Rewind - Christmas 2009

Christmas 2009 was a pretty low-key year for us this year. My family got together at Thanksgiving, and for various reasons we were unable to celebrate Christmas together this year. We were greeted with a white Christmas on Christmas Eve and it stuck around through Christmas Day. It was quite a pleasant surprise. On Christmas Day, we celebrated with just the 4 of us. We had a great time, and I always enjoy seeing the boys' faces light up when they open their presents. Jason and I didn't really exchange gifts this year, we more or less just bought for ourselves and then wrapped the gifts. LOL! We are both so hard to buy for and too often throughout the year we buy things that we need/want. We really need to get better at surprising each other.


We celebrated Christmas with Jason's dad on Saturday. Jeannean treated us with a nice pot roast dinner and some yummy banana pudding (that I had been craving). We aren't very traditional when it come to Holiday dinners.

Christmas 2008

*Preface: pictures are missing from this post, but will be added soon. I was playing hostess on Saturday, so I will have to wait for my sister-in-law's pictures.

Christmas 2008 has now came and gone. It seems this year that it flew by. Christmas Eve after picking up with boys from their mom, we drove around and looked at Christmas lights in Flower Mound. Our outing was cut short due to Colby being sick. We had to get him home to get him some medicine for his horrible cough. When we got home the boys were uber excited to see all of the gifts under the tree (b/c there were not ANY gifts under the tree when they had left). I had been hording all of the gifts in our room.

The boys finally went to bed and we stayed up for about 30 minutes (even though we knew they weren't asleep). I couldn't stay awake any longer. We got their bikes out of our closet , set them up in front of the tree, and filled stockings. Morning finally came and I heard Tristen wake first. He hadn't been into the front room yet to see the bikes (b/c all of the gifts are usually wrapped). He had tried to wake Colby up, but Colby didn't crawl out of bed until I went and got him. They were SOOOOOOO excited about their new bikes. They boys also got some new clothes, a Tony Hawk hoodie, and a Wii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They were beyond thrilled. One last gift to be opened was a gift from their Uncle Shane who lives in Denver. He is flying each one of the kids (separately) out to Denver for a weekend snowboarding trip. The boys were ecstatic. Neither one of them have ever flown, nor have they ever been snowboarding. Tristen's flight is already booked and he is going January 16th. Colby will be going in late February. They are going to have the time of their lives. I'm pretty jealous that I'm not going!

So, of course, Christmas Day, the Wii was turned on and wasn't turned off until about 11 hours later. The boys had a blast playing Wii Sports. I decided to go rent 2 games (to try them out before we buy them). I rented Mario Super Sluggers (or whatever it is called) and Mario Galaxy. The boys weren't crazy over the baseball game but they've enjoyed Mario Galaxy.

Saturday, we did Christmas with our families and the boys scored Guitar Hero and an additional Guitar from Grandpa & Jeannean (Jason's dad and wife). From my mom and Paul, they got Mario Kart. They got some really cool shirts from Zumiez from their Aunt Marty and Aunt Brandie.

It was a very nice Christmas for us and our families. We are truly a very blessed family.

Christmas

Christmas season is finally here. We usually put the tree up the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but the boys were at their mom's and they wanted us to wait for them. Jason put lights on the house on Wednesday and we decorated the yard. We put up the Christmas tree on Friday and got it all decorated.

Jason - putting up our lights

The old tree...

Little did we forget, the stupid cord had a short in it. (It is a pre-lit tree.) Jason thought he had fixed it, but the lights would not stay on. Finally, after messing with the cord more times than he would've liked, he told me to go buy a new tree. Off on my trek I go! Of course, before I headed out at 8:30pm to Lowe's, I researched online to see what was on sale (everything was 50% off) and comparable to what we had, even though I wanted a bigger tree. I wanted a tree w/a wider base than our previous one. I went to Lowe's searching for the tree that was listed as $49. I found it, but decided it wasn't what I wanted! It looked just like our old tree. So after debating with myself and w/Colby who came along to help, we found the perfect tree. My luck, they were out and so was every store within a 10 mile radius! UGH! So, I called around and found that Lowe's by my work had 3 in stock. On my way to work the next morning, I went and picked up the tree, which was the last one!!!!!!!!!!

So, I brought home the new tree and got to go through the fun of undecorating one tree and redecorating the new tree. It really wasn't that bad, but I did have to go buy more ornaments b/c our new tree was so much bigger..

The new and improved tree...

Pictures....

Here are some random pictures from Christmas. I'll try and take more pictures sometime soon!

Tristen...listening to his iPod

Colby....listening to his iPod

Us...I look strange in this picture, but this is the only one from Christmas that we took.

Tristen...so excited about his Tony Hawk shirt from Marty & Phillip

Colby....joining in on the excitement with Tristen.

Abby....opening her gifts.

Aspen....with her gift from us.

Meg...excited that she got the wrestler she wanted!

Abby...

The boys new baseball bags! (They have wheels!!)

The boys new cases for their iPod shuffles.

My Texas Tech gnome from Marty.

Christmas is over...

Well, Christmas has come and gone. I'm a horrible mommy and didn't take pictures Christmas morning. I had every intention of doing so, but completely forgot. I'll take pictures of the boys new stuff sometime soon. I was more excited about them opening their presents then receiving mine.

We ended up at the last minute getting the boys cell phones. We have told them time and time again that they could not have a cell phone until they had a job so they could pay for one. Well, we contradicted ourselves (kinda). They will still have to pay for their cell phones through doing chores. At the end of each month, they will be paid so much per chore that was completed. The cost of their cell phone is $10/month, so anything they make over $10, they get to keep. Here our reasoning behind getting them cell phones. We do not have a house phone. We thought about getting a house phone, but it was cheaper and more cost effective (since we will be moving in 4-6 months) to get a cell phone for the house. Well, it is $10/month per phone line to add to our current plan, so we ended up w/2 cell phones. With my sister-in-law watching the boys after school now, there are days when she needs to leave 30 minutes early to get to her evening classes. The boys need to be able to reach one of us in case of an emergency, so this is how we ended up where we are w/the cell phones. There are rules and restrictions w/the phones, but the boys are on cloud 9. I'd like to hope that we are teaching them how to manage money and the value of a dollar through this new cell phone thing. They both received money for Christmas and immediately asked me to put it in their savings account, so I think we've got a good start on managing money. They also got new wheeled baseball bags w/their names embroidered on them. They got scooters, clothes, movies, game boy games, board games, and cases for their iPods.

Jason got a new iPod nano, case for his iPod, RoadId, clothes, The Love of Baseball book, Texas Rangers Nike pullover, and lots of other little things.

We all had a very nice Christmas and are very thankful for everything that we have. Next year we are starting a new tradition w/the boys. They will both be picking an angel from the Salvation Army Christmas tree and buying gifts for a needy child.

Christmas

Christmas is finally here. I'm sitting at work trying to waste away the day. It is 1:48pm and I'm seriously contemplating sneaking out of here in about 30 minutes. I'm excited for Christmas to be here as I can't wait to not only give some great gifts but also receive some great gifts. I think the boys will be surprised by a few of their gifts, and I know Jason will be surprised by a few a of his gifts. We are staying here in town for Christmas. We will be exchanging gifts with Jason's family on Tuesday evening and having dinner at our house.

I'm sure some of you are wondering why you haven't receieved your Christmas card from us. I have had absolutely no time to put something together, so I'm hoping that after the new year I can send out New Year cards.

Here is a not-so-good picture of out tree. As you can see, it doesn't have a TON of ornaments on it. We decided not to put up quite a few ornaments b/c last year we were constantly battling with Tigger, our dog, eating or pulling down the ornaments. Now looking at the tree, it actually looks pretty crappy from that picture. I'll have to attempt to retake a better picture.