painting!

Christmas and New Years

Christmas

Max just loved learning lots of Christmas songs this year buthis favorite one by far was "Angels we have Heard on High" He learned all the words for the first 2 verses and he is still singing it ll day long every day. Sammy also sings the Gloria part and it is so cute to hear them singing it together! Oh so sweet! Here Javier was playing it on the piano and Max was playing a duet :) for a long long time and every body singing. It was so much fun!

One Chistmas Eve we went to the house of our good friends with another family of good friends and had a delicious feast prepared by all and then enjoyed watching all our three year olds and Sammy perform the nativity for us. Sammy got to be Joseph and he was entirely uninterested in Mary. Then we came home and sang more songs and Talked to Javier's family for a long time on the webcam which was so fun! The boys laid out cookies for Santa. I thought it was funny that my boys left the cookies alone but they couldn't resist the carrots for the reindeer.

Here they are basking in their Christmas loot. Okay I learned a valuable lesson this Christmas. Fun toys=well behaved boys. Yes it also rhymes. But seriously, my little monkeys have been so engrossed in the fun toys they got (most of the really fun things came from Grandma and Dadu and Mimi and Grandpa because apparently they are waaaay better at picking toys than me :)) The first couple of days after Christmas it was seriously difficult to pull Max away from playing even for meals! He just played all day straight from the minute he woke up to the minute he went to sleep and he still totally loves his new toys. I have never bought my kids toys except for their birthday and Christmas and since we got them the trampoline for their birthdays this year I think that Max had just really grown out of all our toys. SO its been fun since Christmas. My Mom also pointed out that it would be cheaper to buy a new toy every once in a while than replace all our walls and ceilings from disasters like the kitchen rain.

New Years!

Javier and I both agreed that this year was the best new years Eve we have ever had. In Ecuador New Years Eve is the biggest holiday of the year and there are major parties where everyone stays up dancing until 5 in the morning in every family and you all know that in the US new years is pretty much usually...lame. So this year since we ended up doing Christmas pretty much American (no dance parties till 5:00 am? No opening gifts at midnight Christmas eve?) I decided I was going to do my darndest to make news years feel authentic for Javier. We started the night off awesome because my dear friend invited the whole ward over to watch the most incredible fireworks imaginable at their house. They were awesome! And the whole party was just so fun too, we loved it! But we had some Ecuadorian traditions to do, so we left a little early so we could make Ceviche to eat at midnight and get to work on our Año viejo.

In Ecuador there is a tradition to make a figure of a person or character that represents the old year and to burn it at midnight. We made ours really small because we were afraid of a)burning down our house and b) having the police show up, but in Ecuador many of the Año viejos are 2 stories high and they are made with incredible detail and then burned right out in the middle of the street.  Its incredible if you are friends with Javier on facebook he put  bunch of pictures and you should totally check then out. Max and Sammy were adamant that we should make spider-man even though that isn't necessarily a 2011 thing. Max did it all from the planning to the paper mache and painting. He was so cute because he missed a spot on the head with the paper mache so he kept saying spider-man had a hole in his head and he drew a sad face on him because he thought a hole in his head would make him sad. Poor little Sammy had to go to bed though because you know, he would have been as sad as Spider-man if we would have kept him up till 12 so he didn't actually really get to join the festivities. That really was too bad, but I keep reminding myself, there will be other new years eves.

Nest we had a dance party and rocked out to all of Javier's favorite songs.

Max took this picture of us. As a side note, for years Javier couldn't dance with me without just laughing at what a horrible dancer I am. I think I have either actually learned how to salsa or he has learned more tact...I'm not really sure which.

Then he took a few silly ones of himself :)

Burning the año viejo at midnight. We laid out a bunch of tin foil to keep it a little safer hopefully.

This was such a great year for us! I feel really humbled to think about all the ways the Lord has blessed us! Good bye 2011.

The following night Javier and I played a truly epic game of risk which he won fair and square but I declared it more like a tie because that's the kind of wife I am, and Javier in his sweet (and smartness) smiled and agreed with me. You see he always has a hard time talking me into playing risk with him so whenever we do he either lets me win, or tells me profusely afterward that I should have won. He's a sweetie!

funny kids again today

My kids are so funny!

Max: Mommy, I am so excited for Easter so we can get pumpkins!
Me: Max actually pumpkins are for Halloween.
Max: Oh...Where are our Easter baskets then, Mommy?
Me: They are up in the attic
Max: Okay, Where is the attic?
Me: It's the room that you have to climb a ladder to get to in the upstairs hall?
Max: Oh. (pause) But what is a hall?
Me: Well its the place where you walk to get from your room to the playroom. It isn't really a room itself, but its just the space that takes you to other rooms.
Max: (long pause) Hmmm. Mommy that makes me wonder....what's a ladder? 

That whole exchange was so funny to me. My little Max is always asking questions, he is so interested in everything and so curious. Today he asked me where wind comes from and he made some pretty good hypotheses about it too. We'll be doing some experiments probably if he's still interested tomorrow. That should be fun. Also he doesn't speak much Spanish unless we make him to get what he wants or something but he will still ask me all the times how to say different words in Spanish. I hope some of it will stick, but I'm pretty sure if we really want our kids to learn Spanish we'll have to send them to a Spanish school, or spend months at a time in Ecuador or something.

And now for Sammy: So we had season passes to Sea World this last year because it is in San Antonio and we are there every month to go to temple anyway so it just made sense to make a fun day of it when we go. SO because of that Sammy is obsessed with Whales (Max is too incidentally). Sammy has a few whale toys that he just loves, but he really made me laugh the other day because we were playing outside and Max and I were pretending to be pirates and so we were saying all kinds of nonsensical stuff about being on an island or in the water and don't drown...etc. SO Sammy was just sitting back and looking confused for a while but then he decided he wanted to join in the pretending so he pointed way up into the sky and with a sharp inhale of surprise he said, "Way-well! Way-well!" (That's how he says whale).  And he just kept doing that every 30 seconds or so while we played. It was so cute. A couple times he was so convincing, I actually looked around the sky and neighbors roofs to see if there was something that looked like a whale there, but there wasn't, just in his imagination. My little funny!

And today marked a turning point I think. All semester long in preschool while all of the other kids sat nicely on the rug and learned all kinds of things Max and Sammy have been doing... well other things. But today we went to a music group at a friends house and they both sat perfectly in a circle through the whole hour. I was amazed and then when I thought about it I realized Max actually sat through circle time in preschool yesterday too! Hallelujah I hope it will become a habit :) I actually think it really will. Max is just getting bigger and he is able to sit now and do chores without being nagged and stay by me in the store and a hundred other things he wasn't able to do a couple months ago and I guess the blessing of having 2 children is that Sammy must do EVERYTHING that Max does, so if Max is sitting nicely in the circle, I am pretty sure Sammy will at least try to. SO yay!

Sammy seems to be following Max's good example of extreme politeness. His new favorite word is "thank you". He says Thank you probably a thousand times a day. Every time he gives something he says thank you many times. Every time he wants something he says thank you many times and of course when he does actually receive what he wants he says it too. Sweet little boy just melts my heart. Just now I laid him down for his nap. As I was rocking him he told me, "I want bear" So I gave him a kiss and laid him in his crib with his bear and said "good night Sammy, I love you" And he came back with, "Thank you, ni-night, thank you!" To which I replied, "Oh, you're welcome honey. Sweet dreams!" Then Sammy said, "Sweet dreams, thank you, THANK YOU!"  Isn't that funny! Its like a mother's dream to have your 20 month old thank you for putting them to bed. So different from how he went to bed last night screaming and kicking me. He's such a good boy!

And last night also I was brushing Max's teeth and he was wiggling around and not opening his mouth and generally giving me some trouble so I told him, in not a very nice voice, "Max if you don't let me brush your teeth, they are going to fall out!" Now, sometimes this really works and he will be scared into opening wide and letting me finish, but last night, Max looked up at me and said, "Mommy I heard that when you get bigger your body grows new teeth!" Little smartypants always makes me laugh.

In other news I was realeased from my calling in the primary presidency a couple of days before Christmas. I was so completely heartbroken for a week or so. I have just loved that calling so much especially because those dear women in the presidency have become my very best friends and those precious 150 children have just filled my life with so much joy! I know with all my heart that our bishop is inspired though and he felt like it was important for me to have less going on so I could focus more on my family. Now a few weeks later I know he's inspired even more because these last couple weeks have just been a gift. My kids have just gotten to an age where they need so much attention (remember the kitchen rain?) and we have had a great time being able to play together without having to worry about emails piling up or spending lots of time on the phone. And to make it even better I just found out I'm getting a new calling that I am really excited about!

And Javier is almost ready to take his first CPA test (finally) it will for sure be sometime this month. Yay! We're going to be on the road to finishing at least! Good man has been studying his brains out all through his Christmas break. So that exciting.