christmas vacay part 2

pre-christmas

i got to meet up with a few of my most very favorite arizona gal pals.

nicole brought her adorable smiley girl with her all the way from hawaii.

and amy told us all about her upcoming wonderful adventures to the east coast.

and brooke and her fetus even joined in for a picture!

maxson was putting the moves on stella

christmas eve

christmas eve morning we went to the park, played croquet and did a mini workout. family came over for most of christmas eve and christmas which was so much fun. 2 of the 3 arizona families even stayed the night at my parents house which made it that much more special (thank you!)

there aren't enough older grandkids to really act out the nativity quite yet so instead my dad read the nativity story and each time a "character" was mentioned my mom would give one of the grandkids that nativity character to put on the tray. the kids loved it. we also opened up our sibling gifts.

whitney is so good to all the grandkids. we're so lucky she's apart of the family.

kirk and tristan

evolett on the phone with her hippo.
phoebe, casey, tristan. the children LOVE casey

lighting of "fireworks" to let santa know where we are

christmas day

the children woke up to a wonderful christmas tree and stockings filled with presents all around.

we had a sweet time slowly opening gifts, stopping to eat breakfast and playing with new toys. christmas with small children is so much fun. gosh darn it, we loved it so much!

annalee and phoebe encouraging ruthie on her present opening

maxson liked playing ON the box.
santa brought this little castle to some of my nieces and maxson LOVED sitting inside it, casey joined it too ;)

the babies (maxson and ruthie) watching the older kids play outside.
toothbrushing time

that afternoon we went to the park to feed the ducks, play on the playground, and run in the (dead winter) grass.
we all LOVED getting outside.






maxson gravitated toward my dad the whole trip. it was so cute watching them together.






maxson learned to LOVE going down the slides while in AZ, so cute seeing him decide to let go, push himself off the top, and SLIDE down, trusting we'd catch him.

christmas night we gathered around the (new) fire pit, roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, drank hot chocolate, and just chatted. i don't remember a single conversation from that night, i just remember being so happy we were gathered together as family celebrating christ's birth.
how wonderful and special that night was.




although christmas activities in AZ are not your typical christmas activities,
i love it so very much.

more to come!

christmas vacay part 1

casey took his last test the morning of thursday, dec 18 and after packing up we drove straight to wyoming. maxson did pretty darn good, i'm so grateful for a happy, content baby. a few things went wrong during our journey though. 1) we locked the keys out of the car, bummer 2) i took a wrong fork and added somewhere between 30-60 min onto our time. fun times, fun times. we made it to wyoming late late in the night and maxson WOULD NOT GO TO SLEEP. he was in our room. i knew he was tired but being in the same room as us was not cutting it for him, we worked for nearly an hour at it. we finally decided to bring the pack n play down stairs to the office so he could cry a little to go to sleep and not wake up the rest of the house. i was laughing hysterically as casey banged the pack n play into every wall and corner on the way downstairs, making so much noise. at 2:30 am we closed the door and maxson fell asleep quickly. low and behold i woke up at 7 am to loud banging. i go downstairs to find out who that person is and encourage them to stop so maxson can keep sleeping. come to find out, maxson had already woken up, so casey's mom went in to get him and learned that the door was locked and they had no key for it and was unable to pick the lock. the banging was nanette literally banging the side of the door frame off to get through the door. maxson was so sad and scared when we finally got to him, poor baby.

we stayed in wyoming a day and half getting to join in the celebration of grammie cutler and karlee's birthdays at their locally beloved mexican restaurant: don pedro's. for 4 years all i've heard is the cutler family rave about this place so i had high expectations. luckily, it did not disappoint and the food was great

on saturday afternoon we drove down to the salt lake area to meet up and stay the night at some of our previously-nebraska-now-utah friends. we love the sigety's so much, they are an absolute hoot. we ate delicious homemade chicken noodle soup (even the noodles were from scratch!) we chatted while the kids played with toys and made us constantly laugh. later in the evening we bundled up in our winter clothes to walk around some new outside mall area that was all lit up with lights, christmas trees, teenagers, santa, and snow. 

maxson could barely move in the stroller.
all henry wanted to do was stomp on snow.

wyoming and salt lake were like our mini trips before our big trips began.
so happy we got to take them!

picturas de iFono

i'm behind. what's new?
here's some of early decemeber.

a. making bow ties
b. part of my new wall collage
c. leaf playing
d. leaf playing

a. napping on grandpa
b. eating breakfast before family is awake
c. family break time
d. walmart shopping

a. maxson's beloved 1st birthday present from the cutler grandparents: a vacuum!
b. post-church bonding
c. maxson's other birthday present: his big truck
d. tearing down my decorations

a. why do i love these stupid sugar cookies so much
b. another newly arranged collage wall in the eating room
c. prepping for maxson's birthday
d. pizza making at thanksgiving

a. shadow dancing
b. shadow dancing
c. cousin love
d. more vacuum obsessing

a. climbing
b. maxson stole a bag of neighborly christmas cookies off the counter and i came in to find him devouring them
c. pudding eating
d. one of his favorite toys: pulling scarves out of an old wipes package

a. snowman pre-maxson
b. snowman post-maxson didn't last 30 seconds
c. very proud of my double crown braid
d. churching

a.-d. casey's "green coat" ceremony
(that's his whole dental class)

a. snowing
b. he loves putting his head back
c. snowing
d. snowing

a. not helping casey study
b.december book club cookie exchange
c. snowwww
d. cold nebraska weather :(

a. pummis stones do WONDERS on tubs!
b. where's the "E"?
c. juiced up all our fruits/veggies before we left. ooy they were strong!
d. helping grammy and grandpa with their neighbor gifts

a. conked out
b. getting ready for errands
c. helping with dishes
d. carousel fun

a. SANTA!
b. getting christmas cards from friends is the best
c. kitchen entertaining. he loves kitchen gadgets. the bread machine is one of his faves
d. really bored in the kitchen one day with me

a. look at that cute boy!!!!
b. the nebraska/wyoming/utah trek
c. nebraska/wyoming/utah trek
d. messy eater

a. bringing the snow inside
b. napping on daddy on a day he didn't feel so good
c. another time we brought snow inside
d. i showed him that he could put this little stool in my closet to see out the window. it entertains him a long time in the mornings when i try to keep half sleeping

happy new year!

we ended the year with an almost missed flight to salt lake (think home alone running through the airport style), lunch with fantastic friends, a drive to wyoming, and huge glasses with sparkling cider at the cutlers in wyoming.

2013 was wonderful and we couldn't be more thrilled for what 2014 has to bring us!

i saw a sheet like this on pinterest but was never able to find the source to print it out, so i made my own.

i am not the original source or creator of this page so please don't pin it, but you sure can use it! ;)

click here to print it out from a google doc version (that i'm hoping will work…)

merry super late christmas!

we've been in arizona this whole time and maxson has kept us busy the whole time.
boy that kid is on the move.
family is fun to be around.
it's also fun to outside sans boots, coats, and winter items.

someday (soon) hopefully i'll blog of our recent lives.

kisses!

on the go

i've been MIA all week because guess what i started working on before the year ended?
our 2013 photo album!
so proud of myself. i'm through half the year already.
casey has been drowning in studying and finals and FINALLY survived his last one of like 14 this morning!
we did a happy dance when he walked in the door.
now we're frantically packing up to get ready for our christmas vacation!

casey and i read the sweetest article tonight by Elder Holland back in 1977 called "Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store."

I highly recommend reading it, such a great piece.

and if you have time to spare this month here's a list of a bunch of other christmas talks given at BYU.

a carousel and snow

to round up maxson's birthday week we headed to the carousel to give him a spin.

it was worth every 200 pennies and more.

firstly he stared at it in awe from the outside for the multiple spins it took before we got on it.

once it was his turn i could tell he was just overwhelmed with joy.

he held on tight, stared at the lights, made his happy grunts, and enjoyed the ride.

every parent needs to experience the joy in taking their little on a carousel, seriously peoples.

and on sunday it finally SNOWED!

it's about time that stuff turned up, it's been bitterly freezing.

we bundled maxson up to the brim to introduce him to that white happiness!

yet again, he had a fun 3 minutes in the snow patting it with his gloves, looking around, so curious at what this new stuff was.

then his glove fell off and he continued to touch the snow after about 15 seconds he tried shaking his hand to get the snow off/make it not cold.

that's when his face turned to us with big tears and confusion.

we went inside not long after, but it was still fun showing it to him!

the next day we played in the snow again (for less than 5 minutes) until his face hit the snow and he got cold.

so once inside i brought him in a plate of snow to play with in the kitchen, he loved that the most i think

and you can see our humble-top-half-decorated tree above.
those presents only stayed there for this picture and then i was wise enough to put them where maxson couldn't ravage them, because he would in a heart beat, ha.
his new favorite thing is to grab onto a branch and shake the whole tree to see all the ornaments shake too, that silly baby.

cake for one

we were so lucky to have casey's family in town for maxson's birthday over thanksgiving! since everyone had to leave on sunday to get back, we celebrated his birthday with family on saturday. i wish we could celebrate all birthdays with family around because it's so darn fun. they made it really special for us and showed maxson some extra special love on his birthday party day. plus family members are great helpers when it comes to getting the place decorated and taking pictures so i get to be in some!

i made a tiny oreo cake for max, which he devoured.

messy?

not so much, he just picked pieces off to eat and they went straight in his mouth.

after he ate his little cake he ate a sweet potato, peas, and meat.

he just kept eating and eating and eating.
(yes we fed him cake first because my awesome cousin, clara, said the best "cake smashes" came when given cake before dinner because then they're super interested in it. sure enough he dug straight in;)

for his actual birthday we served him the rest of the cake for all 3 meals.
 i kid i kid.
i did however put a cake on the meals i served him (breakfast and dinner).
by dinner time he was being super brave and trying to touch the flame, ha
we gave him pudding for his dinner dessert and he was THRILLED.
that one was messy.
but so adorably worth it, the whole time he was making nom nom nom sounds
we also remembered to do a birthday spanking train sans spanking.

maxson went through our legs on his new little car and loved it

to end the night we let him hold our phones most the night as a birthday present and i'm pretty sure that was his favorite thing of all weekend, even more than the food.
he just walked from one end of the house to the other with the phone in his hand, smiling, head bobbing, running to grin at us. he was so happy
and then he began putting the phone in his mouth and we took it away and it was tears until bedtime.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAXSON!

***

i'll be the first to admit that i'm not great at party details.

i kept it simple and very random, ha.

we put up streamers all around the house like we always do for birthdays.

i also saw a special at walgreens that week for 50 free prints and thus printed out 50 photos of maxson's face (just four different shots) i cut out that silhouette and put them all over the house so we had little maxson's face staring at us happily from all sides.

it was really funny.

i made a little fringe garland out of tablecloth, threw that on the wall along with some balloons, and spray painted a dollar store happy birthday sign black and called it good!

festive it was.