Christmas Eve

After a phone call with Santa on Christmas Eve, the kids learned that his favorite kind of cookies are chocolate chip.  They each took a turn with the ingredients and we happened to have some special Christmas chocolate chips.  Many samples were had but enough were saved for Santa along with some carrots for the reindeer.  

Christmas 2008

Christmas is so much fun with little ones!  Joshua was so patient with us while we tried to sleep in a little.  Santa's gifts remained unwrapped under the tree so that the kids would know right away who they were from.  Josh received his Imaginext Bat Cave, Zach his marble run and Allie her Barbie doll.  They've been mesmerized by those gifts alone....especially Zach.  Thanks to the Grandma's and Grandpa's for their gifts as well.  We hope everyone had a very happy Christmas as we did!

More Birthday Fun

 Allie is definitely a girl.  She has all the tendencies of a girl despite having two older brothers.  She adores dresses and shoes.  So, a new birthday dress was definitely in order for our little girl's birthday.

                                                 

                                                       3 candles!!!

Josh's first birthday surprise

Joshua has always loved dinosaurs.  He loves them so much he considers them his "sons" even.  This was a great gift Nanna and Grand-dad!  Thanks for making him so happy:)

Birthday surprises

We have a few birthdays to celebrate during the month of December.  Allie is first on the 16th and then Josh on the 21st and of course Christmas when we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  This year we didn't have a party for Josh like we did last year.  Instead we planned to have pizza and cake for Allie and Josh at the Bigler's.  I ordered the cake from Costco and went to pick it up on Friday, December 12th.  It was while we were at Costco that Allie fell and got a concussion!  It was so scary and I honestly didn't think she had hit her head that hard.  So many people came to help and I thought it was just overwhelming Allie.  She actually fell asleep with her head on the handle bar of the cart.  So, we took her to see Chaz because I thought she wouldn't be so shy around him and we could really see how she was doing.  That is when she vomited.  So, a quick call to the dr who said she needed to the go the ER and off we went.  It actually went rather quickly since while we were in triage she vomited again upgrading her status to emergent rather than urgent.  She was given some medicine for the vomiting and had a ct scan.  The scan came out normal....what a blessing!  Allie was pretty much back to her normal self after that and we were able to continue on with the party.   We just had to watch her activity level.  I do believe that something was either knocked loose or knocked into place as a result of the concussion as she has suddenly become more talkative....almost to the point of talking back to her mom actually.  Some of her new phrases: "Mother!  We have a problem here!" and "Oh my gosh!  What happened to my dvd player?!?" (I had just turned off her Barbie movie).  She has also been calling me "mother"  a lot....I think that comes from a Barbie movie too.  

o tannenbaum

Due to our upcoming trip back east, we were going to opt out of a Christmas tree this year and just use our small plastic tree. After some debating and thinking that maybe Allie might try to carry the tree around the house, we decided to get a small tree. This way the kids would be able to decorate it a little more easily and we wouldn't be out too much money either. So, here's our 5 foot tree proudly decorated by Josh, Zach and Allie.

Santa Clause Is Coming To Town....on a helicopter!

One of our family traditions is to watch Santa make his annual trek into town the day after Thanksgiving. He flies in on KSL's Chopper 5. He then hangs out at the mall for all the boys and girls to visit until the big night!

Before and After

We made it almost 6 years without a major haircutting incident with our children. Yesterday that record was broken by Allie. At least with the boys we could just shave them if they did something similar. Fortunately we have a very talented friend who happens to be Allie's nursery leader at church who worked a miracle around Allie's attempt at creativity. Thanks Andrea!