Early Elko Christmas 2010

We spent four very fun days in Elko with Chuck's family the week leading up to Christmas.
Our last few visits there have been more 'event-centered', so this time it was fun to just relax and . . . hang around with family :).

We were excited to see little baby Eli again, although 'little' has ceased to describe him! Will really wanted to share some water with him.

Chuck was really excited to make gingerbread houses. We opted to spread it out over two evenings - the first evening we constructed the houses and then let the frosting set and then decorated the next night. We're hardcore.

And when I say 'we', I mean 'everyone else'. I did not do any building myself, instead leaving Chuck to make two houses, one for Clyde and one for Will.

The wisdom of that decision became apparent as I watched Chuck carefully place support graham crackers inside the structure. I would have leaned a couple rectangles together and called it a gingerbread tent :).

Our (apparently Amish) gingerbread house village.

Grandma set out to decorate the Christmas tree the morning after we arrived and found a very willing helper in Clyde.

I set out to put my braiding skills to good use (Chuck insists on keeping our boys' hair so short!) and attempted my very first 'Jennifer Aniston braid' in Mallory's hair.

That afternoon Grandma and Grandpa treated the whole gang to a trip to the movie theater to see 'Yogi Bear'. Here we have the four oldest grandkids: Clyde, George, Courtney and Mallory.

And then we got real ambitious and stuck all eight grandkids in the shot! I have to say, I had fairly low expectations for Yogi, but I thought it was pretty cute. I've loved Tom Cavanagh since 'Ed' so that helped.

After the movie (and Melissa's homemade pizza for dinner!) it was time to decorate. It was really fun to watch the little kids put so much of their personalities into their houses.

And the big kids got in on the action, too, of course! I convinced Clyde to let me put a green and red M&M border around his roof and house.

Clyde's finished product...

Will's and Chuck's finished product.

Our visit happened to coincide with Melissa taking her cute girls to get their ears pierced, so I tagged along for extra moral support. Courtney pretty much mirrored me twenty years ago: beg and plead to get your ears pierced and then get really, really nervous when it's finally about to happen. (I remember bursting into tears when my mom announced to me in the car that that's where we were going, no joke).

Both Courtney and Mallory did really great though, and the guy that did the piercing was really sweet and patient; I was impressed.

All done, yay!

That night was the Las Vegas Bowl and we beat University of Utah, hooray! That means Chuck won the bet and we're super excited to see Big Will sportin' some Bronco gear next time we visit Smiths :).

During halftime the kids put on a pretty hilarious talent show. George and Clyde performed a skit that featured a lot of breakdancing and one solid tackle!

The next day it was time for family pictures and . . . (spoiler alert!) we got some good ones - to be featured in a future post. In the meantime, here's a look at the behind the scenes chaos:

We were able to use the church to gather, which was sooo nice. Plenty of room for Melissa's photo equipment and plenty of room for kids (young and old) to run around a bit.

Melissa has all sorts of awesome studio gear - lights, backgrounds, etc.

My little wrestling boys, gotta love them!

Practicing our nicest smiles.

Trying to get a good shot of Grandma and Grandpa with the eight wee ones required lots of behind the camera antics to keep everyone's attention.

Chuck and George played hangman . . . the answer was 'Don't blink' :).

I love this one of Melissa directing her brothers and dad about how to stand.

We spent the rest of the day at Melissa and Kevin's house. After a wonderful prime rib dinner, we opened some presents. First we did our sibling gift exchange; it was so fun to see what everyone picked out for their assigned 'sibling'.
Here's Pops getting ready to open his gift from Chuck and myself. Not to brag, but I'm pretty sure we made him tear up a bit :).

Clyde opened this shirt from Aunt Amanda and Uncle Steve and happily exclaimed, "Just what I always wanted!!" Don't worry, the Star Wars Mr. Potato Head he received from his cousins a few minutes later elicited the same enthusiastic response. Funny kid!

That night Mom and Pops surprised me with MY gift: a laptop!! It's sooo much fun. Now when Chuck is at work and the little boys are safely tucked into bed I don't have to choose between my TV addiction and my facebook addiction - I can enjoy both at once :).

The next morning it was time to get on the road - right after Chuck and Pops made biscuits and gravy. It was such a great trip - we miss everyone and we're excited for our next visit, hopefully sometime soon!

Holiday prep

So, it turns out Christmas is in like three days. Crazy, right? No worries, the Izatt household is pretty much ready, thanks to our diligence earlier in the month:

1. Chuck arranged for my mama to watch the little boys one whole day so he and I could do some shopping.

Will spent the day teasing/cuddling the kitten. The very patient kitten.

We met this goof for lunch at Big Jud's.

Shocking that we don't have more nice pictures of the two of us :).

2. We added to our holiday decor with a new 'Little People' nativity set from Grandma and Grandpa Izatt.

Clyde dutifully used the box as a reference as he set up all of the pieces . . .

whereas Will preferred a more spontaneous arrangement.

Luckily they were able to compromise and work together without incident.

Once the nativity scene was pulled out of the box and arranged, my children proceeded to play in said box for like an hour.

After a slight change in plans, they will now be getting stockings full of packing peanuts this Christmas :).

3. Will also familiarized himself with another nativity scene.

He was clearly not deterred by its placement up on the table.

Cute baby!

4. During Grandpa's quick visit, he joined Chuck and the little boys in setting up the train around the Christmas tree.

I went shopping during this time as to not disturb the testosterone levels that were needed for such a task :).

The conductor hats completed the scene (as did Clyde's 'Jedi Robe' . . . aka a bathrobe).


Will and Pops enjoying the finished product.

5. Finally, we attended our ward Christmas party.

We learned that Will CAN use a fork and feed himself, but only for Texas sheetcake :).

We also learned that my little boys prefer wrestling underneath the table to sitting up like semi-normal children.

And we learned that Will would prefer not to sit on Santa's lap. Ditto for Clyde, although he did get close enough to ask Santa for 'Star Wars the Clone Wars action figures' and discovered that Santa also likes Star Wars, which totally made his day.

Rambling thoughts

* I have recently become slightly addicted to Lifetime/Hallmark/abc family Christmas movies. Not the sad, weird ones, just the cheesy romantic ones. It's pretty embarrassing, but I promise some of them are super cute. Although some of them not even I can stand and I end up deleting them ten minutes in when it becomes clear that both the acting and writing are dreadful. I can take bad acting if it's somewhat well-written, and I can take a ridiculous plotline/dialogue if it's well-acted, but bad acting + bad writing = not worth it. (I know, my standards are obviously sooo high, right?)

* Chuck is officially off work until the Monday after Christmas, hooray! I love having a one-to-one ratio of parents to children in the house. We're headed to Elko to spend a few days before Christmas, which should be a good time, especially since we haven't really been there since March. And we're going to attempt a family picture, since our last 'nice' one was three years ago and we've added five family members since then. Let's see, a group picture with ten adults and eight children, four of whom are under three? Wish us luck; as always my plan will be to look at the camera and smile, even as I'm wrestling Will, so that I'm not the one to ruin a shot!

* I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love my calling in Cub Scouts. Where else do you hear gems like this:

Little Cub Scout: "At school we're going to have an ice cream party at the end of the year for math, so every time we pass something off we get another topping. I just got some whipped cream, now I just need to earn my nuts!!"

Oh, Brother Marsh and I could barely hold it together, it was soooo hilarious. And it gets better. That night I let the boys play with the light sabers at the end of our meeting, and the same Cub Scout came up to me complaining that another boy had accidentally hit him in the 'privates'. I turned to Brother Marsh and quietly said, "It's okay; he hasn't earned his nuts yet." And then we both died laughing.

* Our fantasy football season is wrapping up and guess which team is currently in first place? That's right, Jana's Returning Champs! I had a bye last week, and this week take on my mom, which should be no problem. Then I just need to beat the winner of this week's Big Will/Leslie matchup and the bragging rights are mine for another year! I am having some quarterback issues, however. My main QB all season has been Aaron Rodgers, who suffered his second concussion of the season in last Sunday's game - so he's probably out this week. My backup QB is Matt Cassel, who had an appendectomy two weeks ago and hasn't played since. I think he's more likely to play, so I'll probably put him in, but hopefully Rodgers is good to go the next week to win the whole thing for me. I heart Aaron Rodgers.

* In more evidence of my husband's influence over me, my next bullet point is football-related as well - we are pretty psyched for the Las Vegas Bowl next week. Not as psyched as if we were actually going, but whatev. I keep telling Chuck that thanks to his insistence that we stick extra money in a retirement account every month (thanks to the county for matching it, too!) we will be able to afford to travel to some games when we're nice and old. Let's hope Coach Pete is still running things in 25 - 30 years, okay?

We do have some friends going to the game, however, and I took the liberty of creating a pretty sweet bet between Chuck and Big Will, a noted Utah fan. If by some weird apparent change in the earth's rotation (see the Nevada game) Boise State loses, Chuck has to obtain and wear a University of Utah shirt for an entire day on our next visit to Smiths'. If (really, when) Utah loses, Will has to obtain and wear a BSU shirt for an entire day on our next visit. Awesome bet, right? Especially since naming rights to my future children aren't on the line!

* Chuck's dad stopped by last week on his way (kind of) home from a trip to Eastern Idaho. It was fun to have Pops here for a couple of days and the little boys needed next to no time to warm up to him again (a major benefit to shorter durations between visits!!). One night he and the boys ventured to Cabela's while Chuck and I did sealings at the temple and then he took all of us (including my mum) to dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant in Boise. Awesome, right? The downside is that now all I want to eat is mandarin chicken, pork fried rice, and crab rangoon. . . . Mmmmm.

* Clyde and Will are super into wrestling right now. They've always wrestled a lot, but it's usually been initiated by Clyde . . . well, not anymore. Will has jumped headfirst into the fray and had some pretty serious tackling power. They giggle and giggle and cry and then giggle some more, so I continue to fight my girly instincts to make them stop (although I do step in from time to time to caution them against certain moves/holds/etc).

Well, that's what's running through my head this morning. Happy Wednesday!

"Tell me you like my hat. . ."

Unky Quinn and Will are pretty tight. Mostly because Quinn readily hands over his phone whenever Will reaches for it. And offers unlimited horse-y rides. And because he recently helped Will discover a love of hats.

One night Will wore Quinn's custom-crocheted hat around for a while, then we found Will a hat of his very own so that they could both look super cute. And pretty much since then Will wears a hat around the house at least part of every day, which makes me laugh, mostly when he pulls it down over his face and then has to watch TV with his hands lifting it back above his eyes.

Quinn's such a good kid; it's been really fun having him around the last few months. He's heading back to BYU after Christmas, which I'm at peace with because A) college is "important", B) he called me of his own free will last night to share personal information about his life so I have reason to hope he'll continue doing such, and C) if all else fails I'm a really good facebook stalker :). Love you Quinner!

P.S. Does anyone know what movie that quote is from? Hint, the next line is a family favorite of ours - "You're not wearin' a hat!"

Recent photo roundup

Ahhh, a lovely mishmash of pictures from the last month and a half:

1. Toy Story 3. We made up for seeing it four months after everyone else and saw it twice in a week, right around Halloween, once with Chuck and again with my mom and Quinner. Naturally, I pretty much sobbed both times. Holy moly emotional ending!!
Here are the boys dancing during the end credits :). My mom and I drive everyone in our group crazy at movies because we like to sit and look through the credits for all of our first names - Quinn and Clyde are usually pretty tricky to find, but there are a lot more Chucks, Janas, and Pams working in Hollywood that you might think. Will is a given, of course!

The movie held Will's attention remarkably well, although towards the end of the second viewing he and I took a break to play in the theater foyer for a bit. I was pretty sure this would be the case (although we went to 'kid-friendly' afternoon showings both times) because he loooves Buzz and Woody.

2. One day the little boys and I went to Grandma Pam's house to play which meant the boys could debut their super cool 'what happens at grandma's . . . ' shirts. I found these at Savers on two separate occasions - aren't they cute? (Just pretend you can actually read the shirts). They will definitely be packed to be worn at Grandma Izatt's house on our trip to Elko in a couple of weeks :).

Wilbur getting ALL of the train toys out, no shock there.

What a dedicated grandma to put reading with her grandson before getting dressed for the day :). Love you Mama!!

Cute little reader!

3. Also a couple of weeks ago, my dear bff's Andrew Allen (and Tim!) and Emily came over one evening so we could talk and catch up and laugh and laugh.
Much thanks to Tim for obliging us and taking this picture. I really love these crazy kids.

4. The boys looked super cute one Sunday for church, so I took advantage of them being all strapped in the car to take their pictures - and it worked remarkably well!
I have no idea what face/noise I was doing that prompted this excellent (albeit slightly overenthusiastic) smile of Will's, but I clearly need to replicate it for future family picture sessions!

Oh, my darling Clyde.

Then I decided to press my luck and try to get a picture of both boys sitting nicely on the couch (which unfortunately does not have seatbelts to hold them in place).
Will made a run for it.

Clyde took him down :).

And since it was Chuck's birthday, we had Clyde take a quick picture of us before Chuck left for work. Such a cute thirty-year-old!

5. As some of you may have heard, the Treasure Valley got a bit of snow this week.
It prompted an area-wide Snow Day, which sadly didn't directly affect the student-free Izatt household - although, let's face it, everyday is pretty much a 'Snow Day' around here; we don't need an excuse to drink hot chocolate and watch TV all day.

Luckily Grandma Pam had spent the night after watching the boys while I had Cub Scouts the evening before, and volunteered to take Clyde Monster out into the snow. (I am personally not a fan of playing in the snow. Not big on getting cold and wet. Which is why most of these pictures are taken through the front window).

Grandma Pam and Clyde tackled the sidewalks, making it the second shoveling of the day (Chuck had done it at seven, and there was PLENTY of new snow to clear by they time they went out at eleven!).

Clyde and Grandma workin' on their snowman.

Will and I decided to venture outside and see what all of the fuss was about. Will was happy to follow Grandma Pam around as she shoveled provided he didn't have to touch the snow at all.

Later the apprentice became the master and Will did some shoveling himself!

Clyde with their finished product!

6. We followed up our Snow Days with some Sick Days for poor Clyde Monster - alas, no pictures of him lying despondent on the couch, usually with me within arm's reach. The doctor thinks it was another round of rotavirus (darn it being part of the last age group before they started vaccinating against it!). Now, rotavirus is real bad on its own, but combined with Clyde's Hirschsprung's disease, it's all sorts of horrid. Thankfully Chuck had plenty of sick time saved up and took Friday and Saturday off work to help me care for the wee invalid (it involved rather wretched, ahem, 'treatments' that required two people) and Sunday Clyde bounced back to the crazy kiddo we know and love.

Aaaand that's the latest!