It's December what?

So I'm sitting outside at Burke's soccer game yesterday thinking, it's December what now? Such beautiful weather and I've almost been too busy to enjoy it this week.

First though, I wanted to play catch up and post some photos that my awesome 'photo queen' sis-in-law took Thanksgiving week (I stole these from facebook) :

Cute cousins only 15 months apart (Burke may eventually be taller someday)

This one cracks me up!

Rob, Sue and me (sitting in the backyard watching the kids play)

Love this freckled, cute face!

T in action

Cutie-pies 

Livvy and me

Big squeeze (love that her eyes are closed so tight!)

Love my girl!

Aunt Sue painting Liv's nails (she LOVES this)

Liv helped me put up the Christmas decorations about a week ago.  I've inherited (OK, taken) a lot of my Mom's Christmas stuff and I have loved getting it out and having her things around me.  Writing Christmas cards, putting up stockings (the ones that she helped me make even!) and listening to Christmas music all reminds me of her.  The song, "I'll Be Home for Christmas" seems to do the most damage (meaning makes me cry).  It is interesting how the holidays really make me miss her more, but it is all good and I feel at peace.

My favorite ornaments are the ones from my childhood and the ones that my kids have made.  This little gingerbread man (a Primary craft) has my picture from first grade and it is hilarious!  My mom had my hair permed like "Annie" and the volunteer mom there on picture day took her little black comb and combed out my tight curls.  I've always laughed at this photo (after I got over hating it) and thought it looked like I have "hat head" or something.  I posted this pic on Instagram and several of my friends have commented on how I look like Tosh's identical twin.  The funny thing is that Tosh's hair often looks like this quite naturally.  Ha!

So I found this box of candles on our tree one day this week (certainly Liv's doing).  I'd like to think that she was thinking about how Christmas is a celebration of Jesus' birth, but I'm pretty sure she was just getting into things as usual... 

Rob had all of his gear out last weekend to get ready for a practice and the kids had fun singing into the microphones.  Last year the favorite song around here was "Feliz Navidad" and this year it is "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time" by Paul McCartney.  I have taken several awesome videos (on separate occasions) of the kids singing this song.  Too cute!

Rob and I were asked to do a musical program for our ward Christmas party that was last night.  I told them, "Well if you ask us then we are going to do it our way" and they were fine with that.  We got some different musicians and singers together and it turned out really fun and great.  We did about six songs including some songs with audience participaiton.  It is always fun to do a live gig with full sound and instruments.  The crazy thing is that I had a couple of solos and didn't get nervous AT ALL.  I am a mess if I have to sing in church; I guess it goes to show that this was right up my alley.  This photo was taken at the rehearsal last week:

Random shot of Tosh and Liv before church last week:

We are having the nursery kids that will be Sunbeams in January come and visit Primary for singing time this month.  Liv looked so cute sitting in her chair and she did great again this week.  Can't believe she is almost old enough for Primary.  This next year will be the only year that all four of our children will be in the primary program!

 

Liv saw me doing a Pilates video one morning, and as I was getting ready to jump in the shower I noticed that she had started the video and was doing some of the moves.  So funny!

I have signed up to do a Ragnar relay race (Del Sol in AZ) in February.  It is a team of 12 people divided into two groups/vans that run continually for 200 miles.  Each person runs three legs and tries to get some rest/sleep in between as you follow along in the van.  A little crazy, I know.  The whole thing takes two full days and one night.  Well the legs I signed up for were something like 8.3 miles, 5.4 miles, and 3.6 miles or something like that.  Well yesterday at Burke's soccer game I was talking to another mom on my ragnar team and we decided to look up the exact distances for our legs on the website.  My first leg has been changed to 13.5 miles!  That is over a half marathon people!  Needless to say that I will be swapping my position as they have changed all sorts of things around.  Now I think I am doing 7.5, 4.1, 5.4.  It's stressing me out that it keeps changing.  At any rate I ran 7 miles on Tuesday and have never done that before so I was happy about that.  I've paid my money and have made this public announcement, so no backing out now! 

This week was unusally crazy.  Hewitt took a tennis class this week (every night from 5-6pm) and Burke had a soccer tournament (games Friday and Saturday) along with the usual cub scouts, soccer practices and other things.  Rob provided guitar accompaniment for four vocal solos at our ward relief society dinner on Thrusday night.  The dinner and program were outside and it was a lovely evening--Rob's portion made it especially awesome (for reals).  I volunteered at school three times this week (much more than usual).  I normally go every other Monday, but helped Hewitt's class with their science fair experiements on Thursday and taught Art Masterpiece in Tosh's class on Friday.  By the time the Christmas party was over last night Rob and I were both exhausted and crashed on the couch--until the kids went to bed and then Rob ran to the store to buy some con queso and Drumsticks to celebrate that the week was over!

I dusted off my hardly-ever-used-anymore-camera this morning and thought that I'd try to get a photo of the kids in the front room before church.  I wanted to compare what they looked like to the photo I took of them a year ago at this time.  Remember this one?:

I can't believe how much older everyone looks--especially Liv!  Here are just a few of the shots I got(and it ain't easy, folks):

This last one is my favorite of the bunch, I think. 

Have a great week everyone!