Playing with Christmas Toys

Jared in disguise

Maggie loves her new hat and gloves from Alan's parents. Especially the gloves. In fact, in the two weeks since Christmas, she is either wearing/carrying/sleeping with the gloves for at least 15 hours a day. She even tries really hard to pick up things (like cereal) while she's wearing them.

Christmas

Again these pictures are all out of order, but oh, well.

Usually Christmas is pretty straightforward: we spend the early morning at our own house, the late morning with Alan's family, and the afternoon with my family. However, Christmas was a little different this year with everybody having church. We played with our Santa presents before Church, went to Sacrament Meeting at 9:00, opened our Christmas tree presents and presents from my parents after church, then spent the early afternoon with the Stouts, then back to my parents house for dinner.

Christmas dinner. Everything was so good!!

More Christmas dinner.

Jared and Grandpa Stout. Grandpa likes to tell Jared tall tales. Ha ha!

Stout Foosball tournament

Maggie's new dress from Alan's parents! I think she looks like a snow princess.

This was taken right after church on Christmas day.

Maggie's Christmas dress from my parents was so darling! And Jared's sweater is from Alan's parents. I love getting new church clothes for the kids!

Maggie's new Elmo kitchen from Santa

Jared's crash cars from Santa

Santa, I think, knew that Jared would really like the big present he was bringing Maggie, but he thought it would be a good opportunity for Jared to practice sharing with Maggie. This video shows evidence of how much Jared likes the Elmo's Restaurant (which is technically Maggie's), but he also LOVES the crash cars from Santa (which are his own). Alan and I also gave the kids some fun Melissa & Doug wooden play food to "share."

Christmas Eve

For some reason I'm having a hard time rearranging these pictures in the order I want them to be, so we'll have to make do with this post.

We had a delightful Christmas Eve. First we had a delicious brunch with Alan's family. Jared and Maggie got some early Christmas presents from Grandma and Grandpa Stout and the amazing Aunt Shawna: darling new Sunday clothes and new pajamas!

Then we had a delicious dinner at my brother and sister-in-law's house and our annual Nativity. Jared, who had been a wise man at his preschool nativity, wanted to be an angel that night. What a funny kid. (I remind you that the previous Christmas Eve he told my sister-in-law that he wanted to be King Herod, and she reluctantly told him that King Herod wasn't going to play a part in the nativity that night.) You can see Elmo's eyes from his new pajamas peeking over his angel robe. Ha ha!

Maggie and Papa! We are so glad he was feeling pretty well this Christmas.

My dad has always been the narrator for the nativity.

Didn't you know that Elmo is part of the nativity story?

Maggie's new jammies from Shawna

Jared the angel

Random video of Maggie laughing:

Top Ten Worst Christmas Songs Ever

So, my friend Katie inspired me to write this post. Yesterday she listed some of the worst Christmas songs ever written. I thought it was such a funny post because Alan and I have been making a similar mental list for years now. So, this post might be somewhat of a rip-off of Katie's post (sorry, Katie), but we will add some more insights as well.

10. "Santa, Buddy," as sung by Michael Buble--I really like Michael Buble's Christmas album, but this song is just trying too hard to be witty.

9. "The 12 Days of Christmas"--As my brother says, this song is only sung because someone needs to fill up the last 20 minutes of a Christmas album.

8. "Christmas Time is Here" (the opening song on Charlie Brown's Christmas)--Is this song supposed to make me feel happy inside? It actually has the opposite effect.

7. "The Friendly Beasts"--The only recording I have actually ever heard of this song is on the Brian Stokes Mitchell/Tabernacle Choir Christmas album from a few years ago, but I guess I don't appreciate the animal impersonations. Watch the video here.

6. "The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth," as sung by the Dynamic Duo Bing Crosby and David Bowie--If you have heard this, you will know what I mean. Also, a lyric flaw: what do newborns like better than to have a loud, annoying drum banging in their ears?

5. "Hey, Santa"--We hate this song mostly because they leave out the "t" in Santa. "Hey, Sanna! Hey, Sanna!"

4. "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time"--Love ya, John Lennon, but this song just has a totally lame sound to it.

3. "Grown-up Christmas List"--While I appreciate the good intentions this song has, it is sooooooo cheesy.

2. "Last Christmas I Gave You my Heart"--Nothing captures the Christmas spirit quite like a self-pitying break-up song.

And the #1 Worst Christmas Song Ever is....

"Christmas Shoes"--Why isn't the little kid in this song home with his/her dying mother instead of at the store buying new shoes for her that she will never wear? This is a terrible song--such cheesy sentimental nonsense.

Honorable mentions:

• "My Favorite Things"--I don't actually hate this song (I rather like it), but who decided that it was a Christmas song?
• The Charlie Brown theme, "Linus and Lucy"--ditto
• "Do You Hear What I Hear?"--There is a major flaw with a few of the lyrics in this song. "A Child, a Child, shivers in the cold," and what should we do to remedy this unfortunate situation? I know, "Let us bring Him silver and gold!" Yeah, that ought to do the trick! Forget about the blankets!
• "Little Saint Nick," a song by the Beach Boys, contains the lyrics, "Christmas comes this time each year" over and over again. Very insightful, Beach Boys.
• Alan's personal favorite stupid lyrics come from the song "A Marshmallow World" (although we like the song in general). At one point the song says, "And the sun is red like a pumpkin head." As far as we can tell, there are three major flaws with this sentence: 1) No, the sun is NOT red. 2) Pumpkins aren't red, either. Not usually, anyway. 3) What on earth is a pumpkin head?

Feel free to add any others we have missed to our comments. :)

Preschool Christmas Program

Cute preschool nativity

Getting Santa hats on

The three wise men

I love being able to go to Jared's preschool programs. I just about burst my buttons over how dang cute he is! Seriously. I love him so much!

This post has a bajillion videos that probably not very many of my readers will be interested in, but I know Jared will want to watch them over and over again!

Festival of Trees

The movie Up! seemed to be popular this year. Here's a tree...


...and a gingerbread house

Alan and I have loved going to the Festival of Trees with other members of my family every year, but this year Alan wasn't able to come because of a deadline he had at work. I took some pictures of my favorite trees and gingerbread houses for Alan and brought him home one of their delicious cinnamon-sugar scones as a consolation prize.

Peanuts tree

A very classy Mickey and Minnie tree, complete with Minnie bedroom furniture

Heat Miser and Snow Miser from The Year Without a Santa Claus--a holiday classic I grew up with

Cool log cabin

This was supposed to be the Weasley's house

Tangled gingerbread house, complete with Rapunzel and Flint dangling from her hair

December Fun

I took the kids to the Aquarium on the free day they had there. We got there right when it opened, but it was still crazy busy! We enjoyed it, though, and we had fun with our friends the Griffins.

Jared and his friend Bronte. They are the same size as adult penguins!

Jared loved the pool where you could touch the rays.

Playing in the caves

Maggie came to the aquarium, too. She spent most of the time telling me she wanted to get out of the stroller, and I spent most of the time trying to sneak her some snacks so that she'd be happy to stay in it.

We have sort of started a tradition of buying a gingerbread house kit and making it (this was our 2nd year). Jared wanted to do the gingerbread village this year.

And here is our finished product:

Just kidding. I took a picture of this village at the Festival of Trees this year. I wish ours could look this good! Here is our real end product:

Rather than trying to get it to look beautiful, we let Jared be in charge of the decorating after Alan did the assembling. It made Jared's day!