wrapping up 2010!

Theres just a few things I wanted to make sure I remembered that happened this month and the first part of Jan 2011.
First after 2-3 months of casually sitting Jaq down on the potty whenever I felt like it, I decided to break down and just put her in underwear to see what would happen. We had 1 and 1/2 accidents but the bathroom god's were gracious to me and she other than that, did surprisingly well. I was diligent in asking her very frequently if she had to go, and soon I decided it was more me that was trained to ask her instead of her being trained to tell me. So I stopped and lo and behold, she learned to eventually tell me. 4 days later we had no accidents and now its been over a week! I LOVE NOT HAVING DIAPERS! Seriously! And she's so young (2 years and 4 months). This is awesome! She is awesome! I still can't believe it! (Aren't exclamation points great!!)
Other news with Jaq....I"m thinking of ditching the naps. She is CRAZY going to bed. She's up and out till almost 10! Its ridiculous. But if she doesn't get a nap, 7pm comes and she is out for the night! I would just make the switch but come 3-4 in the afternoon if I leave her alone for 2 minutes she's zonked on the floor somewhere. And it kills me to see a tired kid barely able to keep their eyes open, so I know she still needs a nap. Maybe I've just got to give her an early nap and cut it short. Anyways here's a picture of her zonked out late in the afternoon, this time on the couch. Funny she went and got the step stool so she could rest her feet and then she was out.
Here's a little story about Seth. We are out looking at Christmas lights, when we see one of those blow up snowman Christmas decorations on someone's house. It was extremely windy that night and just as we drove by we saw this snowman get blown over, to which Seth says, "Mom, did that snowman get knocked up?" Yes Seth, yes it did. :) Okay the kid meant, "knocked down" but Cordelle and I got a good laugh out of that one.

Of course my kids are playing dress up with their new Christmas dress ups. Although in this picture, Jaq looks like she is tired of being the princess.

And lastly, look how close we're getting on our basement. (I know its not the most conclusive picture of the basement, but it all looks like this so you get the idea). Mudding and taping is done. Now its just trim, paint and carpet. Ahhh, I can't wait. Its so exciting and will be so nice to get the toys downstairs. Its a slow, long process but I bet within the next couple of months it'll be ready....

Christmas Day

Christmas morning was a blast. We opened up presents at my parents house, which I think was fun for them to see. And Neal and Scott were there too. Seth's big gifts were his huge train set and a scooter. We set up Seth's huge Thomas the train tracks and he was glued for hours playing with it. It was fun. (and because I'm writing this in January, I can tell you it has been the ultimate present for him. He spends hours every day with this train track. Its been so much fun for him.) It feels good when you know you got something they will love. Jaquelle mostly got dress ups and make believe stuff like fake food and baby accessories, but she was cute taking every gift over to show Grannie Annie and get her approval for. This really is a fun age for both of them for Christmas morning. They know how to rip off the paper so they dont take hours and yet they super excited even for what other people were getting. For instance, Jaquelle got some buzz lightyear art stuff and Seth excitedly said, "Jaquelle, maybe we can share that." :)

We ate a big breakfast together and then got to talk to Mark who's still in Hungary but gets home at the end of April! It was good to hear from him. Then the rest of the day was spent vegging and sleeping, and watching movies, playing risk, watching football. I love how lazy Christmas day is. It was so great just to be with family. I think that is what I would miss the most when we finally crack down and do our own Christmas at our house. Or maybe I could just bring them all down here for a change......make them truck all their christmas down to our house....hum...tbc on that one.

Jaquelle Christmas morning

Seth Christmas morning

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE

Ahh, I'm late as usual. Lets see if I can remember all of Christmas Eve. This year once again, instead of giving gifts to my brothers and sisters, my sister picked a family in their ward and we all took a kid/person and bought their Christmas for them. It was really cool. It has seriously changed Christmas for our family starting this tradition. So on Christmas eve we all got together to help wrap all the presents for this family and then we went on a secret delivery. Of course the parents knew it was coming but we wanted the kids to get the excitement of giving these gifts secretly, so we dropped everything off at the Relief Society President's house and she came out and acted all excited and surprised. It was cute. Seth got to ring the doorbell and he was so excited for the kids to get their presents. Very memorable.
Then we headed over to Tallies for dinner and our Christmas pageant. Its always super short, but so much fun to do for the kids. I love that we started to do this a couple of years ago, because it was definitely something I missed growing up. And I think its important.
Then of course the grandkids got their gift boxes from grannie annie and grandpa. Every year my mom has these nice boxes that she puts something in for each grandkid. This year they each got pillow pets and jammies for a future sleepover with Grannie. (My poor mom found out she had shingles a few days before Christmas! I felt so bad! So the sleepover had to get postponed). Anyways the kids stayed up way late and were a nightmare to put to bed at my parents house (okay just Jaq and Seth was so excited and then got nervous cause Jaq was being so loud that Santa would come and hear her crying and not stay).
I still haven't decided how to approach the Santa Clause idea. Santa was huge for me growing up. I mean it was all about Christmas morning, presents, all of it. Cordelle's was a little less Santa. I think I want a good mixture. I definitely dont really feed the whole Santa idea, but especially with preschool this year, he learns about it. And everyone asks him what Santa's bringing him....so it comes up. And I am okay with it. I love the magic and make believe it is for him. I'm just kind of torn about what I'll do when he asks me if he's real. Cordelle is completely opposed to lying to him. I was lied to for 12 years and I didn't hold any scars from it. I think if I can focus on Christ's birth the whole month of December and then let the Santa stuff flow come christmas eve, maybe it will be a good mixture. I guess time will tell what I do.

wrapping gifts at Krista's

Brett and Tiffany

Jaq-in-the-box :)

Delivering gifts

Doorbell ditching the gifts

My cute shepherd

Sheepish Jaq

Okay so the sheep in this one wanted the staff too....maybe she can wrangle herself in.

Mason Family Christmas. The girls are always angels. The brothers wisemen, brother-in-laws shepherds, Jaq was a sheep, Anna - Mary, Mason - Joseph, baby Jesus was supposed to be baby Zach but I think he was being fed. Oh yea Seth and Gaven were shepherds too. And Grandpa was of course the narrator.

Grannie's Christmas boxes

Jammies, pillow pets and head lamps for Easter

SO fun. I love spending time with my family. It was weird this year not seeing Cordelle's parents at all because their still in Chicago on their mission. But we love them and wish them a Merry Christmas too!

The night before the night before Christmas

This was a good day. We were up north a day early and most of my family was gone so we decided to go up to Temple Square, just us. We took trax (which took FOREVER) but I suppose it was nice we didnt have to park up there. We introduced Seth to the closest thing he'll probably ever be to a train, so we pushed that one as far as it would go. It was surprisingly warm, and made for a fun, short outing.

Trying to entertain kids and keep them sitting on Trax

WE BOUGHT A NEW CAR....

....at an auction. Well an online auction. Okay, Cordelle did. Its weird, this is the first car either one of us has really bought. He's been looking for awhile for a good deal on a car cause good old Wally the Taurus is definitely on his last leg. So Cordelle hears this ad on a radio for an online auction through Hurricane and decides to see what they're offering. He see's this car for pretty cheap and only like 3 people had bid on it. So he makes a bid. Waits, and waits....then gets nervous at the last second that he might get out bid and so he increases his bid.....only thing was, he totally outbid HIMSELF! There was never another bid in between, so we ended up paying like 500 more bucks than we would have had he been more calm about his initial bid. Either way we got our new 2002 Toyota Camry at a great price and for half of what they were selling it for at the car dealership. Being that it was a charity auction we could'nt really feel good about pleading our case with outbidding ourselves. The dealership that gave it away to the auction said they almost tried buying it back cause it was going for so cheap. Sweet huh? Cordelle is elated. He finally has a car with air conditioning. And it only has like 80,000 miles on it which apparently is pretty good for a camry. Like I'd know. Anyways, its definitely used and got broken into at the car lot so we'll have to replace somethings like the spare tire and the stereo, but its a nice looking car and drives well.
We gave the Taurus away to a family we thought could use it. Although with the long list of things that were wrong with it, we might have been giving them more of a pain then a blessing. Hopefully it wont die right away. It really could.
Anyways as you can see, we're staying with white, just like Wally....but here it is...in the dark (so its hard to see). Wonder what we'll name this one....

Turkey Trot

Every year around Thanksgiving Cordelle's work has a little 5K run called the turkey trot. I totally thought I'd be pregnant this year so I never planned on running it. Then I hurt my knee real bad running so I was positive I would'nt run it. But like 2 weeks before I started really strengthening my knee and i was feeling pretty good, so I decided to just go for it. Cordelle had been sick with pleurisy a couple weeks earlier, (This nasty infection in the lining of his lungs that makes it very difficult and painful to breathe), so we decided he should'nt run it. Anyways I always get nervous, even though there were probably only like 12 of us...maybe 6-7 women total....but I won first in the womens and 5th overall. I think my final time was 25:38, which was like 2 minutes faster than last year...so I felt pretty good about it. It was FREEZING cold. The wind was blowing so hard and it was pretty miserable, but it felt so good to be running a race again, even if it was only a 5K. Here's the pics from it. ( I know, I know, I look like I just walked out of a magazine right? No make-up and sweats...nice)

Oh yea and the best part of all, I won a turkey!

Happy New Years !!

So this New Years Eve was different than any other year we've had. It was the first year we've ever had New Years just our family. It was kind of weird not being with family and friends, but we made the best of it. We had our NYE snacks like little smokies, popcorn, pop, etc...but we needed to do something truly celebratory SO...I got an orange and wrapped it with this silvery starry wire ribbon and stuck a big 2011 sign on the front of it, then I hung it with a string from our ceiling fan and right on the hour we had a count down and slowly lowered the ball to the ground. It then became a game who could lower the orange into a pot as it swung down from the fan.....overall it actually was quite the success. Now our kids were tired so our festivities ended at 7:00 enstead of 12, but it made for a fun night of games with just Cordelle and I cuz we put the kids to bed soo early....but we're old farts now I supposed cause we got tired and went to bed at 10! Lame eh? Cordelle woke up at midnight in that kind of sleepy, foggy phase, wondering what kind of riot was going on outside...only to remember that it was new years eve. :) We had a good laugh about that. Anyways, I hope this year is good for us. We've really been blessed but I have a ton of goals I really want to implement this year. So here's to that.