Christmas 2011

We hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas this year! Grant got to meet Santa at our Ward Christmas Party this year and so he understood just a little bit what was going on. This is yet another long post, but if you make it to the end, you will get a great surprise! All month, we would ask Grant what he wanted Santa to bring him...his answers were usually candy, an apple, or Aunt Kellie. He was overjoyed that morning when he found both and apple, and some candy in his stocking! Way to go Santa! (He brought Aunt Kellie later at Grandma's house).

Our toddler stud modeling his Santa bathrobe. We picked this up for $2 while we were in Arizona in September and it did not disappoint... he was so cute!

Santa surprised Kyle with some noise cancelling headphones in his stocking. They came at the perfect time too since he spent a few days during his time off that week working on finishing the tile in our basement around the bathroom and wet bar!

Grant was surprised with his very own computer... it is a little advanced, but I am hoping that he will really start to pick up on some of the skills that are included in the activities.

The best part of the morning were the packing peanuts that came with Kyle's gift. Grant was shouting that it was "nooo" (his version of snow) and we had many a snow fight before church.

We were so excited to see that Santa brought a cool indoor trampoline for our family. I couldn't wait to see Grant's reaction since he has been working diligently on jumping with his physical therapist and has mastered it when he is on our bed. Unfortunately, the picture adequately describes the reaction. He wanted nothing to do with the tramp. You win some, you lose some I guess.

(Luckily, it took a few days for him to warm up to the idea, but eventually he decided that it was pretty fun and has been jumping for the last few days on his own! Phew!)

After our quiet family Christmas morning, we got ready and went to church. After church, we drove to my parent's house for their Christmas celebration. Grant was spoiled of course and took great joy in delivering gifts to everyone and helping to rip all the packages open.

Nate, this picture is for you. When mom opened your present, you brought her to tears when she saw the pictures of Karina in her blessing dress. Good work!

By far, Grant's favorite gift was the power tool set he got from Grandma and Grandpa. It was close to nap time and I was afraid he was going to lose it, but he opened those and saw that they actually worked and he was an instant happy camper again. He took his little jig saw and attempted to finish opening all the gifts!

After a close scare, my mom was able to surprise Kellie and Spencer with their family gift. The week before, Spencer had almost ordered this exact thing online and we had to do some fast talking to sway him in a different direction. Phew! They were both shocked and delighted with their steam cleaning vacuum.

Grant demonstrated true concentration as he helped us open our family gift.... check out that tongue! Kyle and I were so excited to see an infrared heater when Grant finished "sawing" open our gift!

We were spoiled as always and very grateful for a year full of wonderful things! My favorite gift we gave was Grant's gift to my parents... some ultrasound pictures of his baby.... BROTHER!!!! My doctor was nice enough to schedule my ultrasound for 18 weeks instead of 20 weeks so that we would know our baby's gender for Christmas. He rationalized that since I already had a fetal echo scheduled to look at baby's heart at my 21 week mark, we could do the rest a little early (it is easier to identify potential heart problems later in a pregnancy). No one knew we had scheduled the ultrasound, so it was a huge surprise to both our families! We weren't exactly able to share the news the way we had planned with Kyle's family. We hid two envelopes with different boy/girl messages in them while we were there the week before, but Kyle's sister JoAnna went into labor on Christmas at 3:30 am and so they all spent the day in the hospital waiting for our new niece to be born. It was a great day!