The King of the Day

Caleb turned 6.  I know. I wished the day to stay far away, yet it came anyway.  I love that my boys look so forward to their birthdays.  One of their favorite things is to tease me a little.  It is cute that they have picked up on my being sad that time goes so fast, and they always inform me that it won't be long and they will be on a mission,  in college and we will soon be celebrating our grandkids (insert current birthday year here) birthday.  Yes, as you can guess, little E has started that tradition. And yes, he is a little too much like his father. :)

 We started out the day with the traditional birthday chair.  I went to our favorite little Donut place, Dee's for breakfast donuts and got some for his birthday treat for school as well.

Caleb is REALLY into Knights right now, which I think is adorable.  His Grandma Angie and Grandpa Ernie got him the Knight castle and some little action figures for his birthday.  It was perfect.  He was so excited!!

 The boys had a half day for school, and so we went to his favorite restaurant Olive Garden for lunch.

 Big E came too.  We are so lucky that we are able to have been able to meet up in the middle of the day like this.  We won't be this lucky every year!

 We couldn't think of a better birthday present for our little knight fan than to go to this castle.

 And see this show.  Full of knights in shining armor, swords, horses, jousting, among many other things.  He was in heaven!

He was in absolute heaven. 

Despite how perfect and fabulous the show was, I could NOT get him to pose with the King we were routing for after the show.  I even tried to bribe him, which of course did not work (after which Little E reminded me we are not the Hecks and he couldn't believe I thought an Elliott boy could be bribed!).

He would, however, stand by this guy while we were waiting for our car :)
We had such a great time even though he would not pose for a picture with the real knight.

  It was a perfect day.  He loved every minute of it.

 As you may remember I dreaded him turning 5 as well.  It must be that he is my youngest.  To be honest, it is also because he has always been such an easy boy to raise.  Every stage is perfect with him, and I suppose I just don't want that to change.  I love him dearly, and am so grateful for such a sweet and wonderful little boy. ( And yes, despite my whining, he still qualifies as a little boy.)

Snow.......in Vegas?

No, you are not seeing things.  This is snow.  No, we didn't move. It was so incredible to wake up to snow!

It actually ended up snowing more than this. However, what day did the "heavenly white stuff" (thank you Caleb) decide to grace us with it's presence?  On their first day back to school after Christmas.  Yep.  They didn't even have a chance to build a snowman! The school did cleverly have "Walking In a Winter Wonderland" playing when I dropped them off. As luck would have it, when we got home that day, it was all completely melted. :( Wouldn't that have been a great memory; to build a snowman in Vegas?  Well, here's to hoping for more Global Warming.  Isn't that what people blame the crazy weather on?

The Rest of the Cabin

We had so much fun the rest of the time we were at the cabin.  Here is the rest of the time we spent there.

 Christmas Day we had a traditional turkey dinner.  It was really good.

 The boys spent a good majority of the day right here.

 They finally moved.

 But only for a minute.  Caleb was especially enthralled with them.  That child is obsessed with them.  Ernie at least did a few other things.  We had to force Caleb to leave the legos to get dressed, eat, and go to the bathroom. 

 We were so surprised and extremely excited when it snowed!!!

We enjoyed the snow before we headed into Zions.

 We went and saw Zions.  It was beautiful.  It only rains a few times a year there like it did.  It created these absolutely amazing waterfalls. 

 

 Don't worry......Ernie found a chess set.  What a funny kid! This was at the Zions lodge.

We found this darling little theater in a town close to the cabin. 

We saw Gulivers Travels.  (We were all pretty disappointed that it wasn't a better movie)  But it was so much fun to go to such a quaint little old town theater.

 Sophie took some family pictures for us.  She does such a great job! Thanks Sophie!

 Mom and Dad got these Wixom University shirts made for all of us.  I know, they are awesome.

Here we all are in the pajamas that Truck Grandma got for us. We LOVE them!

Christmas was SO much fun! We are extremely blessed. We love that we have so much family to share it with and that our kids are able to create such wonderful memories.

As for the mouse.....  Oh, and I tried to get a picture of the capturing of the mouse, but I was always laughing too hard.  But following night after the first sighting, Big Eyes showed himself again.  Ernie and Mark's manhood were shamed when the fast big eyed nasty thing could not get caught! A broom was even broken trying to get him.  I will always have the vivid memory of all of us screaming and hollering while they tried desperately to catch him as he scurried through the kitchen. Ah, memories.

The next day, while in town for the movie we went and bought a trap.  Shortly after setting out a piece of caramel popcorn, we caught Big Eyes.  He no longer haunts my dreams. 

Christmas Morning

I really thought I would make you wait maybe a day for the rest of Christmas.........whoops.  Once again the business of life has taken precedence (which is probably how it should be :).  Well, we will start from Christmas morning.

 Caleb's pile of Santa's gifts (And he got a stuffed reindeer from Dasher.  He must have made a great impression with him  when we were at the reindeer farm! )

Ernie's gifts

Yes, that is a Justin Beiber doll. He had told Caleb every time he saw one that Santa was going to get Caleb a Justin Beiber doll.  Ha! It was pretty funny when Ernie saw it.  And I love that he is old enough to joke around with like that.

 Here are some of the crew waiting to see if Santa came.  Minus those who were primping (uh hum, Collette)

 The boys waiting.......

 Caleb was so excited! Can't you tell? :) He had asked for a lego city subway station thing.  What a lucky kid....he got a lego castle as well and a stocking full of books, a movie, a wii game, their required Christmas underoos, some knight figurines, and a few other little things.

Ernie asked for a lego kingdoms castle set, and he was SOOOO thrilled when he got this chess set as well.  He LOVES chess.  And he is really very good.  We don't even have to let him win (kind of embarrassing, I know) And his stocking was filled with similar things to Caleb.  Oh, and how could I forget.....the doll was his favorite thing I am sure :)!!

 And this my friends is proof that nobody went without this year........

Micah swimming in the wrapping paper.

Not a creature was stirring.........not even a

Oh, wait, yes even a mouse.  But I will get to that.......
This year it was the year to be with the Wixom clan for Christmas.  We were all set to go to Duck Creek again, but a snow storm prevented us from even getting up there.  So, at the last minute my mother found us a cabin.  We decided to go ahead and rough it for a few days in a cabin in Zions. You will see in the pictures just how rough it was. We really know how to roll up our sleeves and tough it out.

Many a Foosball battles were had here.  And I must say, we were all impressed with Sophie.  She was the reining champion.

 

On Christmas Eve  Day, we went to I am pretty sure was the most unique museum/cave that we have ever seen.

 

And this was the friend that  we made whose dad came from a long line of polygamy.  Well, a friend to those of us that were kind enough to let him talk about his dad for about an hour and didn't literally run out (Hmmm, Collette and Ernie) and then do the Charlie Brown dance while the rest of us had to look interested or our friend would stop talking until he had our full attention. 

When we got back, the boys talked us into opening their stockings from Grandma Doreen and Grandpa Bill.

They loved all of their stuff! And we have had flying helicopters around our ceiling endlessly. 

And then it was time, for the long awaited, Christmas PALOOZA!

 Everyone contributed, and it was a fun night.  Ernie made  poutine. And Collette turned poutine into a verb, and it will never be the same.

We then got our Christmas Eve jammers. 

Here are all the boys, and yes, they are all  Posing as Grandpa Mike.

After that we had a Christmas devotional.  

We are all grateful for the spiritual examples that our parents are to us.  They have wonderful in sites, and great testimonies of the Savior.

The kids think that we all went to bed after that. Nope!

It was then onto the white elephant gift.  And this is I think the winner of the night.....

 That's right, they are handerpants.  The best part is that my mom was really excited about them!

And, of course we ended the night with more games.  Yes, it was VERY late when we went to bed. 

One of the best parts.....those of you who actually read through this to the end get to hear about the creature that WAS stirring.  That's right, we had a mouse.  A creepy little guy with HUGE beady eyes.  It made an appearance Christmas Eve.  It was quite the site to see a lot of people screaming and  jumping onto furniture. And running everywhere.  It eventually ran far away and we luckily didn't hear or see it again until the next night.  But don't you worry, we were prepared by then.