Christmas Post

Our three foot tall Christmas tree all ready for Santa to come visit on Christmas Eve. For some reason the bottom half of the lights hadn't been working all season, then they turned on that evening. It was our own little Christmas miracle. We can't wait to get a real tree some year when we have a bit more space.

So, for Christmas this year, I was able to get three days off in a row! It's only the second Christmas day that I've had off since I turned 18. That made it extra fun and special. On Christmas Eve, I spent the morning at the gym and got a good work-out in. After naps in the afternoon, we drove up to Aunt Laura and Uncle Dude's house for a fun family party. Almost everyone was there from my side of the family. Gwen had lots of fun playing with her cousins and we got to eat a yummy ham dinner together. Jonathan and I got a really neat book that my sister Laura put together of our wedding pictures. We have the best wedding pictures but I hadn't really done anything with them and now I don't have to because she did it for us.

On Christmas morning, we couldn't wait for Gwen to get up and finally got her up at 8:30 to open presents. She got some stuffed Muppet babies and some pretend food. Jonathan and I gave each other lots of movies and video games. It was funny because all our gifts were DVD shaped. After opening our presents, we drove in the snow over to my parent's house - yay that they only live 10 minutes away, and made brunch for everyone there. Gwen opened a remote control My Little Pony toy from Grandma and Grandpa and chased the dogs around with it until my sister Heidi and her family came over. We left a few hours later and came home for much needed naps. Jonathan made us a ham dinner and we watched Prince Caspian together and stayed up late. Too bad the only part of the movie that Gwen payed attention to was the big scary battle at the end. I think it gave her nightmares because she woke up crying a couple times in the night and she's had a hard time sleeping since then. I guess we have to be more careful about watching movies at night with her now.

A few days later, the snow finally cleared enough for Jonathan's mom and step-dad to make the trip down from Preston. Still, the normally 2-3 hour drive took them 5 hours. They're so much braver than me. I'd never make that trip in anything but perfect weather. Grandma Elsie gave Gwen a little pretend kitchen to go with her pretend food and it is by far her favorite gift this year. She makes us meals and snacks on it constantly and hides things in it like Hershey's Kisses that she's not supposed to have. We went to lunch that afternoon with Elsie and Floyd and Jonathan's brother Sam and his family. It's always fun to spend time with them and Gwen loves her big cousin Charlotte. It was a fun holiday this year and the best part was that I got to spend so much time with my little girl who is starting to figure out what Christmas is about.
Gwen and her Great-Grandpa Madsen. He just turned 95 this fall.
Samantha, Noah, Kim, and Gwen playing in Noah's room on his big soft bean bag chair. You could fit 2 adults or 25 small children on there.Sam, Kim, and Noah looking so loving and quiet together. This was not always the case during the night though as you can imagine with 6 wound-up kids in the same house.The girls (except Jami who was downstairs). They pushed poor little Noah off his own chair and exerted their "girl power" for this picture. Trust me, he was pouting just off to the side.Mason spent the entire evening watching the Santa tracker on the computer. He'd alert the rest of us each time Santa moved a little closer to Utah.

Gwen-isms

My sister Laura posted about some of the cute things that her almost 3 year-old son says and does these days that make her smile. I thought that I'd borrow her idea and post a few of the cute things Gwen does lately.

Gwen's talking more and more each day. She clams up around company though so don't be surprised if you can't get a squeak out of her. When there's just Mommy and Daddy there though she talks non-stop. Lately, she's been trying out sentences or phrases instead of one or two word commands. This morning she reached up and turned off our bedroom light without using her step stool for the first time ever. (She must have had a growth spurt during the night.) She proudly declared, "Momma, I offed light!" I looked at Jonathan and said that we must be raising a mafia assassin because she had just offed the light. We had a good giggle about that and Gwen said "I funny" and spent the next few minutes turning the light off and on and fake laughing about it. She turns lots of nouns into verbs, too. The other day I was holding her and we were looking at ourselves in the mirror. She looked down at her bare feet and said, "sock me, Momma." She wanted me to put her socks on her.

Gwen's never really been attached to one security item and instead will have a favorite item for a week or two and then move on to something else. This week it's her Elmo pillowcase. She calls it her "Elmo Blankie." She uses it as a seat cover when she sits or wears it as a cape or a dress over her clothes. With Christmas coming I can't wait to see what she settles on next as her favorite.

Gwen LOVES nativities. She calls them "Jesus Houses" and likes to point out baby Jesus and Jesus Momma (Mary) and Small One. Small One is a Disney cartoon about a boy and his pet donkey. The donkey's name is Small One and the boy has to take him to town and sell him because he's getting old and tired. After some adventures with a tanner and some mean auctioneers, Joseph offers to buy Small One so Mary can ride him to Bethlehem. Gwen made the connection all by herself that the donkey in our nativity must be the very same Small One from the cartoon. We have a music box/snow globe nativity that Gwen keeps right next to her bed and watches and listens to as she falls asleep. It doesn't have a donkey on it anywhere, so each night Small One gets to leave the other nativity set downstairs and go sit next to the music box one upstairs to watch over Jesus. Lately, one of the polar bears from my collection has joined Small One. I don't know what that's about.

Fun in the Snow!

It's been snowing off and on the last week, so we've got a few inches on the ground here. This morning (the 18th), we finally took advantage of it and took Gwen out to play. She LOVED it, as you can see by these pictures.
Here are Gwen and Daddy making snow angels, an activity she enjoys this year. Last year when we tried to teach her, she started complaining as soon as we put her down in the snow.
See that humongous smile on her face? That's our happy girl.
After the snow angels, they started piling up snow around Daddy's knees.
There's our dog Boot. She loves snow, too. Some fingers got nibbled when she got impatient waiting for us to throw snowballs for her to bite.
Just a very rough effort at making a snowman.
I don't think there's enough magic in all the hats in the world to make that dance, but Gwen still had fun piling the snow.
Of course, it was even more fun when the pile of snow wound up on Daddy's legs. She LOVED burying him under the snow.

And here it is: Gwen's adorable laugh. I don't need to tell you how much fun she had dumping snow on Daddy's head.
...still laughing at each other.
She was so happy, she kept laughing even when Daddy smothered her with kisses.After that, it was Gwen's turn to be buried. She loved that, too......so much so that when we got home, she had to lay down on the lawn and have Daddy bury her again. He created a monster!

Santa and Big Girl Beds

Gwen got to pick out her very own big girl bed this week. Of course she picked out the one with a doggy and kitty cutout on the headboard. When you put her down for her nap or bedtime you can hear her in her room talking to "Doggy" and "Meow". It's actually been a fairly easy transition for all of us. She loves to climb in her bed by herself and she loves the snowmen sheets that we let her choose at the store. Plus, lots more of her friends fit in this bed. We took down the crib and put it in our room and hopefully when we get it out in February, she won't have a fit thinking it's still her bed.

Some of you got to read my Christmas forward and were probably wondering if the part about our nativity was real. Well, it was and here's proof. This is Baby Jesus in his manger driving the school bus with all the other nativity pieces in it along for the ride.After their tour of our house, they must all be worn out because Gwen takes them out and lays them all down for naps. Even the donkey and cow are laying on their backs with their feet up in the air.Last Friday, we went to the Festival of Trees. It sure was fun. We met Laura and Noah there but were too busy wrestling our two-year-olds to take many pictures. Gwen's favorite part was watching all the pretty dancers. She really loves to dance and would grab Noah's hands and make him boogey with her. We even stood in line to see Santa. This was Gwen's first encounter with him and she didn't really know what to think. She wasn't scared, just unsure of what was going on. The next day we went to a breakfast with Santa at Jonathan's school and Gwen didn't want to go anywhere near Santa.

On another note, Jonathan finished his last final for his Associate degree today. If he did all the paperwork correctly, that means he'll get his associate in art degree for history in the next couple weeks. He does want to go to the graduation ceremony in the spring, so look for your invites in a few months. Now our plans are for him to get a job for the spring and summer so we can save up some money so we can hopefully move in the fall. He'll either go to the University of Utah or Weber State in the fall.

At my OB doctor's appointment last week everything still looks fine. I was super surprised when he said he'd see me again in two weeks. That means we're getting closer to the due date. In fact we only have 10 weeks left. Oh boy, that seems really soon to me.