Genetics

One day a long time ago (well, okay, not that long ago, but over half my life ago) this man, who was a boy

met this lady, who was a girl.  And their teenage "love" grew and grew. 

They were totally different in pretty much all aspects of life. She was quiet, nerdy, liked blending into the wallpaper and bordered on perfectionism.  He was loud, kind of obnoxious (only sometimes), loved having all attention on him, and didn't care about being perfect, just did the minimum to get by.  The odds were stacked against them and all bets were placed on when they would call it quits.

But, God, in His infinite wisdom had different plans for them.  From before they were born He had planned that they would one day be husband and wife.  He knew that the boy would pull the girl out of her shell and give her some confidence and that the girl would reign in the boy and encourage him to use his energy to serve and bring glory to God.

So as the poem goes-

First comes love

Then comes marriage

Then comes the baby in the baby carriage

And along came the first.....

Wait!!!  What?!?!?!  Blond hair, blue eyes???

Where did that come from??

When boy and girl were dating and during their first years of marriage they would often laugh together saying, "Watch our first child have blond hair and blue eyes."  Well, the joke was on them as the Lord saw fit to give them just that.

After a year, boy and girl, decide to have another child.  They dropped all preconceived notions that they would have a child with brown, thick, wavy hair and brown eyes since their first one seemingly defied all genetic odds.

And they got just that,

As baby boy grew so did his hair.  It went from baby fine to curly fine to thick and wavy.

So, moral of the story, don't assume that you know what life is going to hand you.  God is in control and He knows exactly what He is doing.  He will carry you through and give you sweet little surprises along the way.

Christmas, Christmas time is...Gone?!?!?

Befor I get to the nitty gritty of Christmas I feel like I need to make a personal reminder and warning to all y'all out there....If you find yourself needing to walk around, it is never a good idea to do an intense strength training workout one day and then run 8 miles the next!!  Please help me remember this as I am sure that by Sunday I will be feeling good enough to have forgotten and try something similar the next week (don't tell Pratt, but I can be kind of hard headed about stuff like that)

Now on to Christmas!!!  Can you believe how fast that came and went????  I mean seriously, we are already approaching the back end of January and I know by the time tomorrow comes around it will be Christmas again!

Anyway, once again we had a super fabulous Christmas season celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus!  I just really love this time of year.  The candle light service at our church on Christmas Eve is one of my favorite (tied with the sunrise Easter service on the beach).  The children love that they get to hold a lit candle and do fairly well sitting through the service.

Here we are all ready to go.  I am not quite sure about the forced smiles in this picture, but it was the best one I got.

This year we were super excited to share our Christmas Eve traditions with our dear friends Erik and Rachael.  This was their first Christmas together as a married couple and of all the things they could have done, they chose us to spend their evening with us!  We are so blessed to have such wonderful friends:)

 I can't believe it, but I totally forgot to take a picture of the milk, cookies and diet coke we left out for Santa.  It was a momentous occassion in this house and I totally failed to capture it.  Oh well, sometimes it is better to live in the moment then live behind the camera.  At any rate, Shelby was super excited and tickled to death when she got up the next morning to an empty plate of cookies, an empty diet coke can and half a cup of milk.  It was priceless!!!

We hit the ground running around here on Christmas day.  

A quick shot before things got started... 

I was definitely more excited about Shelby's pink bb gun than she was.  My grandpa had a hobby of building (crafting?) guns and as I got older one of my favorite memories is going to Wyoming with the family, driving a few minutes out of town and shooting up anything and everything we could find with all sorts of guns...ah, those were the days:)

After we were done at our house, we got ready and headed to Meme's, from there we drove down to my family's, and after a quick afternoon nap (which was definitely needed by all, especially a certain "young" lady with brown curly hair who goes by the name mom) we popped on over to Papa and Grammie's to finish out our day.

I can't believe JP's eyes are closed in this shot:(  It had such great potential.



We all crashed into bed that night and slept rock hard.  It was a wonderful day!

Four No More!

Happy Birthday to my baby boy who turned 5 on Friday! It is hard to believe that 5 years can be so short.  I feel like just yesterday you looked like this

But every time I see you, you look like this.



 How did that happen so fast????  Where does the time go?

I hope that you enjoyed your day and had so much fun at your birthday party!  I love watching you grow and explore the world around you.  You are my little buddy and I will always love you!

You Are My Sunshine

Once again I am apologizing for the lack of posting lately:(  It is already half way through January and I still haven't done much about Christmas and our trip to Boca Raton and JP had a birthday last week...oh, I get an epic fail on starting off this year full blog ahead!!!

Anyway, just something real quick before I forget about it.  This is a moment that I want to remember forever and so I need to document it before I forget and then hopefully sometime before the end of this week I will get my blog on and finish 2011....hopefully (fingers crossed)

When time permits and usually it does, I love to sing to JP after we are doing reading at bedtime.  Shelby long ago let me know that it wasn't "cool" anymore, but JP still lets me so you better believe that I take full advantage of that.  I typically always sing the same songs in the same order and every once and a while I will throw in an extra, but I always sing the three original songs-You are My Sunshine, Jesus Loves Me, Love Him in the Morning.

So last night we were all snuggled up in his bed and I started with You are My Sunshine and at the end I sang, "Please don't take my sunshine away" and over me JP sang at the same time "Please don't take my mommy away."  (tear)

JP's Christmas Program

So when is it that you finally quit the water works when you are watching your children do something???  Please say it doesn't last forever!!!  I just can't help myself; as soon as I see Shelby or JP up on stage to sing or whatever my eyes get all misty and before I know it the tears are flowing.  Happens every time!!!

In true Montessori fashion, the primary classes Christmas program was so cute and wonderful!!!  They started out singing "Joy to the World" and as soon as those first four words came out I was lost in a mix of tears.  Seriously, I could hardly see to take pictures for the rest of the program.

JP looked so big up there with all his classmates and we all got a huge kick out of his facial expressions.  One minute he would have this angry face and then the next minute he would be singing with the biggest smile; so, between the tears I was laughing too.

This year's program was really one of the best for the primary classes that I have been too.  The songs were all new which was definitely a nice change of pace since we have been hearing the same songs for the last four years and the children all seemed to be really excited to be there.  Although, the fact the I didn't have to have a crying child ripped off me at the beginning might have a little bit to do with the relaxed, good feelings I had towards the whole experience this year.

 Isn't he so handsome?!?!?!?

Angry eyes

JP with his carpool buddies, minus Shelby.  Yeah, the poor boy is constantly surrounded by girls.





Christmas Miracle of 2011

No, this is not a dream and Yes, that is Santa in background!!!!  This is the first picture with the children with Santa since their first Christmas!!!!

It is truly a Christmas Miracle!  Shelby and JP even got close enough to give him a high five, but no closer. 

Santa also has received the go ahead to come to our house this year to deliver presents.  Shelby told Pratt that he could come under one condition and that condition was that she gets to leave out milk and cookies for him.

I am still in total shock over the new development!!

All I want for Christmas

Is my two front teeth! 

 Shelby was so excited this week when she lost her other front bottom tooth on Sunday  night.  Ever since she figured out it was loose she would say, "Mom, I have to lose this tooth before Tuesday. I just have too."  It took me a few days to figure it out, but then I realized that she really wanted to lose it so that when her class sang "All I Want for Christmas" at their Christmas play she could sing it with conviction.  I have a feeling there was more tugging going on in the loss of this tooth versus the other, but she was so excited.  So here is a picture of our toothless babe and the letter she wrote to Chrystal, her tooth fairy.

Translation:

Dear Chrystal  To night I lost my second tooth  Watch out for Daisy  She has been nibbling good  I left a special surprise for you  It is on the edge of my bed

Love Shelby

The special prize was 8 pieces of candy from her candy stash.

Shelby has had a very busy week thus far.  On Monday night she went to a Nursing home with the American Heritage Girls to sing Christmas Carols to the residence and hand out poinsettia pens that the girls made and note cards as special gifts.  While I really struggle with nursing homes, she seemed to enjoy it.



After the nursing home all the girls and their families went back to our church for a little Christmas party and ceremony to present the girls with their Joining Award patch as they all successfully completed the requirements to become official American Heritage Girls!!  It was exciting and I am so thankful that Shelby has the opportunity to be apart of this troop.

As if that wasn't exciting enough!!!  Last night Shelby had her school Christmas performance.  It is so exciting to think of how far she has come in these.  When she was in the Cottage at MRM we couldn't even get her to participate in the Christmas program.  The next year she at least got on stage, the year after that she sang a little, and last year she did about half the movements.  This year she was so excited about the Christmas performance.  She smiled through all the songs and did all the movements.  It was a beautiful night and all the children did a wonderful job.