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.