Christmas.....

Despite everything that went on, we had a really wonderful Christmas. I'm so grateful that my brothers were with us. We had a yummy beef tenderloin dinner on Christmas Eve, complete with crackers and crowns:).

Then everybody opened their Christmas Eve pajamas. Maggie is modeling hers from Grandma Roberts. So cute!

Twas the night before Christmas.....


The kids are allowed to wake up and open their stockings, but have to wait until we get up to open the presents. We don't know what time they got up, but Sam got the Transformers movie in his stocking and they watched the whole movie before waking us up at 7:00!


Sam's big gift was a Bumblebee Transformer robot.

Sophie with her haul.

Chris got a swim parka to put on after cold ocean swims.

Maggie and her new books, she had a ball opening gifts this year. She wanted to help everybody with theirs as well.

We feel very blessed to have everything we need and many of our wants as well. It was just so nice to be together as a family. I have to say that our ailment brought us a little closer this year. We all stayed in and NOBODY was coming to visit. We played games, read books, watched movies, (picked nits out of hair), and built 3 large puzzles! Not a bad way to spend the holidays. :)

Nightmare Before Christmas Update

Well, we still can't believe that we had lice for Christmas. Not our favorite gift we've ever had. It did put a damper on everything, but we still had a nice Christmas. Chris took entire house to the laudromat and I stayed home and cleaned and sprayed the whole house. Not the most fun the day before Christmas Eve, but it felt good.
My brother's braved it and still came to visit, I was so glad, thank you! They stayed in Sam's sanitized room, Sam & Maggie were on the girl's bed and Sophie has been sleeping on the floor in bedding that we wash every morning.
Sam has been clean as a whistle, Maggie, I've only found one nit in a few days. But I go through Sophie's hair for a couple of hours everyday and still find the little boogers. She has been so patient to deal with all this too. She's a little trooper.
Tomorrow is our second treatment day. I am so excited. It is supposed to kill off anything that may have survived the first treatment. You have to wait a week and it has been the longest week! After that and hopefully then not find anymore in Soph, we can feel normal again. In the meantime it's just paranoia. I feel bad for the kids because they haven't gotten to share any Christmas fun with friends and they are so cooped up. But we will all get through this!
I think the hardest part is that I'm such a clean freak and my kids bathe and wash their hair everyday! We're trying to train Sophie not to be so huggy, lovey, but then I don't want her not to be either. I guess we need to move to a remote ranch in Montana! I think Chris is a taker.:)

The Good, the Good, the Good and the REALLY Ugly

Well, we'll start with the Goods....On Dec. 15th Sam & Sophie performed in their first piano recital! They were pretty nervous but did an awesome job. Sophie played "Deck the Halls" & "Broadway Boogie" and Sam played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". I'll try to add the video soon.This is their Russian piano teacher , Irina Fennessey. She means business and is a very good teacher as well as an amazing performer.

Also on the 15th was Ellie's brother Matt's birthday! We were lucky enough to have him here as he was visiting for a wedding. So we took him out to dinner and came home for chocolate cake! Happy Birthday Uncle Matty!

On the 18th, Sam had a pack meeting and earned his Webelo!! We are so proud of all of his accomplishments in Scouts. He has until his birthday to earn his Arrow of Light and then it's bye-bye Cubs and off to Boy Scouts!

I even got pinned, earning the mom's Webelo.

On the 20th, Sam had a holiday concert at school where he played the violin and Sophie had a "New Years Eve" party. Where the second graders count down to "midnight" (noon) and celebrate the new year.

Sam with his best bud and violin companion, Isaac.

Sophie cutting it up for "New Years".

Well, here comes the REALLY ugly. If you are especially squeamish, don't read on. It reeks with TMI, but feels good to get off my chest.
So after a busy week or two, we were off on Thursday afternoon to spend the weekend with Daddy in the bay area, and Brooke and Dave were going to take our kids overnight so Chris and I could celebrate our anniversary on Friday. Sounds great, but the best laid plans.....
What should have been a 5 hour trip took us 8 hours due to traffic and an accident. So we arrived very late and exhausted. The next morning, we all bathed and I was doing Sophie's hair when, what's that I see?! Something moved! Yes, Sophie had my worst nightmare, LICE! I freaked out! It has been going around the kid's school with 4 cases in Sophie's class alone. So she is definitely the carrier.
We checked all the kids and sure enough Maggie and Sam were afflicted too, though not as badly. So what should have been a romantic anniversary turned into a day from you know where. And the kids did not get to see, let alone stay with their cousins which was especially heartbreaking.
Chris went out and bought loads of Rid, Nix and Pronto and we got to work. We all put the shampoo treatment in and then I spent the next 3 1/2 hours going through Sophie's hair picking out nits. I thought about cutting her hair, but really wanted to avoid it if I could. By the time I was done I was exhausted and so when it was time to move on to Maggie, I decided to cut her hair. I cried as I chopped. But she now has a cute little bob and we all like it. The sad part was that Maggie hardly had any nits, only 4, so it wasn't even necessary. Sam it turns out did not have any. (He only had 1 live bug, so I think he had just gotten it that night sharing a bed with Sophie). So....Chris and Sam took the van out and got it cleaned and threw everything we had in the laundry. After spending the entire day in that hotel, we decided to hit the road! We just had to get out of there. I never want to see that hotel again!
We made it as far as Gilroy, the "Garlic Capital of the World". We needed to eat and Chris and I wanted to go somewhere nice-ish (it WAS our anniversary). So we found an Italian restaurant. Of course by this point the kids had fallen asleep but we dragged them in anyway and had a romantic candlelit dinner with three sleeping kids with lice. Good times....
We drove until we were tired which ended up being in Paso Robles. We found the Paso Robles Inn at midnight and Chris mentioned it was his anniversary and could they give us a special on a room with TWO beds. Oh what they must have been thinking. But it was a cute place.

The next morning it was back to work. Everybody showered and lined up for the checking. Sam was still clean & Maggie only had a couple of little ones. Sophie took another couple of hours.
After taking care of business we walked around town with the fun little shops and saw "Alvin and the Chipmunks". Then we left and got home about 10:00 Saturday night. I was dreading it, knowing that the work was just beginning. This has honestly been a nightmare.

A Beachy Christmas

I have wanted a beach Christmas card since we moved to California (9 years ago-hello!). I almost got one last year, and though we were at the beach, the best pic was against a rock and didn't have the ocean in site! So try, try again I dragged the kids back down to the beach and we finally have our beach card! You'll have to wait and see the one that's on the card, but here are a few others.

Elf Yourself!

The Kids
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1207868850

Chris and Ellie
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1222213744

Serious Stuff....

After FHE last night, I had the kids write their letters to Santa. Oh the focus and concentration! I wish I could get them to be this into their homework:). Santa's got some work to do....

Over the River and Through the Woods....

We were lucky enough to be at Grandma and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving! It was so fun to be in Albuquerque with them in their beautiful new home. We had a wonderful visit. We missed seeing Jordon & Sara, be we got to visit with Dane & Emmy, had fun playing with Eden and got to meet baby Zia (so cute!). We also had a great time hanging out with Kellie & KC and the kids had fun wrestling with Isaac and playing with Eliza. We're so glad they stayed around. Thanks everyone!!

Early Christmas present! Grandma and Grandpa got the kids a rocket blaster! Once we figured out the rockets we had a great time blasting them off and trying to catch them.


Maggie really loved it.


Thanksgiving Day. A perfect meal as always, thanks Mom & Dad! We are always so well taken care of at Grandma and Grandpa's. They really make it a vacation for us.:)

Huge excitement, it snowed!! The kids we're thrilled! It came at night in big chunky snowflakes. So they had to go to bed and wait until morning to play. And bright and early they dressed warmly and headed outside.

What better way to play in snow but to have a huge snowball fight! It was kids against Grandma (what a good sport, as always). It was so fun. S. Californians don't get much snow.

Grandma got out the clogging costumes she MADE for Brookie and Kellie when she used to run a clogging school. Yes, she had 5 kids, babysat more kids, was Primary Pres., made the girls clothes, ran a clogging school and made the costumes!! And that was just the tip of the iceberg. We seriously don't know how she did all that she did. She is all of our idol.

The girls looked so cute trying them on. Bring back memories Brookie?


To get the Christmas season going, Grandma and Ellie got out the Christmas decorations and went to town while everybody else went to the movies. Yeah, Christmas!
Thanks again for a wonderful trip-we love you!!

East Coast Trippin'!

We had such a wonderful time in the East Coast. It was filled with so many memories. After all, it's where Chris went to school, where I was a nanny, where we met, had our first home and had Sam! It was also fun to make so many new memories. We walked A LOT and wished we'd had many more days each place we went.

New York City was our first stop! We took the redeye Halloween night and arrived at 5:30 in the morning (2:30 our time-yikes!). We found a mini-van taxi that could hold us and all of our stuff! We checked into our hotel and we hit the pavement. We spent the first day doing some shopping and seeing the Empire State. Let's just say EVERYTHING takes more time with kids. But it was worth it. The next day we spent in Central Park and the Museum of Natural History. Later we went to Columbus Circle and saw the sights. The last day Chris and I had to sit through a time share spiel and we waited in line for a Broadway show. Then we took the subway to the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero and Wall Street. Later that night we saw Mary Poppins. And then we packed up our stuff and headed up to Connecticut!

We got to Stamford, CT. late Saturday night. The next morning we went to our old ward, the Stamford 1st Ward. It was fun to still see some familiar faces, though most had no idea who we were. Our singles ward bishop's wife did remember us and it was so great to see here. Then we took a tour of our old life. It was amazing to see how many things had changed and how many things had stayed the same. We showed Sam where he was born, where we lived before and after marriage and visited Tod's Point. A park area on the water where Chris and I spent a lot of time while we were dating. My favorite part was driving up to W. Redding and dropping in on my Nanny family, the Archers. Two of the three girls I nannied were there (the third is at Notre Dame!). It was so fun to see them and they were so nice. The only bummer is I forgot to take pictures! It was a nice day and a bit emotional too. We left that night for Boston.

Our final destination-Boston! Chris had fun visiting all his old haunts and showing us around. We stayed in Cambridge and spent most of the first day at MIT. Geek Central! Dad told us fun stories and showed us around. There were a lot of new things to see too. Then we walked across the bridge and into Boston. We spent time in the Public Gardens and Boston Commons and met the friendliest squirrels we had ever seen! They walked right up to us and we had a bag of crackers that the kids fed them. They took it right out of thier hands! Well, that's all the kids wanted to do for the rest of the day. We could not pull them away. It really was cute though. We visited an old gravesite-which both Sam and Maggie hated. And then went to Fanueil Hall and to Pizzaria Uno for dinner and went and saw the Bee Movie for Family Night. Our last day it was raining. But we were so fortunate to have awesome weather for most of the trip. We packed up, did a little shopping and flew home! It really was a great trip-I hope we can get out there more often.

Halloween!

We didn't have much of a Halloween, but we didn't want to miss it. The kids only got to trick-or-treat for about 1/2 hour before we had to leave for the airport. But they got a few goodies to take on the trip, and they looked so cute!

Maggie was Annie, Sophie was a Spanish dancer (in honor of Papa & Maki serving in Spain) and Sam being undecided wore his Tae Kwon Do uniform.

Papa & Maki sent Sophie the comb, fan, flower, and earrings from Spain! They were the perfect touch for her costume.Maggie just loves the movie "Annie" and we think she makes a cute little orphan.

Thanksgiving Reader's Theater

I will get to the New York trip, but for now....

Sophie's class had a Thanksgiving Reader's Theater in her classroom. The kids read fun little stories in groups. They all did a great job and Sophie was awesome!

Sophie with the Mayflower pictures. Hers is second one up from the bottom.