3... 2... 1... Let it Rip!

For Christmas Corbin's cousin, Trey, whom he idolizes, asked for Bey Blades, ergo Corbin now loves Bey Blades. We had never heard of them... it is basically the latest Japanimation cartoon, where kids battle tops by spinning them in a plastic basin and seeing which one can outlast the others. The show has marketed little metal tops with rip cords that kids can use to battle their own tops against their friends. So Corbin got two Bey Blades for Caleb for Christmas :) He has since dressed up as his own version of a Japanimation character and spent the day running around the house screaming "Let it rip!" and proceeding to launch his metal top across the room.

Christmas Vacation

On Christmas Eve we all sat down to enjoy our Mary and Joseph dinner. We ate bread, fish, rice, olives, avocados, nuts, dates and grape juice. We turned off the lights and ate out of wooden dishes (minus those plastic cups of course :) but the kids' favorite part was getting to use their fingers for the entire meal.


We also wrote up some Christmas wish lists for Santa, that we hung up after dinner.



Then we read the story of Christ's birth and let the kids open one present each, which just so happen to be a pair of new pajamas. Then we loaded into the car and drove around town admiring every one's Christmas lights until all three kids were finally asleep. Then we headed home and bedded down to wait for Santa's arrival.

Christmas isn't Christmas at our house without Corbin getting sick, so he woke up a few hours later puking. Joy.

We had such a rough night that we actually had to wake the kids up early in order to let them open their stockings before Makelle and I went to church. Santa also brought them a kinect so that the kids can now play games on the xbox. So after church we got that all set up and then finally started opening gifts around 1 o'clock pm.





The rest of the day was spent cooking up a storm and playing with new toys as we hung out and enjoyed our fun, lazy day.


The week after Christmas most of Caleb's family was able to come into town and visit, so we got to spend a few days hanging out with them, playing lots of games, watching a lot of football and taking a trip to the children's museum.

Food, Glorious Food

We started Seth on solids. His first food was ground amaranth cereal. Followed by oatmeal, carrots, tomatoes, cabbage and potatoes. He also is starting to self feed crackers and suck on pieces of fruit in his little mesh pouch. Luckily he is a pretty good little eater, which is a relief since he still refuses to drink from a bottle.

"Seth Did It"

Our devious little daughter has been working on the art of deception lately. She is now old enough to get in trouble when she does something wrong so to avoid a time out she will try to accuse Corbin. However, Corbin is old enough to respond and defend himself and he usually has a good alibi and is able to catch her in her deception. So last time she snuck a treat and knew she couldn't blame Corbin, who was allergic to it, she tells Caleb, "Seth did it!" So Caleb gave her 'the eye' - the, "I clearly don't believe that Seth was capable of climbing up onto the counter and taking the cookie and eating it" look. And before he can even say anything, she quickly adds on, "Seth grew up and did it!"

Gingerbread House

We made our annual gingerbread house using all the leftover Halloween candy.

Basically, Corbin meticulously attached piece after piece of candy, while Makelle non-meticulously ate piece after piece of candy :)

Princess Festival

So far Makelle and I have NOTHING in common. She loves pink, babies, princesses, dresses... pretty much everything I detested growing up.

The other day Caleb was playing video games with Corbin in the living room and Makelle was begging me to let her help fold laundry, and she told me, "it's boring being a kid, I want to be an adult so I can take care of the babies." WHAT?! After wards she brought me a tiara and asked me if I would play princess dance party with her. So somehow I ended up doing chores and pretending to be a princess and Caleb got to play video games. I should have been a boy :)

Later on we were given free tickets to the little princess festival in Provo so Makelle and I had a girls' night out. It was a ridiculously long drive for a low quality production, but she has never been happier.


They had a little princess store set up in the mall where she got to look at tutus, dresses, crowns, necklaces and more. Then we went into the back were they did a little interactive play about a princess that was all clumsy and it turns out she just needed glasses. Makelle is so painfully shy, yet when one of the princess characters came and asked her to dance, Makelle suddenly became the bravest kid there and ran up to the dance floor. The entire time she was clutching this girls' hand and just sort of staring up at her in awe.



After the skit part the girls got to make little snowflake decorations and a Christmas card for someone. Makelle made hers for Corbin. Those two still remain unbelievably good friends, it seriously baffles me with just how much they care about each other.


Then we went to the food court and got a smoothie and discovered that Makelle loves window shopping. I was just rushing along through the crowded holiday foot traffic in the mall, simply trying to get from point A to point B as fast as possible when I noticed Makelle kept stopping and looking at all the little window displays, pointing out shirts that she thought were cute, completely the opposite of me!


It was fun to see how excited she got getting to go to a "real" princess dance party, and she hasn't stopped talking about it since and is already asking about when we can go again. I guess I am going to have to learn to care a whole lot more about make up and clothes and princesses in order to relate to her :)

Decorating the Tree

We picked out a tree for family home evening, but by the time we got home and got it set up, it was getting pretty late, so we told the kids we would put on the decorations and finish it up tomorrow.

The next morning I came out and found Corbin directing Makelle to hand him ornaments while he hung them up. I had to explain that we were actually going to wait until that evening when Daddy got home to decorate it.


I love how they got the stool specifically so they could reach up high and not just have to put them in a cluster on the bottom were they could reach, so instead we ended up with a cluster at the top, because they really liked climbing up the stool.









Poor Mr. Sethers was just too tired to stay up and help decorate his first tree and we lost him about 5 minutes into it. I had great visions of him playing with the little bell ornaments as they jingle while he looks on with a grand vision of awe and wonder at the simple joys of the Christmas season, but no... turns out he couldn't have cared less :)


It is already beginning to feel a lot more like Christmas, especially when you first walk into the house and smell that wonderful pine scent again and again. I love it!