CHRISTMAS!

It's HERE! The boys favorite day of the year (followed in close second by their own birthdays...).
So Santa brought them a wii, and it wasn't on any of their wish lists or letters to Santa. So James, with encouragement from his friend Jon, decided to tell them that he was asking Santa for a wii, but that he was worried that Santa wouldn't get it for him and so he asked them if they'd all forgo getting any presents for each other, or from us and EVEN from Santa so that they could get him a wii... Yeah he's on the naughty list...
The best part was Tylor saying to him, "well, Dad... I don't know a wii is kind of expensive..." with that you might want to lower your expectations look on his face. Priceless.
Here's our Charlie Brown-esque tree with all the gifts around it and under it (our living room isn't all that big so it's actually kind of nice that our tree is small...)


Here's the wii in all it's boxed but not wrapped (Santa should have wrapped it...) glory. Oh and don't tell the boys but Santa may have played the wii a few times -he got it back in May... and that's all I've got to say about that.


Here are the boys opening presents and/or showing them to me for a photo op...






So normally it takes the boys a day or two to clear their new acquisitions out of the living room, this year because of the physical movement involved in playing the wii (especially for Ryan -whom we'll need to record some of his bowling, tennis, and boxing events, stay tuned...) they boys cleared out the living room before James even started thinking about starting Christmas dinner. Here's what the remainder of the day looked like.

Christmas Caroling

So a tradition from my family that may well date back to Dickens time is to make cookies and go Christmas caroling and hand out plates of the cookies. There are however a few rules with this activity. First, there has to be rice crispy treats on the plate, second the recipients of the caroling/cookies needs to include the home and visiting teaching families -hey how else am I going to count them as visited in December?
Anyway it's something that Carmen and I have always done, whether it's been on our own or with my family or Carmen's family and pretty much every year that we've gone up to Portland for the holidays we've gone caroling three times -on our own before we left, with her parents on the Sunday evening before Christmas, and with my parents on Christmas eve.
So this year I wanted to try something different, I wanted to explore my Willy Wonka side and try my hand at being a chocholatier... So we were looking around for different recipes and we found that in a cookbook I already owned that was called the spirit of Christmas cooking, there were a BUNCH of candy recipes. So we tried a few, gum drops, a "never fail" divinity, camels, peppermint smores, peppermint patties, peanutbutter balls (dipped in chocolate of course) and chocolate covered cherries. It turned out that the recipes made a few more than we'd anticipated... we ended up making 13 cookie plates and sending a box of goodies to my mom so she could try out or creations, my sisters (as part of their belated Christmas present from us) and we still had enough that we had our fill, but not the boys they wanted to make more of EVERYTHING!!!

Chocolate Covered Cherries


Peanutbutter Balls (foreground) and Chocolate Covered Pecan Camels (background)


Walnut Carmels (top container) "Never Fail" Divinity (second from top container) Peppermint Gumdrops (middle container) Raspberry Gumdrops (second from bottom container) and Orange Gumdrops (bottom container)


Frosted Sugar Cookies -because it's not a cookie plate without at least one type of cookie on it after all...


Not pictured but included on the cookie plates: peppermint smores, almond bark, peppermint patties, fudge and the rice crispy treats... yeah I think that's all...

Yeah the families on our list made out like cookie (or should I say candy) bandits. The only problem is that next year I'll have to either top it (not likely) or ask for new home teaching families because I don't want to disappoint them with a sub par cookie plate... I've set the bar too high...

End of Soccer Season

Saturday December 13 was the end of the soccer season. All three boys played soccer and they were all on different teams. So yes our Saturdays for the past couple of months were booked... but I can say that we made it though, pretty much in one piece. Each team had their own end of season parties. Here are the boys getting their medals or trophies.

Ty with "coach Steve"

Kyle with coaches Redweaun and Jason

Ryan with coach Kim

I can swing

I was at the park with Ryan when he started swinging by himself. So here he is.

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.