Christmas 2009

The traditional opening of new pajamas on Christmas Eve.

Here are the kids in their new pajamas. Everyone seems happy with what I picked out. Brandon in Buzz Lightyear, Jake in Airforce/airplanes and Emma in pink and cute.

Putting Santa's plate out with homemade cookies, carrotts for the reindeer and chocolate milk.
Brandon was given some reindeer food at his playgroup so he and Matt are putting it on a plate getting the food ready.
Here they are in the backyard putting the reindeer food out.

SANTA DELIVERS!!!

Jake with his favorite gift...LEGOS!!Emma and her favorite gift...Sketch pad and drawing pencils.

Brandon and his favorite...BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!!!Brandon's other Santa gift...Playdough.All the kids were given new pillowcases from Matt's mom. The pillowcases had each of the kids names on it, and if you look closely it also has sewn in glow in the dark thread "Did you think to pray?" I think these are so cool and the kids thought they were pretty neat too. They all slept with them on Christmas Eve.Now for my favorite Christmas gift. Matt and the kids had been working out in the garage for about a week on a homemade gift for me. I was banned from the garage and the office so I would not see the gift in progress. The picture below is the gift wrapped up. I had no idea what it was because they had done a great job at concealing the actual shape of my gift.

This is my gift. My friend Niccole had made this vinyl sign for me intended for me to just put directly on my wall like I had so many other times. However, this vinyl sign would not fit and I was very disappointed. So Matt made a frame and bought some plexiglass and put the vinyl on it for me. I have to say I was not at all surprised at how well it turned out. Matt is a very skilled craftsman. I love the sign and that Matt and the kids took the time and thought to make something that meant a lot to me. It will be soon hanging in my front room. I hope you can read what it says because I love it. After we opened all the gifts, we watched a lot of new movies, played lots of new games, and ate and ate. In the end it was a nice quiet Christmas, just the way we like it.

Jake's Wrestling Tournament

Here is a view of the gym with all the wrestling mats. There is room for 8 matches to go on at once. It gets pretty loud and crazy in the gym too. I still haven't decided if I like watching Jake wrestling. My maternal instincts kick in and I want to stop my kid from getting beat up. When he cries (which all the wrestlers do) I want to hug him and say "It's okay" and then another part of me wants to say "Suck it up and pin the kid!!".This post is actually about Jake's 2nd wrestling tournament. It was held at Legacy High School here in North Las Vegas. It was actually the same day Jake was baptized. He was done at 2pm ran home and showered and headed over to the stake center. That made for a crazy day.
Matt is one of the assistant coaches. This is what it looks like from my point of view watching Matt and another coach help Jake out on the mat.
Jake is trying to pin this kid....

and he does!!!!

After a wrestler wins a match they are suppose to sign the bout sheet and turn it in. Here is Jake with his winning bout sheet. He looks really excited he won huh?

Jake is actually doing pretty good for his first year. He can hold his own with kids who have wrestled for a year or two. He has gotten pinned a couple of times and plans on making sure that doesn't happen again.

Jake's baptism

Jake got baptized on December 5th. There we 5 kids from the stake getting baptized and Jake was the only one from our ward that was baptized that night. He was able to pick who he wanted to give the talk on the Holy Ghost, and who said the closing prayer. He also asked Emma to sing a song. It was a great afternoon/night filled with the spirit, lots of emotions and lots of family and friends. These 2 pictures are the only ones we took all night. I was so disappointed I didn't take pictures of all the family and friends who came and all the great food and fun we had at our house after the baptism.

I did want to mention all the Priesthood holders that were in the circle when Jake was confirmed, Jake was very particular about making sure certain people were in the circle.

Matt, Milo Medley, Bruce Summers, Michael Medley, Larry Ferguson, Jason Dean, Bishop Blackham, Mike Matthes, Monty Warr, Jason DeMille, and Richard Drew.

Road trip back to Las Vegas

On our way home we stopped to visit with Santa. This is Brandon's first year to really understand who Santa is... he sat on Santa's lap and told him he wanted a "Buzz Lightyear"and playdough. This particular Santa gave all the kids a small brown bag filled with peanuts and candy. When we were walking back to the car Brandon pointed to his brown bag and said "Is my Buzz in here?" So sweet and cute. He was not very happy that his Buzz was not in the bag.

We decided to take the scenic route home so we drove through Duck Creek and ended up in Cedar City. We have been to Duck Creek before and it is beautiful we just have never been there in a snow storm. We decided to stop and have lunch at a little cafe. The kids were able to decorate an ornament and hang it on the tree you see behind us.

While we were eating it continued to snow. By the time we were done there was a good amount of snow on the ground for Brandon to experience snow for the first time. We told him to touch the snow and see what it felt like. He touched it and then said "I want to go back to Las Vegas." Emma and Jake seemed to enjoy it though.

This is Brandon NOT enjoying the snow.

Here are just a few pictures of the beautiful snow covered mountains we drove through on our way home.

We kept wondering how many more miles until we would reach Cedar City. As you can see we never did find out since the sign was covered in snow. We also passed 2 snowplows. Makes you wonder if maybe we shouldn't have been on that road at the time...

It was a fun ride home. Well, at least for the kids and I. Matt might have a different opinion since he was the one driving in the snow.

Thanksgiving 2009

We went to Utah for Thanksgiving to be with Matt's family. Here is Emma and her cute cousins Radisyn and Kinley. This was our awesome feast that we all helped to make. Matt's sister Randi did all the decorations and it looked fantastic.

One of our Thanksgiving activities was going "shooting". Matt brought all of our guns up to Utah and we took Emma and Jake to go shoot them.

As you can see they were having a good time.

Matt enjoying himself.

Jake checking to see if my shot hit the bullseye or not. Probably NOT!!Everyone had a good time and wasted lots of ammunition.

More to come about our trip home.