Sheesh, Time Flies

I can't believe it is already February!  I had so many plans to blog about things at Christmas and New Years but obviously THAT didn't happen.  Well, I will finally finish up 2009 with a quick little recap of our Christmas.  As has been our tradition for the past few years, we stayed home for Christmas morning.  We went to church on Christmas Eve and then came home and let the boys open their traditional pjs.  We also did something a little different this year.  We had the boys "draw" names and they each got a present for one of their brothers.  So to add a little excitement to Christmas Eve we let them open their brother gifts too (apparently boys aren't that excited about new pajamas). 

Once they were all tucked away for the night, Santa got to work.  We decided to surprise them with Band Hero for the Wii. So I went to work putting it all together.  Well early in the morning, we woke up and went into the livingroom with the boys were they excitedly exclaimed, "Band Hero...Playstation?  Are we getting a Playstation?"  

"Ahhhh...Nooooooo."

Bad Santa!  He brought the wrong Band Hero!  Ooops!!!!

Dean's brother and sister-in-law came over for breakfast and then we were off to Longview to celebrate with family.  We spent the rest of Christmas Day and evening at my aunt and uncle's house and then the next day with Dean's family.  It was a great time of being with family and even getting to meet my cousin's wife who we hadn't met before.

Once back in Bellingham, We set off to return our oops and get the correct game for our Wii.  Well...wouldn''t you know it, everywhere we went they had it for Playstation, XBox, but not the Wii.  As we left the 3rd or 4th store at the mall, we decided to just swing into one more.  Dean just ran inside because why drag the whole family in just to find more empty shelves.  Well, he seemed to be in there awhile and when he finally came out the door her had a big box in hand.  He had found the last Band Hero for Wii that was probably in Bellingham!

So I will end this post of our Partridge Family moment...

 

 

 

 

It's Christmas Time!

I LOVE this time of year.  I love the decorations and the music, the old tv specials (Rudolph, Charlie Brown), getting presents for my family, and making fun memories with the boys with our traditions.  I love, love, love the excitement in my boys as we get closer to Christmas. 

Well, this weekend we started the traditions with the annual tree hunt.  We set out just after lunch into the COLD weather.  The farm we went to has their trees ultra organized into sections and each section is labelled so we drove to the Noble area, parked and ventured out into the cold.  Now, we usually spend a fair amount of time looking around sure that a better tree must be over there or maybe over there.  Dean and I usually disagree a bit about the kind of tree we want so we keep looking for a compromise.  Well, this year we got out of the car, saw one tree that looked good but decided there might be a better one over there (here we go again huh?) and the spotted a tree that we both really liked so we cut her down.  It was an all time record for us!  10 MINUTES!

After the chilly tree hunt we stopped by Starbucks to warm up a bit and still made it home a little over an hour after we left!  Later that night we hung all the decorations on it and now our house feels really Christmasy. 

I hope you all are enjoying the Christmas season and can all celebrate the birth of Christ!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

We had a great Christmas together this year! Our celebration started Christmas Eve night. Dean's sister Toni and her husband Jason and their kids Jordan and Caleb came over for homemade pizza. Dean's brother Keith and his wife Sheri came over a little after dinner too. We were also joined by a friend named Carmen. We met her through Toni and Jason and she has become a part of the family as well since she is far from her family (she is from Columbia) After pizza the kids opened a few gifts and then everyone headed home. Our boys decorated some yummy cookies for Santa and then put on their new jammies and went to bed.

Santa's cookies with a generous helping of sprinkles.

I think this may have been the first year that the boys woke us up Christmas morning. Usually Dean is the first one awake and ready to get the boys up to open presents. We did still need to get Griffen up as he likes to sleep a little later than his brothers. It was a beautiful scene outside with all of our snow and the boys really enjoyed their presents. We were originally planning to head to Longview Christmas afternoon to be with family for dinner but since we had so much snow, Dean had to work on Friday. Thankfully he went to the store Wednesday afternoon and picked up a small ham for us. So after a day of playing with the new toys, we ate a yummy dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, rolls, and corn. A pretty good last minute Christmas dinner.

Christmas morning!

When Dean got home on Friday we left for Longview. When we arrived at my parents house, we opened gifts with them, had a little snack then headed for Dean's granparents. We had dinner at his grandparents house that night along with his aunt and uncle, mom and dad, and Toni and Jason and their kids. Then we got to open MORE presents with all of them. Saturday was another busy day of visiting friends and family topped off with another Christmas dinner, this time with my mom and dad. The highlight of my Saturday was going to my aunt's house and learning how to make lefse. My grandma even came over and supervised the lesson. We returned home Sunday morning.

Gift opening at Great Grandma and Great Grandpa's house.

Four generations of Mahlums

We spent new years with friends of ours at their house. There were five families altogether and we had a great time of playing games, eating good food, and just hanging out. The only bummer of the night was that our poor little Griff, after playing and having lots of fun, ended up getting a headache and then threw up a couple of time. He spent most of the rest of the night sleeping on my lap. We attempted to celebrate the east coast new year so that kids could go to sleep if they wanted but we missed it by three minutes. Then we tried again with the next two time zones without success but it didn't matter because all of the kids made it to midnight. it was a very fun night with friends made even better when Griffen woke up the next morning feeling perfectly fine.

Our poor little Griff's New Years Eve was spent sleeping on mom's lap.

We hope you all had a great Christmas and that 2009 is a blessed year for you!

More of My Favorite Ornaments

So I said that I would post some more of my favorite Christmas tree ornaments and I almost forgot. So here they are:

This one is from a friend of mine who is a missionary in Kenya. She was one of the girls in a Bible study I was a part of my first two years in college. That group of ladies has, and always will, a special place in my heart. I am awed at the work Tracy is doing in Kenya for God's kingdom and feel very blessed to call her friend. She has been there for 6 years so far. I can't remember what year she sent this but it has been on our tree ever since.

These next two ornaments are what we gave the guests at our wedding 14 years ago. My mom wrote our names and the date on each one by hand (thanks mom!). I am not sure how many people actually took one that night because we ended up having quite a few left over. In fact, about 90% of our first tree, a year later, was decorated in these "Kim & Dean" ornaments. A couple of years later, our small group had a white elephant gift exchange and one lucky person took home a big box full of them. Unfortunately, at the same party the next year we ended up getting them back. Now we just have these two so I am making sure they get stored carfully.

The boys get a new ornament every year from us and Dean's parents so there are a lot of memories on our tree. I limited myself to just picking one from each boy and actually found a couple that were from them instead. This cute little angel Jake is from 1999. A friend of mine, Shannon, had watched Jake for me one day and when I came to pick him up she gave me this sweet little guy telling me that Jake had made it for me. He is just too cute!

These next two pictures go together. This is an ornament that Austin made for us when he was in kidergarten. I have a few different hand print gifts from the boys that have similar poems with them but I will never get tired of seeing how cute and little their hands were once.

These are Griffen's ornaments that he got in 2004, his first Christmas, and 2005 (I think). I love these two because they sum him up at that age. He LOVED to jump in his doorway jumper and I even began calling him my Tigger. When he got to be two he still loved to jump around and really loved it when I would sing the Tigger song while he jumped. (The wonderful thing about Tiggers, is Tiggers are wonderful things. Their tops are made out of rubber, their bottoms are made out of springs. Their bouncy, flouncy, trouncy, pouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is [your] the only one. Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo)

The last ornament is one of about ten or so that my Grandma Mahlum made. They are all different shapes, sizes, and designs. I liked to watch her crochet as I was growing up and I enjoy getting these out every year and putting them on our tree because I know that they were made with lots and lots of love.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

We went on our annual Christmas tree hunt today. They boys got out of school early so we headed out as soon as Dean got home from work. We had a bit of a rough start as we had a VERY grumpy ten year old. We finally got him out to the truck and off we went. Friends of our told us about a farm that had pretty good prices, so after almost 13 years we changed tree farms. I think we made a good choice as we got a Noble-like (I can't remember the exact kind) for less than we would've gotten a Douglas at the old farm. The boys had a good time wandering through the trees and trying to find THE tree (even Jake perked up and enjoyed himself).

Austin and Griff did a happy dance when we found THE tree.

Strong boys carrying the tree.

While we were looking, we met an older couple who wondered out loud if they were going to need to go back to the front of the farm to get help carrying their tree. So after we got our tree loaded, Dean and Jake headed back out to find them. They did and carried the tree to their car. As they did, the gentleman told Dean how he had had a stroke last spring and was so thankful for the people who have stepped up to help them with things (a neighbor mowed their lawn, Dean helped with the tree, etc.) He even invited us to their open house Christmas party on Sunday. He said that they would have their tree up with ornaments from the 1980's all the way back to the 1880's. They both were so sweet.

Jake in a MUCH better mood.

Our Christmas adventure continued when we came home as we began to decorate the tree. I tested each strand of lights before putting them up and all worked fine. When I got the tree 3/4 of the way done and decided to test them again...only half of one strand lit up! When Dean tried to fix them, they all went out. So I headed to the store to get new ones and of course, the only choice was red. They did have some big clear lights so we now have a mix of big clear and small red lights on the tree. I think I actually really like it. The Christmas spirit returned once the boys started to put their ornaments on the tree and were giggling the whole time.

Our pretty tree!

So my cousin Dawn, did a post on her blog about some of her favorite ornaments and I thought that was a great idea so I am going to try it too. After putting up all of ours, I realized how hard this is going to be. So I pick a couple older ones to post today and will do more in the next couple of weeks.

This is an ornament that my parents bought for me when I was little. She is so cute!

This is an another ornament that my parents bought for me when I was little. The date on this one was 1978, so I was five years old.

This sweet angel was a gift from a family who's kiddo was in my classroom when I worked at Kindercare. She is just so cute and reminds me of the cuties that I used to worked with (they are all now in high school!)