12 Days til Christmas

The past few weeks have been a nice break from vacations and strange schedules. November included a lot of going places and a lot of nights being awake, so it has been sort of pleasant for everyone to just go to work, come home, hang out, sleep in their bed, and rest up for Christmas.

Jenna visited her dad at work and rounded up all of the stuffed animals from the entire department

Alixa is still trying to sell all the stuff she made for her big craft fair a month ago, so she and Jarom drove to a little place called West Point about 1 hour from here to hawk her wares at a little town Christmas show. It was fun, and they sold a few things, but the towns main reason for being is that there is a paper mill there. Any of you who have lived near or driven by a paper mill know that they are famous for two things: making paper products and making you want to rip your own nose off so that you don’t have to smell it anymore. The fair was inside the local firehouse, and as long as the doors were closed it was okay because there were some baked goods for sale there that dominated the odorscape. But every time they had to step outside it took all their effort to not gag.

Why don't more people buy her stuff? You can here.

Back at the ranch, the big recent development is that Jenna has finally thrown in the towel and decided that it is okay for her to drink milk out of a sippy cup instead of a bottle. This has been a battle that has been going on since Lix stopped giving her bottles in early November, at which point Jenna essentially stopped drinking milk. She likes milk, and she likes sippy cups, but she apparently did not like them together. But she has now relented, and is back on the wagon, happily drinking her chocolate milk while she watches her show (usually Curious George or Handy Manny.)



As any child ages there are certain photos that all parents are required to take of them. Naked bathtub pics, kissing brothers/sisters/cousins/some other kid pics, trying to put on mom’s shoes pics, etc… We finally took care of a pretty big one this week, the “Look Ma, I unrolled all of the toilet paper!” pic. Next up, crying on Santa’s lap and getting into mom’s makeup. Stay tuned for those.



Jenna’s favorite treat these days are M&Ms, which she calls niminiminiminims, although the length of the word varies from long to interminable. She knows where her mom keeps them on the kitchen counter, and will stand below them and point at the desired snack and say their name until you come and get her one.



Jarom continues to have bad luck with glass. His leg has scarred up nicely so he decided it was time for a new wound. So last night he smashed a glass in the sink and sliced up his finger. It was bleeding like crazy but didn’t seem to be too deep or long, so he just cleaned up the blood and picked up all the broken glass bits and threw a bunch of bandaids on it and went to bed. Today he is waving the white flag of surrender by going to Walmart to get some plastic cups before he loses an arm or something.

A Series of Jenna's Hats

Jenna's favorite Christmas present, a new reading chair