Christmas Lights

We went with the Finlays this year to look at all the great Christmas lights in Reno. There are a few houses with lights synchronized to music, so we headed out to see them. The kids had a lot of fun in the back seat together. Alli and Ethan taught Liam some new Christmas tunes. It was so cute to hear their sweet little voices singing together. It was *quite* chilly that night, so we had to stop at Starbucks for some Hot Chocolate and some Caramel Apple Ciders. Do you think the kids like it? This picture cracks me up.This is one of the houses in the http://www.projectxmas.com/ display. It is synchronized to another house. They have about 7 or so songs. It was very cool. I think only one third or so of the lights are lit up in this photo. It was even snowing, perfect for Christmas spirit. This is another house synched to music. They only have two songs, but the lights are done really, really well and the music is really neat. This is a crummy picture, but this is the house all lit up after the song finished.And this is the house that Wes and I lovingly refer to as the "Christmas Throw Up House." The lights all flash, blink, at different times. They have blow-ups galore, projectors, deer that flash, snowflakes. Yeah. It's really funny anyway.

And this is how sweet little Ashlyn spent our fun evening. How cute is she?!

Disco Bath!

I'm way out of order on blogging, but these pictures are so fun, that I had to share. Liam got some Bathtime Disco Froggies (World Market) in his stocking from Nana and Papa and we tried them out tonight. All you do is set them in the water and they start changing all different colors and flashing. Fun, fun!

Add some bubbles, turn out the lights, and have yourself a Disco Fun Bathtime!

Dancing with the frogs!

Christmas Morning

We had a wonderful Christmas this year! We were so blessed by the wonderful time we had with family and friends. Santa also paid us a visit this year. This is what our house looked like on Christmas morning!

Liam was *quite* excited. He wasn't really sure that he actually could open the presents, since he's been trained to NOT touch them. haha. But, he got into the swing of things and then the day after Christmas he came running out wanting to open presents again. That would make sense, wouldn't it? We were so lucky to have Nana and Papa sleep over on Christmas Eve and open gifts with us in the morning.Santa brought Liam and awesome Little People house. According to Daddy, this is *not* to be confused with a doll house. ;) Nana and Papa gave Liam an awesome new Easel, which he LOVES.

I made Nana some "Holly" bathroom towels.

Liam showing Nana his awesome Diego watch that he got from Sammy, his baby-sitter.

Liam helping Papa open his new TV from Santa! Papa's wearing the cool new jammie pants that we got him.

Santa really did surprise us this year. Wes bought a raffle ticket from a lady at his work who was selling them for a local child who needs a heart transplant. Wes wanted to help, so he bought one, $5 raffle ticket. A few days later, we get a calling saying we won the raffle! The prize? A Wii with Wii play and an extra Wii controller! Santa was very, very good to us. Of course, he didn't deliver it until Christmas Eve. What a wonderful Chrismas surprise!

Here are a few great gifts that I got from Santa.

A PURPLE IPod Nano inside. Yay!

Papa was really good at helping Liam open his new toys and play with them.

Liam got a bounce back racer from mommy and daddy. He was so cute controlling it all over. :)

His new 'manly house.'

Stockings are always so fun!

Liam using his new toothbrush still inside the package! A singing Thomas toothbrush, cool huh?

Wes got some of his very own stickles in his stocking. Stickles are some very amazing glitter glue things for scrapbooking that I'm slightly obsessed with. We made salt dough ornaments a few weeks ago(pictures of that later) and Wes came to understand my obsession. So my mom got him his own 'manly' black stickles for his stocking.

The best gift of all(well, besides the Savior and a healthy, happy family)? A white Christmas!!! It was a beautiful Christmas morning full of joy and fun, but the snow really was the icing on the cake!
There are LOTS more photos of our Christmas festivities soon to come. My goal is to have all the stuff I'm behind on from December(finals trumped blogging) by the time we leave for Washington. We hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!

Merry Christmas Eve!

Who can resist these Christmas cuties?

Izzy is enthusiastic about her first Christmas!

This one is supposed to be taking a nap as I type this, but is instead shouting/singing "Jingle Bells"

at the top of his lungs from his bed. At least we have Christmas Spirit!

The Reason

Love

Love of Christ. Love for each other. Love for family.


Our Reasons for the Season

Happy Birthday, Wes!

Happy 26th Birthday to my man today! We did the big birthday celebration at my parent's this weekend. Aunt Pam made a delicious peppermint cheesecake. Yuuumm... Liam was VERY excited to sing 'Happy Birthday' and help Daddy blow out the candles as well.

The Fire.It's going to be a good 27th year!

Wes's gift from my parents falls under the heading, "Whatever you want, honey..." It's some sort of paintball contraption that makes the paintball gun barrel smaller depending on the temperature. He loved it.
Come to think of it, the gift from my sister falls under the same heading-- over 10 hours of season 4 LOST fun. Wes will be in Heaven.
Tonight we're headed to sushi, of course! Happy Birthday, sweetie! You deserve a fantastic day!

DWTS Tour!!

As most people know, I am a big fan of Dancing with the Stars. I've been watching since the second half of season 1. No one can judge a DWTS fan, until you've watched a season--then you'd know why it's such a big hit!! The show is a lot of fun and the professionals are amazing to watch. My mom and my grandma are also hooked on the show, so my sister had the idea to get my grandma DWTS tour tickets for her Christmas gift. My mom also got a ticket for me for my birthday! Let me tell you, the show was phenomenal. It far exceeded our expectations. These photos aren't very good and I really can't describe the show, but at least there is proof we were there! It truly was about 2 hours of non-stop dancing. There were about 200 costume changes and 19 dancers(grandma counted). There was an awesome mix of music and dance styles. The celebrities that were there were Toni Braxton, Maurice Greene(Olympic gold medalist), Marlee Matlin, and Lance Bass. They did great as well! Toni Braxton sang a couple of songs and they each performed a couple dances from the season. We're thinking the professionals have to eat and insane amount of calories a day after a show like this! We had good seats and had an even better treat when they let us move over a section because those seats weren't filled. That was definitely a nice surprise!
Here are a few photos:
Mom and Grandma before the show. This was the most amazing Walz. My all time favorite pro- Derek Hough (I had to make sure to watch other dancers, too, because I really could have watched him all night)- did an amazing job with a lot of beautiful lifts. Of course, I couldn't get a photo of that, but they had these gorgeous dresses on and on the big screens it looked like it was snowing. This was my favorite dance.

This paso doble was amazing as well. They had fog, capes, you name it. This was a mambo and my mom's comment was, "I think they must be triple jointed." They lined up and did the most amazing and FASTEST latin dance I've ever seen. It's so hard to describe these things.

All the dancers at the end.

If you have the opportunity to see this show, DO IT! It's beyond worth it. Check out www.dancingwiththestarsontour.com The website tells about all the amazing professionals.

Thanks for a great gift, mom!

Nikolaus Tag!

Most of your know that we love to incorporate German tradition into our lives and holidays and we were so excited this year to really be able to celebrate Nikolaus Tag with Liam. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas Click on this link to view a history of St. Nicholas and down toward the bottom under Belgium and The Netherlands is a good explanation of the German celebration of the holiday as well. We modified the tradition a bit for our family, but it is in essence, the same. I made the cans for us to use each year for Liam to receive his Christmas PJs and ornament on Nikolaus Tag(pron. TAWG, 'Day' in German) so that he can use them throughout the month of December. We didn't put shoes out for candy this year because I didn't think Liam needed any candy, but we will probably put a shoe next to the cans next year to see if we get candy or a broom--since that's the real tradition! Anyway, without further ado, here is our Nikolaus Tag morning.

Checking out the cans--notice the super cool bed head!Ohhh look at these awesome PJs.More cozy jammies! With St. Nick to boot!

As much as I despise character things, I knew Liam would love to have a Dora ornament. So, I caved and got a Dora and Snowman Hallmark ornament to commemorate his favorite thing during 2008.

He really loved it!

We let him open Mommy and Daddy's can as well. He liked our Christmas jammies, too! This is seriously the best picture.
Daddy got some cool "Grinch" ones which Liam thought were especially cool because he LOVES the Grinch.

Joy of the Season

Liam is loving Christmas. He especially loves Christmas songs. He also thinks every baby is baby Jesus since we've been talking about the Christmas story. Who knew there were 20 baby Jesus' at Target each day and that baby Jesus is on the box of diapers? I guess we really need to reiterate that there was only ONE baby Jesus. I do love that he is more able to understand the Reason for the Season, though.

Jingle Bells, Wonderful Christmas Time, and The Little Drummer Boy are his favorite carols so far.

^ Can't you tell what a GREAT singer he is??

Officially a Level II

It's official-- I survived level I of nursing school, barely. This morning was insane. We had a 7:30 am final at the alternate campus on the other side of town in a winter storm warning. It took us an hour or so to get down there. By the time the Pathophysiology/Pharmacology final was done, the storm was worse, but we had to head up to campus for our next final. Luckily, we all did great on our final and we survived the drive. Even if we were rebels and didn't have chains or snow tires when they were required.

Here is us on our treacherous drive to our final-- don't worry, I was indeed watching the road. ;) We were driving approx. 10 mph. We enjoyed our Christmas music and Michelle relaxed with her Starbucks.

Meanwhile Melanie studied in the back seat-- Michelle took the pic, not me. We're not that crazy.

The campus was pretty beautiful--in spite of freezing to death! I thought these swans looked so pretty. I'm glad I had my camera!

And here we are-- we're done with semester 1! Hip, hip hooray! Do we look slightly tired? Yeah, not our best photo.
And because we thought the quad looked pretty.And this because it's hysterical. Liam getting ready to go to Costco. He dressed himself(with daddy's help) and one of his pant legs was up and I told him to pull it down, so he pulled the other one up... Oh boys... I'm thinking fashion isn't his strong point.

I just want to thank everyone that has helped me throughout this semester! It was a ton of hard work, but with the support I received, I made it and just happened to find that I love nursing(well, most of it anyway, you can leave the bed pans, but such is the life...). Now, I'm going to cozy up in bed and read a book for FUN--not a textbook. Woo-hoo!