The rest of Christmas

After opening presents at home, we got ready and headed to Grandma and Grandpa Knight's house for more festivities. Rachel was very helpful and opened Jared's presents for him.

She also played with Jared's presents for him. She really liked this turtle that played music when you pushed the buttons, but has no on/off switch (sorry guys).

Rachel got her own recorder to make *beautiful* music for everyone to hear. We might be storing that one at Grandma and Grandpa's house so Rachel can share her talents with them. ;)

 We got some happy surprises, including several books that will keep us reading for a good little while, and many DVDs, which have now put our entertainment center over the top. We're going to have to be creative now in how we store DVDs. :)
Notice in the picture below the pillow sitting on top of the other pillows in the background. It's a pillow with Rachel's profile on it and each of her grandmas got one. It was really pretty easy, but I thought it turned out pretty cool.

Jared got some cool toys, too, and was so happy to bounce around in his new jumper thing with all the bright toys to look at.

 Rachel also got some Dora pajamas that she put on right away and wore over her clothes until she had to go potty. Todd kissed up to her by playing with her on starfall.com in his efforts to achieve favorite uncle status.

We had a good time the rest of the day, eating a tasty turkey dinner, playing games (if you're looking for a new, fun game, try Monopoly Deal!), and spending time with family, which is really how Christmas should be.

Christmas morning

Before:

During:

After:

Rachel was very excited to wake up Christmas morning and find that Santa had brought everything she wanted for Christmas (whenever anyone would ask her what Santa was going to bring her, she'd say "Ummm... candy canes, and nemunems (M&Ms), and toys."). She was excited about her new play kitchen and in between every present she unwrapped she went back to it to turn a knob or open a cabinet or get out a dish. It was a lot of fun seeing her excitement this year. After getting dressed we headed over to my parents' house for a little more fun, but I'll get to that a little later...

Pre-Christmas fun

Since Christmas vacation began last week we've spent most of our time at my parents' house while Todd and Savannah were here visiting. Now that they're gone I have a lot of pictures to post, so I decided to break them up into several posts. Here goes...

A couple of days before Christmas we finally got to meet this little guy:

Todd, Savannah, and baby Jared arrived in Tucson after a loooong ordeal with dumb airlines, missing carseats, closed freeways, and a lot of "fun." We then proceeded to enjoy the happy little guy.

We went down to the park for a nice walk.

 

Rachel loved Jared. And he tolerated her. :)

 

 

He's a happy kid.

 

"Look: baby Jared's ear!"

 

We didn't just stare at Jared and Rachel all day. We also played games and completed this puzzle that I got at our YW board white elephant gift exchange.

 

On Christmas Eve we tried to do a little spiritual, real meaning of Christmas thing, but Rachel has a short attention span, so it mostly turned into a game of follow the leader angel. But it was fun nonetheless.

 

FHE nativity reenactment

We were invited to have Family Home Evening with some friends tonight so our kids could join together to act out the nativity. In preparation I looked through my bag 'o costume stuff to see what we could use for dressing the kids up. Rachel particularly liked this combo:

Not exactly 1st century garb.

Rachel ended up being Mary, and the only (walking) boy was elected to be Joseph. Here's the lovely couple.

(Notice the mini pumpkin in Rachel's hand. She was convinced everyone was getting all dressed up in preparation for Halloween. She must have said "Now it's time for trick or treating" about 5 times.)

Here's Mary in the stable, with Joseph on his way to help out while the shepherd (Maryanne) looks on and the midwife (Lydia) steals baby Jesus. Rachel is still holding on to her donkey (and pumpkin) after the long trek.

Notice the cute angel up above the stable:

And one last smile for the camera, with Evelyn joining the bunch as a sheep, now that baby Jesus has been kidnapped out of the picture.

And here's daddy and daughter posing together. Isn't she a cute Mary?!

Picnic at the park

This morning Rachel came to me and said, "Come have a picnic, Mom." She took me into her room and showed me a book with a picnic on one of the pages. So we decided to go to the park for a picnic. We invited Grandma along and headed to Lakeside Park. We ate on our picnic blanket and enjoyed the 65ish degree weather.

After lunch we headed down to the lakeshore to see the ducks.

After we ran out of bread Rachel meticulously found the perfect rocks to put into the water while laying on her tummy.

We also had to stop off at the playground for all the fun that was to be had there.

It was a fun day, and perfect weather for a visit to the park.

A good weekend

Saturday morning I woke up (after poking Jacob to get up with Rachel, then falling back to sleep for my weekend sleep-in turn for a couple hours) hearing "Mommy, wake up! We bring you brefast!" Jacob and Rachel came in with a cookie sheet that had waffles, scrambled eggs, orange slices, and hot chocolate on it. Yum! Breakfast in bed! It was such a nice surprise. What a great husband I have! I'm a lucky girl.

A little later in the day we got to go to a birthday party for a neighbor girl, which was fun. And we rounded out the weekend with stake conference. The adult session Saturday night was really good with talks about strengthening our families. I'm sure the Sunday general session was just as good, though I didn't get as much out of it as I did the Saturday session because Rachel was there distracting me. But there were lots of good talks about building testimony and the blessings that come by having our houses face towards the temple (figuratively speaking, though ours also faces that way, literally). It was the first stake conference with our new stake since our ward got switched this summer. It's wierd not knowing most of the stake members here like I did in our last stake (which I mostly grew up in), but I'll get used to it. But at least the Spirit is the same and the Church is still true. :) It was overall a great weekend.

And now there's only one more weekend before Christmas! Woohoo! 

Santa Claus is coming to town

Saturday we had our ward Christmas party. It was a delicious dinner and after all the music and everything was over Santa Claus came. I pointed him out to Rachel and she was in awe.

I asked her if she wanted to go see Santa, and she said yes, so we went to wait for her turn. A few weeks ago we were at the store, checking out, and Rachel saw a plastic M&M with reindeer antlers and wanted to get it. I told her that we couldn't get it right now, but if she was a good girl, maybe Santa would bring it to her. Since then every time I ask her what Santa is going to bring her she says, "M&Ms." As we were waiting I asked again what Santa was going to give her and she said "M&Ms" and I told her maybe on Christmas, but right now Santa is giving out candy canes. As we got a little closer and she could actually see Santa she changed her mind about wanting to see him. Even when I asked her, "Is Santa going to give you a candy cane?" (which is her FAVORITE treat these days), she said no. When it was her turn, this is how the first time meeting Santa went:

At least she got her candy cane. :)

Saturday at home

Saturday we all happened to be wearing red or green shirts, so I decided we needed to try for some family pictures. Rachel can be a cheeseball when getting her pictures taken. Sometimes it results in good pictures, sometimes not.

We had one picture of all of us that turned out decent enough. Maybe one of these days we'll visit a real photographer instead of relying on our camera timer. Maybe...

I decided to try and attack the bush I've been trying to dig out of our raised bed for a month or two (okay, so I tried to dig it out a month or two ago and haven't tried since). Jacob came out to help and we ended up getting that bush and 3 more out, so now I just have to sift out all the rocks, add manure and compost, and we'll have a bigger garden for next year. Rachel helped take the bushes out to the street for the brush and bulky pick up this week. But insisted on having her own gloves (Mom and Dad had gloves, so it's only fair, right?).

While Jacob was digging he uncovered a Colorado River Toad that was hibernating. Luckily the shovel didn't split him open. That would have been disgusting.

We knew that these toads were poisonous, so we went inside to do a little internet research before getting rid of him. We found that he is only poisonous if you (or your dog)eat him, or lick him. In fact, some states have laws against toad licking--it produces a hallucinogenic effect (who ever thought to lick a toad in the first place to discover that?!). Once we figured out it was just through licking him that we would get poisoned, we went back outside, put him in a shoebox, and took him down the street to the desert that borders our neighborhood and dropped him off by a nice bush he could burrow under to continue his hibernation.

Christmas decorations

After Jacob's family left after Thanksgiving we pulled out our Christmas decorations to make a big mess of our house, in hopes of making it look more Christmas-y.

Rachel discovered this mouse that sings "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" when you squeeze its toe. She LOVES it. She calls it her Christmas mouse and hugs it and puts it in blankets to go to sleep and calls it "my baby." It's cute.

Rachel helped us decorate the tree. Except the candy canes she kept pulling off to eat.

Rachel liked the Christmas stockings.

I had this wreath that I got at the after Christmas sales last year, and added the ornaments and flowers and ribbon to make it less naked.

Jacob's Alaskan train set he got last year for Christmas is up and running around our snowman mugs.

And here's the table to help remind us of the true meaning of Christmas. There's the nativity that my parents gave us when we were first married, the one Sharon brought back from Jerusalem for us, a nesting doll-type nativity from Oriental Trading Co. that Rachel can play with, and a finger puppet one, also from OTC for Rachel to play with, and a paper one from the Friend that she "helped" me put together.

Now our house feels very festive. I love Christmas time! Merry Christmas to all!