"Pre" Merry Christmas

Kathy making a "spider snowman"

Alexis waiting patiently to open gifts

Alexis stuffing her mouth with marshmellows off pretzel skewer

Snowman with sled

Alexis's fun little mallowman!

These blogs are out of order... but I just realized that I hadn't blogged about this yet... and it seems like it happened forever ago. I wanted to document for posterity's sake. :)

The weekend before Christmas, we celebrated with David's family in Phoenix. It was a great time. We were able to go one night to the Temple Lights. Alexis LOVES Christmas lights and she got her fill here. There were lots of people but that didn't seem to bother her. It was super colds too, but again, still didn't bother her. We were able to go with David's sister Kathy, her son Dahmnaic, and David's mom. It was a nice time and the display seems to get better every time. Timothy slept right through most of it, but that is good because it made keeping him bundled up that much easier.

Saturday was a day of festivities. We made some fun marshmallow snowmen and sleighs. Alexis loved eating the fixings more than anything else. I don't think she has seen or had so much sugar in all her life. Don't worry though, we balanced it out with salt too. After the sugar we made lots of delicious pizzas. They were SO good. Kathy and Daniel made an AMAZING southwestern-ish pizza. It had black beans, YUMMY chicken, lettuce, chips and some other secret ingredients. I have to get the recipe for it. It was even good the day after, cold!

Timothy had his first real experience with stairs. He made it all the way up the stairs by himself. He isn't so good at the whole down part though. He wanted to get into everything and eat everything. He may have even consumed one Marsha's earrings. David's sister Marsha decided to let Timothy play with one of her earrings and then it "disappeared". Not sure where it went but no one could find it. Guess that is one lesson learned by a "pending mother". Don't let kids play with small objects.

That night we had a pre-Christmas and opened presents with family. We told favorite Christmas stories and memories from the past. It was a nice time.

Sunday we attended church at David's folks ward. Their choir is incredible. I guess it doesn't hurt that the choir director has been at it for years and some of the choir members are voice majors at the university. It was a great choir. We were also able to visit with David's grandparents before leaving. It was a nice visit and fun "pre-Christmas".

- - -CHRISTMAS EVE - - -

Christmas eve was a nice quiet one at home. We wanted Alexis to understand the spiritual part of Christmas so we tried to read the Luke story of the birth of Christ. While we read it we tried to "act out" the story with her little nativity set. She wanted to play more than listen so we did our best to help her understand why we really celebrate Christmas. She seemed to understand and even talked about it later. Timothy just wanted to eat all the characters. That seems to be all he does lately... place EVERYTHING directly into his mouth. It was a nice quiet Christmas eve. Children sure bring the real meaning of Christmas into the home.