The Day After

The day after Christmas, we went up and visited Ray's Grandma's in Cottonwood. We had a wonderful visit as we haven't seen them in probably over a year. We then headed to Papa's for sled-riding. Nicholas learned how to snowboard & did pretty good. He then had to give Ray & I demenstrations on how to fall safely. Sean didn't really think to much of sled-riding. He got cold & tired and only wanted to go back to Papa's house. Ray took him back on the 4-wheeler and he fell asleep. We had a good time!

Christmas

What a wonderful Christmas. We were blessed this year and stayed home both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We went to Christmas Eve mass and then headed over to Ray's mom's in Clarkston afterwards to celebrate Christmas with her and Randy. The kids had so much fun hanging out with Grandma, Papa Randy, Aunt Anna, Aunt Natalie, Mas (Natalie's boyfriend), and Rudy (Randy's dad). They opened their Christmas jammies first thing and Sean immediatley started stripping right there in the living room. Sean thought it was really cool that Grandma had munchies out on the table (complete with "picy chips") that he could eat whenever he wanted something. He took complete advantage of that & only left the table to open presents. We got home around 10:30 that night and woke up the next morning to find that Santa had left the boys a GeoTrax Terminal, outfits for their Build-A-Bears, and books with their names in them. Sean was pretty funny, he really didn't care about the stockings, he only wanted breakfast. Christmas day was spent at home. We always celebrate this day with Ray's dad and whichever of his siblings are up for the holidays. This year it was just the four of us, Natalie, Mas & David. It was a very relaxing day with yummy food. Ray & David introduced Mas to deep fried turkey (which was a hit with everybody) and we enjoyed a great meal. The boys had a blast opening all of their gifts. Aunt Tracie spoiled them with new dress-up clothes, Aunt Natalie, Uncle Bret & Mas put them over the top with light sabers made in Disneyland & new back packs (R2-D2 & Yoda). Grandma Judy & Papa Ray blessed them with Lincoln Logs (complete in a drum tin) & Papa David gave them some much needed new clothes. Ray got all sorts of new video games and movies. Ray gifted me this year was a night of scrapbooking at the Holiday Inn Express with Tonia. It was a wonderful holiday, however we did miss Bret & Heather and spending time with my family.

December Life

Well, December has been a busy month for us Remacle's! I had my first appointment for the baby and had a couple of surprises during the visit. The first surprise was that I had an ultrasound done. I have never had an ultrasound done during the first visit so, this was really a fun surprise. Dr. Shearer said we have a very photogenic baby since Soda really didn't want to move. We did see the heartbeat and finally got the baby to move towards the end of the ultrasound. We even got mooned during the ultrasound! (See the first picture that looks like a U). According to the ultrasound, so far everything looks good & my due date got moved forward to the 25th of June!


We have also spent a lot of time playing in the snow. Ray & the boys went out and played a couple of different times. Sean thought it was really cool to eat icecicles off of daddy's pick-up. He would take a bite and then throw it in the sled "for later". Nicholas brought in a huge block of ice and asked me to put it in the freezer so it wouldn't melt. They buried toys and made snow angels. They had a blast!

We also spent a couple of days making cookies. The boys had fun adding the sprinkles on the first round of candy coated pretzals, until Sean decided to chug the sprinkles. His sprinkle privliges got revoked for the rest of that cookie sprinkling time. The next weekend, Ray made some sugar cookies and let the boys help him frost them. They had a blast! Sean was covered in red frosting (thank goodness for Bleach Pens!) and Nicholas just wanted to cover his frosting in sprinkles. They had fun and the cookies tasted pretty good!




Overall, December has been a pretty busy month. Between Nicholas's events at school (Advent Concert, Book Fair, Christmas Party), we also put some volunteer hours in selling Christmas Trees (during a monsoon) at the school tree lot with Tom & Tonia and all of the kids, we've been to a few birthday parties, and on Sunday's we "attmepted" to watch some football. It will be nice to get to January to have some down time!

Pink Eye- Eww-WA

Last Monday, Seanie woke up with Pink Eye...we improvised and gave him some of Nicholas's old prescriptions since we had a stash. Well, he cleared up enough to have a great weekend, get off the antibiotics & then woke up with it again this morning! YUCK! I am definately sick of Pink Eye, washing all of the bedding, hands a thousand times a day, & trying to keep Nicholas from getting it. Today, I took him into the Eye Dr. down at Shopko to see if it was just an irritant in his eye since he wasn't ozzing green goop from it & it was only pink on the outer portion of his eye. He fought the Doc, wouldn't really let him look to close, and cried. However, I did manage to hold his hands & head long enough for the Dr. to get a fairly good look. Yep, another week of pinning the kid to the floor to wrestle the eye drops into him. I am definately ready for sicknesses all the way around to be done!

It's a Girl!

Nope-not ours! We just got the official phone call from Tracie & Jeff & they are having a girl! Yeah! Tracie sounded pretty excited, I didn't get to talk to her too much, they had lots of phone calls to make. So, we will have a new little girl in the family in April...the name picked out right now is Brenna Jean. As you can tell, I am very excited!

Our Christmas Village

The year Ray & I got engaged, we decided to begin a Christmas village. Every year, we add something new to it. It's a fun tradition that has been ongoing since 2002. We always try and find some way to incorporate an event that happened throughout the year so we have a fun way to remember it. For instance, the year we got engaged it was a bridal shop, the year we got married was a church, and the year we had Nicholas it was a toy store, and the year Nicholas started school, it was a school. Every year, we go down to Shopko after Thanksgiving and pick out our newest addition to our village & some accessories to go with it. This year, Nicholas picked out the newest piece for our village, The Conover Estate. Sean picked out some cool looking trees, I picked out some newspaper stands, & Ray picked out a scene with bears around an old cabin (which was perfect since he has spent so much time working on the basement and it's going to be a outdoors theme.) The boys had a blast watching Ray & I put up the village & then we let them add the trees. As you can tell from the pictures, we had to do a little rearranging with the trees...straight lines just don't work to hide the cords! This is our special family tradition that we do & it just seems like the Christmas season is here when our village is up.

Thanksgiving

We had wonderful Thanksgiving. We celebrated the day with Ray's mom & her boyfriend and his family. There were lots of kids for the boys to play with and they had fun making new friends. Sally made a wonderful dinner complete with all of the trimmings. She is an excellent cook and we all ate way too much. After dinner, Sean decided that he wanted to help clean the dishes. Grandma pulled the step-stool over for him and he had a blast "helping" do the dishes. He even made soup! It was pretty cute, he started the dishes off with a plastic cup that he used to scoop up the water and then dump back in the dish water. He got a little crazy and dumped it all over himself & me. Then, he decided he was too wet, got off the stool & started stripping. Ray, Sally & I all had to stop him at the underwear, he was highly disappointed because they were wet too. So, we had a streaker at Thanksgiving! Anyway, he then decided he wanted to make soup in the dishwater and got Sally's hand soap and squirted that in there, grabbed a spoon & started "stirring the soup." He made quite the mess but, had a good time. It's a good thing Grandma loves him because her counters were soaked! We came home fairly early, we were all pooped! That night we went to bed very early & then I got up at 4:00 for the annual day after Thanksgiving sales! Yep, I'm one of those crazy people you hear about on tv. Tonia, her sister Amy, & I all hit the stores and stand in line in crazy degree weather to get those great deals. We have a blast! The only rule is that we don't go to Walmart. Holy cow! The line this year was clear across the parking lot & then some! We always have a great time & always end up with some crazy story from our adventure.