Camera Dump and Christmas

12/14  Ethan made this gingerbread house at physical therapy and was so proud of himself.

12/15  Nolan and Ethan built this train by themselves.  Eventually all the bridges had to be removed for the sake of frustration and my sanity.

12/18  Brenden's gingerbread house didn't travel home from school well.

I finally finished my table centerpiece.

and played with my camera for a little while...

This was actually taken Christmas morning, but I thought it fit into this part of the post well.

I never got a great picture of our tree.

Brenden's Christmas list

12/19  We got Sabrina's package and our poor bratzelis arrived looking like an abused package of potato chips.  They were delicious!

12/20  I was walking down the hall at church looking for my family and saw a little boy in a red vest.  I called, "Ethan" and a little boy turned around.  It was, in fact, a little boy named Ethan, but not MY little boy named Ethan.  He just so happened to be wearing the exact same thing as my Ethan.

Ethan B. and Ethan E.

They bonked heads.

12/21  This is the inside of the tuna can airplane we took to Anchorage - you know, the one where Brenden asked if we would be watching a movie.

12/23  Ethan busted his lip, yet again.  He is a hazard to himself.  He got the other side this time.

12/24  Our family, the Leys, the Maws, the Quiners, and the Thompsons met at the Maws for our Christmas dinner and reenactment of the nativity.

My boys were the wisemen

Aiden Q. and Hayley M.

Nolan the wiseman arrives to the stable

but falls just short of his destination

The next wiseman arrived shortly thereafter

The third wiseman never arrived, he chose to remain a spectator - from the comfort of the kitchen, while snacking on delicious things.

We then returned home for our annual Christmas Eve gift opening

Ethan got Lightning McQueen slippers

Living room before:

and then Santa came.

Santa brought:

The gifts from us:

The big package is:

Doug made this very quickly and it isn't quite finished, but we were both tired enough to say it was good enough.  The bottom half of the wall in Brenden's room is the same tongue and groove wood and the shelf will look like it's build into the wall.  Doug and I also made the balance beam above.  I wish you could all feel it.  It is padded and covered in suede.  I couldn't be more happy with how it turned out.

12/25  We had Brenden sleep in the other boys' room so we would hear when he was up.  He woke up at 7:15 (not bad, huh?) and I heard him run to the living room.  I told him he had to go back to bed until the other boys were up, so he decided to go and wake them up himself.  I could hear the big debate in the living room:

What ARE these things?

(They are sleds.)

And then began the stocking opening

Santa is so smart and gives the kids flashlights every year.

This is ALL Nolan asked Santa for.

It's an "easy to transform Starscream" transformer.  Nolan could even be heard later in the day saying: (in his best Optimus Prime voice) "Starscream, you are easy to transform."

Nolan tried out his balance beam.

Brenden opened his big present

and looked like this

or this

for most of the rest of the day.

Ethan really had the whole present thing figured out.

Nolan has a drill that can take this airplane apart into a million (easily lost) pieces.  He loves it.

Doug can be appeased by anything Alaska related.

Doug's Aunt Darlene sends each of the kids an ornament every year.  Someday they will have their very own tree full of many years worth of ornaments.

After the boys opened this:

we had to take a mid-morning break.

The living room mid-morning:

Nolan stayed in this very spot for most of the rest of the day, playing with transformers.  Brenden is reading, of course.

Doug and Ethan are playing with:

After this, it was like pulling teeth to get anyone to open presents.  I made breakfast and the kids (Doug counts as a kid, right?) played.

Christmas sunrise:

Back to the presents

But still, all Nolan wanted to do was play with transformers.

(and he is still just as fascinated with them today)

Doug's mom gave him his baby book, which provided many hours of entertainment.

Brenden has been writing letters to publishers asking them to publish his stories, so Nolan gave him a book making kit.

And Nolan got a horse puppet he likes to entertain us with.

Christmas was fantastic!  We had a great time together on our first Christmas at home.

12/26  We headed out to try out the new sleds.

They are SO fun and super fast.  Nolan says, "This is the best thing I've ever gotten!  It's faster than a jet!"

The most wonderful thing about them is that they are light enough for the kids to carry back up the hill themselves.

I think I love them just as much (if not more) than the boys do.  We rode them nearly everyday of Brenden's vacation from school.

And Nolan and Ethan decided to crawl in the snow...  Why?  I have no idea.

Random item:  A hilarious thing, in my opinion, is that Brenden found a BYU magazine in Doug's truck and drew a mustache on a girl in one of the pictures.  There was a computer in the picture and Brenden wrote www.mustache.com across the screen.  Weirdo.