Holidaze

I have been putting off this post while we tried to figure out the status of our laptop, but it turns out that it’s only use now is as a paper weight or maybe we can stick it under the leg of our table to keep it from wobbling. I have given in to the fact that I will no longer be using it for its intended purpose. So now, here I am, using our OLD desktop (desktop!?! desktop!?! who uses a desktop these days?) that my parents got us when we got married almost 8 years (!!!) ago (this thing still works and our laptop was only 2 y ears old, huh…). So anyway, here it goes…

Every time we go down to Redding it seems like the time goes by so fast and we are busy the whole time, but when we get home I can never remember what we did.

One thing I know we did get to do was to visit with some of our friends. It seems that we always get to Redding with the best intentions of calling the people we know and getting together with them, but it hardly ever happens. This time we didn’t get a lot of time with friends, but at least we got some. Some of the highlights included; dinner with the Hansens and the Bonds (always an adventure with the kids…), New Years Eve at the Hansen’s house (less of an adventure because my Mom was willing to watch Bella) and a fun filled night of Wii at the Smith’s. All in all I wish we could have spent more time with everyone, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

Christmas was an adventure this year. We stayed out at Dusty’s parent’s house (that is always an adventure) so Santa visited us there. It was a lot of fun opening presents with Dusty’s brother, Jared, and his daughter. Bella’s not quite old enough to get the excitement behind opening presents, but Annikah certainly was. After presents and breakfast we headed back into town to my parent’s house. On the way, Bella had her first car sickness episode. We’re not sure what caused this bout of projectile vomit and screaming, but it may have something to do with the fact that she is continuously teething these days, the windy roads, the fact that she hadn’t slept the night before or the M&M’s she had for breakfast. On the up side her puke smelled like acidic chocolate. Yumm… or not. After we finally made it to my parent’s, put Bella down for a nap and hosed out the car, car seat, blankets and such we finally got to relax. For the rest of the day Bella was pretty out of it (this always seems to happen when large groups of people get together at my parent’s house, last time it was a fever of 101). Because of all this, it ended up taking Bella 3 or 4 days to finish opening all her Christmas presents. She ended up getting a LOT of stuff, but I am glad to say that she plays with most of it on a regular basis (some of it was intended just for car rides or just for church, that sort of thing).

A few days after Christmas we got to spend some time with Dusty’s oldest brother, Giegh, and his wife and kids. Since they live in Utah we hardly get to see them, so we’re always excited when they make the trek out to see everyone. And while getting all 12 grandkids together is a blast, it makes for one hectic afternoon.

Another highlight of Christmas day was getting to talk to my brother, Grant. Since he’s serving a mission the only days that we get to talk to him are Mother’s Day and Christmas. It’s always fun to hear about what he has been doing. When we talked to him last Mother’s Day it was hard to get off the phone knowing that we would have to wait so long to hear from him again. But this time it wasn’t as bad because we knew that we’d get to talk to him in May and have him back home in less than a year. All in all it was a pretty good Christmas break.

Since we’ve gotten home we have been pretty busy. Bella and I went to the mall to walk around and noticed that the Disney store was having a huge sale. We went in just to see what was what and Bella found these cute little high heels and matching tiaras. Bella loves shoes, she is always trying to put my shoes on, and when she was in Redding she found her cousins little plastic high heels and would not take them off. So she got these little shoes, which I love because instead of just being the slip-on style they are more like real shoes. They won’t fit her as long (they are a couple sizes too big so they’ll fit her for a while), but they stay on her feet and she can actually walk in them un-aided. So on day one she got two pairs of shoes and two tiaras. Later that night I noticed that one of the blinking lights on one of the shoes wasn’t working so the next day we went back to the Disney store to get a different pair. We walk out of there with a Tinkerbell dress, wings, shoes and a tiara to match and a Cinderella dress, shoes and a tiara that match. Everything was 50% off so it was like I was saving money by buying them… right? Either way, they are so cute. Usually Bella doesn’t really like the whole dress up thing, but these dresses she goes and gets them and WANTS me to put them on her. I figure, she’s been so obsessed with Disney Pixar’s CARS these days that I will encourage anything girly to help balance that. When we picked out a new sweater for her I let her chose between two and she chose CARS, her cars are her favorite toy that she got for Christmas and she picked out a new sippy cup… CARS. Plus, we are planning on going to Disneyland during the summer of 2011, so she can wear one of these outfits then, they should still fit since they’re a little big now (kids under the age of 7 are encouraged to dress as their favorite character). Anyway, here’s a couple pictures…

Bella getting a little help from Mommy.

A little help from Daddy too...

I made all the granddaughters (minus Hunter) tutus for Christmas and with the help of my mom made Hunter and Max pirate costumes and Chance a cowboy costume.

Jared opening a box full of Annikah.

Bella pushing around her new stroller. She didn't like her new baby so she banished it to the bassinet and put her old baby in the stroller.

Playing with the laptop Grandma and Papa got her.This was the only time she opened something without someone's help. About 2 seconds after I took this she was distracted again.This was what we came home with the first day at the Disney store, just shoes and a tiara.But how can you resist this? Notice the hands on the hips. This is her new thing. If I don't get her out of the tub in time she stands up and puts her hands on her hips and just stares at me. I swear I don't do this to her... at least not often...Still a little bit too big, but she loves it anyway.