Scary Santa?

The picture below is just the classic Santa terror picture. Kirsten thought it was silly being stuffed in his bag but Cruz didn't find it quite so funny. This Santa was actually a close friend of ours and Cruz goes to him all the time. He just looks a little different in a big red suit.The best part of this story is that after church, Santa stopped by. He said "hello" to the kids and then asked where the "old" man was. Jake was out feeding and watering the horses so I just knocked on the window and motioned for him to come in. He was quite put off since he was in the middle of it. Again, I motioned for him to come. So angrily he puts down his bucket and starts to come up the walk to the back door. In the meantime, I had Santa stand right by the back door. Jake opens it and gets a BIG "HO HO HO!" I have never seen Jake jump so high nor about fall over backwards. It was quite funny. Betsy and I had a good laugh.

Catching up

First of all.....MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Now...this has been a crazy past two weeks. We have been down to Utah and then we enjoyed having Betsy and her family up here for Christmas. We took it simple but fun. Jake told me that I have to space out my pictures and that my posts are too long. So, here is the first set. He has "instructed" me of one short post per day. [Is something wrong with this? :) ]
McKay spent Christmas in Utah with Mike and his family. We spent a few days at Grandma's before she had to go. Can you tell they are sisters? We missed her on Christmas but we are glad that she had a fun one.Nate, Betsy, and their kids came up for Christmas and spent a week with us. We even got an extra day with them when it started to snow yesterday and they decided not to go. We really enjoyed you guys! The house was way too quiet after you left. It was wierd.The first thing the guys did was go to C-A-L Ranch and buy a heavy industrial sled to pull the kids behind the four wheeler. They even lined it with a piece of foam so it didn't hurt when you went over bumps or rocks. Everyone enjoyed it.Kirsten, Aspen, and Cruz posing for a picture in the sled.

Cruz kept picking up the snow to show you. Kids always look so cute bundled up in snow clothes.

......This was the first couple days before Christmas. Sorry to keep you waiting......

Like Father ... Like Son

Today was clean out the garage day ... I have had the garage full of stuff since the day we moved in ... anyway I found one of my old baby books and decided that Cruz & I are two peas in a pod. You be the Judge.

Then again you might notice that my sisters and I all seem to have the same haircut in the original 1978 photo.

Reminiscing

...I was talking on the phone today to a friend and realized that it was a year ago that we were leaving Hawaii. Nice beaches, blue water, but most of all....the nice warm weather. I miss it. I am so jealous of those sitting in Jamaica right now getting ready to enjoy the holidays or those knowing they will be there. I am looking outside and seeing the dark gray storm clouds come. I can hear the wind howling and I am not looking forward for this afternoon when I am having to go to town. I'm not helping myself any either by looking thru last year pictures and seeing how nice it was.

Although I do have a few things I should be glad for. Exactly this day last year I had started my dreaded morning sickness. It was the day we had flown into Texas and picked up our suburban. I am not missing that at all. It is still fresh in my mind. I am not missing having a keen sense of smell and wishing I could spend all my time asleep so I wouldn't have to face the battle of my stomach.

Back to the nice part. Enjoy the beach for me! Hannah....do some of our famous boogie boarding, back before we knew how to do it. Aw the nice beach days.

Anyway we are looking forward to Betsy coming though. My kids are excited and I am excited that family came to us this year. I am looking forward to a nice simple Christmas and I wish everyone the same. Love you all and have fun.

tall, Tall, TALL!

Last night we had our Christmas singing, and this was Cruz's favorite song. Every other song had to be "Once there was a snowman". It was quite cute to see him want to take part.Katanya in her cute blue Santa hat. This was Jake's new babysitting method. Where's the baby? She actually loves this. She sits and plays and sucks on her fists while she watches you. I had to get dinner ready and I guess this worked for her. Baby in a bucket (new trend????) Every year we add a new picture and a thing that "represents" the year best. This is our sixth year of doing this and the tree is getting fuller. (You may remember me telling you about it last year.) Katanya was of course our "BIG" thing this year but since we already have two baby ornaments on the tree, we went with our second option, our FIRST house that we own (or will someday). The ornament goes right next to that year's picture. I still enjoy looking back over the years at how our family has grown.

Enjoy the rainbow!

Jake and I thought it would be fun to "give our blog a new look". We were messing around with the HTML codes and it is way over my head. Although I figured it out just enough to give it the colors I wanted. If you notice they match the them of our house. Also there is a little something for Karl on the link of your blog! Enjoy the rainbow!