Christmas Day 2008

Christmas morning....the most magical day. I love the feeling of anticipation that the kids are feeling, the excitement of the parents to give gifts to their children, and to think we are doing all of this to commemorate the birth of our Savior. I'm sure He smiles as He sees the love of families as they are together, the giving to one another that is going on, the peaceful feeling that is in the air. It is so fun to come out of the house in the mid-morning to see all the neighbors out in their front yards with the kids running around with their new toys and the neighbors visiting with each other because there is no rushing around with places to be! (I guess the front yard playing is just here in Florida with the 80+ degree weather we had Christmas day, not in Utah with the snow they got:) It was a great day.

The good old tradition of lining up before going out to the tree


It was a Christmas of wheels around our house, Gavin got a scooter to replace the embarrassing pink one he rides around all the time....



Emma got a 2 wheel one to replace her pink 3 wheel one that Gavin was always taking away from her....

And Luke got a skateboard.



Gavin wins the award of funnest to watch open gifts...he would shake and then jump up and show it to Matt and me no matter what it was.


He got this little guitar that cracks me up...I think he is trying to mimic Matt on our Rock Band game...Check out the video at the bottom of this post!!!!!

Luke had a Indiana Jones Christmas...he got the Play Station game and tons of the Lego's

Can't go without a Barbie :)

We got an extra special surprise...Christmas morning there was a knock at our door...it was the mailman!!!! WHAT on Christmas DAY!? Matt's sister Julie must have spent a lot extra to make sure Emma's present was there on Christmas day! How sweet! And it is the cutest tu tu and puppet I have ever seen! Thanks Julie!

This is the new guitar (for Rock Band) that the kids gave Matt for Christmas
They were very excited that he likes it!

Matt and Luke spent hours working on his Lego's :)

Matt had heard on a podcast that you should NEVER give your wife kitchen appliances or a gift having anything to do with working out....I must not be a normal woman because I LOVE all my gifts! Maybe it's because I am getting old and so things like shelves for your cans, and food storage make me excited! That is all I asked for from my mom and dad and in-laws! Thanks mom and dad and Greg and Wendy!!!!! Check out my beautiful pantry and the starts of my food storage! :) Then I got knives from the kids...VERY exciting, I feel like a whole new world of slicing instead of sawing has opened up to me ;) And then I got the Nike+ from Matt which I am THRILLED about. I have always been a little jealous of his :) Thanks everyone for my wonderful gifts that are not, and never will be faux pauxs to me :)

This one fits PERFECTLY under my stairs in our closet! Exciting! :)

The knives go nicely with my mixer Matt gave me for another holiday...again I am grateful for this appliance - no faux paux here! :) (What does this say about me...am I boring?????)

Christmas Eve Festivities

What a Christmas! When you don't live around family and get to enjoy their company, your friends and neighbors become your family. Christmas Eve we made cookies with our neighbors and then went with them to deliver the cookies to our neighbors. It was the funniest Christmas carolling I have ever done!!!!! George (next door neighbor whose kids are Nicholas and Brooke who we ALWAYS talk about) he brought his BIG keyboard and when the neighbors would answer their door he would hit a button and it would start playing jingle bells and we would sing along! It was so funny to see George with this HUGE keyboard resting on his shoulder like the good old days "ghetto blasters" he he he! We all had Santa hats or reindeer antlers on...very funny sight. The best was when he hit the wrong button and the keyboard started to play Titanic :) The kids got a kick out of that! :)

Then we were off to our dear friends the Whetmans, they are a young family with 3 kids ages 14, 11, and 1 1/2 years....it is so sad because Jeff is this amazing man who has been our E.Q. president, our home teacher, he has been on the High Council, etc. and right now he is battling cancer. It started in a lymph node in his leg and has recently spread throughout his stomach, liver, and brain. Our ward has really been fasting and praying for his family. Our Compassionate Service Leader came up with a very cute idea...she had a bunch of us bring the different parts to their Christmas dinner and gave each of us a piece of the nativity and so as we brought our part of the meal they also added to the nativity. A bunch of us were there at the same time and sang Silent Night...I had to fight back the tears. What a neat evening, we continue to pray for them.

Christmas Eve night we went to the Lopez home for some egg nog, bingo, gift exchange and a wonderful dinner. The Dowdys and Slaughters were there. Then we hurried home in time to catch "Santa" looking in our window checking to see if our kids were in bed! He had a little stuffed animal for the kids to help them get to sleep. This is the second year in a row that we have "caught" him!

Matt's new calling!

Well Matt is no longer callingless...he is now our Stake Young Men President and on the High Council. It was fun to have him ride to church and sit with us while it lasted...so long my dear husband :)

My Fix-It Man Comes to the Rescue AGAIN!

You might remember that I have been without a dryer for quite sometime now. Matt tried and tried to fix our old one but ended up going out on Black Friday and found a GREAT deal on a washer AND dryer for the price of just one of them! I guess it was a little TOO good...they said we could pick it up around Dec. 17th (which I thought was way too long back then) BUT when we called recently they said there were 70,000 people that also took advantage of the unbelievable deal and so ours wasn't even built yet and wouldn't be ready until FEBRUARY!!!!!!! WHAT!!!#@!!! I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL FEBRUARY! It has been a pain hanging everything and breaking into my neighbors house to use her dryer (OK it wasn't breaking in, I had her consent ;) So we decided to fore go the great deal and just get one that we could pick up TODAY! So we got it home and I couldn't wait to plug the thing in and get going on my piles of laundry! It was VERY late at night on Saturday night but Matt was such a trooper and installed the washer and dryer. We were anxious to try it out. We put in a load AND.....the dryer was tumbling but it wasn't heating! WHAT!!!!???? That is what the "broken" dryer that we just replaced was doing!!!!!! YIKES! So all depressed we went up to bed. Matt just happened to go back downstairs and I hear "SARA!" I know that tone and I knew it couldn't be good. I ran downstairs to find our laundry room filled with about 2 inches of WATER!!!!!!!! OOOOOOOOPPPSSS! There were a couple of directions in the install process that Matt missed! :) So we got out the shop vacuum and a lot of towels. Then we had to figure out what went wrong....so by 5:00 a.m. Matt decided he couldn't go to sleep because he had a 6:30 a.m. meeting at the Stake Center! Matt was a ZOMBIE by the time he got home from church at 5:30! He went to sleep and didn't wake until this morning at 7:30!

So now back to the dryer....yes we just purchased a new washer and dryer to find out that the problem was not in the dryer at all but we had a bad circuit breaker! He he he...it is a little funny at this point to think I have been without a dryer for over a month, used my neighbors and spent a fortune on new, when really we could have fixed this little problem in a cinch! :) Funny stuff! Like I said BEFORE, when we try fix it projects the seem small, they turn into quite the production! :) It's a good thing I LOVE my new washer and dryer!

Emma's Christmas Party!

Today was the last of the school parties...this time it was Emma's turn. I got to help out and it was fun to see the kids so excited. They wrote letters to Santa, decorated paper stockings, made the cutest Christmas trees made of LARGE pine cones and they brushed a mixture of glue and shaving cream so it looked like snow and then they put on glitter, sequins, and beads. VERY CUTE! Then they got to make gingerbread houses from crackers and ate them as their treat. At the end of the day they put on a little program for the parents and sang Christmas songs while wearing hats, mittens, and scarves (EVEN THOUGH IT WAS over 80 DEGREES TODAY!!!) And then they had a gift exchange where they gave books under $5...Fun day!

The Nutcracker by the Russian Ballet!!!!

I really wish Matt would do this post...maybe after reading this and seeing that I can't do it justice he will sit down and write it...over 15 years ago Matt served his mission in Russia. While in Moscow he met Lydia and her daughter Masha, who were baptized. Here we are years later and we found out that Lydia works for the Russian ballet and they were coming here (well to Daytona about 1.5 hours away). So we got tickets and Matt and Lydia were able to reunite! It was such a fun evening!!!!! Luke and Emma LOVED the Nutcracker! I couldn't remember all the details of the storyline and so we called my mom on the way and she read her Nutcracker book to us over the phone :) Thanks mom it really did help to have that refresher!

Here's a funny picture of Matt acting afraid of being surrounded by so many women :) But here is Masha and Lydia on the left side of Matt.

It was so funny because our tickets were supposed to be in the balcony. This was a small performing arts center in Daytona and so there really weren't that many people there. When we went to our seats we were the ONLY ones in the balcony!!!!! So needless to say we went down on the ground and found some empty seats (there were actually TONS of empty seats). I thought it was pretty hilarious to see our little family all alone in the balcony! :)








































It was so exciting to see Matt and Lydia reunite after 15+ years! I wondered if Matt was going to remember the language and was pleasantly surprised that as she came out and started rattling off her Russian he was understanding! It was fun to hear him speak too. Luke and Emma thought that was VERY cool!



When we were backstage with Lydia we got to see the prima ballerina (Clara or is the name Maria????)! Emma was very excited about that and ran over and hugged her! We even passed the dancer that was the Nutcracker in the hall.

Luke and Emma can't wait to visit Russia someday....Lydia told them she would sew them a Russian costume! (She is the one that makes the costumes for the ballet! Talented woman!)

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Luke's School Christmas Party!!!

Today was Luke's Christmas party at school and it was WONDERFUL! They had 6 different stations: paper snow globe pictures, Christmas card making, they frosted an ice cream cone and decorated it like a little tree, they made magnets with their pictures in it, they made handprint santa's, and they signed the back of these ADORABLE reindeer t-shirts that are made from their handprint and foot print! Too cute! Then I brought my chimes and they played a couple of Christmas songs on them. They even had pizza! Talk about a great party!

Things got a little MeSsY!

Ms. Bealls is the reading teacher

Mrs. Lipsit gave each child a little goody bag and in it she had made each one of them this cute little train put together with different candy! How sweet! This is Luke and Jurnie.