Merry Christmas!

Nobody jump the gun here. Let me explain....This was the gift that my brother Matt & his wife Jessica gave to my mom on Christmas, and what a gift it was! Yep, Matt & Jess are going to be parents. We are so very excited. They are the most amazing Aunt & Uncle to Jack, Ben and Cooper. We know this baby is very blessed to have them as parents. Congrats!




We hope you had a Merry Christmas! We sure did! It was so much fun this year. Jack was completely into the Christmas spirit, and even sat on Santa's lap TWICE. Once after the polar express train ride and then again at the fire department Christmas party (of course, he would only visit Santa if Chloe went with him).

Jack told me this morning that this was the best Christmas ever and I have to agree with him.

We went to the Sacramento area AGAIN for a couple of days. We let the kids open gifts at Mindy & Jeremy's, had a Christmas dinner at Nana & Pa's house and then opened more gifts. The next day we visited with Uncle Matt & Auntie Jessica and that night we met up with Dani & Mike and opened more gifts. We also went to Miss Hannah's 4th birthday party before heading home. It was a busy couple of days.

Wayne had to work today, so thankfully Santa comes a day early to the houses of all the firemen and policemen who have to work on Christmas Day.

Happy Birthday Owen & Random Holiday Pictures

We've been very busy the past few weeks. I've loaded tons of pictures, so be sure to scroll down to see what we've been up to. We got back into Reno on Friday and we went to Owen's 2nd Birthday party in Carson City on Saturday morning. Owen is my friend Kelly's son. He is totally into cars, so his parents made him a very cool Lightning McQueen cake. He was so cute when it was time to sing Happy Birthday. I also added a few pictures of our gingerbread house and some super cute pictures of Ben.

Polar Express

We took the boys on The Polar Express train ride at the Sacramento Railroad Museum. We took the 4:30 train, which was nice because we got a beautiful view of the sunset as the train rode along the river. Once again, I've managed to put the pictures in reverse order. If you start at the bottom and scroll up, it should appear as they were taken.


The hobo wanted to meet us up top for a cup of Joe.




Santa brought gifts for the kids on the train. Each child received a silver bell and got to take a picture with Santa.

Here is Nana calling Uncle Matt to tell him that she was riding the "Panda Express" :)

The train took us to the North Pole where Santa was awaiting our arrival.

Yummy hot chocolate!

Jack was very excited to give his ticket to the conductor. He punched the ticket just like they did in the movie. When Jack got his ticket back, there was a "BE" punched on the ticket.




We rode on a dining car, which was pretty neat. There was music playing and dancers came through with their trays of cookies and hot chocolate.


Jack & NaNa waiting to board the Polar Express.

Oh, Christmas Tree! Oh, Christmas Tree!

We had fun putting up the Christmas tree. Jack really liked being a helper with the lights and putting the ornaments on the tree. He found one particular branch that was his favorite and put most of the ornaments on it.

Arizona

Wow! It's hard to believe it's been a month since we've added pictures. We just got back from our winter vacation. We went to Arizona to visit Grandma & Grandpa Monson and Great Grandpa Stunz. It was Ben's first plane ride and he did great - no screaming and he slept most of the way. Couldn't ask for more.

Ben got to meet his Great Grandpa for the first time. Jack got to ride an elephant and a camel, play golf in the backyard, ride a carousel, drive grandpa's golf cart and a train. We went to the Phoenix Zoo for Zoolights - the zoo lit up with millions of lights and tons of different light sculptures, very fun.

We had a wonderful visit and hope that we can do it again soon. The 65-70 degree weather was a welcome change. We got about 6 inches of snow today. Jack had fun helping Wayne shovel the driveway, he made snow angels and had Wayne make snowballs so that he could throw them at him.

Kisses

Today we met our friends Keith & Lisa at my favorite park and made an attempt at some holiday photos. I tried getting pictures of their two girls and Lisa tried getting a few family shots of us. As you might guess, things didn't go as I would have liked. It was a miracle if all four of us were looking in the same direction at the same time.

I wanted to share a couple of my favorites from today. Before we left, we got a picture of Jack giving his best friend Chloe a little smooch. They are the best of friends and too cute together. We are working out the details of the marriage and will have a lot of pictures like these for the slideshow at the wedding :)

Ben likes to give kisses too. He grabs onto my cheeks and gives a very sloppy, very wet kiss. I'm a big sicko because I love every minute of it!

Da-Da

Ben has started babbling much more in the past couple of days. You would think his first word might be ma-ma after I carried him in my belly for 9 months, gave birth to him, have provided him with all of his nourishment, have gotten up with him in the middle of the night for 6 months, etc., etc,. Oh no...his first word is da-da. I see where I rank. Whatever ;)

The sounds we hear most are da-da, ya-ya, baaaah and a very long ewww. Sometimes I get to hear a maaaaah sound, usually when he's crying.

He's a very happy little boy, so we also hear a lot of excited squeals and deep belly laughs (especially when big brother is around).

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! We had so much fun going out trick-or-treating. Jack got to trick-or-treating twice. Once at preschool Thursday and then in our neighborhood on Friday. All the kids and teachers dressed up in costume and went door to door to all the different classrooms. It sounded like they had a blast.

Jack has never seen so much candy in his life. On Friday morning, the day after the preschool trick-or-treating, he layed himself down on the couch and wanted me to cover him up. So I grabbed his blanket and covered him up. He took the blanket off and then told me that he needed to be covered up with all of his candy. Crazy kid.

The pictures are in reverse order and I don't know how that happened, so please bear with me. Here is Ben trying to take Jack's candy and Jack moving it out of the way with one hand, while shoveling chocolate into his mouth with the other hand.
Just about to go out trick-or-treating.

Here the boys are busy looking at our neighbor across the street as he was getting the scary music and lights to play.

Jack as Spiderman and Ben the Bear.

Here are Daddy and the Doggie after they carved the pumpkin. Jack thinks that he is a Dog these days. He crawls around on the ground and answers our questions with 'woof-woof'. He has recently been referring to himself as Super-Doggie and tells us that he has powers. (If I would have known that the Doggie stage would be in full force, he would have been a dog for Halloween instead of Spiderman)

Tahoe

Today we went to Tahoe City with our friends from playgroup. There is one token girl in the group and her mommy is a firefighter in the Lake Tahoe area. She gave us a tour and demonstration. The boys were all so excited to play on the fire engines and squirt the hose! After we finished at the firestation, we had a picnic and played at the park. It was a gorgeous fall day.