Merry Christmas!

Unfortunately the only Christmas cards that made it out this year was to family members and we barely got those out to them. 

To everyone else- I am super sorry and I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas!

One gift to us this year is that Seth is getting ready to be potty trained!

This morning he leaned over to his daddy and wispered

"I see poo-pee!"
We think he meant "I be poo-pee!" and we pretend it was said with some attitude

matches Hyrums statement of 

"I didn't pass gas-I burped out of my bottom!"

Playing Catch up

The boys asked me this morning what the biggest number in the world was. MD thought it was a billion. Hyrum thought it was a million billion.

Well I feel like I have a million billion post I have to update on.  But really I am just going to post a million billion pictures.

We made picture frame ornaments.

Hand print ornaments

These did not turn out like I was hoping :)

We wrote letters to Grandparents

Decorated the Christmas tree

And today we are delivering cookies.

One more week-The boys can hardly stand it.

Reindeer Games!

I am way past falling behind. I believe we are on Day 7 for On the way to Christmas. On that day we decided to treat Santa's reindeer to a special treat-Homemade reindeer food made by the Huish Boys.

As we were putting the food out for the reindeer the boys made a break for i! I think they felt like they had been trapped inside too long :)

Reindeer food recipe:

Oatmeal

Sprinkles

Glitter 

(So the reindeer can see it while they are flying overhead)

Meeting Santa

Our ward had a lovely breakfast which proceeded the actual meeting of Santa.

There were candy canes put in the middle of the table as a centerpiece that the boys used as a before breakfast snack. Thank goodness the boys also love fruit with their candy.

Waiting to meet Santa Claus. They had no clue what was going on.

After MD sat down with Santa he decided Santa WAS real.

He says that he knows he is dead but he is also real. Can't beat that logic :)

And we left the party at the same time as Santa. The boys were in awe when they realized Santa lives right here in Payson and drives a white minivan.

On the way to Christmas-Day 6

Letters to Santa!

The conversation I had with my boys:

"Today we are writing letters to Santa!"

Boys:"Why?"

"Because we need to write him a letter so he knows what you want for Christmas!"

Boys: "But Santa's  not real."

"Yes but you wanted to play Santa-This is how you play."

Boys: "Oh. OK. How does Santa get the letter?"

"We give it to one of his elf's who-"

Boys:"But elves aren't real either!"

"Boys do you want to play or not!!!"

They decided they did want to play and got REALLY excited when they started thinking about all the things they were going to ask Santa for.

(Kind of reminded me of Calvin and Hobbes when Calvin makes out his Christmas letter. Luckily my boys don't know what a flame thrower is :)

 Since I had to spell out most of what they wanted I kept the list pretty short.

Michael's says: 

Dear Santa

candy a lot

race car

airplane

Michael

 Hyrums:

Dear Santa

Rocket

Candy

Airplane

toybox

love Hyrum

And so far they will receive nothing they have asked for. except the candy.

On the way to Christmas-Day 5

Good grief I am falling behind! On Day 5 the craft we picked was making homemade Christmas Cards! A lucky few will be receiving them in the mail (And when I say lucky few I mean Grandparents :) The boys LOVE glitter and get excited whenever I feel brave enough to pull it out. That usually results in a gigantic glittery mess. Oh well-  Tis' the season!

I really liked how they turned out-the boys did too, though they were not too excited when they realized their masterpieces were going to be shipped away :)

Cheetah Racer

"Mom did you know Cheetah's can run faster that Lions? But not faster then cars."
Me:"Really! That's amazing.
Michael can you go upstairs and grab my hairspray?"
"How fast do you want me to go? Really fast?"
"Yes, really fast"
"CHEETAH RACER GO!"

Michael has been on a cheetah kick lately which made taking him to the park today really fun.

Does he look like a cheetah?

 MD yelling out "I am a cheetah and I eat.......Monkeys!"

All you Monkeys out there better watch out :)

And Mr. Clark is working on tripling his birth weight.

I love it :)

On the way to Christmas-Day 4

The boys have started listening (kind of) to the stories we have been reading them for days which means lots of "Mom why is that dad crying?"

"He's happy"

"Yeah but why is he crying?"

"Because his son gave him such a wonderful gift! It made him so happy."

"But WHY is he crying?"

"Because-oh Never-mind."

Most of the messages are lost on my kids. Obviously they just cannot understand why anyone would get emotional about a gift.

On day four our craft was making snowflakes.

That day I was tired and looking for something somewhat easy. I folded the snowflakes and drew the pattern on them so the boys would know exactly where to cut.

This easy craft was not what I expected it to be. Both MD and Hyrum got upset because it was too hard for them to cut through the paper. I had to help out quite a bit and finally just apologized after I saw how frustrated they got. MD sweetly told me that he WAS having fun, it was just the paper was to hard for him to cut. Aww sorry Buddy. 

What they did enjoy was putting them on the windows. Afterwards they begged to go outside and look at the snowflakes and both kept trying to trick me into shutting them outside. 

They are pretty sneaky :)
MD starting to get frustrated.

MD wanted his up on the top of the door for all to see when they walked in :)

Sneak Peak

I posted this because I LOVE it, never mind the fact that Clark was totally not cooperating.  This is a little sneak peak into what is going on our Christmas Cards this year. Well that is if I get them out in time.

I tend to forget to do those things.

I have a picture that I love even more. Kind of hard to imagine as I look at my kids all being cute for 10 seconds. Well except Clark, but you can never count on a good picture from Clark.

On the way to Christmas-Day 3

So over the last couple of weeks Md has been coming to me and demanding to know if Santa is real. It's not like I have ever told him he was, and when he flat out asked me I definitely told him he wasn't. It's  good thing too because there are some mixed up kids in his class. Apparently one of his classmates now thinks that Jesus isn't real as well. 

MD was quick to reassure him that 

"Jesus IS real-How would we be here with bodies if he wasn't?" 

deep thoughts from my 5 year old.
*I should clarify that I have no problem with children believing in Santa Clause. I think it is a fun tradition-I just know MD would call me a liar if he found out he wasn't real*

But still even though MD knows Santa is not real he keeps asking me if he COULD be real. I finally realized that MD really wants to play Santa Claus. There really must be some "magic" that surrounds this fat jolly man. 

I confess I never believed in Santa. I also never felt deprived because Christmas for our family was the most wonderful time of the year (OK I have been listening to Christmas music :)

But it really was a magical time for our family as we celebrated being a family and focused on Christ.
I grew up doing service projects Christmas morning. Way before I opened a present.

I want my kids to feel that feeling,

The one that made you feel like you were the luckiest person alive because of what you had-not gifts or possessions, but LOVE. 

The Ross family rocks.

I don't really know how to incorporate Santa.  I am adding some fun "Santa" activities like Reindeer food and cookies and milk. At some point we are having an "Elf party" where we write our letters to Santa. I've been doing some research. Saturday the boys will be meeting Santa. Lets hope it goes better then last time when Md informed us that Santa "creeped him out."

Tonight we made a gingerbread house. For some weird reason I kept thinking of Hansel and Gretal, though if anyone saw how the boys built it no one would dare eat anything off of it :)

Starting out, I assembled the gingerbread structure. It's held together with Sugar glue-probably the strongest glue ever (Made by boiling 2 cups of sugar into a liquid. Super easy-also super hot. Kids should not handle it at all.)

Boys had to listen to us talk for awhile.  They didn't like it.

Going to town

Seth going to town.

Thought I would share this little gem

Hyrum was so hyped up on sugar that he kept running around shouting "Is this a party? I think it is! This is the best party I have ever been part of!"

Quite the Decorators

The boys decided that the house was a cake. Probably because of all the frosting.

The boys also got excited when they found out that I was making gingerbread men. Michael had recently told them the story of the Gingerbread Man and MD was positive that after we baked them they would all come alive and live in the house they made them.

On the way to Christmas- Day 2

More singing, more scriptures (all wonderful) but the highlight of today was the Christmas broadcast put on by the First Presidency of our church. 

Before that started we made hand print ornaments. I didn't picture the ornaments very well in my head and so they turned out HUMONGOUS! I don't know how well our tree will hold them, but it was fun to make-and the boys don't care a lick about what our tree looks like :)

Lovely hand prints about to be baked.

The kids wanted to play with the hand prints the next morning, but I was a party pooper and only let them take a picture with them.

For some reason the boys all LOVE watching the popcorn being popped. They will come running from all around the house once they hear it turn on. 

Oh and Seth is rocking his pilgrim/Indian headdress. We made them around Thanksgiving and his is the only one that has survived. On them we wrote our Indian names with Seth naming himself "Light Dog"

We spread out a blanket and the boys munched on the popcorn until halfway through our Prophets remarks. Then they ran out, started wrestling and were sent to their room.