Merry Christmas!

I LOVE the month of December!  Of course, it may have something to do with the fact that I have the ENTIRE month off of work :).  I love getting to spend the month with my Trey man and my sweet hubby :).  I love all of the fun holiday preparation, and I even love having the time to clean our apartment!  Though I'm sure that last one will get old quickly once I'm a stay at home mom for good :). We spent the month doing the usual fun holiday celebrations...made gingerbread nativities/Santa's sleigh, went to our ward Christmas party, got together with friends, listened to tons of Christmas music, and of course ate way too many delicious treats.  We also went to see the lights at Thanksgiving Point.  That trip is the reason this post has no pictures :).  We definitely took some, though not many due the huge downpour of snow.  We thought it would be fun to take the wagon ride through the lights instead of driving in our car, and that the snow would make it so much more magical :).  It was magical for about the first 5 minutes, then we started to freeze and Trey started to get antsy.  Another 5 minutes into it and we didn't care much about the lights, just getting back into our warm car!  The snow was coming down quicker, and we were getting more soaked by the second.  As soon as it was over we booked it back to our car.  It was quite the ordeal getting Trey in.  We had to unearth him from his piles of clothing so he wouldn't suffer from heat stroke once we blasted the heat.  In our rush I wasn't exactly thorough enough with checking to make sure we didn't lose anything in the process.  When we pulled out of the parking lot, we ran over a large lump...which turned out to be our camera.  It was surprisingly not smashed like I thought, but still completely broken and unusable.  So, no pictures from this month :(.  But on the upside, we got a new camera!  And let's face it, it was time.  The one we had been using I'd gotten in college...8 years ago.  Technology has come a long way in those 8 years!

We didn't get our camera until after Christmas, so once again, we didn't get pics of Trey at Christmas...guess we won't be voted Parents of the Year any time soon :).  But we did of course get it on video.  We were so super excited for Trey to open his presents this year now that he actually has complete control over his hands!  He had been practicing all month (we've been letting him unwrap Christmas books to read at night...he won't sit still for the stories, but he's one terrific unwrapper).  He was pretty excited too that we were actually letting him unwrap the presents instead of saying "No" every time he got close to the tree :).  Earlier in the month he started touching the end of a tree branch and would look at us and say "No." :).  He got some pretty fun presents, but lost interest half way through unwrapping.  He wanted to play with his loot!  Santa sure spoiled him this year :).  Another great Christmas enjoying time with family, eating dinner with my Grandma, and of course, relaxing in our Christmas Pjs.     

Christmas

Trey's first Christmas was pretty dang awesome.  I think for us more than him.  We LOVED watching him open all of his presents!  We got it all on video, but unfortunately didn't think to take any pictures.   Here's a pic. I stole off Facebook of the Jessee Family in our Christmas Eve PJ's though :).

And here's the pic. from our Christmas card my incredible sil took!  I love it!

And here's our Santa Trey...another pic by my sil.  I love this one too!

Trey's 1st Christmas gifts:  The kiddo needed clothes, so he mostly got a ton of 9 month clothes.  He also got some fun books and a super awesome Dino that shoots out balls.  I can't wait for him to be able to crawl around and chase them!  He got some more toys, but he just stares at them right now...again, we'll have to wait til he starts crawling, which he is nowhere near doing.  He's a rolling maniac, but try and have him sit up by himself and he falls right over.  Trey's favorite part of the whole gift unwrapping experience? The bows off the presents.  I put tiny bows on all of his gifts, and he loved grabbing them and pulling them off.  Super fun to watch!

We hope you had a Merry Christmas! :)

Gingerbread Palaces

We aren't into just makin normal, boring, plain old gingerbread houses around here.  Go big or go home baby!  Or at least that's how it started out.  Then our building construction got a bit too complicated and morphed into just another average run of the mill gingerbread house.  Oh well, maybe next year :).

 Dale and I rockin the frosting nose look...I love my goofy hubby :)

Breakfast with Santa

Dale and I took Trey to visit Santa this year!  Dale's mom is in the Riverton Orchestra and they put on a delicious breakfast catered by Kneaders while they serenaded us with beautiful Christmas music.  Afterwards Santa visited and we got to have Trey sit on his lap.  He wasn't so sure about the beard at first...but after a lot of calling his name and making goofy faces, we got him to kind of look at the camera :).  

In line to see Santa :)

This is kinda scary!

Chillin with daddy!

Christmas Spirit

Dale and I have decided December at our house is going to be filled with the Christmas Spirit.  Naturally I just HAD to put up my tree 3 days before Thanksgiving, and let's be honest...I've been listening to Christmas music for months :).  I love the spirit this holiday brings.  This year I really want to focus on a Christ centered Christmas.  After all, He is the reason for the season.  To start off our Christ centered Christmas Dale and I took Trey on his first ever trip to see the lights at Temple Square.  We of course picked up our OH SO WONDERFUL hot cup of Caramel Apple Cider from Starbucks!  I thought it was delicious, Dale thought it was amazing.  Trey just drooled.  Next we walked through Temple Square and admired the amazing lights.  I thought they were beautiful, Dale thought they were incredible.  Trey just drooled.  Before leaving we visited the Nativity scene set up by the temple.  I loved it, Dale thought it was great, and Trey...well, he just drooled.  Not so sure Trey got much out of our trip, but Dale and I were incredibly overexcited about taking him.  Apparently everything is much more fun when you have a kid.  Even if all they do is drool :). 

1st attempt at taking our own picture...

2nd Attempt

3rd attempt...didn't realize Trey's hat had fallen down :)

4th picture...taken by a kind stranger who was watching us struggle :)

The reason for the season!