Christmas was wonderful. The children were “spoilt rotten” with all their gifts (thank yous are on the way). This was the first year Sofia caught onto the fact that all the really good gifts come in huge pacakages. She saved anything that looked like a book for last. She would shake them and roll them over and try to pick out the best presents first. She was fooled a couple of times, but for the most part she picked the best gifts first.

I remember one particular Christmas when one of the boys (Nathan?) wrapped his sibling gift inside a dozen boxes and put a phone book in the box to throw everyone off as to what was actually inside. I think we’ll be taking similar measures next year.

CJ is still in the awe and wonder stage. Every present is the best present ever (at least until the next thing is opened) and he was as delighted by his Little Einsteins toy as by a pair of gloves.

We’ve been treating ourselves to a staycation since we didn’t go anywhere and don’t have a trip to Disney to look forward to (like last year). So we’ve been to the movies twice and I bought tickets to our local theater group’s production of Suessical. We even went out to lunch yesterday (THANKS AMY) at Olive Garden and not only were the children well-behaved, but they ate everything they ordered.

Charlie leaves for his annual ski trip on Thursday, so we’ll be holed up while he’s gone. We really do miss you all madly. I’ve put more photos up on the flickr site. Just click the thumbnails in  the upper right corner.

We wish all of our family and friends a very merry Christmas.

Here’s hoping that you find the kind of world that you want in 2009.

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You can watch a higher quality version here. (You might have to click on “watch in high quality” at the bottom right of the video… I couldn’t get the hq version to embded.)

The song is “World” by Five for Fighting (or John Ondrasik), who also did “The Riddle,” which we used in last year’s “A Year with the Santos.”

Charlie has been pretty busy, he found us a new used couch for the den (leather because the kids stained the heck out of our other one), picked out new curtains and painted the den/ breakfast nook.

What have I been doing? Finishing my classes. I have two papers due in the next week and have been trying to buckle down. It is difficult though  and I’m having a hard time fitting it inbetween family time. We are really looking forward to Christmas Break.

We also got the tree up this weekend and most of the decorations up. (Those of you who know us well know that our decorations are limited to the mantel, so it isn’t really a big project).

We miss our families dearly and wish you could be here with us for the celebrations or at lest that we could be there.

In addition to cold and flu season, it is apparently also Christmas season. 104.5 (The River) has started playing all Christmas music, and the stores are chock full of fake trees, and cheap decorations from China. All this holiday cheer makes me feel like I’m behind schedule and everytime I hear bells jingle I get a bit panicky.

School will be out for me the first week of December, but the kids are still in school until the 18th, so I’ll have a little bit of time to try to catch up. I’ve been feeling a little homesick lately, which I blame on the cold, rainy weather.

I’ll post a few pictures of the kids to flickr in the next few days. I miss you all!

In the last few weeks, the two have settled on  their future careers–Sofia wants to be a college teacher and CJ wants to be a dentist. The following is a reconstructed conversation they had in the car:

Sofia: I want to be a teacher when I grow up.

CJ: I want to be a dentist.

Sofia: No, I want to be a college teacher.

CJ: And I want to be a dentist so I can use Mr. Sucky*

Sofia: Mr. Sucky is a funny name.

CJ: Yeah. But I want to be a dentist.

Sofia: I know I can teach you to be a dentist at college.

CJ: Yes! And I get to use Mr. Sucky. And when you come to visit me at the dentist I will give you prizes from the treasure box.

Sofia: But first you have to come to school so I can teach you how to use Mr. Sucky.

*Mr. Sucky is what the dental hygenist called the suction tool that they stick in your mouth to vacuum out all the nasty, gritty, toothpaste water.

Apologies all around. Going to school full time has left me with no freetime and things like the blog have quickly fallen to the wayside. I shall be better.

The kids went trick or treating tonight and raked in two bucketloads of candy. Sofia decided to be a cat and CJ was, of course, Mickey Mouse. I’ll put a few photos in the flicker set over the weekend and hopefully I’ll have some time to update the site with a few more videos.

Life is good. I had my first piece of writing published (http://segullah.org/summer2008/shoulder.php), which I am very proud of. If you haven’t heard about Segullah, it is an excellent LDS Women’s Literary Magazine and I highly recommend you check out its blog and print edition.

CJ loves preschool. I was able to spend some time today watching him in the classroom for his Halloween party and it is so sweet to see how friendly he is with all of his classmates. He also loves to sing and without me even realizing it he learned all the words to Beautiful Girl, and then he sings it to himself around the house.

Sofia went on a bus for the very first time today for her field trip to the pumpkin farm/petting zoo/hayride/land of two seesaws (as Sofia described it). She was terrified that she would be locked up on the bus, but thankfully she’s learned her phone number and address in kindergarten and she felt confident that if she did get locked on the bus she would be able to tell the driver where she lived. Her teacher sat her next to Kennedy, who according to Sofia is an “experienced” bus rider.

Charlie is still in the bishopric and working like a crazy man or at least a mad professor. I finally got my dream calling of RS Teacher and could not be more happy. Hope all are welll. I will post more often.

What are we doing? Swimming, teaching the kids to fish, teaching the kids to roller skating, watching the Olympics, visiting with family. I’m slowly uploading some photos to flikr, so check it out to get an idea of what our days are like. We’ll be back and sweating in Memphis soon enough.