Christmas!

So to start, I must tell you about Jacob's rock collection. Tyler has started collecting nice polished rocks, so Jacob wanted his own collection. He decided to make it himself--he goes out all the time and finds "cool" rocks--even walking into church he bends over and picks up a few and puts them in his pocket. He has them all laid out over the table on our patio and loves to go outside and stare at them. It is amazing because he actually remembers each rock, has favorites, tells me where he got them, etc. It is so cute. And he is in heaven here--no shortage of rocks at Fort Irwin!Before we left on our adventures for the holidays, we built a gingerbread house. Can you guess how long it lasted? Well, Maggie ate the candy as it was being built, and by the end of the night the house was half demolished. By the next day any edible parts were gone...can you say sugar high? At least they had fun making it.
Jacob had his preschool Christmas program. He looked so cute. He sang louder than most other kids and knew all the movements. I met with his teacher a few weeks ago and she said he is really good in class--follows directions, helps other kids, is very smart, etc. She went on and on and it made me so proud! Jacob has always been very intense and it could have easily gone the other way with his behavior. He is such a funny kid. On the way home from Utah in the car he was very upset and kept growling and yelling, "My eyebrow is crooked!" It was very upsetting to him and I still have no idea what he was talking about...

First, the kids and I took off to my mom's for a few days. My sister and her family came down from the Bay Area and we got to spend some time together. It was great, except that everyone got sick. Jacob was throwing up (and never seemed to make it to the toilet) and the rest had coughs/colds. But we still managed to have a good time. Santa even came over to visit! Well, okay, it was only one of Santa's helpers, but he brought some good gifts!
Sorry not too many pics. But then I came home, unpacked, repacked and left for Utah. The kids had a blast playing in the snow. All except for Maggie. She was sick while we were there and made sure everyone knew how miserable she felt...what a pain! She was also sleep deprived. We got all the kids ready to go play in the snow and while I was getting something she actually fell asleep on the floor in all her snow gear. Poor little thing.
So Mags stayed home but the boys went sledding. By the way, I don't think there is anything more frustrating than putting gloves on kids... They had so much fun! They were troopers too--hiking their sleds back up the huge hill. Sometimes they got one of the snowmobilers to pick them up too which was nice.

Christmas Eve we all went to my sister-in-law Katie's house. Grandma Swenson gave all the kids pj's--here's the best pic I got (excluding Joey).
Christmas morning came and Santa didn't forget us. The kids were up bright and early (and I do mean early). They actually took some time opening their gifts so the unwrapping lasted more than a couple minutes, which was nice. Tyler's favorite gift was one Santa brought--Beyblades. Now, unless you have a boy ages 6-10 you probably have no idea what these are, but I firmly believe there is no kid on earth right now who loves Beyblades as much as Tyler does! It is rubbing off on Maggie too--she keeps taking them and yelling, "My beybade!" It is kind of funny...Tyler doesn't think so.
Jacob loves his remote control car...
And Maggie loves her Sing-a-ma-jig. I have to admit, that one is pretty cute!
We went up to visit my grandpa as well. It was great to see him. He loved seeing his great-grand-kids. Tyler was particularly sweet. He tried to make grandpa feel good by making comments about his nice view from his window and even told him that he had a nice bathroom! We went out to lunch and Tyler held his hand out of the restaurant. I didn't even ask him to! It sure made great-grandpa happy. Can you believe he is 92?
I won't go into too much more detail, except to say we had fun even though the kids were sick. It is always great to spend time with family and we can't wait until we move back there in a couple months. The kids had a blast with cousins, and by the end of the week we were all worn out, including dad...
So Merry Christmas everyone, even if it is a little late.

P.S. It snowed here at Fort Irwin! But by the time I got my camera ready to go it had all melted....oh well.