{The Big Black Thing}

So every Christmas we unpack all our holiday stuff--decorations, pictures, albums everything. This everything includes Christmas movies and books. I think that if we hide them away they are more special and loved even more when they are around. So when the movies come out we have some oldies but goodies that are of the VHS variety.

This year the boys pull it all out stick the movies in the handy Christmas basket and the books under the trees and on we go.

Until one day E comes in, with nothing in his hands while I am wrting lesson plans to ask "What do you we do the the big black thing?"

Me: "What?"

E: "In the movie bucket, the big black thing?"

Me: (i still have no clue what he is talking about and am just straing at him)

E: "You know it goes in the big black box but it isn't doing anything"

Me: (Still confused and having no clue)

E: "It was in with the movies so we can watch Home Alone 3"

Me: (finally I got it...the VHS tape of Home Alone 3 and the VCR!) and I start laughing and explain how it works and what to do.

My 7 year old has no clue what a VCR is or that at one time it was all we had to watch movies

Then tonight....

the 9 year old comes in and yes I was working on lesson plans again

K: "you know that V thing?"

Me: (looking at him wierd I am sure)

K: "We want to watch Home Alone 3" (followed by an eye roll by him)

Me: " the VCR you mean?"

K: "Yeah. How do we get it to go?"

Me: "You push play like I showed you before."

K: "but it is at the end and we need to get it to the start."

My child did not know how to rewind a movie or even thought that was a possibility that he would have to do that.....what have dvd players done to our thinking???

So we talk about how to rewind the movie and he goes to do it.....

From the other room I hear this conversation:

E:"Are we going to watch the movie?"

K: "We have to get it to the start first. Mom said to re---wind, re--wond, reee....to push that button."

E: "But the numbers are going backward."

K: "Well they must go forward when we watch so this is how it works....just wait Mom said it would work."

My poor babies....can't remember that it is called rewind and have no patience to see what will happen...I wonder if I should show them fast forward to get through the previews??

Maybe next year we should find all those old movies on dvd so they don't have to have this convsersation again next year.

{Christmas in Pictures}

{A Nerf Gun Christmas}

This year was all about the Nerf Gun. All boys, including C, got a gun for Christmas. Our house is constantly covered in the nerf darts and people are running shooting hiding and sneak attacking each other.

The only rule...no shooting in the kitchen when food is cooking and no shooting the mom.

{Christmas Eve}

It seems each year our traditions evolve and change. We add new ones, take out the ones that didn't work, and remember ones from years past.

This year we remembered a treasured tradition we had when we would go home to Canada for Christmas. We only did this twice in Canada but the kids loved it and it gave us all something to do Christmas Eve day as a family. Now we try to recreate that in Vegas, but we were missing snow and a cold cold cabin but it was just as fun.

So we re-introduced the roasting hot dogs and marshmellows over the fire pit this year. C dug out a hole in the backyard, I did the shopping, K did some roasting, and E was the freezing cold flashlight holding hating the smoke of the fire person.

We also did our painting this year. Last year's theme (picked by me) was snowmen, this year was K's pick which was Christmas Trees. It is a quiet tradition with everyone at the table together will all the paints I can find. It is relaxing and different from all the other stuff we do.

We also read the Christmas story before taking the traditional kids in their jammies picture in front of the tree. The night ends with the boys opening the presents they purchased for one another. It is a fun day and a great start to our Christmas day.

{Christmas Treats}

It seems that every other year my parents are able to come to visit sometime in the month of December. So we have a lot of Vegas Christmas memories, as opposed to going out of town to make extended family memories.

This year Grandma was able to help all the kids make treats to take to school for thier classmates. Even our cousings A & L were here for the fun! K. didn't want to give "hearts" to everyone so he went with the classic candy cane, but E and L were happy to make each of thier classmates a candy cane heart. Grandma did the dangerous hot gluing and the kids punched out circles, cut ribbon and signed all thier tags while I stamped and helped out.

{Hope, Faith, Endurance}

I have followed the story of this family since the day after the accident. I read this mom's blog before the accident and continued to all these years, following her recovery and faith. She is amazing.

Her story and the story of her family has been written beautifully in an Arizona paper and is in a two piece series.

It is a great story of love hope endurance faith and family.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/stephanie-nielson-intro-120609.html

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/stephanie-nielson-intro-120609.html



p.s. one of these days I will get caught up on our lives here in blog land and i am hoping that is before Christmas!

{thanksgiving}

For Thanksgiving I pretty much force everyone into the kitchen to help. After they are in there all is well it's getting them in to help that is the hardest. I do a lot of prep the night before so we all spend a good hour or two together cooking and getting ready for the morning.

The next day after a movie at home, and dinner we do gingerbread houses that evening. This way we get our first taste of Christmas decor in our house early. This was the first year the boys were able to do all the decoratinog themselves. C still puts the houses together and we watched the boys decorate. We might need to buy one for each of us next year so C and I have something to do too!

{THe Fall Flood}

So the morning of Thanksgiving we woke up to water all over the boys bathroom, down the hallway and in the front room of our house. We started soaking up water but it seemed that as fast as we could soak it up the faster it was running out. Finally C turned the water off to the house and thus began our fun experience of turning the water on and off at the street so we could use it.

This was after they dug up our front yard to stop that leak, and replacing our water heater 2 days before...to say the least we were not happy campers.

We found out the next day after tons of phone calls to get someone out here that there was a major leak in the pipes in our house and all the plumbing would have to be replaced. And there we were for 6 days with virutally no water to the house and plumbers everywhere.

They cut holes in almost every wall in the house, turned our garage into a plumbing store and became friends with us for those days.

I think the boys counted 18 holes in all through the house. Here are a few pictures of that holiday fun.

{The Last Game of the Fall And Awards}

It was E's last game. It got warmer so we weren't all freezing (remember we are in Vegas so freezing is below 60 degrees). It was a great season and E had a great time. It was his first season the "big field" so it was a challenge but he figured out how helpful it is to play the position you are put in so you don't run yourself ragged chasing the ball on the big field.

And the picture is horrible and my battery died so it was the only one I got that day.

Then the next Tuesday was his season closing party. E got another trophy and his coach, who we love, talked about how hard he worked and how for being the smallest on the team he did a great job. We had a really young team this year and I think they only lost 2 games all season...They did a great job!