Day after Christmas

Henry after his brawl with the snow, I love his crooked hat.
Daddy shoveling.

Tatum and P.J. digging a snow cave.

It was nice that Tatum is still 5 in his mind because him and P.J. stayed out there and played for three hours. Thanks for the entertaining of child Tatum.

Christmas Night

We started the night off with a little cross dressing......
a little Rock Band.....

and ended with a group shot of all the boys.

Henry, Max, P.J., Calvin, Tonio and Weston

Christmas Morning

Waiting in Mom and Dad's room until given the OK to come out.
I think P.J. was a little overwhelmed, Pete thinks he was just thinking, "great, what do I do with these boxes?", either way it makes for a funny moment.

The big guy pulled through and Henry got his tracks and trains, he was very excited.

P.J. was very excited about his pajamas for his build-a-bear frog.

Stocking time for Henry.

Snow Snow Snow

Not only do we have a yard to play in now but we have real fluffy Utah powder.

Henry is so funny in the snow he just throws himself in and rolls around like a little dog.
Snow Angel P.J.
Henry is always asking to have a snowball fight. He looks ready doesn't he?

P.J. and Grandpa Mike made these cool snow shoes. P.J. kept walking around saying, "it's not too hard, only when you have to lift up your leg like this."

Showing off his snow shoes.

Taylor Family Christmas Party

As you can see these three are nothing but trouble.

Henry, Izzy & Chloe
All of the cousins and Santa himself.
When we first got to Matt's house for the party he had a cozy little fire going and all of us thought how nice it was until we couldn't breath anymore. The flue was clogged and the smoke just started pouring inside the house, Matt thought it would be a good idea to just take the log out of the fire so he got a metal garbage can and the fire poker thing. It was a good attempt but the log broke into a bunch of tiny pieces, so at this point we had a burning garbage can out front and little pieces of burning wood in the fire place all the while with smoke pouring into the family room. Again Matt thought it would be a good idea just to get this fire out so he poured water on it and if you think that made the smoke problem better boy are you wrong. All of this happened within minutes before Santa got there so we all had to apologize for the smoke as he walked in. It all turned out fine, the kids had fun, the adults had a laugh and nobody caught on fire themselves.

Weston and Chloe

P.J. and Santa

After all the kids had gotten their presents Santa picked up his bag and got ready to leave, but P.J. and Henry had still not received their gifts, we all said Rudolph must have them and frantically went looking for the presents. All the while P.J.'s frown progressively got longer and longer until Oby told him "Santa won't forget about you," P.J. hurried to stop his cry and said "I know." Luckily Rudolph did have their presents and all was good in the world again.

Henry was very excited to ask Santa for tracks and trains.

What a cheese ball!

The Big Birthday Bash!

Birthday Boy in his new birthday duds.
Indiana Jones was the them of this party, I think Papa thought is was "Psycho". Oh well, we will make sure he gets the memo next time.

All the kids were given these little Indiana Jones party hats, Jamie thought they were for everyone and ended up wearing one all night long. I don't know why we didn't get a picture of that, little hat, big head, makes for a pretty funny picture.

Mr. Henry had to get in on the action.

This table of cool kids, Zach, Abby, Andi and P.J. The coolest kid (or dorkiest) is Tonio in the back giving everyone bunny ears.

I think they thought this was a mug shot line up.

Zach, P.J., Andi, Abby, Tonio and Max

The coveted Air Hog Zero Gravity Micro. I had him convinced that he wasn't getting one because the box says for 8 and older but good old Grandma Chris and Grandpa Mike pulled through. And he doesn't just call it a remote control car either, it has to be Zero Gravity Micro.

Aunt Holly has the same b-day as P.J. so it was a double birthday bash.

Pinata Time.

Candy Time.

Cake Time.

Holly's Cake, her boys made me put all 34 candles on.

Happy Birthday you two!

We are in UTAH!!!!!

Henry's happy, Chloe's happy....
Nana's happy and P.J.'s happy.

Now for those of you who just like to look at the pictures I am sorry this is an abnormally long post. Melanie this is especially for you.

What more can I say? Well....... It was quite the struggle getting here. On Monday morning the movers came and that was very stressful to me for some reason so after a few breakdowns, a walk and a box of Twinkies I was very happy the day was over. Waking up the next morning I was so happy to have that day behind me and to get on the plane and fly home. If it were only that easy. We took off fine and the fact that we had our good friends the Allens with us was a saving grace for all of the kids. When we were supposed to land in Chicago we suddenly hear the pilot telling us that the airport is closed and we have to fly around until it opens, well after an hour of flying he comes back on and says we have to fly to Kentucky and land there until further notice. WHAT!!! Kentucky? So we finally land but are stuck on the tarmac for about 45 minutes, with starving children. Again the Allens came to the rescue, McRae had little boxes of cereal for us all to eat while we waited. We were finally able to get off the plane to go get some real food and they told us we would have a long time until we took off again so we thought we would let the kids run around to get some energy out and get some food for us all and go back. I had a feeling I needed to go back to our gate just to see what was going on so I left McRae and her kids in line at Quizno's and headed back. Good thing I went back because they were about to give our seats away, so the boys and I got on the plane and called McRae to hurry back. Whew, we made it. Flew back to Chicago, then into Salt Lake, and at around 3:00 in the morning got home. Needless to say it was a long night but we are here now and so happy to be spending time with our families.

Early Birthday Celebration

P.J. will be turning 5 on the 18th and Pete will be driving across the country that day so, we decided to celebrate early. I think the anticipation of opening the presents may have been more exciting than the actual presents, (low budget this year). He is however very excited to start reading his new chapter books and when I say start reading I mean that I will start reading them to him, he is only 5.

P.J.'s self portrait!

Believe it or not, P.J. has come a very long way in his people drawing skills. A person used to consist of a circle for the head and body together and then some arms and legs coming out of the circle. At school they have really been working on drawing all of the body parts (eyes, nose, mouth. arms, hands, feet and legs). Enjoy the artwork that is my almost five year old son.

p.s. If you were wondering what that circle is by his head it is his lucky rock.

Sunday Morning laying around.

If you know my kids you know that if you lay down, sit down, or even just stand there you get hung on. This morning was no exception, Pete was laying on the floor to warm up by the space heater and shortly thereafter this is what happened. Pete just looks so happy to be alive.

Singing Time

Every Wednesday for the past 2 1/2 years we have been going to singing time at this local church here in Concord. The boys live it, sometimes P.J. acts like he is too cool to go but then he gets there and starts singing.

This is probably one of my favorite songs

I am a bucket here's my handle

here's my big round rim,

God fills me up with LOVE LOVE LOVE

I pour it out to others and he fills me up again.

There are three verses and the next two are the same except you replace love with joy and peace. The kids pretend they are buckets pouring out the love, joy and peace to others. It is all just very cute.

P.J. and Henry getting ready to pour out the love.

Somehow Mr. Mark (the music man) can always make my kids dead silent. He turns on a tape of some sound and tells the kids to cover their mouths to listen, no matter how crazy they are being they always stop and cover their mouths.

See-Sawing, this only lasted about two seconds, long enough for me to take the picture. They both usually like to see-saw with me.

We will miss this weekly adventure when we leave but are very glad we got to experience it.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

This year we couldn't do our tradition of setting up the Christmas Tree on the day after Thanksgiving because we are moving to Utah in two weeks and there would be no point in putting it up. I was very sad when I woke up on Friday morning and P.J. kept asking me when we were going to put up our Christmas decorations so I figured we could improvise. This is what we came up with:

Packing Paper

Tape

Markers

Crayons

Stickers

=

The Best Paper Christmas Tree Ever!

Fully equiped with presents for everyone, even little Cisco!