Christmas Rules!

We had a nice Christmas. We are trying to start some of our own traditions. This was the first year that we opened presents Christmas morning with our kids at home! It was pretty fun. We made our usual rounds to our parents house and everyone seemed to have a great time. My dad made his famous biscuits and gravy for Christmas morning... so delicious.

Chris was so excited about his best friends, Edd and Ron, coming into town for the holidays. Everyone got together to celebrate Nolan's (Edd and Heather's son) 2nd birthday that's coming up. I was sooo sad to have to miss because my employees were all sick! So I had to go into work. Boo! But I ordered Chris to take pictures of the kids, cause they grow so fast!

Ants in the Christmas Tree

Note to self: Putting popcorn on the tree attracts ants in the tree. Not cool.

Faith of a little child

James last night said he had prayed to tell Heavenly Father that he wanted to give Jesus a gift for Christmas. He prayed that his gift would be that he would be a good boy and that he would remember to read his scriptures every night. Awwww. Warms my heart!

Christmas Message

This week I came across the First Presidency Message for this month and found it particularly inspiring. It is entitled "Home for Christmas". Click HERE to read it for yourself.

The part I felt most inspiring stated:

"Many of us have lost loved ones to death. We may be surrounded by individuals who seek to destroy our faith in the gospel and the Lord’s promises of eternal life. Some of us are troubled with illness and with poverty. Others may have contention in the family or no family at all. Yet we can invite the Light of Christ to shine on us and let us see and feel some of the promised joys that lie before us.

For instance, as we gather in that heavenly home, we will be surrounded by those who have been forgiven of all sin and who have forgiven each other. We can taste some of that joy now, especially as we remember and celebrate the Savior’s gifts to us. He came into the world to be the Lamb of God, to pay the price of all of the sins of His Father’s children in mortality so that all might be forgiven. In the Christmas season we feel a greater desire to remember and ponder the Savior’s words. He warned us that we cannot be forgiven unless we forgive others. That is often hard to do, so you will need to pray for help. This help to forgive will come most often when you are allowed to see that you have given as much or more hurt than you have received.

When you act on that answer to your prayer for strength to forgive, you will feel a burden lifted from your shoulders. Carrying a grudge is a heavy burden. As you forgive, you will feel the joy of being forgiven. At this Christmastime you can give and receive the gift of forgiveness. The feeling of happiness that will come will be a glimpse of what we can feel at home together in the eternal home for which we yearn."

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I am grateful for the influence of the people the Lord has placed in my life. I hope that next year I can be a model of myself that is ever closer to what God would have me be. I welcome all support in that! :) This has been a hard year. But a new year comes, and a new beginning come with it. May 2010 be the best year yet.

Updates from the past month

So, things have just been busy! To fill you in on our last month:

Chris' sister got married on 11/21. His brother, Jarum and his family came for the wedding and stayed at our home. We had a ton of fun with them and were happy for the visit. During their visit, James had his birthday, Sarah had her birthday, and we celebrated Thanksgiving. We also took a trip to the temple, which sadly to admit, was Chris and I's first time back to the temple since we were married. It was a really neat experience and it was special to be there with Jarum and Naomi. I have been really motivated about geneology so it was awesome to do some of my family work when I was there.

I was terrible about taking pictures during the visit... but here are pictures of Sarah's birthday.


My friend from high school, Megan, and her husband, Sam, with their baby, Hannah! Hannah is two months younger than Sarah. They play so cute together. They are such a cute family.


And this is a picture of Lisa's FIANCE... I know, weird. His name is Luis and we all adore him.

James had a loose tooth in the front that has been bugging him. He decided he had enough, so he pulled out his own tooth! I don't think it was quite ready, there was lots of blood... I know, gross. Sometimes it is hard to believe this is MY kid. I am such a baby - I would have been the kid that would have a tooth hanging by half a thread and would cry if my dad wanted to touch it. Luckily, he pulled it out, cause he had a tooth growing in behind it. My brave boy.

We put our Christmas trees up and our lights up. It is starting to feel like Christmas. Chris and James made popcorn strings for their tree, which Sarah thinks is her never-ending snack! I keep catching her eating popcorn off the tree. It is hilarious. Poor tree, has NO ornaments on the bottom half of the tree due to her grabby hands, and the popcorn string has bald spots of just string due to her appetite. LOL The sedcond picture below catches her in the act with the string in her mouth. :) Memories to hold on to!

Well, that's an update. Love to you all! - Jilly

Wicked Nail Art

Ok. So lots of things are new around here. Remember I had posted that for my birthday, Chris took me to see Wicked and we just so happened to find a product that I fell in love with and so my mom and I opened a kiosk at the mall selling it... and we named our business after the reason we found it - "Wicked Nail Art". We are selling the funnest nail stamping kits. So, hence the reason I have not been posting! In addition to my regular full time job, and my piano lessons, and my classes at the scrapbook store, and being a mommy, we now have the business at the mall to run... and I just enrolled in classes again for the Spring. Yikes. Does it sound as crazy as it feels? LOL I wish there was more time in the day. So, anyway, this is our latest adventure. I don't know how long we'll do it for, but we thought we'd try something new. We have been open for a little over a week now and it is going well so far. If you haven't gotten a chance to come by and visit us, please do! We are at the Weberstown Mall by the Gap. Love to you all! - Jill

Halloween 2009

On Friday, the 1st grade had "scarecrow day". So I took a pair of James old jeans that were a size too small and glued raffia all around the bottom, ironed some patches on the knees, put him in a plaid shirt and sent him off too school. They got their faces painted at school and had a really fun time. Of course, he couldn't make it easy by being a scarecrow for Halloween... because "that is so LAME, mom." He wanted to be Dracula.
I had this idea that Sarah would be a flower fairy and then ... life was too busy! So she ended up being our island princess. She had a cute flower lei around her head, but it didn't stay on long now that she has discovered how to pull headbands off. Check out the pics! The first picture is my sister, Brooke, and Sarah. The next picture is my sister, Haleigh, and James.

My big birthday

Ok. So, to catch you up on my birthday extravaganza: My husband is the bomb! Chris got tickets to Wicked for my birthday! So we woke up, went to Chuck's for breakfast (mmmm), stopped at the Carter's outlet in Tracy to buy cute baby clothes before getting to the BART station. I have to say that Chris said not one "hurry up, dear" or "aren't you ready yet" or anything (it truly felt like MY day). We rode BART to San Francisco and shopped around Union Square are the Westfield Mall. We had a nice lunch and walked around some more before heading to the show. We both loved Wicked, but the best part of the day was just being able to spend time together. It was a perfect day. Next year, my birthday will be 10/10/10. That means BIG party time. My Aunt Heidi (who has my same birthday) suggested we take a cruise! I love the idea! Who's on board?

Tooth #2

Sarah got tooth #2 today! Now we have two bottom front teeth. Hooray! So cute.

Sarah's Bathtime Adventures

Tonight after feeding Sarah, I gave her a bath in the kitchen sink. Since she is quickly outgrowing the sink, I wanted to steal a few pictures of her to remember what a wonderful age this is. She is developing personality more and more! It is getting more fun (and more work) by the day. She is giggling more now and says a few words "mama, dada, baba" and does a whole lot a babbling that we don't understand at all. I can't believe that tomorrow she turns 10 months old. It is flying by! If you click on the picture above to enlarge, you can see Sarah's one little tooth coming in!Sarah trying to taste the water. My camera was a second too late. She was opening her mouth under the faucet and drinking. Funny. Splish, splash, I am taking a bath!
This last picture was taken on Sunday 9/20/09 morning. Sarah loves when I play the piano. She always has. When she was newborn and didn't move around, I would swaddle her in blankets and either lay her on the couch or cradle her in my lap and play. It would calm her. She likes music. Now that she can move around, she wants to play too. As soon as she hears the piano start playing, she crawls in, pulls herself to standing and plays any note her fingers can reach. I play the piano in Relief Society at church, so I have to have help now entertaining her while I play the hymns or she adds in lots of notes that don't belong.

Dodgers Stink!

We were invited to take a limo ride to the Giants game tonight with some friends that play softball with Chris. The Giants played the Dodgers... and there were almost as many blue shirts in the crowd as there were in Giants colors. So the chants sounded like "Let's go, blah, blah" as people tried shouting their teams name louder than their neighbor. And of course since the rivalry between the two teams causes much excitement in the park, we saw lots of people kicked out of the game. That was entertainment in itself. Unfortunately, the Giants lost.... but at least we had a great Sheboygan Bratwurst and some garlic fries that were so strong, I may still taste them next week. Nothing like a Sheboygan at the ball field!

Sarah's first tooth

Late breaking news... Sarah cut her 1st tooth today (9/10/09). Very exciting!

Oh Happy Day!

Today was Sarah's 6 month follow up appointment at the Children's Hospital. Great news! They stated they could not tell at all which side her torticollis had been on, AND that she is DONE with physical therapy. I was so happy for the specialist to release us from any further physical therapy as the drives to Fresno have been such a pain in the neck (no pun intended). :)

3 day weekends rule!

Thank goodness for 3 day weekends! This weekend has been fun and the fun ain't over yet! To reinforce good behavior at school, James has a behavior jar. When he is good, we add marshmallows to the jar. When he fills up the jar, he gets to pick a reward. He likes this and the first reward he asked for was to have a camp out at Papa Hampton's house. So that's what we did this weekend. We had a barbecue and were so happy to have my Uncle Ron and his kids, Aaron and Holly; as well as my Aunt Debbie, Uncle Randy, Todd (just recently home from his mission), Scott & Rhonda with their children Jackson and Grace. It was great! Chris barbecued delicious burgers. We set up our little village of tents and the kids rotated back and forth between watching movies on the outside projector (just like the old drive-in movies) and roasting marshmallows by the fire. All in all, fun times. Today we had the kids over for swimming and fun. It was nice to have everyone together (even my brother Brent came up yesterday from Arizona to surprise the kids for a visit. We haven't seen him since Christmas so it is quite a treat. Anyway, here is some pictures...love to you! This picture is Claire (left) and Sarah (right) playing on the blanket. Sarah absolutely LOVED Claire and to be watched very carefully as not to maul her while trying to give her lots of hugs and kisses. This is Sarah learning to play Peek-a-boo repeatedly sitting and standing in this bucket!

Twilight

So I just saw that Twilight's "New Moon" movie comes out in 89 days. We are under 90 days! I can't wait. Jacob is looking mighty hunky in the movie posters... although it feels a little wrong saying it because I think he is only 17 years old! Anyone else as excited as me??? Let's have a girl's night and see the movie together. You in?

Something Fishy

James went to a birthday party last weekend and among the many goodies in the gift bag was a miniature phone book. He has gone around to the whole family getting phone numbers for his phone book. I was going to take a picture to show, but then realized everyone on the web would see your phone numbers. Anywho, after a few days of collecting phone numbers, he said, "Mom, by the time I fill this up, I will be ready to drive!" lol. Kids are so funny. James new word this week that I have never heard him say before.... fishy. His teacher did something he thought was "kinda fishy" - had them sit on the carpet when they came back from lunch. The fact that they broke the normal routine was "fishy" to him. :) I don't know that he truly knows what the word is, but he is taking it for a test drive. The little things just crack me up!

My big 1st grade boy!

Today James started 1st grade. It was his 1st day at school ALL day. After school, he said he was tired and should go to bed probably at 6:00 p.m. so he could get a little more rest for tomorrow. :) James was super excited when the teacher told the class that on Tuesdays they would have music class and he asked his teacher if he could play the guitar. LOL The teacher told him he would have to wait until at least 3rd grade before that and so now, he keeps saying he hopes he makes it to 3rd grade so he can play guitar. :) funny. His desk is right next to a little girl he went to preschool with, Chloe, and he said she was hugging him all day.

Anyway, I am just so happy to have such a wonderful boy. James, I love you forever and ever and ever!

Giant Big Trees

A couple weeks ago, we went to the Giants game. It was Sarah's first game and we think she must be a good luck charm. It was the first time I have been to a game that the Giant's won.

Today we went to Calaveras Big Trees and hiked around. It was a great day. Nice walk, beautiful scenery, fresh air, and of course, really BIG trees!