Merry Christmas

It’s amazing how fast Christmas can come and go as an adult.  I love the anticipation leading up to it.  The spirit that is in the air.  Drinking eggnog or hot chocolate.  Making yummy treats and then giving them to others or enjoying them with your family.  Listening to the Christmas music or watching the Christmas movies.  I get so excited the entire month of December.  The anticipation of watching your kids open up exactly what they asked for and watch their eyes light up with wonder.

Like most families we have our traditions we like to do every year.  I like having traditions, it gives you fun things to look forward to.  Some of ours are the kids get to open up one gift on Christmas eve, it’s always pajamas.  We have a Christmas book that has a scripture, song, and a Christmas story for every day in December leading up to Christmas.  I love reading those stories, all of them have lessons about what is really important and the spirit of Christmas.  The story on Christmas eve is the scripture account of Christ’s birth.  I love making cookies with the kids, every year we get together with a group of our friends on Christmas eve day to decorate cookies for santa and to make “Reindeer Dust” for santa’s reindeer.  Every year I get them a new book of some sort to add to their collection of books, I need to add more Christmas books.  We get out all the Christmas movies and watch them all month long.  This year we added a new tradition of a “Secret Santa” we put our names in a hat and all of us drew out a name to get a gift for, we weren’t supposed to tell who each other had, but obviously Keira and Jayda didn’t really follow that, so we all knew who they had.

Here is all the cookie making fun we have had.  Keira REALLY enjoyed the sprinkles!  We had a lot of cookies to decorate if you can’t tell, we didn’t even decorate them all.  We had a ton of fun as usual.

On Christmas Eve, the kids got their new PJ’s and then we went on up to the Runia’s for the festivities.  We acted out the nativity, ate food, and had lots of fun.

Santa came!  Let the unwrapping...begin!  The kids were so excited to open up all the presents.  Nyah was so excited about getting an IPOD Touch that she started hyperventilating and was saying “I need to come down” she then started to take deep breaths it was so funny.  After they opened all of the gifts that were for just them, they all seemed satisfied.  Nyah got her IPOD Touch of course along with some new black boots (they look similar to UGG’s only the brand that is in our price range ha ha), a webkin, DS games, etc. Keira added to her collection of stuffed animals with a my little pony, yoshi backpack, giraffe, dog, etc.  Jayda was so excited to get a DSI, an Ariel doll, Tiana doll, and then a HUGE collection of coloring books, crayons, etc.  Connor, didn’t care about opening his presents, once he opened the vacuum that was for him, it was all over, he just wanted to play with it, he did like his light saber, he also got a ride on tractor, some swords, and of course some tools, etc.

After all that, it was on to some family gifts we got.  The first one was a WII.  I think we just might be the last family on earth to get one of these ha ha.  The kids, especially Nyah was super excited.  It was a blue one, then we got three more remotes for it, one more blue one and then 2 pink ones.  We also got around 6 games.  We have played most of them now and they are all pretty fun.  We got the Just Dance 3 and then the ABBA Just Dance and all I can say his HOLY WORK OUT!  Although, I am not the best judge, I am really out of shape, but I do know that I am pretty sore after all that dancing around I did with them.

Then came the BIG surprise!  We got a new puppy!  It was mostly for Keira and to help her with some of her issues, but we call it a family pet, since everyone will get to enjoy the dog.  It’s a girl, she is a Mini Goldendoodle, which is a cross between a Golden Retriever and a Poodle, since she is mini she will get to be around 30 lbs, so about a medium size dog.  Santa had brought Keira a stuffed dog and it was in a wrapped box with a lid that comes off, then some of the presents she unwrapped were things for her “stuffed” dog.  After we opened up all the presents I “found” a note from Santa, that said something like he had another surprise and to follow the directions, the first direction was to put Keira’s new dog in the “magic box” then it sent them on a hunt, first it told them to go where “Nyah does the dishes” then it said “go where Perry and all Keira’s friends are” (which is in Keira’s room with the stuffed animals) then it said to “go where Connor’s favorite shopping cart is” (it’s where we keep the toys, there is a shopping cart we have that Connor loves to push around) then it said to “go where Jayda is Sally the Mermaid” which is the bathtub, when taking a bath, Jayda always says she is “Sally the Mermaid” then that one said that he did his magic and to check the box to see what happened.  They came upstairs and inside the box was the real puppy, they were so excited and then all other presents were forgotten for the time being.  They immediately wanted to name it and of course Keira wanted “Sprinkles” no surprise, but I was like, “well there is the dog book that Keira has and there is a dog in there named Bella, what if we name her Bella Sprinkles”  and Keira was like “ya, Bella Sprinkles!”  So that is her name, we just call her Bella.

This is our house in the aftermath of the mad house that is Christmas morning.  The disaster zone our living room turns into.  I think Jayda spent the majority of the day coloring.  Connor was mostly vacuuming, but he did like playing with some of his other toys, like his light saber.  Nyah alternated between playing with her IPOD and the dog and Keira spent all day with the dog and trying to cart her new stuffed animals along with her all day.  While this was all happening, Jared and I traded of taking naps!

We had a great Christmas, in Keira’s words “best...christmas...ever!”  She said that before they got the puppy, so you can only imagine how over the top that was for her.  Now we have been winding down, I took down all the Christmas decor, which is bitter sweet really.  I am sad to see the holiday come and go so quickly, but I also ready to move on to our regular routine.  Which I don’t even know that is yet with the new puppy, we are still figuring that out.  Well...on to 2012 I guess.

Our Digital Christmas Card

It’s been quite a year in the Runia house.  I guess with a family of 6 things are typically never dull.  It’s funny how quickly the years seem to fly by these days.  Here is how our year went for each of us:

Jared, is still working at IHC, he enjoys it, which is a really good thing, not many people can do accounting and not be bored to tears.  For us, it’s just nice to have a good and steady job.  He is a hard worker to, so that always helps.  He still works out at the gym as often as he likes.  Which is usually 3 times a week.  I can picture him as this old man in his 90’s pumpn’ up those weights.  He will be going to the gym until the day he dies.  He recently got a new calling in church, he works with the 11 year old scouts.  He seems to enjoy it, right now there is only 2 boys in there with him and another guy.  One of the boys rarely comes, so it’s typically the one scout to the 2 leaders ratio.  I think this boy will be earning quite  few badges with that ratio

Jessi (me), is busy running around taking the kids to and from school, running millions of errands, helping the kids with this, that, and the other.  You know, the typical mom thing of making sure everyone else in the family’s lives runs smoothly.  I saw a bumper sticker once that said “If I am called a stay at home mom, then why am I always in my car?”  It is so true, once your kids get school age, it feels like you basically live in your car.  The days where I get to stay home all day are few and far between.  We took another year off the “extra’s” again.  This will probably be the last time we can get away with it.  They really do well going to there little “extra” activities.  So I am sure this next year we will just get that much busier.  I just got a new calling in church, I was bummed to stop teaching Relief Society, I really enjoyed that.  Now I am going to be back in the primary, teaching the Valiant 10-11 year olds.  I am excited for that, I have taught that age before and it really is a fun age.  They listen and respond and ask questions pertaining to the lesson, which is really nice.

Nyah, turned 9 this year.  She is officially what I call a tween.  She is growing like a weed!  Especially her feet.  She is already in a women’s size 7, she can wear my moms shoes, which is just crazy for me.  She loves going to activity days.  She is my little social bug.  Everyday after school at pick up time, she is getting later and later, because she is in her classroom still, talking to friends or the teacher.  She is really creative and is constantly working on some sort of project.  Now, getting her to work on her projects at appropriate times is another thing altogether.  She has gotten into trouble at school for working on her projects when she wasn’t supposed to.  It’s fun watching her, she is always thinking up different, creative ways to have fun with her siblings.  She really likes make believe, I think she would really like being involved in drama and doing plays, she thrives on stuff like that.  It makes me happy that she isn’t afraid to get in front of people and perform.  It makes me a little sad, watching her grow up so quickly.  She is at that in between age, where she still likes toys, but she is starting to like more electronic gadgets as well.

Keira, has had quite a year.  She turned 7 this year and started 1st grade.  The transition from going to school 1/2 a day to going to school all day was interesting to say the least.  We alway knew there was something special about her.  Something...unique you could say.  We actually thought for a long time that she possibly had ADHD or something because her attention span was so bad, among other things.  Well, this summer, after talking with a psychologist/social worker about some of her issues.  She had us take another route.  We had her school do testing on her and they agreed with us about her issues.  She qualified for an IEP (which is an Individual Education Plan) under Autism.  We believe she has Aspergers.  She hasn’t been officially diagnosed, but at this point I figure we are getting her the help she needs with the IEP without the “label” of being diagnosed.  The school will be giving her extra help in speech, reading, math, and social skills.  I will do another post all about this later.  She is still in love with stuffed animals and has dozens (the word dozen is a huge  understatement).  She has fun at school and she does have a few friends which is great.

Jayda, she turned 4 this year and got to start preschool.  She loves it of course!  She goes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and is learning so much from there.  She is so funny and loves to go around teasing everyone.  She especially loves to pick on her little brother.  I keep telling her that one day he is going to turn on her and give her the smack down and I am going to let him.  She lives everyday, in her own little princess world, full of cupcakes, party dresses, ballerina’s twirling, and Mickey and Minnie singing and dancing.  

Connor, he turned 1 this year, he learned to walk.  He is into everything.  His favorites are anything that is electronic.  He walks around with electronic things and makes sound effects for them.  His top choices are the vacuum, our electric mixer, and the blow dryer.  He loves driving on his little battery operated 4 wheeler he got for his birthday and he is actually pretty dang good and navigating that thing around.  He is starting to talk and say things.  Of course he won’t talk on demand, only when he wants to.  It has been so much fun having a boy in the house to change things up for us.

Well, that is basically what we have all been up this past year.  Definitely not overly exciting, but we love it.  We want to wish you all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!