Season greetings!

Another Christmas has come and gone and we all hope that anyone who sees this had an enjoyable time with friends and family and felt the true spirit of the holiday.

We had a great time spending Christmas Eve with my parents by going to see "Bolt" in the theater and going to McGrath's for dinner and ending up at their house to open presents. Of course if was back home to open PJ's and on to bed, for the kids that is! Wrapping for Santa presents didn't take too long and the long awaited day came. After opening presents here and having an enjoyable relaxing morning, it was back to My parents for dinner. My sister Bettie and her family gave my parents a webcam for Christmas so Kirk got that hooked up on their end and Voila! modern technology at its finest! It was kind of strange seeing each other on the computer talking to each other as in person-although you are 1,000 miles away!

This weekend ends our Christmas celebrations with a big bang. We have Kirk's family party tomorrow from 10-2 and then we are going to stay at a hotel in salt lake thanks to Kirk's brother Kevin as he has ton of points through work. So as he and his family will be staying there also we will go to dinner and see the lights on Temple square. Sunday go to church and back to my parents (hope they won't be too sick of us! :)).

This time right after Christmas always makes me pause and think about the year that is ending and the year to come as with many other people I'm sure. I know I have been very blessed with a wonderful, loving, caring husband and 3 beautiful children and family and friends that are close by that the kids get to know and love also. Most of all I want to express my love and appreciation for my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. What a blessing it is to know I am truly a daughter of God! His hand is in my life every day through it all.

More to come with pictures

William

(William insisted I take this picture with his underwear on his head! )

I don't know maybe it's the third and last child thing but our William is definitely the one that entertains us. I was blow drying my hair today and as I am finished I look out into my bedroom and thre is Will with a pair of his spiderman underwear on his head bouncing around my bed. When he realized I saw him he laughed and said he wanted to wear them when we went out to do our errands! The funny thing about this is that there were no other kids to "egg" him on he just did it- because!

So we made it out in to the snowstorm and within half an hour he says things like "what if we drove our car up stairs?", "What if someone put on a Mickey Mouse head?". my favorite "mom what if I was in a movie and you saw me on TV? me-"I don't know-I think I would know if you were in a movie" Will-"Yeah (laughing)dad and I would be in it and we would shake our booties at you! " That's william-just random thoughts!

Our lives would be so boring without him!

Kirk's"Piggies"

As you can see by Kirk's foot,it's seen better days but when it was his choice you can't feel too bad for him-just a little! :)

Kirk has what's called hammer toes where his toes don't lie flat (thanks to genetics!)so he heard about a study they were doing where they would operate on your toes so that they can test a different way to administrate a pain medication. It was definitely one of those "window of opportunities" as they pay him to do the surgery and follow up which was done by a podiatrist in Salt Lake.

I suppose Kirk and I were pretty naive as it coems to recovery time for these things though because we were thinking that he would be out of work 1 week-ha! Now he has been instructed to stay home for the 3rd week now! His toes are healing wonderfully but it has some infection due to the nature of the surgery since he has 3 sets of stiches close together going down his 3 middle toes. What's driving him crazy is well, first of all he can't drive so I do everywhere and he can't move as fast or be on his feet for very long.

Was it worth it? Well ask him in a couple of weeks...!

Ella the Escape Artist

This is Ella our hamster that the kids bought this summer. For the most part she is great to have but I have to admit hamsters are waayyy smarter than I ever thought they were! She has escaped about 4 times now and by now we know that when she does she will be back soon looking for food/water so we don't stress too much until this past week. Since she has escaped she is always trying to get out of her cage and she somehow manages to pop one of the plastic covers off.

Well, the beginning of this week she escaped and was gone for a full day until at 1am Kirk and I hear "scritch, scratch" coming from our dresser in our bedroom! Kirk has had foot surgery (more to come on that) so he couldn't investigate so I am carefully opening drawers and I look down and there she is looking up at me like "what are we looking for?". glad that I found her without smooshing her I put her back and all is well. Well she liked that idea a little too much and last night about 12:30 am I wake up to "scritch,scratch" from our dresser-again! After a while of chasing her down I get her and put her back and we shut our bedroom door all the way. Half an hour later what do I wake up to again? scritch,scratch from our dresser AGAIN!!! She had squeezed underneath our door and went back to our dresser! I thought my early morning times had been in the past now that my kids are older! UUGGHHH Back she goes again and Kirk hobbled after me and we finally "secured" her escape hatches. I didn't know hamsters were so much like kids.

And to think the kids want a dog now......

Ohh facebook

I just realized that it has been a while since I have posted anything and I realized it is because I have been sucked into the addicting world of Facebook! For those of you who haven't ventured into this world it is quite entertaining to find old friends, play games etc. but as I said highly addicting.

My parents are in Israel with a tour and since they come back the day before Thanksgiving I get to do my first Thanksgiving in my 12 years of marriage! Thanksgiving Day happens to be my parents 40th anniversary so I was trying to surprise them by having my sisters and their families come out as a surprise but unfortunately with work schedules,it didn't work out. Although disappointing I am actually more relieved as I don't feel like I have to"paint my walls, re-do my seats on my dining room chairs, fix this that etc..."-why is it we tend to put all this stress on ourselves trying to make everything perfect when it always tends to turn out just right?

Humor of a 4 yr old

Today after taking Mackenzie to a birthday party the boys and I were in the car going home when the boys starting telling knock-knock jokes to each other. Now a 7 and 4 yr old telling jokes to each other causes laughter in itself but when the 4 year old (William) decided to make one up you don't know if it should crickets chirping because it makes no sense at all or laughing because, once again, it makes no sense at all. An example provided by William today: W: knock, knock
M: who's there?
W: cookie
M: cookie who?
W: (long pause) Banana!(as loud as he can say it)

Of course Mitchell and I just had to look at each other and start laughing hysterically at the absurdity of it as William thought it was the funniest thing he ever said!