Finally Christmas pics

Here are some Christmas pics of our awesome Christmas! They are in random order--sorry no time to blog lately...





















For my brothers and sisters: I have copies of a Christmas Eve DVD I put together for all of you, so come get your copy, otherwise I'll wait till I see you on New Year's Day at the family party.

While I was blogging...

OK, so while I was blogging and talking to my sister on the phone apparently 3 was busy making more art! What is with the face painting?! This is with crayola markers! Yay! Why did I think it was OK that she was quiet?? Will I ever learn? See how proud she is!

Oh, well, makes fun for the blogging world!

Merry Christmas!

The Preschool Polar Express

3's teacher arranged a big Polar Express Party.
She had a ticket to get on the bus and everything—
she looked so cute bundled up with her coat and her pajamas.
The snow made for a perfect backdrop.

Abstract Art

3 got into the paint! Oh, the joy of motherhood! And did it have to be the black paint that she chose to use. The carpet was spotted--luckily it was just poster paint so it came out easily.

Story time!

Now you all now that nothing is completely conventional at our house. I sat down to read 3 a bedtime story, but my mom didn't want to be left out...

Kirsten was reading to my mom!

I love Christmas books and I am always on the look for a good one for a good price. I usually get them at Seagull Book on clearance.

My favorites that we own (and they are in order, kind of):

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey (with the CD narrated by James Earl Jones) by Susan Wojciechowski

Kissing Kringle by Sam Beesom (the illustrations are adorable and 3 and 9 LOVE this book)

Rocking Horse Christmas by Mary Pope Osborn (this one made me cry the first time I read it, reminded me of childhood, and the illustrations are beautiful)

How the Grinch stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss

Winter's Gift by Jane Monroe Donovan

Santa's New Job by Michael J. McLelland

The Christmas Candle by Richard Paul Evans (this one is amazing, the illustrations are realistic)

Giving Chest by Dan Farr (CD narrated by Dick VanDyke)

(The Story of the Christmas Truce) Silent Night Holy Night as Narrated by Walter Cronkite (CD narrated by Walter Cronkite adn Silent Night performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir)

I got my love of books from my dad. I also have some fun pop-up books for Christmas.

16 is now 17!!!!!

Ya, I know, I can't believe it either!!!!

We had a good time and celebrated it with family on Sunday. 9 kept trying to blow out the candles so we had to really keep him corralled! It was pretty funny!

Afterward we (Lynne, Dad, Kirsten, Tyler, 17 and I) went to see the Community Choir Christmas Concert. BYU17 played 2 organ pieces. It was beautiful!

Sister's Day Christmas Ornaments

Tynelle planned our sister's day this month. We are going to try to be more official and do them when we don't have to have our kids, so that we actually can get out. But, we had it at Tynelle's house so she wasn't as lucky as Jessie and I. Well, actually, it wasn't so good having to drive to her house in one of the worst now conditions I have ever driven in. I was a little shaken up and when Kirsten got there she was shaken up pretty bad. Luckliy, Jessie had gotten there earlier before the snow. While were all trying to settle ourselves down from our yucky drive we then got a phone call from my mom and dad that they had gotten in a wreck on the freeway. So then we were shaken again. They were totally OK and the car wasn't too bad but bad enough to take in to get some work done. Thank goodness they were OK. We feel bad too, because we were going to sing at my cousins ward Christmas party that night and we were very excited to go, but with my mom having been in a wreck and us worried about the drive, we had to cancel. Better safe than sorry--right?

Anyway, we all still had a good time making our really cool ornaments. Tynelle was such a trooper and purchased everything for us for the ornaments. My kids just love them, and I think I want to make a bunch more--they are just neat. Here are some pics.

Tynelle, the idea woman!

No, Daniel is not the sister, but he still got involved

You can tell that Kirsten was very busy making ornaments!

Broccoli Bouquet

OK, so my mom feels sorry for me that I can't eat grains, dairy, sugar. etc. but, is also proud of me for staying strong with it so far. So my mom being the incredibly awesome mom that she is brought me a broccoli bouquet!!! Ya, she said that the guy doing the balloons had to ask if she really wanted him to tie the balloons to the broccoli! He tried not to laugh the whole time--but she was laughing. Then the lady checking her groceries just took the broccoli bouquet and scanned it through as if it were no big deal! Too funny. She also brought me mushrooms, salad mix, nuts, and roasted chicken. Oh, Mom, you are the best!

Here it is in a vase of water!! Tee hee!

Oh, and by the way, I have lost 5 pounds since Monday! Crazy!

Funny thing

So, I am not sure that this is a Fragile X thing or not, but for my two youngest it just might be.

When 9 was little he used to love, and I mean love, to carry a spatula (pancake turner) around the house. When my Aunt Aleesa would babysit him, the first thing he would do when he walked into her house was go to her utensils drawer to pull out the spatula to carry around with him the entire day.. so funny. He loved to sit with the water running in the bathroom or the kitchen and watch the water run over the spatula. But, it didn't stop there—there was a while there when 9 wouldn't not go to sleep unless he had the spatula in bed with him!

Now I watch 3 as she just has to sleep with a certain orange story book on top of her chest. It is so funny. And last night she had to go to sleep with her snow boots on. I mean it was hilarious, she woke up at 2:30am and handed me her snow boots. I had to put them on and then tuck her into bed and she was fast asleep. Then, when I went to take her boots off in order to get her dressed for school this morning, I thought she was going to die! I had to take one boot off, slide the tights on one leg and quickly put it back on then the same with the other side—phew! we made it through. Hopefully we grow out of the sleeping with boots on thing pretty soon here.

Whatever blows your hair back!

Real Life is a Wonderful Life

OK, so this will be a really long blog just to warn you ahead of time. There are slide shows, pictures, ramblings...

So while I am waiting for my slides to save, I will ramble. I have realized that as I have been blogging that I have neglected to mention that I quit Kids Who Count. Yes, it was a very tough decision for me. But, my kids have been needing more and more attention and my sanity is thin so I had to let something go. I will miss the kids terribly and I really did enjoy working there, with Melanie and the others. Thanks to Melanie, publicly, for giving me the fantastic opportunity of influencing children's lives. It was so fun. I hope to return to KWC one day when 3 is in Kindergarten or 1st grade, if they will take me and if my life can handle it. So, I guess with that you can imagine my level of saneness. It is low, but, I am coping. Having two kids with FXS seems like a task that I could never do and laugh when I think that God trusted me to do this and thought I would live through it! Ha!

I did a class on Fragile X Syndrome for the Preschool teachers for the entire school district here. I was asked to do an hour and a half presentation and I did it! I think it went pretty well. It was a lot of work putting it together and it is always hard to stare all the symptoms in the face all at once when at least once in a while I try not to think about it all too much. My father-in-law came with me and video taped the whole thing—I will post my video one day when I am brave enough to let everyone watch me in all my glory! : )

Also, I have been having problems with weight gain, regardless of my everyday exercise and eating less and even healthier than before. Anyway, to make a long story short, I think it may be Candida--it's where the yeast continues to grow in your body and causes many different symptoms, anyway, I am cutting out sugar entirely--all sugar and that is tough. Yeast feeds on sugar so that has to go along with lactose (dairy) and carbs (grains, potatoes and carrots, etc.) So I am going to be strict on it for 2 weeks and then introduce grains and carbs back in slowly--because there is no way I could ever survive without all those things for the rest of my life, but, if I have to, I will. So sugar is the biggest thing I am going to try to eliminate. Now this is just an experiment to see if this is really what is causing my problems. Look up Candida on the web, you'll learn a lot. Anyway, so the holidays will be interesting--and yes, I will cheat a little, I am not super human. But, to tell you the truth after only one day of of no sugar, no carbs, no dairy—I actually do feel a little bit of a change—it will be interesting to see what happens. Don't worry, I won't go overboard but, it is kind of like people who are lactose intolerant or have allergies to wheat--they feel much better without those things so they do it--we'll see. I will keep you posted. So far, so good—even while we made gingerbread houses last night I didn't snitch, at all!!!!

OK, so here are the slides and pictures of our first snow of December which brought on our Christmas spirit for our Family Home Evening Activities. Enjoy!

Here is 3 out enjoying our first big snow! She loves being outside!

Decorating the Tree together as a Family—tradition

Gingerbread Houses—tradition.
(I am not as cool as my sister though, I just used graham crackers—and Jessie, I don't think ours turned out to look like gingerbread trailers--although 3's has little to show for itself...)




And on Sunday we sang around the piano at mom's house—tradition!