Solitary Holiday

At last the fevers have broken! Maybe it was the snow that brought the cool. My kids sure were excited about it although Matthew and Malia were both bummed that they couldn’t go out and play in it. After three days of fever, building a snowman is not on the to-do list. Even if it is the first real snow of the season. And it is a Christmas snow as well.

With all our Christmas visitors (expect for Santa, of course) warned off due to the plague upon our house, we had a not exactly calm and/or quiet day but it was pretty laid back. It started early (long gone are the days when my children blissfully slept until they were fully refreshed on Christmas morning). In fact, Nathan was up, showered and dressed by 6 a.m. and that was about two hours after he actually woke up.

In addition to the normal silly stuff filling her stocking, Malia was the proud recipient of a Fisher Price Little People Castle. The princesses sing, dance, and talk. She thinks it is wonderful. And she is not the only one who has played with the princesses today. All three of my boys had to have a turn as well.

Here she is showing off the new doll purse I made her. Be sure to check out her awesome outfit. She picked it herself. And her uncombed hair is one of my Christmas day concessions: don’t make her stop playing long enough to get her hair combed. 

Matthew received a remote control car. He has a little Lightning Mcqueen rc car that my brother Adam gave him for Christmas about four years ago and he has literally driven that thing to death. When the gears got so stripped it wouldn’t drive, Kev helped him fix it as much as possible (these toys are never designed with repair in mind) and he has continued to drive it even though it is pretty sad sounding. So Santa picked a perfect car-one that drives super fast and is repairable. Believe me, the look on his face in the picture in no way expresses his excitement about this particular gift. He has been driving it as much as possible around battery recharging times, is trying to learn how to prevent crashes (this thing goes fast) and purposely 4-wheeling over the detritus littering our family room (including the princess castle). Believe me, he has driven over all of our toes at least once today.

Another winning gift was the flag football set that Nathan gave him. His face in this picture captures pretty well how he feels about it.

Nathan is definitely moving into teenager territory. He was super duper excited about food, in particular a bag of Cadbury chocolates. Daniel got a similar bag for his birthday and Nathan liked them so much that he asked for a bag of his very own for Christmas. It made it onto his wish list and everything.

While the chocolate was the sweetest gift, the iPod Nano was definitely the most rockin’. Nathan has been asking for a way to listen to music and general conference for months now. It would appear that Santa heard is request. Nathan was really excited about getting his own iPod, possibly even more excited than he was about the chocolate. ;-)

Daniel also received an iPod Nano, yellow instead of the blue that Nathan got. He was pretty excited about that although the pictures definitely don’t reflect how much he likes it. Both boys got an iTunes gift card to accompany their iPods and a portable speaker so they don’t always have to use the earbuds. Daniel also got some Star Trek models that he has been wanting.

Kev and I decided that instead of more stuff, we would give the boys “experiences” for Christmas this year. Matthew gets to go to one BYU basketball game and one BYU football game. As he has turned into an avid BYU fan in the past year, he is pretty excited. Nathan will get to choose one show at Hale Center Theatre and one at The Desert Star Playhouse. He has already looked up what shows will be performed this year and is having a hard time deciding which ones to choose. Daniel’s was a bit different but totally tailored to his interests. He got a one year membership to Origami USA, the national origami club. The membership includes several monthly publications, access to online resources and the opportunity to check out books from the origami library located in New York. We just need to pay for shipping. Kev made a gift certificate for each boy and I think that they are more excited about their experience gifts than anything else. This is definitely something we will be doing again.

We also gave Nathan and Matthew loft beds to replace their bunk bed. Their room is just small enough that the bunk bed, dressers, and toy bins take up all the space. Not only is there no room to play in there, but neither boy has any space that he can call his own. So putting loft beds in will allow them to have all the space underneath as their own private space. I’m hoping it will be a good thing for them.

As for the grownups, I received the iPad Mini I’ve been wanting and Kev got a new hard drive with tons of storage space so he can continue building our home computer network the way he wants.

This afternoon we discovered our next door neighbor snow blowing our driveway. We have great neighbors. We expressed our thanks and wished him a Merry Christmas.  A few minutes later there was a knock on our door and our neighbor presented us with this:

He says that he is good at snowblowing but not so good at finding newspapers. Yeah, we haven’t really been out for the past few days which means we didn’t even think about picking up the newspapers. We all got a good laugh out of it.

As the day winds down, I can honestly say that we had a good day. Matthew is already in need of some parts for his rc car. Nathan and Daniel have filled their iPods with their own personal perfect mix of music. Malia has finally calmed down and is headed for sleep. There are presents strewn around the house and skid marks on the ballroom floor. So yeah, good day.