This And That

Christmas break flew by.  We mainly hung out as a family and did a few things here and there.  We went shopping, a couple parties, saw lights, movie day, Wii day, and of course previous posted festivities.  We mainly hung out at home and played. 

Lydia made a seat for herself by a bin next to me on the computer. 

We played a family "Scoot Up" game.  Jared asks them different questions and if they answer correctly they get to scoot up towards him, and first one to him wins. It's an old family game.

Tagg started off cheating by sitting in the middle of the room. 

Lydia had enough hair to attempt piggies!  So cute! 

Jared went out of town later for a job interview.  We sent him this picture.  

Luke bless his heart shoveled the driveway about 4 days straight every morning.  Rees helped a little before his bus, but Luke did most of it.

We have a long driveway too!  Gotta love snow country! 

No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!

The New Year started off with a bang for Tagg...literally!

Rees had just downloaded some music and the boys were listening to it in our room and Darin and Tagg decided to jump on the bed.  As I was walking in to put the kabosh on the bed jumping Tagg fell over crying.  What the heck?!  Apparently he tripped on Darin and came down on Luke's head. Ouch!

After some examination this is what Tagg's tooth looked like.  Totally cracked and broken!!

Mind you Luke's head was totally fine. :) After a call to a friend that is a dentist he reassured me I didn't have to take him in anywhere yet...since it was Sat. night.  Our friend looked at it at church the next day and suggested we see a pediatric dentist.  

So lucky us there is one right in our little city.  After xrays, cleaning, the dentist said he needed to pull the cracked portion off to see how bad it was, they might be able to crown it.  After some drugs and laughing gas (poor Tagg) it was realized that the crack went across his nerve...(I had yet to give him anything for pain, he never complained - what a trooper!) So the dentist proceed with a root canal just to realize that the crack went past the gum line, so he suggested to extract the tooth to be safe if there was any damage to the root.  

So after about a 3 hour visit to the dentist this is the tooth they pulled with the broken piece.

Tagg was so brave and good!

He was excited that the tooth fairy would come and he got a note with some money.  Darin was jealous that Tagg got a visit from the tooth fairy before him.  I told him he didn't want to go through what Tagg did to get tooth fairy money. 

Tagg after the extraction.  He has a nice gap now.  He will definitely need ortho work now because his teeth will most likely shift because of the space. 

So let this be a lesson to you all: "No more MONKEYS jumping on the bed!  

My kids had a talking to after this incident. 

Boys will be boys!

NeW yEaRs!

New Years we decided to have some family fun! 

We decided to have a family day of "Station Rotations" (Luke came up with that name.)

Each person got to pick one thing they wanted to do with the family and we all participated.

Tagg: he picked Indiana Jones Wii (surprise, surprise).  We all took turns playing different levels.

Darin: wanted to watch a movie, I talked him into watching an old movie I used to watch as a kid that I thought was hilarious and silly - Tiny Toons: Summer Vacation.  

Lydia: We had a 30 minute dance session to music for her - she loves music!

Stacey: I made a homemade game similar to headbandz that we played. 

Jared: was in charge of homemade individual pizzas for dinner.

Rees: headed up a sports tournament on the Wii.  

Luke: wanted to watch Iron Will.  

It still wasn't midnight when we finished so we decided to watch Darin's first choice movie of Despicable Me with ice cream sundaes.  At midnight we watched the apple fall and then sent everyone off to bed.  We had a fun family day!  Happy New Year!

Stenson Christmas 2012

Christmas finally came!  (and went. yeah, I'm a little behind). 

The tree in all its glory. 

The boys quickly found their loot near their stockings.

Luke checking out his new plasma ball.

Love that this kid can get excited about anything, even a jar of roasted peanuts! There is a new BYU hat on the couch too that he scored.

Darin just excited that he finally made it to Christmas morning!

Ready to open up some Santa gifts.

Tagg I love, he is excited deep down but tries not to show it. 

He was stoked about his own pack of gum in his stocking and a new toy helicopter.

Lydia was sleeping during the first rush of things, but finally joined us to check out her new My Little Ponies.  She was more excited about a new pair of boots and wore them most the rest of the day.  Such a girl!

Tagg tearing into a present.

Pretty much the only picture of me during Christmas break.

And the only picture of Jared. Pretty sure Lydia was eating candy, that's mainly what she wanted all morning.

Some aftermath.  Lydia over by the window sill, her favorite place to sit.  I think she is looking for more candy in someones stocking. :)

Let the Lego building begin!  The boys got some new lego sets that they immediately opened and tackled.

Rees was nice to help Tagg with his very own set from G&G.

We had our traditional Christmas Brunch with egg sausage casserole and just relaxed played with new stuff and enjoyed each others company the rest of the day. 

The boys finally finished their huge set...it only took 3 hours!!

We had a great Christmas!

Stenson Christmas Eve

We started Christmas Eve with some cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate bar for breakfast.  I think it sent some into sugar coma, but it was yummy.

We relaxed and hung out. It snowed so the boys went out to play in the snow and had some fun.  They were excited that it would be a white Christmas. 

Luke and Darin creating their snowman. 

Tagg sad that his brothers wouldn't let him knock down the snowman. 

Rees went out later with Tagg to make their own snowman they could knock down. Bless his heart.

Darin had begged me for weeks to make small gingerbread houses out of graham crackers so we finally did!  

We had our traditional appetizer night of dinner and watched Elf. 

Then the kids opened pjs from GG Stenson and snuggled into the couch for a long winters nap.  It was nice just doing our own thing as a family. Tagg refused to put on the pjs and take a picture and Lydia was already in bed. It was a nice relaxing Christmas Eve!

Pre Christmas Stuff

After trying to figure out this picture thing...I'll try to catchup on this blog.

So I'm still figuring out the pictures and everything happened in reverse order, but I'm too lazy to switch all the pictures around so you get our events in reverse. :)

Some pre Christmas events were few.  The boys had some fun Christmas parties at school that they enjoyed and we did a few things here and there.

Some friends invited us over to have appetizers, and do the nativy story and just hang out with them and others.  It was fun.  

Rees graciously offered to be the donkey. 

Luke and Darin had some Christmas Concerts at the school.  Since their school is so big they did the different grades on different nights.  Which was pretty good since the whole thing lasted about 15 min!  So nice. 

Darin and he's pointing to his buddy below. 

Luke in the middle - I was pretty far back so this picture suffered. 

We also had our ward Christmas brunch early on in the month.  It was yummy and the primary kids performed a few songs as well.

At the end of November our little town had a Christmas Tree Lighting event.  It was free so we decided to check it out.  They had carolers, crafts, bounce house - that I had to convince Tagg to go on and he loved it, and some hot chocolate and cookies.  They also had a hay ride that the boys caught while Lydia and I hung out.  The actual tree lighting wasn't anything spectacular, but it was fun.