Well, thank you for that.

I was just sitting here and Morgan walked over to the piano and started plunking around on it. She noticed that one of the keys is a little scratched up (honestly they are all in pretty bad shape :) And she said, "Hey Mom, how did this happen to this key?"
"What do you mean?"
"How did it get these little scratches?" she asked.
So I said, "I don't really know"

"Oh. I bet I know, Mom. I bet you scratched it with those pokeys you have. Those pokeys in your underarms."

"Uhhhhh, that's one idea, but I'm pretty sure my arm pit hair couldn't scratch the keys on a piano."

"Huh. I bet they could." And away she went, onto her next task to decide what my arm pit hairs may have destroyed.

Just a little thing

A while ago we were just out running errands and we spotted a hot air balloon. We didn't really have anything else to be doing so we pulled over into a parking lot and spent a little bit of time watching it. It was so fun and the kids were enthralled. Morgan was so curious about how it works and what the fire does and Ian would get a little distracted and start trying to climb up the back windshield (since we all just sat on the trunk of the neon) but all you had to say was "Where's the balloon" and he would immediately whip around saying "Boon! Boon!" and find that puppy floating in the sky. Eventually Ian got tired of it and wouldn't quit climbing the car so we gave up on it, but it sure was fun while it lasted :)

Rain is Falling All Around

Since we don't have a tree skirt, I always put some of the fluffy batting under our tree. I kind of like it in my own ghetto way, because it's the only snow we see around here. Anyhow, I will NOT be using it next year because this year it ended up ALL over my house. But this particular use of it made me laugh. Morgan rounded up some pencils and stuck them in the bottom of some poofs of the stuff and her and Ian spent a good hour gallivanting around the house singing about rain clouds and making it rain on me :)

Neeeeeeiiigggh!

Ian loves anything and everything to do with horses. He is such a crack up. He likes to grab the bottom hem of his shirt, or the top of his pants and gallop around the house saying, "Gidup! Neeeeiggggh!" like he is holding onto the reigns of the craziest horse this side of the Mississippi :)

About a month ago I made some brownies and I gave him the spoon and this is what followed. I was laughing so hard, his personality is just so funny and quirky. He makes me laugh with all the silly little things his growing boy mind comes up with!

It's the most wonderful day of the year!

We went down to Prescott Valley to visit with my family this year for Christmas. It was such a great trip, but it was especially good because JD had arranged to have the 25th, 26th, and 27th off this year so we could go down, but one of his coworker friends agreed to take JD's Christmas Eve shift and JD already had the 23rd scheduled off so we got to work in 2 extra days! The trip ended up being the perfect amount of time and we had a really good visit while we were there.

On the night before Christmas Eve, JD and I surprised Morgan and Ian by hiding a golden ticket to take a ride on the Christmas Express under Morgan's pillow. Basically, she got all ready for bed and thought she was getting tucked in for the night, but then she saw 2 tickets in her bed and we all loaded up to go see the Valley of Lights.  We had fun pretending like our truck was a train and Morgan thought it was just about the silliest thing ever to have her Dad as a conductor and her Mom saying things like, "All aboard!" while loading them up. Ian kept randomly saying, "Toot! Toot!" and it is so fun to see how aware he is and how much he is starting to understand pretend play :)

Afterwards, we got to go see some of my friends at Rochelle's house. It was so fun and I had such a good time just chatting and goofing off with Rochelle and Ilene (I guess the husbands were fun too but that is unimportant :)

And so, on Christmas Eve, the kids got to open their Christmas Eve present and they were both thrilled to get the pajamas that they did. Morgan loves just about anything Hello Kitty, and Ian started yelling "Toot Toot!!" before he even got the paper all the way off of his Thomas the Train jammies.

Well, here are the pictures of the kids discovering their loot. Morgan wanted nothing more from Santa then a rainbow bear, and so she got one. She thinks it is pretty cool because "Santa even knowed me good enough to know I love rainbows AND ballerinas because my bear has a rainbow tutu!" Oh, and she got to see the spots where the "elves" stitched on all that rainbow fleece. I would be willing to bet those elves even got a gnarly blister from all that sewing *wink wink*

And Ian loved his train table. He plays with it all the time and it has been so fun to have with him. The kids finally have a reason to play in Ian's room too :) 

Santa brought me and JD a cage for our little monsters:

Hehehe just kidding of course :)

  But I think, that even with all the excitement of Christmas and Santa, the biggest hit of the Christmas presents was definitely this little guy that my Dad got for my Mom:

And, isn't Ian just the cutest ever?