December

I feel like I haven’t taken many pictures lately – we’ve done some fun stuff (like going to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir / David Archuleta Christmas concert) but not much that makes for great pictures. I did want to post a few random ones of Bennett enjoying Christmas preparations:

Bennett spotted this little mini nativity set as soon as it was out (Nate and I put out some of the Christmas decorations after he was in bed one night). He loved carrying the pieces around in the basket, and lined them all up on my index cards one day. Fortunately, my mom sent him a Little People Nativity set shortly after that I don’t have to worry about him breaking :)

Opening the box with the little people nativity (he was excited to pull out each piece and set it up - we hope that means that this year he’ll be more excited about the presents than he was last year – last year it was mostly the wrapping he liked :) The second picture is a little blurry but I love how excited he is.

Watching football with dad. And a video (taken on my phone, so lame quality) of him saying “touchdown!” On Saturday, we were listening to the BYU bowl game on the radio and he seemed to be playing with something else and not paying attention, then the announcer said touchdown and Bennett yelled out “da-down”. I taught him how to make the appropriate arm formation later :)

and a little shirt I couldn’t pass up at Target – I’ll admit I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to go out and buy some cute girl clothes, so I settled for a little brother shirt instead.

Meeting Santa at the Gingerbread showcase / party in our neighborhood. Bennett didn’t want to sit on his lap, and we didn’t make him – although I kind of regretted later not getting a good one of him screaming on Santa’s lap :) He did at least talk to Santa a little bit.

That’s all for now…hopefully I can be better at photographically documenting the rest of the Christmas celebrations!

Dribble, Dribble, Dribble, Shoot!

I think we have a future basketball player on our hands - sorry, the video's kind of long, you have to wait until towards the end to see the good dribbling skills.

Thanksgiving

We seemed to have an extended Thanksgiving celebration since Nate’s brother Spencer got home from his mission to Carlsbad, California – Mandarin Chinese speaking – about a week before Thanksgiving, and got to spend time with the family that night and on Sunday when he gave his mission report in church. A couple pics of his arrival: (I love Bennett’s little hands in that first picture – he does that a lot if he’s around a lot of people or unsure quite what to do)

 

Spencer got to meet two new nephews (including Bennett) and one niece who were all born while he was gone. On Sunday, Bennett was pretty disappointed he couldn’t go out in his Grandpa and Grandma’s backyard and play with the dog (there were a few inches of snow) so Grandpa helped him get up and watch the dog out the window.

We had planned on having a big Thanksgiving dinner Tuesday night with Nate’s family (his married siblings were spending Thanksgiving day with their in-laws) but because of the blizzard, we had to cancel that night but still had Thanksgiving dinner with the rest of the family on Thanksgiving. It was delicious! Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures :(

I got up early Friday and went shopping with my sister (who was in town from Portland) and brother. We actually had a pretty good experience – we got some great deals, didn’t get run over by crazy shoppers, waited in a few ridiculously long lines, and got most of what we wanted. We started at 4 and Jess & I finished up around 11 – Dave left around 7:30 but he was a great shopping buddy until then – he would go find stuff for us, or wait in line while we finished up our shopping.

On Saturday night, we went to Temple Square to see the lights (after watching the very disappointing BYU game!). It actually wasn’t as crowded as I thought it might be – and as it has been sometimes when we’ve gone in the past. It was so pretty, and Bennett loved pointing out all the “wights”. We got a couple pictures thanks to my trusty tripod and self-timer (although the last one’s blurry :(

It was a great Thanksgiving, and Bennett and I were pretty sad when Nate had to go back to work on Monday (although really the vacation ended on Sunday since we don’t see Nate much on Sundays either).

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