Merry Christmas 2008

Santa Pictures

We finally did our time at the mall to get our Santa pictures. Christopher was so excited he could hardly stand it. I got the picture of Christopher with Santa and they were chatting for a little bit and then Erin & Hannah arrived, so we tossed Hannah in for a quick pic before our turn was over. I think these shots turned out pretty well.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Christopher is 4!

We can hardly believe that it's been four years since our sweet boy arrived. So here's the "then and now":

December 4, 2004 - Christopher James Truitt makes his grand debut.

December 4, 2008 - No longer a baby, but still pretty cute...the one on the right...no, your right...not the gigantic mouse!

Cute Halloween idea

Just had to share this really cute idea that my super clever and creative friend Melanie did with her family for Halloween this year. They are the five little piggies:

Halloween Pictures

We were visited this Halloween by a skeleton pirate!

"Aaargghhhh! I'm SCARY!!!!"

Apparently even skeleton pirates can sometimes be quite charming.

They're willing to take dads out trick or treating and show them the ropes. 'Which ropes?' you ask. Well, with a skeleton pirate you can never be sure, so you must be careful.

Hmmm...this skeleton pirate seems to have been putting on a good act at the start, but the scary thing didn't hold up too long. Here he is sharing some grins with Abby Cadabby from Sesame Street (a.k.a. Hannah Hathcock)

Whoa! The skeleton pirate costume disappeared later that night to reveal our little Christopher again, only to be replaced by something really freaky going on with his eye. We'll have to get someone to take a look at that...

We hope you all had a wonderful Halloween and can forgive the fact that these pictures are two weeks late!

Bargain Shopping!!!

Okay, I have never had a really huge love of shopping. I don't enjoy poring over the ads and I don't love the actual going out and doing the shopping. But at the risk of sounding like a huge commercial...I signed up for CouponSense a few months ago and was so proud of my savings on a couple of recent shopping trips that I literally lined everything up on the counter and took pictures so I could share my joy. :)

This shopping trip was to Fry's and between the sales and coupons I got 50 items including milk, oatmeal, potatoes, cookie mix, carrots, sour cream, soap, Zatarain's rice mixes, tortillas, bagels, Powerade, and water for $14.40!

This trip cost me $24.92, which doesn't sound as impressive as the other trip, but I got a few more bigger items like cereal, more water, Puffs tissue, orange juice, yogurt, canned tomatoes, soup, cat treats, bagels again, and herb tea (multiples of everything). On both trips I saved about $79.00.

I am a slightly bigger fan of shopping than I used to be. Coupons and sale watching are definitely worth it!

Just one of those moments

I simply had to share this because it was one of those little experiences that reminds and teaches you of so many things.

We were driving to church this afternoon and Christopher suddenly asked me why someone we know doesn't go to church. I was trying in my own bumbling way to explain to him that not everyone goes to church. He asked why some people don't go to church with us. I answered that some people do not know about the gospel and do not know what it is that we believe.

His simple response was: "We believe in Jesus Christ."

Maybe you had to be there, but maybe some of you have had those teaching moments from your own children as well. He pretty much summed it up for me and reminded me that in spite of all the other things we think about and worry about and are trying to accomplish each day, that is one basic truth that can answer everything.

Christopher had preschool at Kate's house this Monday and she included this in her email to the other moms about what happened that day:

Quote of the day:
Christopher, "I don't know what I'm going to be for Halloween yet"
Caleb, "You could be a mosquito"
Christopher, "Maybe when I get a little older I can be a mosquito."

I couldn't help but laugh! I love the way their minds work!

Yes, I'm posting twice in one week. Check the window - was that a pig flying by?

Happy Birthday to me on Tuesday! The always flattering blowing out the candles picture. Thanks to Erin for the cute, yummy little cake and thanks to Hannah & Christopher for helping me blow out the candle!

Matt brought me some beautiful flowers. The bananas, onion and tomatoes were already part of the decor. Yes, I know I need to clean off my counter....

Christopher and William. This picture was completely candid and I honestly was standing right next to my camera when they did this, so I snapped a quick pic. We take care of William on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Christopher gets to be a big brother. He's pretty good at it.

School Field Trip

"Joy School" has started again for Christopher. This is our second year of doing a home-based preschool and this year we're with three other moms and now have four boys in our group. Last week Dalon's mom Kate planned a fun field trip for the boys to Papa John's pizza. Here are the pics:

Christopher making his own personal pizza.

Watching the pizzas go into the oven.

Waiting patiently for the pizzas to be done.

I think in this one they were actually waiting to get started. From the back of the picture to the front are Dalon, Christopher, Caleb and Andrew. Caleb did school with us last year, but Andrew and Dalon are new. It's a completely different dynamic than last year, but the boys are starting to be really good friends and have fun playing together.

Enjoying the fruits of their labors back at Miss Kate's house. The boys were so excited about making their own pizzas and Christopher now asks me if we're going to go make more pizza every time we drive by a Papa John's or see a delivery truck.

September...so far

"And I know what you're thinking. But my clothes aren't on backwards, my head is!" ("Meet the Robinsons," anyone?) When he first got dressed, just the shirt was on backward. Then he went in to go potty and came out and the pants were on backwards too. When I pointed this out to him he replied "Mom! It's okay! I can do it however I want to!"

"Don't take my picture! I'm just going to ride Daddy's motorcycle. It's no big deal!"

Me, Angie and Christopher at Angie's baptism. Congratulations, Angie! We're proud of you!

One of the storms we had earlier this month woke Christopher up during the night, so he crawled into our bed around 4 a.m. and proceeded to sleep in longer than he has in years. He looks pretty comfy, doesn't he?

The dangers of being domestic....

No, I did not decide to get some weird purple triangle tattoo outlined in red as some sign of solidarity with - is there a group that has a symbol like this?

I tried ironing last night. Yes. That is the shape of the top tip of my iron. Exactly. Ow. The funny thing is that I really couldn't precisely describe how I ironed my own hand. I was on the third shirt, I think the shirt started slipping off the board, the iron was in my right hand...somehow the two met and I sort of melted my own skin. Christopher keeps wanting to touch it. I keep trying to explain that touching an "owie" makes the owie feel worse and not better. So then he wants to know how long it will be before it feels better...

Strange rumblings in the night....

We are having the craziest storm here tonight. We had huge winds, blowing rain, and then from inside the house we started noticing a lot of light flashes outside and neverending thunder sounds. Which is what it was. There is nearly constant lightning in the sky, but horizontally, up in the clouds, not from sky to ground. And the thunder isn't stopping. Hasn't for a good 20 minutes at least. I'm waiting for the 10:00 news to see what the weather man has to say, because I'm sure this will be the lead story. Any weather around here usually is, but this is truly unusual. I've never seen anything like it before. I tried to get a little bit of video, and if I ever figure out YouTube, I'll try to post it, but it probably won't do justice to what we've been seeing.

Matt's Saturday night

No pictures for this one, but Matt got to go to the Diamondbacks vs. Florida Marlins game last Saturday night. Misty May-Treanor, half of the Olympic beach volleyball gold medal winning team, was there. Her husband is a catcher for the Florida Marlins. Matt said they put the camera on her at one point so that you could see her up on the fancy new screen at the ball park and she held up her gold medal for everyone to see, and the crowd went crazy! He said it was a lot of fun!

A few more Utah pictures

Here's the closeup of Collin. Real baby men wear purple.

At the resting point of our Snowbird walk, Christopher took over the camera: Here is me with Jimmy, from a lower point of view.

Here's an almost centered, just slightly skewed picture of Jimmy and Daisy, taken by Toph.

A quite nice picture of the scenery around us.

Finally he handed the camera back to mom and posed for one last shot before heading back down the hill.

Utah trip

We went to Utah the first week of August to be at the blessing of my brother's new baby. It was a really good week!

We stayed with my parents in Taylorsville. They have a canal that runs behind their house. Christopher liked to go out every morning to feed the ducks. Here he is with my dad. You can see how the duck feeding went: one piece for the ducks, one piece for Christopher, one piece for the ducks...

Christopher had a very good time getting reacquainted with Grandma Hail. We live so close to Matt's parents that when we got to Utah Christopher was saying: "I have two Grandmas? And two Grandpas? Cool!"

The star of the trip, little Collin Matthew Hail. We got a closer picture of just the baby, but this really captured how sweet Christopher was with him. He wanted to help with everything - holding him, feeding him, making him laugh. It was fun to watch. At one point he said "Baby Collin is my cousin? Another cousin? I'm going to have to come visit him again more!"

On Friday we drove up to Snowbird with Jimmy & Daisy to meet up with my parents (my dad was up there for a conference for a few days). It was very pretty and we had a really good walk up to this lookout point. Christopher climbed up on this bench and proceeded to give directions: "Mom. Take my picture right here. Just like this. Wait, let me look out at the trees. Okay, now!"

Christopher with Uncle Jimmy. Toph got tired about halfway back down the trail, so he got to ride on some shoulders and take a little break.

Pure relaxation

I promise I did not stage this shot, but I simply had to take the picture. I went in to put something away in Christopher's room last week and there was Pooter. Completely crashed out with his back feet tucked under the sheet, his head on the pillow. He figures he's a member of the family, so why can't he use the other child's bed when it's available?

Flagstaff weekend

This past weekend we went to Flagstaff with Matt's parents and our friends Jason & Erin. We went to the Highland Festival on Saturday (pictures will be posted soon) and then after the boys went home on Sunday, the girls stayed for an extra day to play a little more.

On Monday morning we went to the Deer Farm. Christopher was more interested and excited about it than he has ever been before.

Petting the pygmy goats. They were pretty passive this time around, so maybe that made it easier for him.

Outside the deer farm is an old tractor. We tried getting pictures of Christopher and Hannah together on the seat, but that didn't work out too well. They were fighting over who got to drive. So they parted ways and Christopher decided to "fix" the tractor while Hannah snuck back up into the driver's seat.

Erin, Hannah and Christopher. Same goat as before, I believe.

Summer activities

No earth-shattering events, but just some recent happenings:

Christopher loves building towers now out of quatro blocks that are taller than he is. Then the fun part - knocking them down! Which is impossible to capture on camera.

Swimming with his buddies Decker (middle) and Caleb (right side of photo). They're all such good swimmers now that they can get to that step by themselves.

Singing "Happy Birthday!" to Daddy. All day long he was asking when we got to celebrate Dad's birthday and he truly loved singing to him, helping him blow out the candle on the birthday brownie, helping him eat the brownie, and helping to open the birthday cards too.

Yesterday when it started raining, it was still sunny. A strange combination, but really pretty. It partially accounts for the completely washed out lighting on this picture since I was on the darker front porch. Anyway, as soon as Christopher saw the rain he ran to get his umbrella and his "rain boots" (the snow boots Grandpa Hail got for him when we were in Utah for Christmas last year). Christopher has been watching the late afternoon/evening cloud buildup typical for this time of year and hoping for rain for days.

Rain, rain, go away...

Wow. We just got about three inches of rain in about two hours. Our lawn is a pond, the streets in front of and behind our house are streams, the drainage wash behind the house is literally flowing like a river (you can even hear it flowing), and Matt is out draining the pool because it was almost full up to the top. That's a lot of rain. We also had some really close lightning strikes. It's welcome rain, but it sure was a lot at one time. I'm actually curious to watch the news tonight and see what the technical rainfall amount was. Only in Arizona does the weather become the top story of the night when it rains!

Happy Birthday, Matt!

Happy 35th Birthday to Matt!!! He's a wonderful husband, father and friend and we are so blessed to have him in our lives. If you'd like to call him and wish him a "Happy Birthday," please feel free to call or email me and I will quite gladly pass along his cell phone number for all to use, all day long!

Almost done...

Our back yard is almost finished, but I just couldn't wait any longer to post the "before and after" pictures. There is one tiny part left to do, and that's to put some pavers down in a couple of areas around the pool - places for chairs and maybe a patio table - but the other side of the yard is done!

Here is what the yard looked like before, maybe a couple of years ago. The previous owners decided to "landscape" by throwing down bermuda grass seed - ALL OVER THE YARD. For any of you familiar with bermuda grass, it's very difficult to get rid of. We starved it, weed sprayed it, and hacked it out of the ground for a little over a year. This picture is from February 2006. Christopher was helping Matt beat on the dead grass a little bit:

Fast forward a year to March 2007. The pool is done, the border for the grass got done, and then we laid sod and threw a few boulders down in the dirt around the lawn. This was just after the sod went down. These next few are composite pictures since we can't get a shot of the whole yard in one picture. The top view is to the east side of the pool, the bottom left view is west of the house, south of the pool, and the bottom right view is the east side of the house, south of the lawn.

Fast forward one more year to March of 2008. The plants are in! Trees, flowers, shrubs, except for the east side of the house, which really won't change much.

Tah dah!!! Just a few short months later, the gravel is in and everything looks much more finished. That big dirt patch just off the pool deck is where the pavers will go so that we can someday get a patio table and chairs. The actual patio is just too small to put anything on and still be able to walk on it. The pictures don't convey the actual changes very well, but it has been quite the process and a lot of work by Matt. If you want to see the real thing, come see us some time!