Lights on Temple Square

Tonight after our traditional Sunday dinner with the Lloyds we went down to see the lights on temple square.


Caleb showing the Korean holiday bag to Corbin.


Corbin riding on Grandpa Lloyd's head.


Our family... you will notice that my coat can't even button up all the way; um... embarrassing.

Gingerbread House?

Tonight while Caleb was watching the big BYU bowl game, I decided to entertain Corbin by making a gingerbread house.

I was too lazy to make some gingerbread pieces or even go to the store to buy a kit, so we went with graham crackers. He can't touch royal frosting, which is what you would normally use, and we had some leftover chocolate frosting left in the fridge that was dairy and egg-free so we used that. But without the special frosting that dries rock hard I couldn't get a good roof to stay on.

So basically we ended up decorating a square graham cracker box with some non-wintery brown frosting, but he still had fun.

Every now and then he would sneak in some candy-eating, but for the most part he did pretty good putting them on the "house." (There was a lot of finger licking after each piece went on though, thus the brown frosting ring around his lips :)

Christmas Season

Harmony made Corbin a cute little advent calendar to count down the days to Christmas. Every day we put some gummy vitamins in the slot and he takes a paper off and sticks it on the fridge and gets a treat. He gets SOOO excited; he runs around saying, "Harmony calendar, I got a treat!" Little does he know they are healthy vitamins that I would make him eat anyway... :)


Also, on Sunday, my mom sent us home from family dinner with a bag of small presents to open on the 12 days leading up to Christmas. Though he really doesn't understand the whole "Twelve Days of Christmas" thing he seems to thoroughly enjoy the thrill of opening a present, no matter what is inside. I could list two examples of the gifts so far, but I am pretty sure my brother's family likely got the same ones and may not have opened them yet, so rather than ruin the surprise, we'll just leave it a mystery!


We have been reading lots of Christmas stories out of the Friend and books from the library, singing holiday carols and watching Christmas movies, so Corbin is getting excited, I just don't know if he realizes what he is getting so excited about. But having a toddler definitely makes the season a little funner, as you experience his excitement and see things through his little eyes... it takes us about 10 minutes to get from the front door to the car because he has to stop and point out every decoration on every door we pass, poke at every light and ask a zillion questions about "snow." Sometimes I start to lose my patience and yell at him to hurry up, but it is nice to be reminded to slow down and take the time to enjoy the holidays.

Christmas Tree

Tonight for Family Home Evening we decorated our Christmas tree. On Saturday I made Caleb go and cut one down. The compromise was that instead of going up the mountain and tramping around in the cold we would visit a local tree farm, where they prune them all year to ensure they look pretty and that they are grown in nice straight lines that you walk up and down. However, this tree farm was not really a farm at all. It looked like some old man was merely letting people cut down trees on his property. They were not pruned, they were not easy to wander through... basically our tree still looks like it came from the wild. But it smells great and looks pretty good, once we got the decorations on. Plus, now we have the fun memories of Corbin wandering around picking up every loose stick in sight and attempting to "help" saw down the pine tree.

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we went down to Cedar City and spent the holiday with Caleb's family. Corbin's favorite food, by far, was sweet potatoes with marshmallows melted on top. Does it get any better than that?

Caleb's mom did a great job of entertaining the grand kids, so that we could relax and enjoy our vacation. We went and saw the new James Bond movie... it was really good, we would just recommend watching Casino Royal right before you go so that you can remember who all the major characters are, because a lot of them carry over into the new one. We also went shopping to the good old Cedar City Walmart on Black Friday... not nearly as cool as everyone makes it sound. We did get one pair of pajamas for Corbin for Christmas (shh... don't tell him :) and some soy milk. We also played games and Corbin got to help hang up Christmas lights.

Birthday Cake

Here is a picture of the awesome birthday cake that I made for Corbin. He is really into animals lately, so we decided to go with a farm scene. It took me forever, but I was excited that it came out okay in the end. Plus, he seems to like playing with the leftover animal pieces.