Goodbye Christmas

 Why does it come and go so darn fast?? 

Decorations will be completely gone tomorrow.

 I miss the music already. 

Guess it's time to get our party on and ring in the New Year!

UGLY sweaters

 Sporting this season's finest at our Christmas Eve ugly sweater party.

 classic eyes closed family photo

 My Mom even made a sweater to go on the trophy.

 Lucas tried sneaking into other Family photos. :)

 The Gang (most of them)

 Cousin gift exchange

Christmas Updates and Out takes

 So tell me WHY it is so hard to take family pictures? Really. I just don't get it. As grateful as I am for Ashli doing them, I don't think it was the best of ideas. (Jimmy thinks it's comedy hour when she's around) Most people worry about their children behaving during pictures. I worry about my husband.

{I must admit, we did get some pretty good laughs looking through these afterward.}

Our Christmas was as hectic as any other day of the week for us. (very unfortunate) I wish we had more time in the day! Most holidays I take the week off to just bake and relax. Not this year. I worked my hiney off up until Christmas giving myself VERY little time off and instead of enjoying preparing for Christmas - I was in a mad rush.

I was glad to see lots of family and share more memories with them all. 

The Fagan family had an ugly sweater party that ROCKED. 

Lucas enjoyed leaving cookies and milk out for Santa.

The Millers hosted a GINORMOUS Christmas breakfast. I indulged in more bacon than ever should exist. (I never even used to like the stuff.) ps. Lucas loves his pillow pet, Grandma!

After breakfast we spent time at home... awaiting family to arrive from out of town, eating tooooo much and playing games. I also got a nice afternoon nap in! I didn't even feel guilty about it.

As per custom, when family gets together, SOMEONE always gets sick. 

My nephew was being such a party pooper - wanting to sleep all Christmas day. Come to find out - he had appendicitis! In for emergency surgery on Christmas night. 

We enjoyed time spent giving gifts, playing games, talking all hours of the night, having sleepovers with the kiddos, and even had some fun at the Hospital visiting Mason. 

Life never stops, does it? Neither does Heavenly Father's bounteous blessings! With all that went on Christmas night, instead of feeling sad or upset about what could have been a ruined holiday, we were just all grateful to be {more or less} healthy and to be surrounded by so much love.

I hope you all enjoyed Christmas this year!

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

I was 9.

I vividly remember reading the Christmas story with my family, each taking turns with verses. My older sister and her husband lived with us at the time. I was fairly confident with my reading skills and when it came to be my turn, the words began flowing out of my mouth, maybe more freely than I had planned. I said every word in the worst way possible. Gentiles were not Gentiles... if you get my drift. It got worse. I don't want to write anything vulgar, but I think you can imagine some of those lengthy words getting slaughtered. The thing is, I just kept on going. Until my Brother-in-law, Louis couldn't take it anymore. He bursted into laughter and we had a hard time keeping the story sacredly read. I'll have you know, when the word "ASS" came along, I skipped it. I know a bad word when I see it. 

That said,

I was asked to tell the Christmas story in our church Christmas service today. 

I'm not sure how it went, as I was letting my words flow freely - as per custom. 

(Louis wasn't there to stop me)

Even if I did horribly, I felt the spirits' warm fuzzies. :) It was nice to sing the Christmas hymns honoring Christ and his magnificent arrival and to hear others testify of Jesus Christ. 

Enjoy pictures of baby Lucas as Jesus in 2008:

I hope you're all enjoying the season!

Fall?

 As per custom - Seattle gets a few inches of snow and no one knows what to do with themselves. Roads were awful, so we spent the day sledding on them instead of driving. (gotta love the card board box sleds)

 Lucas' cousins came over to play. Who he LOVES. (secretly I love them to come over so I can play with them too - they know Aunt Sara is always down to do whatever they want.:)

 Lucas has really been wanting to go see the tractors in the snow. He thought it was so funny that they got snowed on.

 First Icicle

 YUM.

 Once they came in, Lucas' big cousin "mees" read to him while they thawed.

 I thought Lucas would get excited about making ginger bread houses.  He was more interested in sneaking candy from the table and hiding it for later. Occasionally, we would hear him dart down the hallway - which meant he was taking candy and hiding it somewhere. Funny kid.

yes. we still have peeps. Who eats those things anyways? A perfect compliment to a gingerbread house.

 

Notice the pumpkins in the background... we still need to get rid of those bad boys. 

Lucas always has so much fun with his cousins - he skipped a nap in fear of missing out on the action. This resulted in an unexpected CRASH on Dad's lap. 

I don't think these kids will ever know how important they are to Lucas. He really looks up to them. 

Thanks for spending the day with us!

Lucas Lately

I thought I needed to showcase my son today. For no other reason than he's cute. 

He is still in his big boy bed. Kind of sort of. He ends up with us most mornings, climbing in to bed saying, "up up" and kissing me good morning. I try so hard to be stern with him and tell him to go back to bed... but it's just too dang cute.

He is successfully potty training. I can't say it's a done deal, but he's doing FANtastic. He wakes up dry most times and really loves to pee standing up. eeeek.

He had me concerned at his 2 year check up about speech (lots of grunting and hand gestures were still going on) but as soon as I booked a speech therapist, he started talking. So, I canceled appointments and we're going to see how he does. He just had a lack of interest and now wants to repeat everything I say, sings, and excitedly explains things to me. I LOVE hearing the things that come out of his mouth. He loves to WWWEAD (read) and hide. He also loves the "HUSKIES!" (which can't be said without shouting) He often times asks if he can watch Huskies on TV or wear his Husky gear. He named a teddy bear "Abby" and I have NO clue where he got the name idea. He loves to feed her, dress her (she looks like a boy) and most of all, hug her. My favorite new words he says are: bodowerr (bulldozer) back-ack (back pack) gogut (go-gurt) hommie (this is how he says his uncle Jeramy's name - but it comes out more like "homie". I love it.) He also says his Aunt Emily's name pretty cute: "mumaweee". 

Lately I include him more in his nightly prayers. Rather than saying them for him, we kneel down and I ask him who he thinks we should pray for. It is SO fun to see who/what he comes up with. He also tries to say them with me sometimes which melts my heart. 

His tractor obsession continues as you can see in the photo above. He is crazy over Bob the builder. He knows all the character's names and sings the song. He even hopped up on Santa's lap last weekend and asked for a tractor. 

He is such a fun boy. Through all the action, he seems to know just when his Mom needs a snuggle - and I am SO blessed that he's willing to share them with me. 

Love you Groobs!

emotions in the Miller household...

We have had a long week. Thanks to the latest adventures of Lucas. 

He has known how to climb out of the crib for a while now. He just amazingly chose not to. That changed earlier this week. It was a constant battle getting him to STAY in the crib. 

He started waking up in the middle of the night. Remembering his new found freedom, he would climb right out of that thing and proceed to read every book in his room and do every puzzle. At 2am, mind you.

When he would get bored he would come in our room telling us to "up up".

Continual nights of this behavior and lack of naps resulted in major sleep deprivation of ALL parties involved.

One day, during his non-nap I asked him to get me a screw driver. He excitedly did just that - thinking I was going to play bob the builder or something. Out of desperation, I reluctantly began unscrewing his crib. He was enjoying the unscrewing. Until he saw the crib start to come apart. "Mom! NO! No, Mom... Mom, noooo!"

My reaction to his tears? 

Tears. 

In a sobbing form.

We sat there and talked quietly - while crying. 

I told him he should really stop growing. He agreed.

This must have been harder on me. I am realizing that my baby is no longer. He is growing up... and we're closing a chapter. 

The funny thing is, Jimmy called right in the middle of our tear fest.

After telling him the cause of our emotions and about the crib that was now in pieces, he was patient with both of us - he tried explaining it all to Lucas on the phone. After he soaked in all the drama, he replied... "yea - I'll be home late tonight." :) Love you, Jimmy. 

As of now, Lucas is still throwing parties at all hours in his room. It's going to take some time to get used to his big boy bed slash trampoline.  

Here are some recent photos from Maris Farms:

 Come on in, Dad! The water's fine!