A Very Merry Christmas to you

Christmas has come and gone and we had a wonderful time. We spent this year in Utah with family. I have decided Christmas is much more fun when you have kids. Nathan made this season so special for us. We did a lot of activities as a family. Sadly I didn't document all of them. We went to Temple Square early in the month when we were in town for a day. Unfortunately I forgot to grab my back up battery and charger for my camera so there were not pictures of the evening. The highlights were Nathan saying over and over again "Christmas Lights!" very loudly. We also had a funny experience that brought back a lot of memories for me.

Twenty years ago my family was at Temple Square and my little brother had an accident...in the bathroom. We had been waiting in line for a long time and things just took to long for him. It was a funny family memory for us. Well I relived it with my little boy. Nathan was so into the lights that he gave us almost no warning that he needed to use the bathroom. Thankfully we were right next to the Joseph Smith Building. We ran inside and I took him into the bathroom. Unfortunately it took to long to get him unbundled from his winter clothes. It was funny because it was in the exact same bathroom that the accident with my brother occurred. All I could do was ring out his pants and underwear and wrap my coat round to so I could make a mad dash to our car. I called my brother that night to tell him he wasn't the only boy in the family that had an accident on Temple Square.

As the holidays drew near we prepared to go to Utah to spend time with our families. We decided that we would give Nathan some of his Christmas as home so we wouldn't have to ship it. We laid it out the morning we left for Utah. Nathan loves cooking with me and whenever we are around a kitchen set he is all over it. We decided it would be something that all of the kids would enjoy someday. Nathan's reaction was so cute.

Once we made it to Utah we spent time with my family. We had the traditional Ball family dinner. It was really fun to spend time with everyone.

One of my favorite traditions is to do the Nativity with the kids. They crack me up. Every year it is a crazy production. This year was no exception. Nathan was a shepherd and Andy was the baby Jesus.

Unfortunately we keep having the same situation with Nathan every Christmas. That evening after we went to bed he woke up screaming because his ear was hurting him. We tried for a couple of hours to get him to sleep but we had no success. Finally in the middle of the night we headed over to the emergency room. He had another bad ear infection. By the time we got out of the hospital It was 5:30 in the morning. None of us had slept. We were supposed to go up to Jakes parents later that day but we decided that we should just head up at that time because we knew once we went to sleep there was no promise we were going to wake up. Jake and I slept until mid morning but Andy was awake and family was coming over for the Cefalo family party. Nate ended up sleeping until Afternoon. When he was up he had a nasty fever and laid miserably on the couch. Finally around 7:00 he finally started to come out of the worst of it.

The rest of Chistmas Eve was spent with family opening presents and having fun together. Andy and his cousin Conner were super cute together.

Christmas morning came all to fast. Thankfully Nathan was doing a little better. His energy was low but he enjoyed opening his gifts from Santa.

It was a wonderful holiday season for us. Our families have been really blessed this year. We are so thankful for all the Lord gives us.

We love candy

Preparing for the holidays was really fun around here. I had a wonderful helper while making treats and doing crafts. As you can see we made some hats to add to the christmas fun. Nate wore it for days. My problem now is finding a way to get rid of it before it causes a meltdown when it gets torn.

This was my first year where I tried to make candy. I started with Toffee and it was a total failure. I ruined 2 batches. It was tragic.

Nathan enjoyed sampling.

We had success with fudge and white chocolate peppermint popcorn.

It was really fun to make christmas treats this year. I am planning on doing it again next year. Hopefully I will be a little smarter. I made a bunch of treats to hand out to friends and neighbors but I didn't leave myself enough time to get them around to everyone. We ended up taking a bunch of stuff to Utah so it wouldn't spoil. Oh well. 

Happy Birthday Jake

So today was Jakes birthday. I am happy to say that the day turned out to be a success. There was a lot going on today with doctors appointments and other activities. The big event of the day came when our Christmas present was delivered. Happy early Christmas to us. We have been wanting a piano for a while and things fell into place last month and we found one that we felt was worth the cost. We are super excited because we both play (a little) and we are hoping to continue to improve out piano skills.

We also had friends over for some dinner. Jake and I love to make homemade pizzas with our trusty pizza maker. It was really fun and we loved how the pizzas turned out. We made 3 but I forgot to take a picture until the very end. This was the BBQ chicken :)

Lastly was the birthday cake. This is usually a fun thing with Nathan. He gets so excited to blow out the candles. Unfortunately (well kind of) for the past couple of weeks Nathan and Andy's bed time has fallen around 7-7:30. This was the time that we started into the cake. Andy started melting down and soon after Nathan followed. I didn't really get any good pictures because I was so focused on the kids. After the kids went down Jake and I got to spend some nice quite time together which doesn't seem to happen these days.

Overall it was a really nice family day together. Jake we love you and we are so thankful for all of the wonderful things you do for our family.

I love Pintrest. I decided that I had to make at least 1 thing a week from it if I would allow myself to continue my addiction. It has been fun. I do a lot of crafts with Nathan but the food is what kills me. Not a good thing for a girl that needs to lose baby weight. I am giving myself until after Christmas to kick my backside into shape. That said this is what I made the other day. It was mighty tasty.

I have wanted to take some pictures of Nathan and Andy for a while. I will admit that I love to take pictures outside but with the weather the way it is I made my bedroom work. I am not really a black and white person when it comes to pictures but I have been liking them lately. I thought these images turned out especially cute. Andy was totally not into taking pictures but Nathan was totally being a poser. I love my little guys ;)

Hi

I'm Andy

 

Overall I am a pretty happy kid.

I love to dance with my brother...

and I love... Oh no...

Maybe she wont notice the smell.

Trouble

I meant to write about this a while back. Life seems to get away from me though and when I finally remember it turns out to be long ago. I just can't not write about this story because it needs to be remembered.

Back when Andy was just about 3 weeks old we had a traumatic experience here. Since Andy was born mornings are really slow for me. It is a major challenge for me to get out of the house by 9:00 so when there isn't anything going on you might find me in my PJ's around 11:00 or 12:00. I know it is bad but I do make sure I am ready for the day by the time I serve lunch. Well it was getting to that later part of the morning and I had jumped into the shower after I got Andy down for a nap. After the shower I quickly ran down to the family roon check on him because he was fussing. While I was taking care of him Nathan called down to me letting me know he needed to use the bathroom. At the time he was potty trained but he liked a lot of help. I called up to him and told him to get on the potty and I would be up soon to help.

I continued to take care of Andy and spent a couple of minutes nursing him (remember I had just gotten out of the shower... this might be TMI but I was just in my towel). I hear Nathan and I call up to him asking if he needs my help. He lets me know that he is ok so I forgot about him. After a couple of minutes I hear the toilet flush and I hear water start running. It took me a few seconds to realize that Nathan cannot reach the sink to wash his hands. All of the sudden I realized that the sound of water running was really loud and was much more than would come from the sink. I put Andy down and ran upstairs as fast as I could.

To my dismay the toilet is overflowing and the whole floor was already full of water. I get down to turn off the water to the toilet and as I am doing this the fire alarms start going off in the house. I don't know why they are going off but I have toilet water all over everything and I am getting really upset. I kick Nathan out of the bathroom and then I start to try to figure out why the alarm is going off. I start to run down stairs and I look over into the family room and I see that water from the toilet has leaked into the floor under the sink and is now running through to the fire alarm in the family room ceiling leaking all over my floor right next to Andys car seat where I had set him. Nathan is crying Andy is screaming and I am in a panic trying to get dressed.

It took me a minute to realize that I need to get to the breaker box so I could stop the alarms. I finally get to the breaker box and for some reason I cannot get it open. This was the perfect time for my sister to call me. I am a mess because the water is still trickling through the ceiling and the cannot get the alarms off. She tells me nicely that everything will be ok and that I just need to calm down and take a second. She tells me to call Jake and that she will check back with me in a few minutes. I call Jake in tears and ask him what I am doing wrong and why can't I open the breaker box (I still wasn't calmed down). He pretty much told me the same thing that my sister did plus asked if I was ok and if he needed to come home. I finally got the alarms turned off. It was on the same breaker with the bathroom and hall light which made for an interesting clean up. I pretty much had an hour of crazy.

When questioning Nathan later I found out that he had put a roll of toilet paper down there. I had to keep the power off for a while to make sure everything was dried out. Looking back I laugh really hard. I know I am not the greatest under pressure and this proved it. Thankfully our ceiling survived and we found out that there is and opening under out sink that we need to take care of. So life goes on. Nathan learned not to put anything extra in the toilet and I learned that our fire alarms work.