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For the first time, it is the Christmas season around the Winn house. You see, this will be the first Christmas that Jarom and Alixa have spent at their own home. Since their marriage they have always travelled to one of their parent’s houses for the holidays. And because they were never around, Jarom prevented Alixa from getting too many decorations. But this year that has all changed. Last week Jarom kept his long standing promise to buy a nice Christmas tree as soon as he would be around on Christmas to see it. Alixa comes from a tradition of getting real trees, but Jarom had to draw the line somewhere, so they got a 7-foot pre lit beauty instead. Jenna helped Lix put the ornaments on, and plugging the lights in has become one of her favorite pastimes. The Winns have also spent a lot of time visiting Santa lately, pretty much everywhere he shows up. And Jenna thinks it’s great. Every time she talks to him she tells him that she wants a green ball.

Some pictures of Bodiddly. We think he is very cute.

Speaking of Christmas presents, Alixa got the best one ever from her mom – a new iPhone 4S. Since it arrived about a week ago it has scarcely left her side. She loves that she can get to her email and the internet on her phone instead of having to sit at the computer, and she says that it has made her a better mother because now she can hang out where the kids are and ignore them while she plays on her phone, instead of the old way where she had to ignore them in a different room.

Jenna and her Christmas tree, with white and blue lights

But it isn’t all great news in Dallas. There has been a recent cold snap where on some mornings the temperature actually dropped below freezing. I didn’t sign up for this. But as Jarom would leave to go to work in the morning and see the frost on the windshields of the cars that were parked outside he remembered all those awful mornings scraping ice off the car in Richmond and is so glad that we have a garage now. And that’s not all the bad news. The Winns also had to give talks in church this past Sunday, one of Jarom’s least favorite things about being a Mormon. But I guess they did a good job, because Nate and Kenz kept getting compliments about the good talks they gave.

Fun with iPhones

Other than enjoying lots of Christmas music and drinking lots of hot chocolate, most of the time around here is filled with children growing up. Jenna attended her first birthday party over the weekend. It was a 5-year old party, and Jenna was the only 2-year old there, but she handled herself pretty well, got to eat a cupcake, and when they played some games that scared her a little she just went into the other room and played with some toys by herself. She has also corrected the pronunciation of two of her cutest words: Yellow is no longer E-O, and necklace is no longer nesick. Tear. And while Bo still doesn’t seem to be any closer to crawling than he was on the day he was born, he has started to use sippy cups, which is equal parts adorable, hilarious, and sopping wet.





And we haven’t forgotten the real reason for Christmas, either. Of course I’m referring to shopping. When we first moved here to Texas Jarom and Lix talked about setting her up with a fixed budget for discretionary expenses. A limit was set, and on top of that Jarom said she could keep one-third of any money that she makes from babysitting Kenna. Now before I get a slew of angry letters from wives all over the country whining about how Jarom has no right to take 56 percent of Alixa’s earnings, please remember that Jarom only gets to keep about 2 percent of his salary. So feel free to write, but he won’t feel bad. So Lix has her budget, and has done a fine job of staying within it. She even had some extra money left over from November so she decided to treat herself to a new pair of jeans. And the beauty of it is that she can spend as much as she wants and Jarom isn’t allowed to yell at her as long as she stays under her budget. And while they do seem like lovely jeans that make her look beautiful, they might have been a hair overpriced. I won’t say how much they cost, but $90 is a lot of money.

Some funny things that were said.

Alixa (to Jenna, standing at the top of the stairs at 9:45pm, long after she had been put to bed): Hey! What are you doing?
Jenna: Ummmm, I’m good.
Alixa: Where are you supposed to be?
Jenna: In bed. But I was just tellin daddy I got out of bed and I need some chocolate.

Jarom (to Jenna): Isn’t mommy fast?
Jenna: Yeah, mommy’s fast and I’m slow. Just like you’re slow daddy!

Paternity Test

Whenever people see Jenna, and they also know Jarom, the first thing they tell me is that she looks exactly like him. Some people in the Winn family call her a little Jarom. Their look-alike-ness was also made abundantly clear when the first thing the doctor said when he delivered her was that she had Dad’s hairline. Not exactly the first thing a mom wants to hear but it proves my point. I like to think that Jenna has some of my characteristics. My eyes, my curly hair. But those are all far less prominent than the fact that she is just a girl version of Jarom. You wouldn’t think that a girl version of Jarom would be very cute, but let me tell you people, she is. She is really stinkin’ cute.
Recently I have been noticing that not only does she look like Jarom, she has SO many of his personality traits. It is bizarro. For instance…



Jarom has this weird habit of rubbing his feet together. I don’t know anyone else that does this. If he is sitting down, he is rubbing his feet on something. The carpet, a pair of socks, the person he is sitting next to (usually me), or just plain rubbing them together. It is kind of cat-like. Well, Jenna does this too. She actually started doing it when she was a baby which makes me think that somehow it is genetic. She rubs her feet together just like Jarom does. She usually does it when she is watching TV. Her little feet are always moving.
Jarom also is the absolute worst person to wake up in the mornings. He knows this, and so sets his alarm for way earlier than he wants to wake up so that he can hit the snooze button a million times. He does it this way because he likes to sleep. And even after he is awake, he prefers to just lie in bed for several minutes. This drives me crazy, because I am a one alarm kind of gal, and every time his alarm goes off, it wakes me up. And then I have to try and go back to sleep, only to be woken again up by the next alarm. Most of the time he never even hears his alarm, and I have to hit him and yell his name so he will turn it off. This is my morning every morning. I remember a story where Jarom’s mom had to throw water on him to get him out of bed. That is how bad he is. Jenna has also recently begun to be incredibly hard to wake up. Sometimes she sleeps in til 8:30, and I have to wake her up to get to my class at the gym. So I go in and turn her fan off, open her shade, and gently rub her back while I whisper her name. She will open her eyes, look at me, and roll over and close them again. So I do something and come back and do it again. She wakes up a little more, but still goes back to sleep. When I finally do get her to stay awake, she tells me she just wants to lie on Pete (her pillow pet) for a few more minutes. So the whole process takes entirely way too long. And it is just like her dad. So now I get to do it twice a day. Hooray for me!
Jenna is also just like her dad in her eating habits. Jarom’s mom has told me several times when I call her to complain about how Jenna is a lousy eater that Jarom survived several years of his life only eating peanut butter and honey sandwiches. That is not even and exaggeration. He literally ate peanut butter and honey sandwiches three meals a day for a really long time. Well, Jenna would eat cereal three meals a day if I let her. Sometimes I can only negotiate a different entrée once a day. So it is cereal twice a day, chicken nuggets the other meal. Seriously. I do make her eat some fruit purees and a vitamin just to make sure she isn’t totally malnourished. Some would say that she is just a picky two year old, and I would agree with you if I didn’t know her dad. I’m pretty sure this is genetic, too and I will never be able to get her to eat normally.



Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all of Jarom’s bad characteristics that Jenna has inherited. She is also incredibly smart. She can do all of our 24 piece puzzles by herself, she can memorize any song you sing her after hearing it a few times, and she is learning Spanish. She can say lots of things in Spanish. She knows all of her numbers, and letters, and colors, and can count things on a page (not just recite numbers in order). She also loves books. She loves when you read them to her, and she loves to read them to herself. She memorizes stories and recites them as she sees the pictures on the page. She has an incredibly long attention span and will sit and do something until it is completed. No matter how long it takes. And because Jarom is her dad, I would expect nothing less. It is just a little crazy, how much she is like him. And even if sometimes they both drive me absolutely crazy with their little quirks, I love them both very much.

Thanks indeed

We celebrated Turkey Day this year by having our first visitors here in the new house. Since Jarom’s parents don’t love him we invited Alixa’s folks to come instead. They accepted the invitation since they have no kids at home and who wants to be in Cleveland during November anyway? They flew in the day before Thanksgiving and Mario and Jarom quickly took advantage of the nice weather to play a few holes of golf. Then after dinner, Lix and her mom went out shopping. So everyone got what they wanted on day one.

Thanksgiving started with Jarom waking up early and heading out to play football. He had messed up his knee a little while playing basketball a few days before, and probably should have sat it out, but Thanksgiving is the only day all year that he gets to play football so he played anyway. Like most ward football games it was a diverse mixture of old and young, talented and not. Jarom got to play quarterback and tried to make sure everyone felt included and had a good time, especially the little kids. And now he can put the football away for another 12 months. The afternoon was spent hanging out with the grandparents. Jenna wanted to take a walk and show them the neighborhood and the park and play on the playground. Since there are only a few of us, we decided not to cook Thanksgiving dinner at home this year, and instead made reservations at a fancy-pants steakhouse nearby. Upon arrival, Jarom and Lix realized that it was a little fancier-pants than they had thought, and questioned their presence in the restaurant with two little kids. But they gave the valet their cars and headed into the posh dining room and plopped Jenna down with her bag of cut up chicken nuggets and gave Bo some toys to chew on and they were awesome. Outside of some singing that Jenna did using her NOT-library voice, there wasn’t anything to complain about, and they actually got several compliments on the stellar behavior of their children, which will make any parent proud. The dinner was superb, even though Jarom hates eating in snooty establishments. He doesn’t think turkey is all that great, so he got a ribeye and swears that it was the greatest piece of meat he has ever eaten. The rest of the party was equally pleased with their meals. Jarom and Lix might even go back there someday, although they definitely won’t try and bring any kids with them.

This is as nice as Jarom dresses up. It wasn't good enough for Lawry's.

PJ and Mario have a little more experience with fine dining than the Winns do

Friday morning was spent doing some yardwork. Mostly Mario and PJ doing yardwork. You see, Jarom is not really a landscaping kind of guy, much to Alixa’s dismay. But those Hegewalds take their yardwork very seriously, and they saw some things that needed tending to and Jarom wasn’t about to stand in their way. So some bushes got trimmed/removed, some weeding got done, and some leaves were raked. They wanted to go out and buy a leaf blower and an axe to do some heavy duty remodeling, so Jarom had to reign in the enthusiasm just a tad. After the yardwork Lix, Jarom and Mario took off to play a round of golf while the kids played with PJ.

Mimi decided to give Jenna's bed a test run while she was here

Saturday was zoo day, which is always Jenna’s favorite. The Dallas zoo is a pretty good one, and there were lots of highlights. There is a kid’s zoo area with lots of farm animals that can be petted and a pony named Tank that Jenna got to ride. There is a bird cage that you can walk into and feed the birds as they land on your arms, which Jenna thought was hilarious. There were monkeys and a tiger and camels and otters and penguins. They also got to watch a rhino play with his trainer, which was neat because he jumped around and frolicked like a little puppy, something that Jarom didn’t imagine a 1.5-ton animal could do. Alixa’s favorite was the giant South American anteater, and Jarom’s was watching a girl lion try to catch sparrows. Mimi and Opa and Jenna got to take a tram ride that circled the zoo and gave them an aerial view into most all the cages, which they thought was fabulous. After the zoo Lix took her parents to Lewisville so they could see the house that they almost moved into 10 years ago, and Jarom took the little ones home for naps.

Deep thoughts with the gorilla

Tank

Happy grandkids, happy grandparents

The rest of the grandparent’s time was spent hanging out, playing games, and enjoying the grandkids. Mars left Sunday evening, and PJ stuck around until Wednesday. I don’t know how much Bo cares about people that aren’t his parents at this stage of the game, but Jenna loved having her grandparents around. She had a great time playing with Mimi and doing puzzles and reading books with Opa. Lix started getting her books from the library a few weeks ago and she has had a great time hearing new stories each week. While the Hegewalds were here her favorite story was Horton Hears a Who, or as she calls it, the elephant book. She loves the story and gets very animated as she looks at the pictures and tells you about what is happening to the elephant and his speck of dust. She now asks to read it at least once a day and enjoys filling in some of the lines, as you can see in this video.



And now that the guests have taken off, the remodeling of the home has begun. A few nights ago the whole crew went off to Sherwin Williams to get some paint. It was a terrible experience because Blake threw up all over Alixa and Jenna had a particularly messy accident in her pants while in the store, but they got some paint and have begun to redo the family room, with other rooms on the horizon. Soon enough, Alixa will be happy with the place, except for the kitchen counters, which will then need to be replaced. I guess it never really ends.