He's a Ham!

This first video is for Grandma Good.....

He really was grateful for his presents although he seems a little insincere here.

The next video is Julien's impersonation of Keven (Macaulay Culkin) on "Home Alone!" If you know Julien, he has the best memory and is always reciting lines from movies. This is his favorite line right now. It's the part on "Home Alone" where he goes to the grocery store and the cashier starts getting suspicious of him and why he is there alone..(this is his response). If you can't understand him, he is saying, "I'm 8 years old. Do you think I'd be here ALONE? I don't think so!"

and the same line again, but a little more exaggerated......

Biggest and Youngest Rocky Fan!

If you read the post below, you read that Julien and Jonah got boxing gloves for Christmas. It all started when Julien was 2 (he is 4 1/2 now). One night Rich sat down with Julien and turned on Rocky. Rich has been a fan his whole life too. Anything that daddy does with the kids becomes very sentimental to them and they will love it forever. So after watching Rocky once with Dad, Julien was hooked. He began his obsession. When he watches it, he rips his shirt off, sometimes even puts water on his chest to look like sweat, and acts out every single punch exactly how it is on the movies. He has them memorized. He has been singing "Eye of the Tiger" for years now. It's pretty cute! In this family Rocky is everywhere; on the t.v., the soundtrack in the car, when you call Rich, his ring tone is the theme song from Rocky. Now we have two sets of boxing gloves around the house. So for this whole time that Julien has been a fan of Rocky, he has never had a pair of gloves. He was beyond trilled when he opened them! It's only been a month, and his gloves are shredded (but I'm sure that has to do with the fact that they were only$5)! But mom is still against him doing boxing as a sport, I'm hoping he will never ask. Rocky is fine, but not the real thing please!

Isn't he tough!? Such a cute mean face!

Christmas Morning

Rich and I woke up before the kids did on Christmas morning! We couldn't believe they weren't up early, excited about Christmas! I set up the video camera and we made hot chocolate and turned on Christmas music, and sat and sat and waited and waited and still they didn't wake up! We finally gave up and went in their room and woke them up! Once Julien was up, he was excited and ran out to see what Santa had brought him. But Jonah was a different story. He wouldn't even get out of bed until we bribed him with milk!

The kids had a lot of fun! I knew as soon as we were done, the first thing Julien would do is put on his boxing gloves and turn on Rocky. He hasn't taken them off since! They loved everything else they got too! My sister, dad, aunt, and Rich's parents spoiled them.

Note: yes, we realize that our t.v. looks very W.T. on the ground, but our apartment is tiny and we got rid of our t.v. and entertainment center before we moved to ID. Rich's aunt wanted to get rid of this T.V. so she gave it to us (THANK YOU Cindy and David) and truly, this was the only spot to put it, other than the kitchen table,; see why it ended up there?!

Christmas Eve

Every Christmas Eve my sister and I would get an ornament and new pajamas. Rich also grew up getting new pajamas on Christmas Eve. So we decided to carry those traditions down to our children as well.

.....opening their ornaments; Julien got a "Toy Story" ornament and Jonah got a "Cars" one. They loved 'em!Usually we buy the pjs, but this year Grandma and Grandpa good (Rich's mom and step dad) insisted on getting them. But they threw in a little suprise....SLIPPERS! For weeks my kids would wake up in the morning and tell me that their feet were cold. Julien kept telling me that he needed some slippers. So they were SO excited to have their very own pair! (They have never had slippers before, and they wanted them so bad)! So sorry the next 3 pictures are blury (don't know what happened) but I couldn't leave these pictures out because their faces were priceless! Check out their excitment..... Then they started cheering and running all over the house, hugging their slippers!.....

Then came the pjs, and another round of cheers and excitement! THANK YOU SO MUCH GRANDMA AND GRANDPA GOOD! WE APPRECIATE IT SO MUCH AND SO DO THEY! ALSO, THEY WEAR THE SLIPPERS EVERYDAY AND THE PJS ARE THEIR FAVORITE ONES!

Julien posing with the milk and cookies! He was so excited!!!!!!! Jonah re-hanging his ornament for the "umpteenth" time that night!!!!

More catching up!!!! Scroll down for more!

I also mentioned below that we went to see Santa, and to reiterate, Julien was beyond thrilled and Jonah was running the other direction in fear! We did manage to get one shot with Jonah though. Sorry for the poor quality of pictures here. Instead of paying $15 for one 5x7 pic, I just snapped a few with my digital, but the lighting in there ruined it...probably why they allow you to take your own.
Yay! We got it!


I love this last one of Julien! This Santa was great and Julien was just precious!

Earlier that day we decorated our tree and house. It was such a great day It is so much fun to develop these special traditions with our little family.
Julien ran in our room the next morning with a knot in his throat saying, "Mommy, there's no presents!:(" Oh Christmas can never come fast enough for kids. The kids and I made one of those paper chains with red and green paper (like you do in elementary school) so they could have a visual on the countdown till Christmas. Each night we took one off. I wish I had a picture of that cause they were way excited as it got shorter and shorter.

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This is late November after the first decent snowfall. Since then we have seen a lot more snow! As you can see the poor kids had wet clothes from the snow and freezing hands, but that didn't stop them! Since then, they have gotten the proper snow attire (thank you to my dad from Christmas)! So here is a little snowman that the kids and I made one day!

I just think they look so cute and proud in this picture!

Catching up!!!

I don't know how we survived months without the Internet, but we did. We just got the Internet the other night, and Rich said, "I feel like we are connected with the outside world again!" I feel the same way!! Nowadays pretty much everything is online. I love having information at my fingertips because I'm curious and always thinking of things that I want to know more about. I missed being able to keep up on blogs and leave comments, but hopefully I will get caught up soon. We stayed up till 4am last night just looking up stuff and trying to jam all the things we've been wanting to do online, as fast as we could. The kids were crawling all over us this morning as we moaned and groaned and couldn't open our eyes! I guess the Internet is a novelty to us again. I have to admit, not having the Internet freed up our nights a lot. I read more books over the past couple of months than I have in probably 2 years. It was great! But we are excited to be normal again and have the Internet back. With that being said I have some catching up to do and I apologize for it being old news, but it's mainly for the sake of our family blog to not leave some things out.

I mentioned in my last post that I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner, and I promised pictures, so here they are...

The appetizers..Deviled eggs, fruit and marshmallow/cream cheese dip, artichoke dip and bread.

Although we weren't with extended family this year, it still felt like Thanksgiving and we had a great day! We did miss everyone though.

The main course..candied yams, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, and of course...

..the turkey and stuffing! Oh and rolls and cranberry sauce!

My little picky eater (Jonah) ate really good that night!

Julien was so excited that day, he kept saying, "I LOVE thanksgiving!"
and even homemade pumpkin pie! It was a great day and the kids were very intrigued by the turkey for some reason! It was different being the one doing all the cooking ( a little more busy) but so rewarding and I'm glad I could spoil my family with good food because they deserve it!