Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2009

Christmas Eve

We had a nice Christmas Eve. We ordered pizza and watched, "A Christmas Story". Then we watched "The King is Born" and read Luke 2 and talked about the birth of Christ. Then each of us wrote on a piece of paper what gift we were giving to Christ this year and put the paper in our special Christmas box. Next we opened our PJs.

Tayson and Tatum look so cute in their little Asian PJs. I couldn't pass these up. You have to have ninja PJs if you live in Japan right?

We ended up just getting regular PJs for us because the fancy Asian ones were like $40 for adults. But we look cute and comfy any ways.

Here's Jay helping the kiddos sprinkle reindeer food (oats with glitter) out. They really enjoyed this.

Here is the Lego table that we built. It's holding only a third of the legos that Tayson possesses. These are the legos that Grandma and Grandpa Barney sent that belonged to Jay and his brother David when they were little. Tayson loves it.

Christmas morning. I don't know about you, but pictures never do Christmas trees justice in my opinion.

This is us after sprinkling reindeer food.

Tatum is surprised by all these presents

The kiddos opening their gifts to each other.

I love this. It even has little tags that hang from it that say where we've been stationed and extra ones for the future.

Tatum was super excited about her makeup sets. One of her very favorite gifts was a plastic lipstick.

I'm so glad Tayson likes to get clothes.

I love this perfume and have worn it for about 5 years. Jay got this for me just in time. My other one only has a few sprays left.

Jay's favorite gift (besides his socks). He has a fetish for accessories like: watches, sunglasses and belt buckles.

Tatum loves her new baby. It came with a highchair, stroller and crib and interacts with each. When in the stroller the baby says, "Let's go to the park Mommy". You get the idea.

Here is Jay and Tayson working on Tayson's new lego set. Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom. They were there for quite a while, so Tatum and I had fun with her new dress-ups.

Here she is doing a little dance.

Several times during our little fashion show she needed to stop and reapply her makeup. Funny girl.

Here is Tatum in her new Dora outfit. She was just shaking trying to get this opened and so of course she wanted to wear it that day. I don't know why we don't have a picture of Tayson's finished lego project but I'll have to take one and post it some other time.

We had such a fun Christmas spending time together and celebrating the birth of Christ.

Some Christmas fun so far.......

We got the kiddos dressed-up for church on Sunday in their new Christmas attire.

Tatum looked so cute in her little Asian dress I had to get a full length picture of it. I tried to make her hair look a little Asian too.

These two are too cute. Tayson looks so grown-up to me.

We decided to make gingerbread (graham cracker) houses (they were out of molasses at the commissary) for family home evening a couple weeks ago. We had a great time. In the end, Jay's is the only one that remained standing. The rest of ours had gone through some sort of natural disaster and about half-way through decorating decided to collapse. Tayson likes to show his off and say that it went through an earthquake.

Each year on Kadena Air Base, they have a fun Tinsel Town celebration with Santa, a parade and some fun activities for the kids.

What a goofball. Gotta love that kid. He's so much like his dad. He had to pose each time he reached the top. We were laughing pretty hard. For some reason he got an extra long turn. He either looked like he was having way too much fun and no one wanted to spoil it or they were just as entertained as we were.

Tatum could see Santa sitting in his little house while we were in line and starting saying, "No, No, No" in a very frantic voice. Needless to say, she is terrified of Santa and about had a heart attack when we tried to sit on his lap again at the Branch Christmas party a week after this. Tayson was funny. In line he kept saying that he couldn't decide between 2 lego sets that he wanted. Mind you, the elves had already started working on one of them. Once he got onto Santa's lap he totally spaced what he wanted to say and it kind of reminded me of "A Christmas Story" moment. Thankfully Mom was there for the rescue and reminded him that he wanted the Indiana Jones Temple of Doom lego set. Whew!!!!

Family pics 2009

In August we went to Utah to visit family. While we were there the family got together for pictures. It was a great time. We missed my brother, Chad and his family. But here are the rest of us!

Mom and Dad Swensen with Grandma Dott and Grandma Swensen

Mindy (sister), Erika (sister), Me, Mom, Kalli (sister), Shannon (Sister-in-law), & Jodi (sister)

Some good lookin' jeans don't you think?

The grandkids

Trever (Brother-in-law), Kendall (Brother-in-law), Kenny (Brother-in-law), Dad, Daymon (Bro.), Jordan (Brother-in-law), Mike (Bro.), Jay

Warm Fuzzies

I asked Tayson to get his room picked up before he got on the computer and he whined and went into his room to do it. He comes out after a little bit and says, "I got warm fuzzies making my room all clean; just like you said". It was so cute. We had, had a Family Home Evening Lesson a long time ago about feeling good inside when we do good things and we made little warm fuzzies to remind us what it feels like. Warm Fuzzies are made by winding yard around your hand a lot of times and then tying the middle. Then you get scissors and cut the loops on each side. It makes a soft little fuzzy ball.

I like it!

I just thought I would share a little something about Tatum. She hit the "terrific twos" about a month ago. She won't be two for 3 more months. Thankfully this time around we're a lot more laid back about her responses, than we were with Tayson, and try and find the fun in it because it is pretty funny. Tatum is so sweet and full of personality and shares her opinion strongly. She says, "no" to a lot of things and lately when she doesn't want something she says, "I like it" (instead of I don't like it). It's really funny because she's so flustered when she says it but we just have to laugh. She also says, "I like it" when she does like something just in a sweeter voice. Well, for some reason last night she didn't want to eat her dinner and she continued to say, "NO, Don't, I like it!!!" After Jay was finished with dinner he started to help her by scooping up the food for her and giving her bites. Well then she started saying "I like it" (in her sweet voice) and as she was chewing she was making mmmmmm sounds until she was finished. What a funny kid. Definitely a roller coaster of emotion but entertaining at least.

Halloween 2009

We had a fun Halloween this year but we really missed Jay (who was supposed to be Fred Flintstone), so it didn't feel quite complete. We had our Trunk-r-Treat on Friday. We decorated the van pretty scary (the pictures don't give it justice). I had some scary music playing and strobe lights. Too bad the fog machine didn't end up working because there wasn't enough output from my van or that would've been sweet. There was even a couple of kids who wouldn't come get candy from us because they were too scared. Our branch invited the Okinawan branch to the Trunk-r-Treat and they had a great time. That evening my friend and I went to the Haunted House and laughed and screamed a lot. It wasn't the scariest I've been to but I was impressed especially with the limited resources. Halloween isn't really celebrated in Japan, so there isn't a whole lot available off-base. Halloween morning we carved pumpkins at the Stokes Home. Her husband is gone right now she she invited several of us that were husbandless over for lunch and fun. Then we headed right over to The Cox home for a birthday party. From there we headed home and got ready for Trick-r-Treating. Then after that we went to the Narvaez home for a party. Needless to say, we were exhausted by the end of the night and Tatum did not want to wash her hair before bed but I kind of had to so she was screaming the whole time.

For some reason Tayson evaded getting any pictures on Halloween, so this is the day after.

He was our cool Bumblebee Transformer. Too bad he didn't want to be Bam Bam but his costume was pretty sweet.

Here's our little Pebbles. She didn't want her picture taken, so I had to catch her on the go. It's kind of funny how she was all about wanting to be in Tayson's picture but really didn't want anything to do with her own.

Here's Wilma. I don't know what's up with my pose but I thought I better add it so you could see the whole costume. Jay's sister Sarah Leigh was so awesome to make our Flintstones costumes and send Tayson his Bumblebee costume. She was very creative and everyone loved them.

Trick-r-Treating was fun. It was the first time for Tatum and she caught on fast. Even though it was raining, she was hard to keep up with. I'm surprised she didn't get tired. Tayson had a good time too and the rain didn't seem to slow him down either.

My sister, Jodi, told me how to make these fun cupcakes and I thought they turned out great (delicious too). Tayson took some to class and they really enjoyed them.