Christmas Morning!

So, another Christmas has come and gone! This post is kind of long, so if you don't really care about seeing lots of videos of my kids, you might just want to skip this one! I will start out with some pictures of the decorations around the house!

So many of my pictures turned out blurry! I don't think I am meant to live in a technological age! But here is kind of a wide shot of the living room. I wish it was clearer. Sorry! (Of course, to Mommy it probably looks totally normal! Hahaha!)

Meggie gave me the idea of hanging ornaments from the mantle. It only cost about $4 and I really like how it turned out!

Tristan took this picture of Alaina, and I just thought it was cute!!


My kids are like every store Santa's dream come true! Alaina ran over to him so fast and jumped up on his lap and gave him the biggest hug! They all love seeing Santa!

This is video of Christmas Eve night. All of the videos are really dark, and I couldn't get them to lighten up any. But that's okay, as the best part is hearing Tristan squeal with delight! Also, notice in this video how quickly Tristan strips out of his old jammies to put on his new ones.


Alex asked me to "take a picture of Alex happy" after he got his new jammies on.  Tristan was sooo excited to get new "slip and falls", as he calls footed sleepers (because his others are so old that he can run and slide in them). Well, of course these being new, they still had the non-slip grip on the bottoms of the feet. After trying to fall a few times with no success, he came to me very disappointed. I told him that if he would just wait a while these would be slippery, too. He looked longingly at his old, holey jammies and asked, "Can I change back into my old ones?" Ahhh, kids! He also asked me all night long if it had been long enough for them to be slippery yet and then would run into the kitchen to test it out. By now he has accepted that they won't slip yet, and is very happy to wear them. ALL the time.

Alex's "happy" picture

Everyone in their new jammies

After jammies, we read the Christmas story and had a fire. After we talked about Christmas and what the scriptures mean, Tristan asked, "Mommy, is the baby Jesus in your belly?" Maybe we need to go over it a few more times.
Christmas morning before the kids came in. Compare this to the picture later of "after".

Going through stockings. They got candy, oranges, bubble bath, flashlights and bouncy balloons in their stockings. They really loved the balloons a lot. That's what Tristan is practically screaming about in the next video.

Of course, the moment we have all waited for, for the last year. Alex getting his "red dinosaur"!! Alex was all business, but I thought Tristan was going to have a heart attack!! I wish I could have got a video of Tristan when he opened "Up".  He literally screamed. It was great. I think Seth thought it was worth coming just for that.

I need to let you know, that after Alex opened his dinosaur, he would not touch another present. We tried to get him to open others, and he would just say, "No, thank you," and keep playing. He even kicked a present out of the way that was in the path of Spike.  I did get him to open one other present, and as he was opening it he said, "Open present, then you can play with the red dinosaur," as if it was some torture he had to get through so that he could get back to what was really important! He absolutely loooves his dinosaur and plays with it nearly nonstop until the batteries run out, and then he sits as though it is someone's death bed, watching and waiting for the light to turn green, meaning that it is done charging. It takes about 4 hours, so this took a lot of time the first couple of days. Now he will go and do other things while he waits for it to charge. Today he let Alaina hold the remote control for about 2 minutes, which was the first time anyone else has gotten to touch it. Except for Danny, of course, who played with it quite a lot on Christmas Eve before we wrapped it!


One of the many fun uses we have found for Spike, the dinosaur. :)

We all had such a great Christmas and really felt the Christmas spirit this year, I think. We loved having Seth here with us! We loved having Ben and Linda over the night before and seeing so many others on Christmas Day. We were sad to not see everyone. I hope sometime soon we can all get together! We were really sad that night when everyone was gone. :(  Where did all the fun people to do things with go?

So, here are a few things I have learned this year:
1. The best thing about working is having a day off.
2. You should always wear gloves when stringing and unstringing lights from alpine trees. They hurt!
3. It takes 30 minutes to unstring the lights on one alpine tree and 5 minutes for the new lights you put on to stop working.
4. Alex can find many things to do with a string of white lights, including but not limited to- taping them to his snowglobe, stringing them around his mom's head and attaching them to a large, inflatable beach ball.
5. It doesn't matter how much you prepare, it is written in your eternal destiny that you will have to go to Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve.
6. There will still be something you forgot to buy come Christmas Day. And when you break down and run to Walgreens to get it, they will tell you that someone just came in and bought all the last of it.
7. The amount of presents doesn't matter. Unless you are Danny. And then more is still better.

8. The Christmas Spirit is real and it is still fun as a grown-up getting things for people and getting little things from people you love. Somehow it still makes me feel all warm and cozy inside, just like when I was a little kid.

9. Possibly the best part of Christmas is after eating too much, with warm fuzzy socks on, laying there while the kids play and people talk all around you and drifting off to sleep and feeling that all is right with the world.

This was the last picture we got before the camera memory was all full.  I love how oblivious all the kids are to the total destruction around them. And frankly, us too.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, too and felt the spirit of Christmas in your homes and in your hearts! Here's to another wonderful, exciting year in life!!

Ukelele Boy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTCzJWrgFbE

Go and watch this, it will make you smile :-)

This is Danny, by the way :-P

This is Mel! Hi! I am alive!! You need to go watch this, just because it is so funny and cute. The more you watch it, the funnier it is. It will bring a smile to your face!! And we all need that sometimes!

Yes, we are still alive in Bloggerland

Well, hello there! Nice to see ya'! Sorry it's taken me so long to get some of these pictures up, but my excuse is definitely that my computer is so infuriatingly slow! It takes a very long time to do anything.
We had a great Halloween, despite still fighting a little sickness. Here are our fall festivities in pictures!

Alex has been looking forward all year to carving pumpkins again. He drew his own face on his pumpkin and cut most of it out, with help for the mouth.

This picture is fuzzy, but doesn't he look so happy to be working on his pumpkin?


A few days before Halloween we took the kids to a Pumpkin Walk in Shelley. It was only a can of food to get in and they had pumpkins everywhere painted and dressed up to look like movie scenes and favorite characters, with backdrops and everything. And we all got a full size candy bar, too! Maybe instead of having us bring food to give to the hungry, they should put the money from the candy bars to a good use. But I didn't complain and took mine happily!

In addition to the pumpkin scenes, they had lots of these cut-outs (I can't remember what they're called) and the kids thought that was fun, once they figured it out.

Danny, finally in touch with his feminine side.

My two wild things, embracing their true character.

The final result on the pumpkins. Alex's is on the right and Tristan's is on the left. I "helped" Lainey with hers, and I hope you can see it all right, because it turned out pretty cool.

Lainey in her kitty costume. Whenever someone asked her if she was a kitty, she would twirl and say, "Meow."

Tristan was a dragon and wanted to breathe fire. With my limited artistic abilities, this is what we came up with in 3 minutes. No one with or married to anyone with artistic talent is allowed to look. (This includes you, Maria!) Tristan was happy with the final result and breathed fire on anyone who asked if he was a dragon. Just doing our little part to help spread germs. :)

All three, ready to head out for candy!

I kind of forgot to take pictures once we were trick-or-treating, but I got this one of Lainey. This was how she held her bag most of the time.

That's all the pictures I have! The kids loved it and were totally happy to just do two streets (Evergreen and Pinion). Tristan asked the people handing out the candy several times if they were going to come with us or if they would like to come to our house, and always told everyone "Happy Halloween!" before he left. Alex always tried to reach in and get the piece of candy he wanted the most, and once after Tristan got his candy he stood there and then asked the lady if he could have some more. (She gave him some, but afterwards we talked to him about being polite.) Alex also told several of the ladies as we were leaving, "Bye, Grandma!" Luckily, they all were Grandmas and just laughed. Lainey just thought it was great fun, but couldn't understand why we wouldn't stop after the first house and let her just eat her piece of candy.

After Tricks-or-Treats we went to the Campbells, where they all dumped out their bags to see their loot and eat too much. On the way home, Tristan was sitting with his bag next to him and said, in a very weary kind of voice, "I don't think I will eat any more, or I am going to be sick." I kept seeing his fingers twitch toward his bag, and then he would sigh and drop his hand back down.

That night we took all the candy from their bags except for their bags of popcorn, hot cocoa and four or five pieces of chocolate each. The next morning Tristan asked me, "Does Daddy have all the candy?"

"Yes," I said.

"Where did he put it?"

"I don't know, Tristan."

"Oh." And that was all he ever said. I love it when they're little!

They can earn a piece or two a day now and that makes them happy and keeps the memory alive.

Oh, but Alex asked every night for at least the next week to go trick-or-treating and seemed very confused that this great idea wasn't done every night! I'm inclined to agree.

I do, You do, Who wants Swine Flu?!!

Yes, we are having our own little party here in Idaho. Actually, once we got over the actual being sick part, and it's only been me and Alex so far, this whole self-quarantine, don't go out in public, cancel all your meetings thing is pretty okay. We're a little stir-crazy at times, and I don't want to know how many movies the kids have watched, but it's really nice to be freed from some of your responsibilities and appts. and things without feeling guilty. The last time I left the house was on Thursday to go to the doctor, and that is the only place I have been since last Tuesday. Literally. As I have started feeling better, I have complained to Danny that I want to be sick again because it is so nice for a change to not have to worry about anything except staying alive! As soon as I feel better, I start feeling this pressure to get lots of "things"done and be all productive, but I am fighting it.
Yesterday we made a fire and brownies and resisted eating the rest of them until 11 this morning, which I thought was pretty good. We've played Candy Land with the kids and Danny and I have been playing Scrabble. We found out we're not that good, but at least we're evenly matched!! Every other minute finds one of us banging our fist on the table saying, "If only I had this one letter!!" See, the problem with Scrabble is that even though you can think of nice, big long words, you never have the letters for them. So you have to know lots of weird short words, like "zareba", which is a small enclosure made out of bushes in Northern Africa. I did make a word that was worth 75 points- it was "quotes" with the "q" on a double letter square and the whole word on a triple word play. Definitely the highlight of my week!! And several times we have nearly spelt out swear words in desperation, but have always been able to put something else down. (But not until after we told the other one what we were thinking of using.)
Alex has been watching Oklahoma a lot and really likes "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' " and has started singing it around the house in his best Gordon McRae-like voice. I love it, but Danny can't stand listening to the same parts on the tv anymore, so he gave Alex headphones so that he can watch the tv but we can't hear. Now we just have to get Alex to understand not to use the headphones when other people want to watch something.
I've started reading Catching Fire and wish that when I was sicker and just in bed I had felt like reading then!
Other than that, we're just laying around, kind of enjoying being left alone by the world. Having something contagious is the next best thing to moving out in the woods by yourself. We're thinking about catching ebola next!

Wild and Wonderful West Virginia

Here is my trip in pictures. Unfortunately, I really don't know why, a lot of my pictures turned out so blurry I had to delete them. And, I forgot to take pictures a lot of the time because we were having too much fun! But, here you go with the few that I did get.

Notice Audrey is giving me the "look." She was very excited to see me, I hear, until I actually got there. But she warmed up after a little while.

Anya crabby pants
I think these next two pictures qualify as "wild and wonderful," while serving the dual purpose of paying Megan back for a couple of pictures she put on of me. Hehehe.. revenge is sweet. :) But those cookies do look really good right now. When Danny saw this picture he asked if Megan was using the cheese sauce as toothpaste. I didn't want to say anything but, well, they are in West Virginia now. They say that toothbrushes were invented in West Virgina, because if it had been anywhere else they would have been called teethbrushes.

Their very pretty and huuge back yard. I must have taken this picture the one day it didn't rain while I was there. The day I left it was 70 degrees. I don't think the weather likes me.

Huuge deck

Audrey wears her pink cowboy boots everywhere and gets lots of compliments on them.

This is Audrey "smiling" for the camera. It looks painful.

This is blurry, but it is Anya putting her dolly in the stroller. Very cute.

Aiden's room- I love it and so does he!

Anya's room. I took pictures of Audrey's room, but my stuff was kind of everywhere, so I won't post those. I'll let Meggie put some on. But if she doesn't soon, I can threaten her with the pictures I have of the room NOT CLEAN!!! (Insert evil laugh.)

The family room as seen from the stairs. The kids had little gold coins on the floor.

I think this is the only picture I got of Aiden that wasn't too blurry to use. He was at school the first two days and I think that he thought we just stayed at home while he was gone, waiting for him, because when he got home on Friday he told me, "Aunt Mel!! You have to come to my magic show tonight because you have been here two days and you haven't done anything fun yet!!"

This is a horrible picture of me, but I am putting it on here to show how tired I was on Sunday. After this we took naps. Look at the bags under my eyes! Yikes!

Just to reassure everyone that Brooks is still the same Brooks. Whew! We were so worried!
Very blurry pictures of some of the party food. It was all soo good! Relish trays and spinach dips and chips and cookies and homemade bread and cornbread and caramel corn and pumpkin cake and chili and hot chocolate and root beer! It makes me want to have a party!

Here are some of the pictures of the cool old houses. Mommy, you would loove them! I wanted to go inside all of them and Megan tried to convince me to go knock on one house and ask them about it and maybe they would invite us inside to look around. But I was too scared. I'll bet when Danny comes next year he'll go and ask for us. I love my husband!

I know Meggie put pictures of this one on her blog, but I just love it!! You need to zoom in so you can see all the cute details. This was the one that she tried to get me to knock on the door of. The next picture is of the back of the house. The picture doesn't capture how really huugge it was. You have to look to the far right and see that behind the trees it keeps going further and the bushes cut off the bottom fourth floor. The camera couldn't get it all in. Just the garage part is like my whole house. Can I have it, Danny?

On our hike, the day I left. Wahhh! See, Anya is upset just thinking about it!

This was the last picture we took together before I left for the plane.

There were so many fun things we did together that we didn't get any pictures of. Like going to a million cute little stores, watching High School Musical 1 & 2, craft stores, furniture stores, lots of stores where we didn't have any money and wanted lots, the big neighborhood garage sale, looking at houses and so on. Isn't it amazing that I could visit Meggie across the country and that we would find all the same things to do?! Best of all was just being there and visiting together and getting to see her family and friends and the wonderful new life they have there! I can't wait to come again next summer with my family and stay for longer. And this time I will have my huge truck that I can stuff full with all of my garge sale finds!! Thanks for letting me come stay Meggie! I did have the time of my life!