Merry Christmas You Crummy Building and Loan!

The title of this post has nothing to do with our Christmas celebration other than this was the first year I have seen It's a Wonderful Life. I don't know how I made it so long without having seen it! Best Christmas movie...(next to muppet Christmas carol). And come to find out my husband does an awesome Jimmy Stewart impression. Truly, a Christmas treat. This was our first year to have Christmas in our own home...and while I missed the suit cases, blow up beds and jet lag of year's past...it was a nice change of pace :)

Here is our little Christmas fairy. As you can tell, she received some dress up clothes from Santa. Off went the special Christmas jammies and on came the fairy costume. She's holding a gift from grandma Patsy and Grandpa Don. Great gift choice! That doll is awesome and she has some sweet outfits I'd like to borrow!

Woof! This is Brandon (if you can't tell it's him, it's because of his super sweet disguise) playing with some of Abby's dress up masks she received ...I think the glasses kind of give him away. Not a lot of nearly blind bull dogs out there.

Christmas morning. Pre-destruction. Pre-showers. Pre-sugar rush. Pre-sugar crash. Pre-the most desperately my carpet has ever needed a vacuum.

Abby's hand decorated cupcake to Santa. She also included some healthy treats for him (love that girl!). She wanted to put the plate in her room so that Santa would come in and see her...but then she thought about it and spent an hour before bed crying about a scary stranger coming into her house to eat her food. She'd only go to sleep after her dad put a note on the front door instructing Santa that he may leave the toys but he was not, under any conditions, to eat ALL of our food or to go into Abigail's room. She then made me hide all of the treats in our house so they wouldn't be eaten. This may sound extreme...but you guys should have seen our introduction to the Easter bunny. For those interested in what her dictated note (written before the hysterical portion of the evening) said, it is as follows: "Dear Santa, I want a barbie for Christmas. Where are you going to be? Are you getting close to us? We want to figure out when you will be in Las Vegas city where our house is. Can we see everything I told my mom I want to see? Rudolph, you, the sleigh? Santa, can you stay and talk a long time? Santa, come to our house soon, ok? Merry Christmas! Love, Abigail."

The cupcake decorating project.

The finished project...and let me tell you Santa loved them...and in fact, Santa is wondering why she bought new jeans before the holidays because Santa is having trouble getting them on.

Christmas eve we went to a cactus garden to see an AWESOME light display. It is Vegas...nothing says Vegas Christmas like a pancake cactus with twinkle lights... Well, maybe a bedazzled Santa flanked by showgirls...

She wanted to know if she could touch them. I made a Christmas commitment to try not to tell Abigail "no" more than 15 times in the 24 hour period. I nearly made it. If I count the "Maybe laters" and the "I'll think about its" and the "We will sees..." I didn't even come close to my goal!

My two sweet slices of Christmas cake! I can't imagine who I would want with me more to sing carols, drink the Abuelita with and to eat my clam chowder that somehow ended up tasting like vegetable soup. Merry Christmas! On to 2010!!!

I LOVE SARAH GOODSELL PHOTOGRAPHY!!! She will be doing my children's weddings and my children's children's. However, Woodside...we may have wanted to reconsider tying your sweater around your shoulders :)

The Weekend...Reported Mid Week

I really only have pictures of Friday's activities...but they were some sweet activities.

This, apparently, is just about the nerdiest thing I've ever done. Pictured above is one of the two presents we brought to Brandon's work party for a gift exchange. I was SO excited about this gift. It is a reusable bag from whole foods stuffed with organic goodies and produce. I wanted to take this bag back home...and in fact, I had a long discussion/strategy session about getting this bag back with my husband...we had a plan. The second gift we brought was a yoga mat (love yoga!) and a two week gym pass to Gold's gym that I got for running my last 10K. Pretty sweet, right? I mean, you can get a 1 week pass any day of the week, but two is something special! Well, needless to say, I ended up taking my yoga mat home because NOBODY wanted it...and, when my organic produce bag was the last gift remaining on the table, everybody started fighting over a leopard print Snuggie (a snuggie! it's a blanket with sleeves people!) instead of even taking a look at my lovely bag of health and eco-friendliness! It ended up going home with a woman who is a chronic smoker and had three different deserts that night. Somehow, I don't feel like it was appreciated. Maybe because when she looked through it she sighed and said "what is all this junk?" And as for my spouse and I having a strategy to get the bag back home? He went AWOL when the variety hot chocolates and brownie mix came out. You should have seen the animalistic look in his eye. A truly deprived man.

On to happier things...pictures of my daughter in her "Princess Dance" class she takes at the rec center. She likes this much better than the formal ballet class I had her in, because in this class she can accessorize! (That's her with the PERFECT first position on the far left)

Yes, we bought the crown with us. It pretty much gets brought with us every where we go.

A happy princess. I told her how proud I was after class and she asked me to address her by her full name "Princess Cinderella Belle Hannah Montana Abigail." And may I say my child has never even seen any of the movies/shows associated with these questionable characters (I'm talking to you, Miley!), but somehow she knows more about them than I do? She also knows the entire chorus of Poker Face by Lady Gaga. It's a scary world.

Ah, Sweet Repentance

I was at a baby shower last weekend and was called to blog repentance from my loving Aunt Janet. It basically went like this:

Enter Jamie.

Janet: "Will you update your blog already?! Every time I click on your blog, it's the same picture of you and the rabbit! I thought come Halloween, 'oh, I'll check Jamie's blog, I'm sure she's updated...but no. And then I thought surely for Thanksgiving...but no.'"

Jamie sits down and provides limp excuses.

And here is the least limp of my excuses: My life has run away with me and I haven't had time to sufficiently document it. Following my last post (2 months ago), we had our bar exam results (depressing), an 8-year anniversary (and they said it couldn't be done), my birthday (still in my 20's), Brandon's birthday (no longer in his 20's), I took a Spanish class at my local community college (y si, mi espanol es perfecto. Saco buenas notas en la clase de espanol), Thanksgiving (which I went home to Washington for- haven't been there in a year, oh! and wendi, ran into your mom, she is just a lovely and classy woman), and countless festivities and adorable anecdotes I could have included about my offspring.

I will be better...I promise...?