A Morales Minute

During this holiday break we've enjoyed lots of lazy mornings. One of my favorite things to do. :) This morning after breakfast the kids all climbed on the couch to watch the game Jaime was watching. I'd say they just wanted to watch something even if it wasn't cartoons but they've been sitting here for half an hour and counting! I'm sitting here, blogging and listening to them chatter about random stuff and occasionally talking about the Ole Miss/TCU game, like the players who get hurt. They're having good bonding time. :) Music to my ears. Love their giggles. Happy New Year's Eve!!

Last night was the first time Jaime met Jeremy and Carina's new baby Audrey. I missed getting their smiles. It was so cute when he first got a hold of this cutie. They both had such big smiles on their faces. We love you Andersons! Aidan asked me if houses were being built by Carson's house. I think my kids would be happy to move if it was next door to their best friends. 

On Saturday, December 27th Jaime and I celebrated 12 years of marriage. Yes, celebrated. I'm still so excited I married him! It really doesn't seem like it's been 12 years. Time does fly when you're having fun. I know you hear that marriage takes work. Maybe it does, but being married to Jaime doesn't seem like work. It seems easy. We don't fight or argue. If feelings are hurt it's generally because I misunderstood and I'm being a baby. I can honestly say that he'd do anything for me. We are on the same page with major issues like parenting, spending, etc. He's my match! This year the kids stayed the night with Grandma and Grandpa Morales. Jaime and I got to spend some one on one time. We do the usual, out to dinner, shopping, see a movie and just enjoy being together. I never get tired of spending time with him. He's truly my best friend.  He's an awesome father who gets down on the floor and plays with our kids. He&

We went to my parents in the afternoon for round 3 of Christmas. Mom and prepared a delicious Christmas dinner. After that was all cleaned up we headed in to the living room to open gifts from them  and give them gifts.  Aidan and his imaginext toys. He gets his castle out almost weekly but this week it's been more like daily since he was given more imaginext castle toys to go with it.  Tyler and trains. He can never have enough of them. Even when you think he does he can still tell you which ones he'd like to have.  Lindsey was given another Ever After High doll. (Peace Elizabeth!) Olivia was given a camper to go with her Calico Critters. These toys are adorable! Tyler LOVES this. It's a semi (a 'mac' in Tyler terms) and it carries up to 40 Hot Wheels. Anything that carries Hot Wheels is awesome to Tyler.  We gave my parents some seat cushions for the kitchen table and a book I put together of our summer trips. 

The kids don't wake up awfully early on Christmas. 7 a.m. The girls came in to get Jaime and I to show them what Santa left for them by their stockings. I didn't get too many pictures of things this year but I guess that means I was enjoying everything and got caught up in the excitement . Tyler got a new train set from Santa Aidan got the Octonaut Octopod from Santa Santa gave Lindsey an Ever After High doll set. I have yet to get a picture of Olivia's Santa gift, a Calico Critter School house. After seeing what Santa left for everyone we opened up the rest of the gifts.  Lindsey was stoked to get a pair of beats headphones. She wanted them in this aqua color so bad. We got a killer deal on some! I don't think we bought anything at regular price this year. One of our best steals were $70-80 toys for the boys that we got at around $25! After gifts we had the awesome delight of traditional Christmas omelets made by Jaime's dad.

Christmas Eve is generally a slow kind of day. The kids are eager and anticipate the evening. This year we didn't go anywhere for Christmas Eve. It was odd not going to see any of Jaime's family or mine but we invited Jaime's parents and sister over this year.  The kids said Santa's favorite cookie is chocolate chip, so that's what we made.  Aunt Bel and Uncle Chris got here first. Grandma and Grandpa were a bit late because they went to see other family before coming to our house. Marcus was in Arizona for Christmas. He's the first of Jaime's siblings to be gone on Christmas. It was kind of hard for everyone to not have him around. But Bel face-timed him so we could all say hi and Merry Christmas. After Martin and Diana got here we ate dinner. Diana brought tamales, I made rice and put together a veggie plate, and had salsa and chips. And of course lots of yummy treats for dessert! After dinner the kids put on a short program. Linds

On Friday the 19th, the last day of school for the year, Olivia came home with a kit for "12 Days of STEM." It's a kit with lots of little science projects for them to do over the break and take notes of their findings. This is totally up Olivia's alley. She loves science projects. Even if it's not homework, she likes to bring home science project books from the library and do the project at home.  This tornado in a bottle wasn't one in the kit from school but one from a book she checked out from the library. It's surprisingly a well played with "toy" by all the kids who come around. Maybe I should have made a bunch of these for Christmas gifts! She had other projects like build a constellation from toothpicks and marshmallows, watch water walk, making a flute out of a straw and listen to the sound changes, and many other experiments. It's homework that I don't have to tell her to get done. Nice!

I made my advent calendar last year. I still love it just as much as I did when I finished it. The kids really enjoy it. Each day someone takes a turn to flip over the number, reveal the scripture to be read for the day, and then hang up the picture. It's a fun way to get our family scripture reading in. After we read the scripture we kneel to have family prayer.  Christmas Sunday! My babies did a wonderful job singing in the sacrament meeting Christmas Program. They all stood next to each other so it was easy to watch them all sing. It really is one of my favorite things to listen to.  I made these tickets for the kids to board our minivan to head out to see Christmas lights.  I made the mistake of saying lets get on the train and all aboard. Tyler kept asking when we would get to the train. I kept telling him our car was a pretend train. There wasn't a real train. Yeah, that didn't work so well. He was very unhappy. But when we made it to

I registered to run the Lampson Cable Bridge run this year. I've never done it before, honestly I have a hard time paying to run when I can do it for free. I've been running with a couple friends and so they got me in to actually doing a couple races the past couple months. Kellie couldn't run the cable bridge run because her son was getting baptized at the same time. So it was just going to be Sarah and I, however, she came down with a fever and yucky-ness a couple days before the race. Same thing happened on our last race so I ran this one alone again. It wasn't too cold on Saturday December 20th but it was a rainy morning. Anyone who knows me knows that it takes me a long time to warm up once I'm cold so I wasn't actually looking forward to running out in the cold, gray, rainy morning. Once I got in my spot for the race, I got excited for it! Running over the bridge was so cool. The rain pretty much stopped after I got off the bridge! I just listened to my m

We did a bit smaller Christmas party this year. I planned and organized a small christmas program for my Grandparents and parents. We invited the Martin family and Christensen family to participate, sadly Christsensens because ill and couldn't come. Only Jessica was still able to make it and lead the children's songs and sing with me. We also invited Andreana, the music teacher at Lindsey and Olivia's school. I first met her this past summer because she had invited Jaime and I, along with other LDS people she knows, to come and bear their testimonies to her. She had been baptized a few years ago but then went inactive. She was trying to make a decision to come back to the church or not. After this "intervention" she had us come to, she did decide to go to church. She's not in our ward but when I see her at the school I enjoy visiting with her. I was grateful she accepted the invitation and came to our program. I'm sure she felt the Spirit in our home just