Twas the week before Christmas

We had a few "divide and conquer" nights this week with all of the Christmas recitals and activities scheduled.  Thursday night was the Orhcestra/Choir concert at the high school, but it was also Enlight Ballroom's Christmas Show at a venue across town.  Jenna is in both the orchestra AND the choir, but she is also in Ballroom so she had to make a choice. The fact that her grade in two classes at school was dependent on her attendance at the concert made it a bit easier to decide, but she would rather have danced with her team instead. Since they couldn't just take her out of the routines they had to have an alternate come and dance in her place. She was sad to miss it, but what can you do?

Britton and Jenna leaving for the concert with AJ photobombing.

Korinne did dance at the ballroom show with her team so Adam took the boys to see her while I went to the orchestra concert.

They did "Believe" from the Polar Express with the choir, orchestra and the band which ended up being really cool.

On Friday night Britton and Jenna had a piano recital at 5:00 p.m. and Adam and I had a formal Christmas party at 6:00 p.m.  The Christmas recital is always a duet recital so Britton and Jenna played together on two different pianos.  This isn't the best picture, but it was where I was sitting so we could slip out after they performed.  Britton is on the piano on the right and Jenna is playing on the left.

Fortunately some friends of ours filmed the song from a much better angle.

Emily, Carrie, Lacie, Hilary

This is the only picture I have from the party hosted by our good friends Dave and Erica. Dave was in rare form and we laughed harder than we have laughed in a long time.

Saturday was the day we finished the last of our Christmas preparations. At one point I said to Korinne, "Hey, it's Christmas Eve Eve" and she responded with "Actually it's Christmas Adam today because Adam came before Eve." Ha! I laughed at that one. Not only is December 23rd Joseph Smith's Birthday, but it's also "Christmas Adam".

I really liked having Christmas Eve on a Sunday this year.  We only had 1 hour of church and Adam didn't have any meetings so he was home all day.  It felt like an extra bonus Christmas day. 

Adam having some "boy time" with Jameson and AJ watching the Polar Express.

Adam also made some sugar cookies (again) with the kids for Santa.

He also made sugar cookies on Saturday to give out to his home teaching families and a few others in the ward.  I had to giggle when one of the ladies called me afterwards and left a message about how delicious the cookies were and asking me for the recipe because in her mind if Adam shows up with cookies then naturally I was the one who made them.  I laughed because anyone who knows us knows that Adam is the one who does all of the baking around here.  I stick with the cooking.

We spent the last 2 Christmases wondering how AJ was doing at the orphanage in Ethiopia and wishing he could be home with us. I can't tell you how nice it was to have him home this year all safe and sound.

I kind of love that as soon as we got out the hors d'ouevres on Christmas Eve Jenna, Korinne and Jameson all quietly disappeared and came back in their ugly Christmas sweaters.  We got them for Christmas Eve last year and I think we started a new tradition.  I went and put one on, too, but Adam and Britton slacked a little this year. I guess I need to find one for AJ next year. 😊

Jameson and AJ playing with the Little People Nativity

Super Jmo!

After our dinner of Reubens we tried to act out the nativity story from Luke 2 but things quickly got out of hand.

Before long AJ (our baby Jeaus) was riding the donkey and everything else was in shambles. It seems chaos is the new normal around our house and Christmas Eve was no different.

Jameson has been asking for footy pajamas lately so I went with that theme this year. They are hard to find in big kid sizes but we have an outlet store in town that sells them up to adult sizes. Jenna was a good sport and loved her footy pajamas, but I got Britton something else because I knew he would only wear them once to please me and then never again.

It is darn near impossible to get a good picture of the kids in their Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve.  I have video that shows the chaos during our attempt.  Standing still and smiling is just too much for about 60% of our kids.

The kids lined up early Christmas Morning (6:15 a.m.)

This was AJ's very first Christmas and he was surprised and delighted with everything.

Britton with his loot.

Jenna showing off her new latin ballroom dance shoes.

Jameson was thrilled with his new Paw Patrol boat.

Korinne had already changed into her new clothes and was pleasantly surprised to get an echo dot.

AJ loved everything and had a great time unwrapping his gifts.

Adam finishing off the nog (only slightly staged).

Usually Grandma is here and takes care of the Christmas morning breakfast ring, but since she is on a mission this year it was up to me.  I hate to admit it but I've never actually made a breakfast ring myself, but don't worry, I nailed it. 😀

We missed Adam's rolls on Thanksgiving this year, but he didn't disappoint with the Christmas edition.

Every year Adam makes fancy Christmas jello for our Christmas dinner. It's one of our longest running traditions and his 3 layered jello this year was one for the books.

We decided the green, red and yellow jello was a nice shout out to Ethiopia. 😊

 We had a great Christmas day with games, puzzles, movies and general merriment.  It was nice to Skype with both sets of Grandparents and stay in our pajamas all day long (except for Adam who actually got dressed for the day and Korinne who wanted to wear her new clothes).

Merry Christmas to all!!

Music and Mayhem

When I blog I usually look at the pictures on my camera for the week and start putting together a post from there.  This is why some of my posts aren't very detailed and I often skip over a lot of our general business from day to day.  This week as I looked at the pictures I found that I had done a good job of documenting the mishaps, but not much else. 😊

This is what our tree looked like the day we decorated it on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

This is what it looks like now.

The lights are out of place and the ornaments are all over the house. Basically, it's a disaster.  This is the first Christmas tree AJ has ever had and he just can't leave it alone. Actually, AJ has a hard time leaving anything alone.  He is just like Curious George, constantly in motion and making a mess, but so curious he just can't help himself. 

I think he had some type of batter all over himself and his clothes in this picture.  Some days he will go through multiple outfits.

Often times I'm cleaning up one mess only to turn around and find he made another while I was occupied with the first.  Such was the case when I found this mess in the laundry room.

He threw a full bowl of cereal off of the table one morning and it was everywhere! 

AJ is busy, busy, busy.  He has poured out entire bottles of essential oils, dumped out the fish food twice, broken several dishes, damaged our nice TV, poured out a bottle of coconut oil moisturizing spray we use on the boys hair, broke the head off of one of our wise men in our newest nativity set, dumped out the laundry detergent, sprayed furniture oil all over the floor, spilled grape juice on the carpet and gotten into the dishwasher detergent multiple times and that is just this week!

This kind of gives you a glimpse into my life right now. It's not glamorous and it certainly isn't fun but it will be worth it in the end. AJ's English is getting better every day.  This week he told me a shark has a "funny nose" and he will often say both, "Thank you" and ."You're welcome" when you give him something.  He mimics whatever we say and is putting 2 and 3 words together. 

Britton had a cello recital yesterday.  As we still don't own a cello I don't get to hear him play very often (he practices at school during flex time using the school cellos and his private cello teacher has an extra cello he is using for lessons and recitals).  

Playing Vivaldi with another student and piano accompaniment.

There are 17 cellos in his orchestra at the high school and Britton is the section leader this year. It is kind of a bummer that I don't get to hear him play very often because I really love the cello.  He is good enough now that his teacher told us not to buy a student cello, but the better quality cellos are way out of our price range so we are left trying to make do with what we have available to us.

Jameson played in his last basketball game of the season yesterday. Here is a team picture with coach Josh Jones.

Christmas is a week away. Are we ready? Nope. This next week should be interesting to say the least. Adam went to his last 6:00 a.m. Sunday meeting this morning and is excited about moving to 8:00 a.m. meetings in January. Our ward will move to the 11:00 a.m. schedule and we are all thrilled about it.

Winter Wonderland

After being spoiled by the weather in November winter arrived in a big way this week.  It started snowing last Sunday and temperatures quickly dropped to bitter levels.  I know it has only been a week, but already it feels like winter's been going on forever. 

The boys ready to play in the snow.

After a day or two the snow developed these cool crystals on the surface.  I've never seen anything like it but they now cover every bit of snow on the ground.

Jameson had a bit of a rough start with rec basketball this season.  We didn't realize that we needed to prepare him a little bit before throwing him into a new sport. We showed up to the first game at the beginning of November thinking he would just get in there and try it out but he felt lost and self conscious and didn't want to ever go back.  He refused to go to the next game, or the next, or the next.  He even chose doing chores and having no privileges all day over going to his basketball game.  During this time we worked with him so he would feel more comfortable. Adam took him to the church a few times and Korinne has been holding 30 min. practice sessions with him helping him learn to dribble and shoot the ball. Yesterday he finally felt ready to go to his basketball game which was good because they only had 4 other players show up. He played the entire game and by the end he looked a lot more relaxed and was enjoying himself.    

There is only 1 game left, but I think progress has been made so we will take it.

Last night was our ward Christmas Party. The theme was the Polar Express and they did a really good job putting it together.

They invited everyone to come in their Pajamas.

Our 2 neighbors, McKenna and Trisha planned the whole thing so we were busy helping them get everything done. As our reward we got a lot of leftovers. 😀

'Tis the Season

So far our weather this year has been unseasonably warm.  One day last week after getting home from early morning basketball Adam picked up the leaves one last time with the lawn mower.  AJ, still in his pajamas, wasn't about to miss out on the fun.

Like father, like son.

Like any 2 year old AJ doesn't like to hear the word, "No".  When I wouldn't let him go with Dad to work one morning he went and got a sleeve of crackers from the pantry and broke them up into tiny little pieces just to show me that he was NOT happy about it. I get it, AJ, but you still can't go to work with Dad. Just sayin'.

Christmas decorations are up!

AJ likes him some hot chocolate.  Finding him in the cupboard making a huge mess from trying to eat hot chocolate mix straight from the container is, unfortunately, not a rare occurrence.

He is always so proud of himself when he does something naughty. 

A sister in our ward, Shari Wilkinson, passed away this week and the funeral was yesterday.  This was Adam's 5th funeral as Bishop and he always does a nice job speaking and taking care of things,  Shari was hospitalized on Monday and on Tuesday Adam felt that he needed to go see her even though it was the middle of the day. He did so and she passed away 2 hours later. Had he waited until after work to go it would have been too late.

Last night we went to the LDS Genesis Group's Christmas party.  Santa made a visit to the party and had gifts for all of the boys and girls.

AJ's fist visit with Santa Claus. 

Jameson in line to visit Santa.

Santa spent quite a bit of time talking to each child.  I overheard him telling Jameson, among other things, to work hard in school and get an education. Clearly he is a very wise Santa Claus. And he didn't give them a bunch of candy either, he gave them toothbrushes and coloring books. Yup, pretty much my favorite Santa ever.

AJ had no fear of the big guy, but then again, there isn't much that AJ is afraid of. He walked around last night like he owned the place.