Essentials of Christmas

Essential parts of our Christmas season:

1. Two trees- one with Mom and Dad's wedding ornaments and carefully picked out ornaments that match and another with homemade, silly and fun gifted ornaments.  Can you tell which one this is?

 2.  Celebration of St. Nicholas day.  He comes on the night of the 5th and fills your shoe with wonderful stuff.  

3.  Yummy treats- super essential!

 This one was made by a nurse in my ED.  Super cute and yummy

 This one was made by me!  This was my first year of success with old fashioned fudge.  I got some awesome pointers from our fabulous cook, Carolyn, and it finally worked out.  Who knew the secret was to not stir it?

4.  Cuteness in all it's many forms.  Poor puppy!

5. The reading of and acting out of the First Nativity.  Emma is usually Mary and Joseph is usually Joseph, but it has varied.  Our sheep has run off at this point.

6. Christmas morning round up.  They must all sit on the stairs and look pretty in the morning until I get a picture and start the video camera.  Yes it is always me, so you will never see me in the Christmas morning round up.  Aren't they so cute, even as big as they are?

The rest of Fall

Ok, so it might be all about the sports, but we did do a few other things this fall!

 We went to the state fair!  Always good fun, greasy food and hot at the State Fair!

 Mom and Dad sent a postcard from their travels and Max colored it.

 We watched conference and built structures

 We went to see the Balloon festival again.  This time with Grandma.  Grandpa was sick!

 I decided to learn once in for all that I am indeed allergic to Penicillin.  Somehow I got it in me while working and became a patient as I got huge hives and then started sweating profusely and then almost fainted.  We tried oral Benadryl first, but when the hives continued to spread I had to check in.  

 We made a Pyramid including chambers and artifacts and camels and alligators!

 I worked on Halloween.  The only one to go out was Max.  Sad I missed most likely his last time!

 Angus took up weight lifting.  He mostly does it with his mouth.  He has a very strong neck!

 I broke my toe!  Ok, I have no idea if it was actually broke.  I never went in.  It sure looked it and felt it though!

Angus being Angus

Angus the Scottish Terrier is part cat!

He likes his belly scratched, when he wants it scratched.  

When he's decided he has had enough of human contact he will go far away from you and lie down.  He loves to walk on the edges of the furniture, including in the car.  

He is not as nimble as a cat however and has fallen off more than once, hitting himself in the head!  He doesn't seem to mind, though.  He just gets up and pretends nothing happened.

Angus is too smart for his own good.  We put some fencing up in our backyard, because he is too tiny and can get through our fence slats.  I put him out back one day and went to go to the gym.  When I came back I couldn't find him, but I had to get Joseph to an appointment so I ran around looking in neighbors backyards real quick, because I knew that's where he would go.  He loves saying hello to other dogs and other people.  I finally had to go, though.  Max texted me when he got home to say he couldn't find him.  I told him that he had run away and to go with his friend and go look.  Sam saw the text too and ran home to look.  That started almost a week of putting his picture and information on several different websites, pleading for help to find him.  I was sure he was either hit by a car, eaten by a coyote, or stolen, since he is so cute, pure bred and not fixed.  Finally Max made up flyers and I walked around with him to put them up.  2 days later we got a call.  He had gotten into a neighbors yard to say hello to their dog and then they had blocked the fence so that he couldn't get back out.  Then they just sat and waited until they found someone who wanted him.  The boys had gone door to door, but they skipped that house, because it is one of those latin homes with the gate then a walkway and then a door.  He went nuts when we came to pick him up!  I guess he does at least like us!

 We fixed the fencing so that he couldn't pull it apart and left for church.  Rob said, "I just want to go around the corner and see."  Sure enough the dog was out!  He had learned to jump up on Rob's arrow shooting targets and jump over the fencing.  As the boys chased him, a lady yelled at them to secure their dog or someone would steal him.  Ya, thanks a lot lady!  Now we have an additional layer of fencing, but we don't trust him out there.  We have come out several times and seen him working at it.  We got a collar and tag and a bigger crate that he can walk in a little and that's where he has to stay for now!  Poor silly puppy!  But the kids were absolutely devastated when he was gone and we can't risk it again!  

Picture Perfect Christmas

In order to have a picture perfect Christmas- 

 My front entry way.

you must have family around.  Emma was not going to be able to get more than a day or two off of Walmart so we decided it would be another away Christmas.  We generally don't like to go away for Christmas, but we did last year, so why not again this year? 

We stopped on the way to pick up a new addition to the family.  The boys have been begging for a dog for years and we always had a good excuse not to get one.  We no longer have an excuse!  Rob found this dog, after almost getting tricked into an internet scam "dog."  Luckily, I kept feeling it was a scam and kept nagging about it, so he made me check it totally out and we figured out it was indeed a scam.  Non-scam dogs are much more expensive! 

Angus is a full bred Scottish Terrier.  He is cute and smart and also too smart for his own good, but more on that later.

We also stopped to see a couple arches at Arches National Park as we headed up.

Next we stopped at my parents house to give them their presents and get our.  The boys got a day at a fun center with go karts and mini golf and laser tag, among other things.  I got a night out with Mom to see the Nutcracker Ballet by Ballet West. 

It was wonderful!  There were all kinds of little girls all dressed up with their moms there.  It is obviously a tradition for many people in the area.  We just had never done it before.

Rob and Sam hopped over to Rob's brother's home and did some picture perfect snow machining.  

Lots and lots of snow is required for a picture perfect Christmas and we got just that!  

The kids made a snow dog to go with the snowman.

Poor little Angus was buried in the snow every time he went out!  I don't think he enjoyed going out much- besides that he still wasn't trained to potty without a door open all the time.  He pottied a lot on many different rugs!  Oops! Sorry!

Lots of dog friends, family and fun games made it even more perfect.

Christmas day was nice.  They don't get excited as they used to, but they still play along pretty well.  Sam wrapped Joe's present that he really really wanted, but I refused to buy, up with some bullets for his nerf gun.  Joseph said, "oh, I know what these are.  Yep, bullets." And then he saw the game he had wanted.  He went crazy!  It was super fun!  Best thank you ever.

Before New Year's we left, since Robert had to go to work right afterwards.  We had a super subdued New year's.  In fact I don't think anyone actually stayed up.  We were woken up by gun shots at Midnight however, because that is obviously a thing you do here in New Mexico on New Years!  We have since had one snow day.  This was our crazy amount of snow that day-

Dosen't quite compare, does it?  We had a few heavy presents that couldn't come with us visiting, so we opened those too.  One was a basketball hoop and one was clay thrower for Rob.