Christmas Rush and Wonderful Family Time

It is no surprise that we were rushing about this Christmas. We were down at my sister's Thursday night, at my mom's Friday night thru Saturday morning and then back in Lone Pine Saturday night. It was such a quick trip, but absolutely wonderful.
I've been sick for about a week now, including over Christmas. On Friday, I tweaked my back, so I wasn't feeling so great. Everything went so smoothly though. Friday I got my hair done with my sister. Afterwards we had "Christmas dinner" with my mom and family. A wonderful ham with scalloped potatoes and fresh green beans. After we ate Mathew skipped out to do some last minute shopping. In his shopping he was supposed to pick up Will's 'big' present. We were getting him a balance bike a.k.a. 'strider bike'. What's so great about this bike? Well, it has no pedals. The trick is to train kids to balance at an earlier age without tripping over the pedals in the process. When we went to see Santa, Will saw the bike and tried it out. He LOVED it. So, we decided we'd get it for him. Well, it turned out that we ended up hunting one down, because the kiosk at the mall didn't have them anymore. We ended up looking all over for one on Saturday. We realized this is probably something we should get used to. I remember being young and my parents doing the same thing. Hahaha...kind of funny to reflect on. We did find one and he does love it.

Unfortunately because I've been sick, and Will's been sick neither of us felt too comfortable to go to the grandparent's house. The last thing we wanted to do is give our sickness to anyone older. It wouldn't be good.
Christmas Eve morning was like Christmas morning with my mom and family. We had breakfast casserole, mimosas and left over ham. It was absolutely wonderful. We open gifts and exchanged lots of laughs and stories. We really had a wonderful time.
After breakfast we packed up and headed out. We still had a few stops along the way, but ended up back in Lone Pine about 7 pm. We went up to Mat's family's to hang out and have some fun. We really enjoyed seeing all of Mat's siblings and his aunt and uncle. We headed home about 930 pm. We stayed up till just after midnight. We made sure Santa got his cookies, milk and letter. It was so much fun putting Will's gifts together and getting everything ready for Christmas morning. We fell asleep by the tree watching Elf. It was wonderful.
Chirstmas morning Will woke up at 5 am crying for daddy. Mathew went and laid down with him. they didn't get back up till 730 am. Once everyone was up we got french toast casserole in the oven and then opened gifts. Will was so funny. He loves opening and playing with each gift before going to the next. It gave us time to really enjoy everything. I don't know if he really had a favorite gift. He was playing with everything and still is.
After gift opening, we packed everything up, including breakfast and headed up to Mat's family's. We ate breakfast and mimosa's and just chatted for awhile. Presents were a crack up. Mat's family is great at gift giving and giving funny gifts as well. Daddy Lutze had me open my gift first because it was a tripod for my camera. I got to use it immediately to video the family opening gifts and cracking up. We really had a great time. It was definitely a very Merry Christmas.
Now that the new year is upon us, it's wonderful to reflect on 2011.

Will-isms

William is pretty comical with his sayings and he is continues to come up with them every day. Last night, he was cuddled up on the couch with me and said "Mommy, you're my best friend." 
Top 10 Will-isms
10) Oh my goooooodness.
9) Mommy you're a good girl.
8) I just want to give you a kiss/hug (to get out of doing anything)
7) Cachow cachow.
6) Sure I can
5) We're both a family
4) I love my mommy/daddy
3) Will is Spiderman/Datman (batman)
2) Come on Granpa's Guys
1) I love our family

More recently he talks about the Winnie the Pooh that sits on top of the roof of a neighbor's house. It's so cute to here him say "Hi, Winne the Pooh. How's it going? I see you got your hunny. Merry Christmas. Good night." It is incredibly adorable.

Will is growing up so fast and watching him put together new thoughts and sayings is such a treat.

Decorating the Tree

It's no secret that Christmas time is my absolute favorite time of year. November 1st I start listening to Christmas music and start Christmas shopping. I love how kind people become, the meaning behind it and the beautiful lights, delicious cookies and wonderful spirit.

This year we decorated the Christmas tree later than I ever have before. With 2 weeks till Christmas we finally found the time to decorate. In fact, we skipped going to Disneyland because we weren't sure when else we would have time to decorate. Our house was decorated around Thanksgiving but we didn't have our tree till 3 weeks before Christmas. Between Mathew and I traveling we did not even have one minute to. Besides the travel dilemma we also had Will's birthday to take priority. Before that, I was diligently trying to finish my certificate program (which I finished Thanksgiving weekend).

Decorating the tree was by far the greatest this year. William is much more aware of everything. He really had a blast putting the ornaments on the tree. He was adorable saying things like "we decorating the tree up" and "I love our family, we're all a family decorating the tree up."  He said this many times.  Sometimes he'd even be curious about the ornaments and ask questions. I love the curiousity of our little 3 year old. Will was very cute to cluster certain ornaments together so they could "be with their friends".

It's one week till Christmas, and it's going to be the best Christmas yet.

Will's 3rd Birthday (part 2)

William has a lot of family around that love him. He is always going places and finding all the love he could ever dream of. It's funny cause he actually has been in trouble at school before for hugging too much. I'm sorry, but I don't think there are too many other reasons I'd be happy for my kid to get into trouble for. He had a birthday celebration at his school on his birthday this year. It was a special treat for me to be able to pick him up afterwards. I took part of the day off to help decorate and get everything ready for his big special day.

About a month ago I asked Will "what do you want to have for your birthday party?" We looked through a Birthday Express catalogue and there he found "Toy Story 3" party stuff. He said "mommy, can I have a Woody birthday, please?" It was so sweet. I said "of course you can....whatever you want." I didn't order from there but found everything he liked near by.

With Will's birthday being themed "Toy Story" we actually ended up getting him Toy Story gifts too. It wasn't intentional but he loved it. We originally had planned to have his birthday party at our house, but with how many people we were inviting we decided the Pizza Factory would be a better location. Aside from the local elementary school deciding to put on a holiday musical on Will's birthday, a week and a half before, everything turned out ok. We had to rush and do a birthday celebration in about 35 minutes. Between pizza, presents and ice cream cake it was a whirlwind. Will had his friends Dev, Jessica, Rylee, Alex, Sammie, Hugo, Tommy, and Jaycee help him celebrate. All of them had to leave pretty early except Hugo and Tommy. Will had a lot of fun. The only 'hard' part was having to hold off playing with each present, cause he had to open the next one quickly. All in all everything moved along smoothly and we had some great memories.

Grandma, Great Grandma, and Grandpa were there at the party as well as all the parents. They were all great at helping make everything so perfect. I  know that Will might not remember his party but we were sure to take lots of pictures and will tell him all about it.

It's so hard to believe our baby boy is no longer a baby. He is so active and seriously the most tender hearted little boy I've ever known. He would walk each of his friends into the party with a hand on the back and saying "thank you for coming, let me show you where to go". I have no doubts that he knows he's special. We cherish these moments. We are so blessed to have him in our life.

William's 3rd Birthday - Party 1

With Willam we always have 2 parties. There's one in San Diego and one in Lone Pine. It is always so much fun, but a lot of work too. This year we went to Poway to Old Poway Park. They were having Christmas festivities, but before those we were able to take a train ride. Will loves trains and it was so much fun that he really didn't want to get off. We later took a walk around to see all that eas going on. Afterwards we stood in line to ride the horse drawn hay ride. Everyone sang Christmas carols but then they sang Will "happy birthday". It was so adorable. after that, we were all pretty hungry. There's an old restaurant with great burgers at the park. It was very very yummy.

Cupcakes....Will wanted chocolate cupcakes. When asked "what frosting do you want?" he replied "chocolate, dark chocolate." It was so adorable.  William received a microphone from Aunt Lori. A dancing teddy bear, touch piano, and horse on a stick from Mamu and Grandma. Aunt Kelly got him 2 construction trucks. It was so much fun to see him play with everything.