holiday fun and snow with my boys and have stayed away from the computer a bit the last couple weeks. I have to admit, a break from the computer was pretty nice! But here I am, back to show you all the fun things we've been doing. :)

The second week of November was my week to teach preschool. I'm always kind of stressed when it's my week, but this was even worse because I was in charge of our Christmas program at the nursing home. Have you ever tried to get a group of preschoolers to act out the nativity?? It actually went really well and the kids did such a good job. I don't have any pictures because I was busy with the program, but they were so cute. :)

We've also been getting a lot of snow and the boys had been begging me to go out and build a snowman. There are some impressively huge ones around our neighborhood and every time we'd see one, they'd beg me to help them make one. On Monday, we finally did. It's not impressively huge, but we were proud of it. :) Evan named it Jack.




(Yes, Evan has tape around the bottom of his snow pants. I know it's ghetto, but it's the only way to keep the snow out!)

On Thursday, Evan had his preschool Christmas party. They acted out the nativity again and sang some songs. Asher was excited to get to be a part of the play, too.



Evan's preschool class: James, Evan, Meile, Samuel


The kids each got a "Super Service Award" for doing nice things in preschool this month. Evan was very proud of his.


On Friday night, I had my book club Christmas party and it was really fun! I was definitely overdue for a girls' night out!

Unfortunately, the rest of that night, Evan and I were both sick. Evan was fine by about 8:00 on Saturday morning, but it took me until about 4:00 to be able to get off the couch. We think it might have been something we ate because Ben and Asher are fine, and once Evan and I got feeling better, we were totally fine, too. (There was some cinnamon bread that Asher and Ben didn't like... maybe that was the culprit.)

On Saturday night, we had a Christmas party with Ben's family. Ben was going to just take the boys, but I decided to go at the last minute because I was feeling pretty good. As long as I sat down most of the time, I was ok. I'm glad I went because it was a good time with the family.

Last, but not least, a picture of Evan all dressed up in his cowboy gear. He got this hat from uncle William at the party last night and couldn't wait to be a cowboy today:


His mean cowboy face:


And that's what we've been up to! I'm still really enjoying the holiday season and the excitement of my boys. This week we are going to finish up presents (mostly wrapping) and bake some cookies for Santa. I did all my grocery shopping for the week on Friday (so I wouldn't have to go to the store this week) and I'm so glad I don't have to worry about that for tomorrow! :)

Letter to Santa

Evan is at such a fun age for Christmas this year. We can do all the things that were totally over his head the last few years. Today, we wrote Santa a letter:





"Dear Santa,
For Christmas
I want a gun and
a transformer.
Thank you.
Love, Evan"

The "gun" is a Nerf gun, by the way... I realize it sounds a little weird to have my 4 year old asking Santa for a gun. :) Funny side story on that subject.... when Evan first told us he wanted a gun for Christmas, we said "But you already have two guns... one for each hand. You don't need another one." He responded with, "Yeah, I do. For when one of them runs out of bullets." :)

Snow much fun!

I know, I know... cheesy post title. :)

The boys were very excited to wake up to SNOW this morning! They came in my room and told me about it like 3 times while I was trying to sleep. So, I got them all bundled up and sent them out to enjoy playing in the snow for the first time this winter. We've had snow several times already, but they haven't gotten out to play in it before now. They had a great time!



And it was totally worth the five hours (ok, not really, but it felt like it) that it took to bundle and un-bundle them because now they are both sleeping soundly. :)

Decorating the Tree

As I promised last night, I have pictures of the kids decorating the tree. We did it this morning and the boys loved it! I think I was almost as excited as they were, though. :) It was fun to get out all the ornaments and remember when we got them. I still have a bunch of ornaments from our Missouri friends, too, which is fun.





Each year, the kids get to pick out an ornament. Asher picked a train this year:


And Evan got a Santa Claus holding a chalk board and a pencil. We like to try and have the ornaments represent the year if we can and Evan's favorite thing this year is preschool.


Our pretty tree all decorated:

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I spent Thanksgiving weekend putting the Christmas decorations up with the kids (since we were already done with Thanksgiving). I'm so glad I don't work at Hallmark anymore because when the Christmas season rolls around, I'm actually excited about it instead of sick of it already! :) The boys are insanely excited, too, of course. The only thing we didn't put up this past weekend was a tree, because we didn't have one! We've always had a little 3 foot tree that we've used, but we left it behind in Missouri.

On Monday night, for family night, we went and picked out a tree.... and it's REAL! I'm so excited to have a real tree this year. I haven't had a real tree since I lived at home with my parents. I love the smell and it looks so pretty. And it's 6 ft (ish) instead of 3. So exciting! :)

Christmas is going to be especially fun this year because the boys are old enough to really "get it". Especially Evan... he's been soaking up everything Christmas for the last week. He wants to know all the stories (Santa, Rudolph, the birth of Christ...), and he wants to learn all the songs. In the last two days, he's learned all the words to "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Clause is Coming to Town". He wants to know the name of any symbolic Christmas item (he's learned about wreaths, nutcrackers, toy soldiers and rain deer, among other things).

I just can't wait to see their little faces on Christmas morning this year. The excitement these little guys can barely contain is the best thing about Christmas when you're a mom. :)

We haven't actually decorated the tree yet, so I'll have pictures to post as soon as we do. For now, I'll leave you with this:

Happy Thanksgiving!!

I want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving! I am most grateful for my family and my faith. I'm also grateful that this year has been so good to us. Ben has been a hard worker and we have a practice that is doing extremely well. We are so blessed!

We actually had our Thanksgiving a week early this year. Ben has an event all this weekend, so my parents had their Thanksgiving feast last weekend. We made the trip up to Rexburg Friday night and had our yummy Thanksgiving meal Saturday afternoon. That evening, we went to see Thomas perform in the high school play, Man of LaMancha. He was one of the muleteers and they all did a fantastic job! It was fun to spend some time with the family.

My parents preparing the meal:


Sitting down to the feast:


Jenna introduced the boys to the fun of pulling each other around int he laundry basket. They had so much fun taking turns being the rider/pusher/puller.




The distinguished actor:


Every time we visit my parents, This is what Ben does:

Ben likes to catch up on the National Geographic and read Calvin and Hobbes.

We left right after sacrament meeting on Sunday because it was starting to snow like crazy. It wouldn't be a trip to Rexburg in the winter without driving home in a snow storm. :)

Evan also had his preschool Thanksgiving (or as he would say, "Gives-giving") party on Tuesday. He was very proud of the "turkey-lurkey" he made out of an apple and some marshmallows.





Since our Thanksgiving is over, we have a whole day today with nothing to do. It feels nice! I went and saw New Moon (which I liked a LOT better than Twilight) this afternoon while the kids were napping.

We hope you all have a happy and safe holiday with lots of loved ones and yummy food! :)

Trip to SLC

Ben needed to go down to Salt Lake on Saturday to pick up a few things for his fish tank, so we decided to make it a family outing. Unfortunately for us, it snowed like crazy and took us forever to get down there.

(Ben standing out in the blizzard to change the windshield wiper)


We didn't end up having much time to do the things we wanted to do. We settled for just taking a tour of the conference center.

The conference center from the outside:


The conference center from the inside:


We learned that the conference center seats 21,000 people and that, unlike most buildings that seat such a large number of people, all the seats face the front of the stage, instead of being arranged in a circle all the way around the stage. The tour guide also pointed out that there are no columns on the inside to hold the building up. It is an amazing piece of architecture!!

The fountain:


The fountain (and the piano player) from the third floor:


One of the reasons we wanted to tour the conference center was to see my grandfather's statue. My Grandpa Johansen has done a lot of art work for the church (the big statue outside of the Winter Quarters visitor's center, the baas relief on the front of the Joseph Smith building at BYU, the doors of the Washington DC temple, and more). This statue in the conference center is called "Resurrection".


It was an enjoyable trip, even if it was short. (Well, our time outside of the car was short, anyway.) Now we have an excuse to go back in a few weeks when all the Christmas lights are up! :)