Christmas Day 2006

Ok I got the pictures, so....

On Christmas Morning, we opened presents, as usual. It was a good thing that the kids had gotten presents from Grandmas and Grandpas or it would have been a pretty scarce Christmas as far as gifts go. Mike, Hyrum, and I all got new matching pajamas made by my mom. They have bright colorful cats on them and cause Hyrum to go into meowing fits whenever he puts them on. I'm going to try to make some PJs for Emily from the scraps that Mom sent. Among the presents that Emily got were new church and casual shoes and some new clothes and blankets. She got her traditional sock monkey from Grandma Sears. It turned out really cute. She got burp rags and bibs and clothes, a cute firefly shaped rattle, and a picture frame with a figurine of a little girl playing with some kittens. Now I just need a good picture of her to put in it. Hyrum made a pretty good haul. He got a new video game for his Little Leaps system which has some great activities for vocabulary building and learning letters and numbers. He enjoyed playing it quite a bit. He also got some new books. Yay! Now I don't have to read "Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar" as often! He also got a shopping cart and toy food which he pushes all over the house with a teddy bear riding in the child seat. He also got an ambulance which talks and makes siren noises. Luckily for me and Mike, it isn't too loud since he plays with it almost non stop from morning till night. We also got him a really neat fort building kit. All the pieces fit together with magnets and can be moved around and reconfigured in lots of different ways and can be used indoors or outdoors. That afternoon, we tried to play a game of Settlers with Jacob, Joseph, Mom, and Sherwin, but technical difficulties abounded. We ended up playing with Jacob, Joseph, and Mike's brother, Dave. We'll have to try again with Mom and Sherwin later. Mike and Hyrum wasted no time later that evening putting together a large fort with 2 towers that nearly filled our whole living room. We put a pillow inside the fort and Hyrum and Mike lounged inside it while we all watched "The Polar Express" until Hyrum's bedtime.

Christmas Eve 2006

Christmas this year was very quiet. We didn't have the money to go visit anyone and would have had nobody to visit anyhow, so we just stayed at home. In a way, it was very difficult for me. I'm used to having lots of family around for the Holidays. However, it gave us a chance to spend more time focusing on just our own little family. On Christmas Eve, we watched the First Presidency Devotional and the church video "Joy to the World" which is a video of different families reading the Christmas story from both the Bible and Book of Mormon while they show pictures of nativity scenes and different parts of Christ's life. Afterwards, we baked sugar cookies with Hyrum. I wasn't able to find a recipe that I liked for sugar cookies since my cookbook and recipes have disappeared. I'm sure they're still packed... somewhere. We ended up buying a tube of pre-made Pillsburry dough. The instructions were to open the tube and cut the roll in half inch slices, but the dough was way too gooey and wouldn't hold any shape. We decided we would try to roll it out and cut it since gingerbread men shapes (the only cookie cutter we have) are more fun than plain circles anyhow. It took a lot of flour to get the dough to a decent consistency. Hyrum really enjoyed rolling the dough and especially loved cutting out the shapes. We turned the oven light on so he could watch the cookies raise and get all puffy. He liked decorating the baked cookies too, but once he realized that the decorations were just candy, he ate more than he decorated. The cookies weren't all that great. I would have preferred homemade to the Pillsburry, but Hyrum seemed to like them. We spent the next several days hiding them from him so he wouldn't spoil his appetite for real food.

I'll post about our Christmas as soon as I get the pictures off of my camera.

Jessica's Christmas Memories

So, Mike wanted me to post my Christmas memories so it didn't look like this was just his blog. As far as gifts, I usually don't remember all that I got for Christmas since it's always a bit blurred with my birthday gifts as well. We always left the tree up until after my birthday, so all my memories of opening presents are memories of sitting in front of the tree and having snow outside and all that other Christmasy stuff. I do have a few memories I can share, however.

When I was 6 years old, I got a gift from "Santa" that was too big for my stocking. I found it sitting under my stocking on Christmas morning. It was a Cabbage Patch Kid! I was never in to dolls much, but for some reason, I really wanted one. Maybe because all my friends had large collections of them. I didn't care about having a bunch, I just wanted one, and there it was! She had long brown hair in pigtails and blue eyes and when I opened the box and read the birth certificate, I found out her name was Joletta Christine. It was a Christmas miracle!! A doll who's name already started with a "J" so I wouldn't have to change it! (Everyone in my family and even extended family is named with a "J" name.) My oldest brother James helped me with the adoption papers and had me swear an oath to take care of her. From that point on, I took that doll with me everywhere I went. My Great Grandma Rock pulled the pigtails down over Joletta's nose, making a mustache, and gave it the nick-name "George" when I went to visit her -- a joke that caught on quickly with my 2 great uncles Jim and Harland. Uncle Jim even made me a doll cradle that had the name George on it. It was my Uncle Harland who first transferred the name from the doll to me. He called me George from that point on. He even labeled our wedding present, "To: Mike and George."

Another year my brothers and I were welcomed with meows at our garage door. We shared a cat with our neighbors across the street, but it wasn't his meow. We opened the door and in walked an elegant Siamese cat. We let him in and closed the door behind him, but the meowing continued from the other side of the door. We opened the door once again and a scraggly tabby cat walked in. We named the cats Jarvis S. and Jarvis T. (the initials designated their breed) after our home teachers Bro. Jarvis and Bro. Jarvis. As an adult, I've often wondered how they felt about having cats named after them...

I remember trying to wake up every year before my youngest brother Joseph. It wasn't really a competition, but it bothered me that every Christmas morning, I'd wake up and he was already up and opening stocking stuffers. I swear, he never woke up early the whole time he lived with us! One year, he got Donkey Kong Country in his stocking, and since we had woken up so early, we got a few good hours of playtime before my mom woke up for presents.

Most of my Christmas memories are memories of playing board games with my family, listening to carols as we decorated the tree, singing around the piano as Jacob played, and just enjoying each other's company. Every year, we tried to sneak some small present into my mom's stocking as a gift from Santa. Then, of course, there was Christmas morning at my Grandma Sears's house with all the extended family while we were living in East Idaho. We were always late -- something that my grandma bothered my mom about endlessly even though we usually beat my Aunt Jane. Christmas morning at Grandma Sears's house was a tradition that Mike and I still carried on until we moved away. This year, like last, we will be spending Christmas alone. It's kind of difficult for me to be alone like this for the holidays since I'm so used to having family around. But it gives us the chance to try to establish some traditions of our own. Hyrum will be old enough this year to understand what's going on, so I'm excited. It should be a lot of fun for him, and whenever he's having fun, it makes me happy. It'll be a while still before Emily will care about Christmas, but I'm already looking forward to the years when my kids are older and can enjoy it as much as I did.

New photo album

You can find our new photo album @ http://picasaweb.google.com/mike.haddox

Don't try to remember it, just us the link on the right if you ever need to get to it :)

A Christmas Memory

@ work, we had a team meeting. At the beginning of this meeting they had an ice breaker where we stated the most memorable present we've ever received.

First of all, I just have to say that I never knew that so many people received promise/engagement rings as Christmas gifts. Out of the 12 team members that were there, 7 of them mentioned having a promise or engagement ring as their most memorable present o_o

Then it was my turn, and I knew the answer well:

M.A.S.K. Boulder Hill! Based on the stares from people I was getting, I realized I was probably the only 80's child in the group. I had to explain how it was the secret base of M.A.S.K. (the Good Guys) and how when Venom would come along, the boulder on the top of the hill would crush their vehicles. I still got blank stares until one guy said, "Wait! Didn't they have a diesel too?" I was so excited, I replied, "Yes!! That was one of Venom's vehicles!"

I went on to explain how my siblings and I would wake up at 4 or 5am most every Christmas day and just sit and look at the presents and talk about which ones were ours and what we'd guess they would be. I remember that Boulder Hill got us most excited because it said "To: The Boys" and it was so big it could only be wrapped in a black garbage bag.

WebNursery

Visit http://www.growingfamily.com/webnursery/babypage.asp?URLID=8R4L8O4K4I and use O5Q7I0G9T0 as the visitor password.

These are some photos that were taken of Emily the next day following her birth. In one of them, she looks like she's smiling on mom's shoulder and it's amazingly adorable. ... on 2nd thought, I just took the photos from the website and placed them here. The website focuses on getting you to buy of of their photo packages which are over-priced imo.
My favorite photo is #the 1st, followed by the 4th. The others are meh:

KAWAII!!

no caption .. oops, dang it! nevermind Too many grapes...
Bullwinkle: "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!"
Rocky: "Again?!!"
Bullwinkle: "Button up my sleeve ......
PRESTO!"
Rocky: "Now here's something you'll really enjoy."