Entertaining Elves

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Merry Christmas!

Chick-fil-A Cow

Apparently the real Santa is too freaky for Spencer...

but the creepy Chick-fil-A Cow Santa is totally fine...

Funny kid.

Colorful Coiffure

It was "crazy hair" day at Dallin's school today and this is what we came up with:

He looked pretty darn cool.

Dallin's birthday is during Christmas break, so we decided that today would also be a good day to celebrate early with his class. I brought small Jamba Juices for everyone and was able to witness a really cute class tradition... Dallin stood in front of a wall with with the words to "Happy Birthday" placed in the correct order. With a stick, Dallin pointed to each word as his class sang to him.

Then, his teacher flipped the wall around while we all hummed the Jeopardy theme song and Dallin rearranged the words.

It was really funny listening to us sing the messed up version.

Hair color, Jamba Juice and birthday celebrations make for a pretty great day!

Sweet Santas

Here are the common sounds of our home: Dallin bouncing a basketball, Spencer watching the Wiggles, and Claire doing "falaps" with her tap shoes. This little girl loves to dance.This morning I attended her Christmas dance performance. Could there be anything cuter than a bunch of 3 and 4 year old girls in tights, tutus and Santa hats? They were adorable.

They performed their little dance, had a gift exchange (Claire scored some fabulous girly makeup),

and finished off the morning with some hot chocolate and Christmas treats.

Here's the performance (Claire is front, in the middle):

Can you see the pure happiness and joy in Claire's face? That's all I needed for Christmas!

Cousin Cheer

Yesterday I pulled the older kids out of school, got a babysitter for Spencer and headed for Disneyland. My cousin Shaun, his wife Kristy and their 3 kids are in town on vacation and we have been looking forward to playing with them at Disneyland. Dallin and Claire had a BLAST!

Here are the highlights:
-meeting up with Jolene and Parker Chase and Dee Adamson (from our ward) and riding the Matterhorn together (while we waited for our cousins).
-watching Claire's sheer fright as she rode the Matterhorn for the very first time and then listening to her ask if we could ride it a couple hundred more times when it was over.
-riding the Matterhorn 3 more times with our cousins.
-seeing Allison and Dallin's excitement being able to ride together in a Matterhorn car without an adult.-catching up with my cousins Shaun and Kristy.-meeting their newest addition, baby Macey.
-Dallin's first time riding Indiana Jones and loving it.
-watching Shaun go with Dallin, Allison and Garrett (4) on Splash Mountain outfitted in huge white ponchos.
-eating a fun dinner together at Pinocchio's Village
-letting the 4 older kids walk through the Swiss Family Robinson's tree house all by themselves (2X).
-watching the boys play...-watching the girls giggle...-seeing all of the beautiful Christmas decorations at Disneyland.
-the best part was having my kids reconnect with their cousins (and me too!)

Thanks White family for making the trip down here and inviting us to share in a part of your vacation! See you next year?!

*once again, sorry for the horrible photos... I really need to stop relying on my phone to take pictures.

Spectacular Scholar

*WARNING: this blog entry contains some serious bragging. If you are not one who enjoys hearing about how awesome other people's kids are, you might want to stop here and move on to another blog.Dallin is smart... really smart. I rarely have to assist him with his homework... he just sits down, does it and understands it all. We just received his progress report which told us (after much testing) that he is at a 3rd grade reading level. Last week when he spent the night at his buddy's house, they apparently stayed up until midnight discussing in depth the planets in space. He can navigate a computer better than most adults I know. When he is curious about something, he googles it and then "wikepedias" it. He loves playing with calculators and is quite the mathmetician. He enjoys opening up the hymn book to memorize songs. I went and volunteered in his classroom a few weeks ago and noticed that during journal writing, all the kids around Dallin kept asking him how to spell words. Okay, I'm done bragging... sort of.

Last week, Dallin brought home a piece of paper and a big smile on his face. It was a note saying that he has been chosen to receive an award at the 1st grade awards assembly. He has been so excited and we have been wondering what kind of award it would be. Here is the really fuzzy video of Dallin's award acceptance today (not sure what happened with our camera).

Congratulations to our Spectacular Scholar! Dallin really is an all-around bright kid and I know that one of these days, there is no way I will be able to help him with his homework (not that probably he'll need it :)).

Dallin and Principal Maxwell

Love you Dallin!

Saturday Snow

We used to have a pretty crappy mall. Lately, however, some nice stores have emerged, new restaurants are filling up quickly and a new outdoor section of the mall has literally transformed my views of this city. It's amazing what a Pottery Barn can do for a town :). A part of this outdoor shopping experience right now is a beautiful Christmas tree in the middle of the courtyard and on the weekends, snow. Yep, snow in the desert.

We decided to partake and my kids were beside themselves. Snow falling from the sky (okay, soap bubbles being spit from the rooftops) with Christmas music in the background was too good to be true for a Saturday evening in Temecula. Boy are we glad we went and boy are we sad that we didn't bring our good camera. These shots from my phone are horrible because the kids were moving so fast, but hopefully you get the idea:

Thanks Temecula for upping the ante!

Hermano Hickey

I personally have never had a hickey... maybe one that I gave to myself on my arm when I was 12 just to see what would happen. I have had a curling iron burn on my neck that resembled a hickey and required a turtleneck cover to help me avoid telling the correct story over and over again. Spencer, however, at the ripe age of 15 months currently has a hickey. Here is the story...

It was a beautiful Sunday morning in December (last Sunday) and I desperately needed to hop in the shower before church. I put Dallin in charge of watching Spencer (with the help of The Wiggles) while I rinsed off. I emerged from the shower just in time to see Spencer trip and land face first into one of his toy cars. As I picked him up to kiss him, I noticed a big red mark on his cheek. "An odd owie from landing on a toy car" I thought... and then I didn't give it much more thought as we dashed out the door for church.

We arrived at church early (patting myself on the back right now) and sat down behind the Scott family. Leslie Scott turned around and brought up Spencer's owie. I told her "oh, he fell on his toy car this morning". Then here is how the truth came out...
Dallin quickly replied "that's not how he got that mark"
I quickly asked "then WHAT HAPPENED?!" (whispering in church, of course)
He proceeded to unveil the mystery: "I couldn't stop kissing his cute cheeks this morning and sucked too hard on his cheek."

Dallin, you just gave your brother a hickey... holy moly.*These photos were taken this morning, so the hickey is 5 days old. Imagine how red and noticeable it was when it was fresh. If only there was a turtleneck for Spencer's face.

Tucson Thanksgiving

Packing up 5 suitcases, an entire family van and all of the baby essentials is never an easy or quick task. I started packing the kids on Sunday, packed myself on Monday, realized that a couple of the pre-packed bags had been unpacked by some live-in monkeys, re-packed those bags on Tuesday and started to load up the van. Are you dizzy yet? I sure was... literally. We left for Tucson on Tuesday evening and it honestly took me ALL day to get us out the door. I was in a poopy mood until we buckled our seat belts and put the van in drive. It felt so good to drive away knowing that the next few days would be filled with family, good food, an unscheduled husband and lots of fun family time!

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Wednesday to accommodate Pete's dad and brother's work schedules. It was so great to spend the holiday with Peter's parents and some of his siblings. An added bonus was having his Grandpa and Grandma Murray there from Oregon!

The kids were in HEAVEN playing with their cousins.

Here are some of the highlights of our Thanksgiving in Tucson:

watching the boys play together...

watching the girls entertain each other...

eating a super-yummy Thanksgiving meal together...

watching the javelina knock over the outside garbage cans and eat our leftovers...

going to the shooting range to shoot Casey's guns (one of my "blonde" moments was when I put the bullets in backwards... I thought I was going to have to buy Casey a new gun, but a kind employee of the range fixed it for us. Sorry for the scare Casey and you're welcome, everyone else for the good laugh :))...

staying in a nearby hotel and jumping on the bed. Claire showed us all up by jumping from the window ledge to the bed.

watching the Thanksgiving day parade in our pajamas in the hotel room...playing in Grandpa and Grandma's backyard...

playing in the cousins backyard...

watching the girls (Claire and Katie) hide a bag of oranges from Grandpa Murray. This random game lasted the entire time we were there. Each day we would meet up and somehow, this bag of oranges would show up. The girls would hold the bag, hide and then yell "Grandpa!!! Come and get the oranges!!!! He would sneak up on them, scare them and the girly screams would pierce our ears. Claire adores him...

visiting Grandpa Waldron at work and exploring his helicopter (he is a life-flight pilot)...

meeting Peter's cousins for the first time and having a big family lunch together...

playing Loaded Questions back at the house with those cousins.

We had a wonderful time. Dallin and Claire slept the entire way home on Friday night... this was great except for the fact that Claire thinks her cousins only live a few minutes away. She gets angry that I won't take her to Katie's house to play. If only we all did live a little closer.