Christmas Devotional

I have to say I Love having the Internet. We were able to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional from our home (on BYU TV's Internet site). The boys all had pillows and blankets because we were sitting on our bed -they didn't pass out but James was willing to put odds on them falling asleep... as the computer is in our bedroom and so in order for all of us to watch it we were sitting or laying on the bed.

Getting ready for Christmas

The day after Thanksgiving, we started getting ready for Christmas. On Friday we had Tylor do his service project for the family. It was cleaning the carpets (with Dads help). While the carpets were drying we took the boys to see Madagascar 2. We all enjoyed the movie.
Then on Saturday we got our tree out and set it up. Every year we think, we should get a new one as we're setting it up -it's a little Charlie Brown-esque. But then we price them out and decided to look after Christmas, but the nice ones are never still there when the clearance prices get good -75% off, I guess we're asking for too much...
Kyle, Ryan and I put the tree together. James was helping Tylor finish up his book report that was due on Monday. I do have to say the project for the book report turned out really good. Ty had to make a shoebox diorama, so we went to the DI and got some 5 cent toys to supper glue in it. Ty needed a dragon, a guy (not a knight but just a young boy) a girl and a horse, we were able to get all three, we just had to rummage through the big toy bins... Where James found about 2 dozen decent shape titleist golf balls (they're like over two dollars a ball at the golf shop -no they're not that special...).


Anyhow, we got the tree up and decorated, and now we can justify the Christmas music we've been listening to for about a month...


This is the only picture I took of Kyle. He was goofing off. Or maybe trying to hide under the tree. This was before James started putting on the lights.

















Ryan set up one of the nativity sets that we have. This is how he set it up. Oh and that look on his face... well that's his "other" smile -yup, not my favorite either...









Here are the stockings that James and I found back in July at the Disney outlet in Ontario CA. In the center of the snow flakes there are little mickey faces. I also bought the tree skirt that matched the stockings, of course...

Band Concert

Tylor had his band concert tonight. He is warming up before the concert.


Here are some of the songs the sixth grade band played.

Western BBQ

Basha Elementary school has a western BBQ once a year. The parents can come and eat with there child. So this year I ate with Kyle and James ate with Tylor. After they've eaten, they do some of the dances they've learned in "PE". To accommodate the entire school all the grades eat at different times, that's why I ate with Kyle at 10:45am and James ate with Tylor at 12:30pm. Here are some of the dances the boys did. Tylor's gym teacher told the sixth graders that now they were set for life for weddings as they've learned the chicken dance, the electric slide and the hussel, all wedding reception staples... So apparently we short changed the guests at our wedding as we didn't have ANY of those dances...

Visit from Yuma

My brother Trevor and his wife Mayumi and their two girls came up for a visit. We were able to have dinner with them on Friday night and hang out for a little bit. They came up to see the boys soccer games. Tylor's game was at 8am. Ryan's game was 9am. and Kyle game was to 2pm. They got a little distracted comming to Ty's game, as the price of gas in Yuma is like 20 to 40 cents more than here... But the boys loved having them come to the games and we really appreciated it too. Thanks guys!

All I want for Christmas is...

Kyle's two front teeth!

So a little more than a week ago Kyle lost one of his front teeth. The other one has been insanely loose, but he's refused to really wiggle it, he said it hurts but I think it was because it feels odd not so much hurts. Anyway today after church I convinced him to lay his head on my lap and let me look at his tooth with this piece of dental floss in my hand... what? no I didn't lie to him I only wanted to look at it AND maybe wrap the floss around it and see what happened. Well now he's missing both his front teeth... so he cannot "wiss you a merry Chrissmiss"

Halloween

So last Saturday (the 25th of October) the ward had a trunk-or-treat. Tylor went to a friends birthday party so we only had two little ghouls with us. Here they are eating hot dogs. Side bar -so we save every Halloween costume -no I don't know why either but it makes it nice as we only bought one costume this year, and the boys were different things at the trunk-or-treat then they were on Halloween night when we took them trick-or-treating with friends in the neighborhood.
Here's Thomas the tank engine and Harry Potter...

And here's Anakin Skywalker (yes we're still way into Star Wars), Spiderman and Spiderman, Guess who's who...

Oh and the Spiderman costume Kyle is wearing is the ONE costume we bought this year. He's too big for the one Tylor wore when he was 7!! Ryan's "wearing" it, it's just a hair big on him...
Ryan wanted to be batman again but the costume from last year didn't fit him and we couldn't find another one -at least not on Halloween when he decided that's what he wanted to be...
So a note on weather, for those who don't know, it's W.A.R.M. in AZ pretty much 9 to 10 months out of the year. So we don't even bother to take jackets with us trick-or-treating. In fact James was in shorts and we were both warring flip-flops...
So because of our "balmy" weather real pumpkins don't really last outside, they sort of go bad overnight. Here are the boys (including their dad) carving our pumpkins on Halloween afternoon.