Christmas: Wammack Style

We had a very nice Christmas yesterday.  The kids slept until 7 and then stayed in their room quietly, although they did admit to sneaking out to see the presents.  We all got up and they got to open their stocking and their present from Santa.  We then went to church and had a nice time there.  Then it was time to come home, put the jammies back on and open lots of presents.
We have a very generous and hard working family and they made this a truly blessed year for us.  We were all spoiled and we are really looking forward to playing with all of our new toys, playing our new games, and reading lots of books.
We hope that you had a very Merry Christmas as well.

Christmas Jammies

Nothing says Christmas like the Dark Lord of the Sith.

 

Dora the Explorer for the girliest of girls.

 

 Lala-Loopsy for the Annika bug.

 The biggest goob, had Hello Kitty.

 Happy kids on Christmas Eve in their new jammies, and Johnny of course trying to get to the camera.

The Christmas Tree

 Santa arrived and loaded up the tree.

 Everything waiting to delight the children.

Christmas morning

 Coming down the hall ready to see the tree and thier presents.

 Excitedly finding their stockings.

 Discovering the wonders that Santa put in their stocking.

 Woohoo!  Candy, underwear and more candy.

 Johnny had a lightsaber in his stocking.

 Opening their Santa present.  Annika received High School Musical Sing It! for the Wii.  MacKayla received an electronic Sudoku game.

 Arabella got the new Winnie the Pooh movie from Santa.

 Johnny was not that interested in opening up the presents, but he received a cute number caterpillar.  He did love the lightsaber though, he has chewed on that since yesterday morning.

Time for presents

 

 The girls opening and showing off a few of their presents.

 Johnny decided to play some Christmas music for us instead of opening presents.

The joy on Bella's face expresses what we all felt!

Annika's Christmas Concert

The first and second graders at the school put on a wonderful Christmas concert for the parents.  The kids have been practicing all year and they did a great job.  Annika was so very excited to perform and she was awesome!  Here are her videos:

Deck the Halls

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

Jingle Bells

Must be Santa

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

MacKayla's Christmas Concert

This year MacKayla has joined the Eastern Idaho Youth Arts Council Choir.  She is having a lot of fun learning new songs, learning proper technique and making new friends.  The choir was recently invited to perform at the Festival of Trees.  The kids had been preparing for the concert in January, so they hadn't done a whole lot of other practice.  They decided to go with Christmas songs and what a great job they did.  Here are the songs:

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Away in a Manger

Deck the Halls

Frosty

Jingle Bells

O Come Little Child

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Up on the Housetop

We Wish You a Merry Christmas (again)

Fall Catch Up

Once again I have let myself get behind on the blog again...maybe this time, I will stay on top of it...

We have had a really fun fall, Annika turned 7 in the middle of October and had a fun birthday party with several of her friends.  We also had a lot of fun for Halloween.  The night was cold, but the kids were still able to get lots of candy.

For the most part I will just make this a photo bomb to show our Fall.

 

Our Halloween pumpkins.

Ms. SuperGirl, I love the attitude.

Frankie Stein and SuperGirl waiting in line for the school parade.

"Parade too long it is" according to Yoda.

Harry Potter off to save the magical world.

A friend didn't think that I would be willing to wear the tutu and bow, I guess she didn't realize that I have no shame when it's Halloween.

Our pumpkins in the light. 

The cutest Yoda ever!

Annika's birthday cake.  Silly mom forgot to order one before the party, luckily they had a cute Halloween cake ready when we got there.

Annika had a costume/movie party.  She had a lot of fun!

Showing off a few present.

Annika's new love is all things Monster High, she was on cloud 9 when she received four dolls for her birthday.

Bella has decided she is too old for naps, but after a long day she will still crash sometimes.   I thought this was particularly cute.

Johnny playing with his lightsabers.  I love that smile!

Again with the adorable smile, doesn't he make you melt.

Johnny's new favorite thing is to grab a book and climb up and read it with me.  He especially loves puppies and can even say "puppa" now, he also pants like a dog.  Today for the first time he said "kitty, meow" as well.  It is amazing how fast he is growing up.

 

James also wanted to capture him is his Star Trek shirt at least one more time before he grows up.

I came in to get him one morning and he had gotten his shirt this far off and was quite proud of it.  Since then he has managed to get all of his jammies off, what a silly boy.

Bella's hair had reached the point that is was getting really long and she was ready for her first haircut, so this is the before from the front.

The back, I will miss those curls at the bottom.  All of the girls had really cute curls until their first haircut, and those curls never come back.

During the haircut.

The haircut all done, isn't she adorable!

Showing off the ponytail that she donated to Locks of Love, she was very excited to help another little girl who didn't have any hair.

Johnny is not a big eater much of the time, so when we find something he likes it is a great day.  Here we discovered that he loves pizza, he ate almost the whole slice on his own.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

A friend told me that we were going to have some snow this week, I looked at the forecast but never saw snow on it.  I also couldn't believe with the good weather that we were having that we were going to be getting snow so soon, well I was wrong.  Today it started out cold and rainy and a few hours later we got SNOW, not the light fluffy stuff that goes away, oh no, this was the big, wet, cold, snow that is still on the lawn. 

The kids had a lotof fun with the snow though.  They invited some friends over and they made a cute snowman. 

 The girls snowman from today.  Unfortunately I didn't realize Bella wasn't looking.  

All of the friends together that built the snowman.

 

This was the last snowman that they built from last season.  It was only in April, that doesn't feel all that long ago, I don't know if I am ready to start the whole cold weather process again!

My Walking Baby

Little Johnny decided this week he was ready to take his first steps.  He has been crusing around the furniture for a few months now, but he was finally ready to let go.  Over the last week or so, he started letting go and taking the two steps between the coffee table the couch, but today he walked the first time to me about six steps. 

Later in the evening once dad was home we were able to capture his attempts on video.  So for all to enjoy, here is my baby boy learning to walk.  Way to go Johnny!

Bob, why did you have to leave me?!?

Dear Bob,

I miss you so much!  I miss your bright visage, the warm greetings that you shared with me every morning and the way you always helped me to feel connected.  I know that I am spending time with Hal now, and I hope that you aren't too jealous, but see I needed someone to keep me company, and you had to go away.  Things were just getting too hot when we were together.  I know you were doing your best, but I needed you to be more reliable.  One day, hopefully soon, you will be back in my life and we can be happy together again. 

Love,
Me

(For those of you who don't remember, Bob is my computer.  He has been having overheating problems and I had to take him in to get repaired.  I haven't been a day without Bob since I got him, he even went to the hospital with me when Johnny was born.  I was told it could take as long as six weeks until I get him back.  In the meantime I am using James' computer, but it feels like I am cheating on Bob.  Oh well, hopefully we get this fixed soon and can get back to our computing together.)

A look back

As I posted Bella's first day of preschool photos yesterday I thought it would be fun to add the other girls first day photos as well. With MacKayla we hadn't started the tradition of photos in the kitchen in front of the door, but you can still see how little she was and how much she has grown up.

MacKayla - August 2006

Annika - August 2008

Arabella - August 2011