Christmas Fun

Here's some clips from Kade's 2nd grade play.  He was so so so excited to be the part of "Marty the Moose"  It was adorable and totally made me cry. It's fuzzy cause apparently we don't have the right lens for our camera but it's super tender...I may have cried after his little singing solo a little bit...the end.

Lights of the South

 It's one of those places that sets up tons of lights of Christmas stuff, Disney stuff, American stuff...you know--the works. ANYWAY, it was lovely.  Not too cold--I had a coupon--and we went with friends.

 Here are the boys with Santa.

Rhett didn't want to leave Jess' arms to see Santa this year, but he did reach his hand out just far enough to get a candy cane "nandy" from him before we left.

We do a scavenger hunt each Christmas Eve with the boys for them to find their pajamas.  This year Jess did the clues and totally rocked it.  Turns out rhyming is just something that I'm challenged with--not everyone.  The boys loved it!

One of the clues almost always leads us to lunch--this year--Burger King.  The boys were sure that we'd gone there the night before to hide it--cause how oh how could it be in their happy meals???  I like them.

Christmas Morning 2011was awesome as usual. Kade woke everyone up at 6:04 (6:00 being the earliest).

Since Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, we had Sacrament at 10:00 and needed to leave by 9:15, so....we had warned the boys that we would only be seeing what Santa brought before church and we'd open gifts after.  At 6:05 when we were all ready to go and see Luke got really sad and wanted to open the presents too... So Cari made everyone stay on her and Jess' bed until Luke cheered up determined not to have a weepy child on Christmas morning (I can be a fun killer from time to time :). It only took about 30 seconds for him to decide waiting was okay and off we went!  YAY Chistmas Morning

Luke got an amazingly awesome electric train set from Santa that all of us have been playing with.  It was so nice to take the time to just play with a few toys at a time instead of seeing what was next!  Hooray for going to church!

Kade's big gift was his 3DS. Now why--when you have a regular DS, you need a new one, is beyond me entirely.  Jess was the responsible party on this one and it made Kade SOO happy.  I still think it's ridiculous--the other one was working just fine :)  But that's all he asked Santa for so...there you go.

happy happy happy.  

We are so insanely blessed and thankful for our heath, and family, and that Jess has a job!  And especially to have the Gospel of Jesus Christ and ALL that goes with it.  Life is great!

Kade's Baptism

Kade was baptized and confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on

Dec. 3rd, 2011 at 3:00.

We were so so blessed to have both mine and Jess' parents fly out for this event.  They are amazing and we're so grateful for them.

My mom and Jess' mom. They're so great!

Because they were both staying at hotels, the boys split up on Friday night and both got to spend the night with one set. They were SOOOOO excited. I can't express enough how much these boys love hotels. 

 They drew names and Luke went with my parents.  He got to watch a movie in his giant bed, get a ice cream sandwich from the hotel bar, and work out in the gym with grandma and grandpa in the morning (he was pretty excited to tell us that he could life a 10 lb dumb bell!)

 Kade apparently felt like a king in his giant bed just lying there watching cartoons with his Butterfinger (it's like grandparents know kids love sweets or something :)  They both LOVED being able to do this.  We all met up in the morning to go swimming together.  And the water was WARM!  woo woo for warm pools.  It was awesome.

 Yeah, so Luke is doing bunny ears in the family pictures...so that's nice.

Jess didn't go swimming with us because he was having too much fun taking the LSAT (the test they use to apply for Law School).  I was so glad the baptism was AFTER the big test.  Not to mention I was really glad he made it in time.  He's such a wonderful man! 

 Kaden had a joint baptism with such a great little girl named Ashley Viens.  They were so cute.  The first picture of them they were probably 5 feet apart and neither one wanted to move closer. So after much coaching...and lots of little kid funny squirming, we got them in the same picture.  It makes me laugh. 

 I heard an earful about how embarrassing it was from both of them on Saturday and Sunday.  They're sooo awesome!  (oh, and Kade's wearing his Spy Watch he got for his birthday. It's pretty much his favorite thing ever.  He wore it to the baptism, took it off to get baptized but put it back on for his confirmation.  He's funny :)