Christmas 2011

Our Christmas tree & stockings.

Ornaments that Amir made & we gave them out for Christmas gifts. Five finger snowmen. Amir is really great about doing stuff like this. He has LOTS of patience. Especially when there is paint involved. I think we'll do something like this again next year.

On Christmas Eve we went to Rich's sisters house for dinner. Gifts were exchanged & they have a Christmas program. Amir played a little song on the piano. (one he wrote himself.) I wish I had gotten my camera out for that but I didn't want to miss it running to get it.

Christmas Day:

Opening his gifts. :) He got up at 3am yelling "MOM! Santa left presents under my tree!" Luckily, he was able to go back to sleep pretty quick after I told him it wasn't time to open presents yet.

 His stocking. It's almost as big as he is!

After Santa put out all the presents he realized that he didn't have anything for mom and dad. Not even stocking stuffers. HA! (The joys of being pregnant, forgetful & just plain tired!)

After we opened presents at our house we went to Gram's house. We ate dinner and opened presents. Amir got $10 (in $1's) from gram & a bunch of toys from Bebe & Nehneh.

We also got to talk to Sami Christmas morning. Which was nice. It was great to see his face again.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

I seriously cant believe that Christmas has come and gone already! We had so much fun during the holidays. Amir especially. He loved the gingerbread house making, tree decorating, present opening - all of it. 

This was the first year without my brother being here but I got to talk to him on the phone. He had an hour and a half to talk. It was pretty amazing. He also has one awesome British accent!

Here are a few pictures from our Christmas morning:

 He could tell which ones were his. They were all wrapped in Toy Story paper. :)

 He was very interested in one of the books we got him. Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb. He was discussing the quality of the book when I took this picture.

 His new ottoman. He liked playing IN it rather than opening it. We put a Bumblebee Pillow Pet  in it and he said: "OH! This is from Sami!" (My brother who is on his mission) Hilarious.

 Next were some gifts from Grandma W. Before he opened this he shook the box and said: "Oh! Tools!" ... He was right. Play-doh tools!

 By the end of unwrapping he was a little burned out. The last one he picked up and said "Oh, another book" and just set it back down without even opening it. He was right, it was another book. Ha!

Our Tree this year. Brown, Green & White birds. Yep, year number two where the cats used it as their home. 

Mini Pies

This year for Christmas I decided to make mini pies as part of gifts for friends and family. They were super fun to make and I found the idea here.

I made blueberry & apple. I got packaged pie crust and canned filling. 

Supplies: Canned filling, pie crusts, cookie cutters (I used Amir's transformers cup for the crust and the cookie cutter with the star center for the tops of the apple pies) brush, mini cupcake tin & egg whites.

Apples. Only fill about half way , some of mine exploded because I put waaayyy too much in the first time. :)

The blueberries were super fun but really time consuming to do the tops. I just cut strips of the unused pie crust. Brush the tops with egg whites.

Bake each batch for 15 min on 350 F. 

TAA DAA!! Finished products. They taste delicious!

Advent Calendar

Well I did it.... I actually SEWED something! Crazy right? I made an advent calendar for our family this year. I'm really excited about it. Its pretty big and we can use a marker or fill it with stuff. I'm almost done. I just have a few more buttons to sew on. Here are some pics....

Button marker. 

The calendar. A few of the buttons are on. 

I also made a tree skirt (unfinished) out of the leftover red felt. I'm pretty excited to see that done too.

Christmas!

Christmas was GREAT this year! We did two charities: Festival of Tree's & Angel Giving Tree. But we also had a fun Christmas of our own.

[Our stockings. :)]

We started out on Christmas Eve by going to Allyson's house. We got there a little early to help so we decorated cookies and chopped veggies etc. Allyson made a YUMMY dinner. A few people in the family sang songs, played their instruments or just played a song for everyone from the iPod. It was awesome. Then the kids opened presents from Grandpa and it was time to go home. Allyson said that she was kicking everyone out by 8:00pm.... Everyone packed up and left at about 9:30pm... lol. (see pictures below)

[Amir played hard at Allyson's... He always has fun and never wants to leave]

[Amir, Katherine & Baby Gus... Cute!]

[Rich, Cooper & the girls decorating cookies. They were yummy!]

[Where does Rich get this from?!]

[Oh wait.... His dad!]

[Mason, Caden, either Tess or Elli... Since I think its Tess I'm going to say its Elli... Then me and Rich.]

When we got home Amir was sleeping so I told Santa he could go ahead and put the presents out. I was so excited I hardly slept the whole night! I got up at 7:00am because I couldn't sleep any longer. So I made cinnamon rolls while waiting for the boys to get up. Amir finally woke up at about 8:00am and was grumpy because he wasn't ready to get up yet. But I told him that Santa came and brought him presents and he was immediately happy. So we opened presents and hung around the house.

[Yummy cinnamon roll breakfast... mmmm.]

[Rich <3]

Then later in the afternoon we went to my Grandma's house. There we opened even more presents, ate dinner and watched The Polar Express. Amir loves that show. After hanging around there for a little while we left and went home. It was lots of fun.

[Sami... I gave him a Buzz Lightyear toy... It took us back a good ten years.]

[Gavin and the hooded towel I gave him. Thats right, the previously mentioned hooded towel was for him. :) ]

[Amir in this cute outfit opening gifts.]

[Rich, Me, Mariam & Sami]

5 Days 'til Christmas!

Richard & I got a kit from Costco for making a gingerbread house. So we put it together last week. It turned out pretty awesome.




In other news, we went to the MonaVie Christmas party on Friday. It was pretty awesome. For entertainment they had Kurt Bestor play. He is GREAT! They also gave out his CD as the Christmas gift for the employee's. That and candy, popcorn and the DVD; The Polar Express. That part I was pretty excited for. :)

We also went and saw baby Gus (who was born on Tuesday) he is the cutest baby I've ever seen!

Anyway, FIVE DAYS TIL CHRISTMAS!! WOO HOO!!! I'm getting really excited!