New Years 2011

This New Year's Eve, we decided to repeat our bad parenting from two years ago and take our kids out at midnight to see the Rose Parade floats.  The kids went to sleep around 8pm, then we got them back up around eleven so we could make it to the staging area by twelve.  We brought along some of those confetti poppers and some New Year's crackers, which the kids thought were awesome because they contained a crown and cheap toy.  It was crazy cold, but we had fun looking at the staged floats up close.  This was the first year that Connor really understood the point of everything, which made our missing the countdown kinda anti-climactic, but he didn't seem to mind.  We just weren't paying attention to the clock, and the people around us must not have been, either, so we did our own little fake countdown instead.

Christmas/New Year's Cracker Treasures!

That's my new purple stroller, by the way.  I love it!

Evan is hidden in my "Baby Wearing Coat"

The Saturday after New Year's Day we had our annual Primary Breakfast.  The point is for the kids to come and meet their new teachers for the year.  Elise was sooo excited to be old enough for Primary, and Connor was all about sharing his wisdom with her.  My favorite thing about the activity is that all we have to do as a presidency is show up with sugary cereal and milk, and the kids think it's the greatest party ever.
    

CTR 5 Class

Sunbeams!

Elise is hiding in the herd.  Gotta love the preschool rope.

    
Lastly, here are a couple other pictures of my goofy kids.  They got to decorate these giant gingerbread man kits over the holidays.  The decorating was fun, but the cookies themselves were sort of inedible.  Oh, and whoever invented little round sprinkles is evil - I was cleaning them up for days.  Also, I walked into the living room one evening to see that Elise had buried Evan in living-room clutter.  He liked it.
   

  

Merry Christmas

We had a great, quiet Christmas this year.  We spent Christmas Eve at the home of some friends we hadn't seen in two years (the "other Browns"), and got home so late we had to wake the kids up to put them in their Christmas Jammies.  Christmas morning we just hung out and opened presents, then had our traditional waffle breakfast.  Later we called family and watched "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer".  
   
Among other things, Connor got a loom (he'd been asking for one since the County Fair), Legos, a Pillow Pet, and a vintage Transformer Dinobot (which Ryan found on ebay.)  Elise got a doll house, a scooter (to replace the one I backed over), a Pillow Pet, a pink tutu, and a huge creepy spider puppet.  She had been asking for a toy spider that could crawl on people, so the puppet seemed perfect.  When she opened it, however, she looked at it in a confused way until Connor shouted, "It's a spider!"  Then she threw it down and backed up, all freaked out.  It was awesome.  A minute or so later, she decided it was cool after all.  Evan . . well, Evan didn't really ask for anything, and he has soooo many hand-me-down toys, that I only got him a few small things.  He got a new stroller (okay, that's kind of for me), a baby squeaky toy, and a cute stuffed puppy.  He seemed content with the wrapping paper, honestly.  Ryan got a bike rack for the van, and I got a new computer desk that makes our living room seem much less like a college dorm (sorry, no pictures.)
    

The camera spent the night in the cold car, so this photo has a nice frosted look

Christmas Morning

I don't know what genius did the marketing for Pillow Pets, but every kid on Earth has one now.

Evan's First Present (wrapping paper was too complicated for him)

What's inside?

Opening . . .

Merry Christmas, Evs!

Christmas  afternoon we met up with a couple of our neighbors and went to the park.  Kinda weird for Christmas, right?  I mean, isn't it supposed to be too cold for that sort of thing?
    

We found a place where there were actually enough leaves to make a pile!

I miss the phase of my life before I discovered ugly yellow spiders.  Leaves weren't cool after that.

  
Anyway, we had fun, then went home to eat our Christmas Crab.  Nice cozy holiday.  
  

A day or two later, after the kids had been put to bed, Ryan and I were talking in our room and heard a strange noise.  Ryan went into the hallway, peeked into the bathroom, and saw this:
    

Celebration of Learning

Just before Winter Break, Connor's school held an event called "Celebration of Learning", where the students showcased the work they'd been doing in class.  Connor's class only meets once a week, but since they don't have to cover core academics, they get to do a lot of fun supplemental stuff.  Here Connor's showing me his book (titled The Galliping Horse).  
  

  
He presented his Passion Project (on police officers) the week before in class, but they were supposed to condense the material into a poster for Celebration of Learning.  He was pretty proud of it.  
    

  
Connor read his poem to everyone, showed his favorite pieces from his art portfolio, and participated in a musical number with his "nature shaker".  
   

Yeah, I probably should have made him take his coat off, but he claimed to be cold.

The class actually has about 18 students (K-2), you just can't see them all here.

       
Connor's Poem:


Sandy Hike
Sandy Hike
Rocky log-filled
I was tough that was
fun.
Connor Brown
     
It was fun to see everything they've been working on so far this year.  I'm really glad we're doing this program - it's helped Connor become more confident in his abilities (yeah, he's kinda always been confident, but now it's for a reason!)


A day or two later we were invited by our friends to attend Disney on Ice with them.  The husband's office had offered free box tickets to some of their clients, but nobody took them, so our friends got to take our family and a couple others for free!  Poor Ryan was sick, so he kept Evan at home and missed out.  The best part was definitely the box.  It was like having your own little theater where you could chat, change seats all around, and pass out snacks without bothering anyone else.  The kids loved the show, but the grownups all agreed we probably wouldn't have paid money for it.   I was just proud that I had driven Connor and Elise all the way downtown to the Staples center and back in rush hour traffic without dying or freaking out. 
    

We kept worrying the kids would fall out the front.

Birthdays and Christmas Pageants

Getting Ready for Christmas!

In early December, Ryan's mom and sister were able to come and stay with us over Ryan's and my birthdays.  It was a great weekend - we spent Saturday at Disneyland, where the kids basically got to go on twice as many rides as usual, since  Bomi and Aunt Helena would save them places in line while we took them on something else.  I was certain that Connor would want to do this "Jedi Training Academy" thing, so we found spots a half hour before it started so that he'd have a good chance at being picked.  When the time finally came, and the Jedi Master came past, Connor quickly shook his head and sat down.  Oh, well.  I think he liked watching the show, at least.  

    

   

The rest of the weekend we pretty much just relaxed and ate pumpkin cheesecake, and on Monday, Bomi and Aunt Helena volunteered to watch the kids so Ryan and I could go out for a birthday dinner. It was really nice to have them visit!  

   

   

The following week, Elise's Joy School did their traditional Nativity Show for the Twelve Oaks Retirement Lodge.  We did this both years with Connor in Joy School (well, not really last year, since he broke his arm right before the show, but we prepared for it!)  It was fun to see Elise's age group do it this year.  She got to be Mary that day (the girls agreed to take turns.)  We let Connor and his friend Ben participate, too, since we were short a couple characters.  After the little program, the kids gave homemade Christmas cards to the residents, it was really sweet.

   

Consequences of a well-lit photo

Our ward Christmas Party featured the Bob Baker Marionettes again this year, and the kids got to visit Santa.  They were a lot more into the Santa thing this year - last year they just looked confused.

   

   

The Joy School kids did an encore of their Christmas Pageant for the family party.  It went pretty well, and even when it didn't it was still cute.

   

Angel, Mary, Shepherd, Joseph, Wise Man/Innkeeper, Charlie (he didn't really want to be on stage.)

Why are the cutest pictures always blurry?

Angel visits Mary

Angel visits Shepherds

The part where the 2-year-olds have a knock-down brawl over Baby Jesus

Oh, and we finally had semi-professional pictures taken for our Christmas cards this year.  A friend of ours who lives a few blocks away agreed to the difficult task of making us look decent, and I think she did an awesome job of it!  By the way, I  thought that these pictures would be downloadable in their original size, but that doesn't seem to be working.  If anybody wants digital copies of any of these, just let me know and I'll email them!