Our Christmas Season So Far...

A recap of our Christmas Season in pictures. They are mostly all phone pictures, hence the poor quality. However, I have to document this stuff because without the blog I wouldn't be able to remember hardly anything from the last 5 years of my life.

Balboa Park Christmas Festival with friends

Balboa Park has some really gorgeous buildings. If I had a nice camera and actual artistic talent then I could prove it with pictures, but this will have to do.

SeaWorld has a snow area the month of December. The kids all LOVE it. We've gone a few times just for the snow.

San Diego's version of Temple Square. 

Yes, Taft has a mohawk/strip of hair down the middle of his head. It started out as a joke but then we left it like that for over a week. Doesn't he look like he would get into all kinds of trouble? I felt like he was naughtier with this haircut.

Christmas Party with friends from our ward and neighborhood. This was the same night as Seth's work party. We were going to try to make both, but in the end we just decided to do the one. We had a great time and Taft played with our friends train table for 2 1/2 hours straight.

Ward Christmas Party. The primary did a Nativity play and it was sooooo adorable. Taft was sad he couldn't be a sheep. He'll be in nursery for a full year more, bummer! That's Taft's friend as the star. When he saw her he said "Sadie's a Starfish!!"

Taft and the second Santa Claus of the season. Obviously, he's a little unsure about Santa. I think he knows he's supposed to like Santa but isn't sure why.  He's been very consistent in telling Santa and others that he wants a helicopter for Christmas.

And Luke....well he hated Santa.

Boat Parade in San Diego Bay (sad picture I know. Doesn't look like much of  a parade does it?)

Zoo Lights at San Diego Zoo

Christmas Parade and Tree Lighting on Orange Ave. Yeah, the boys are wearing pjs. It was kinda late and cold.

Santa arrives at Ferry Landing. Taft with "Puckerman" hair cut (Glee fans?)

Christmas outfits, Sunday before Christmas. Grammie and Pop, your Christmas money bought them each a toy, but also these outfits. The first time I dressed them the exact same. I loved it!

I actually think Taft was trying to be nice here. Brothers....

Tree Lighting on Orange

More Zoo Lights

I love the small community feel of Coronado, especially for the holidays. At the beginning of December Santa rode across the bay to Coronado on a ferry. Later that night there was a light parade and Santa rode down Orange on a firetruck and lit the Christmas tree. It all had a very small, town feel and I loved it. 

I'm surprised we've fit in as much as we have because Seth's has a very busy work schedule this month. We weren't sure he was going to get Christmas off, but he does! He's been at work since yesterday around 6:30 a.m. and won't get home until about noon today, but at least he'll be home for Christmas Eve festivities and all day Christmas.  

I posted this to Facebook, but I think it's worth re-writing here. Yesterday while baking cookies: 

Taft: "What are you making Mom?"

Me: "Cookies!"

Taft: "OH! I LOVE cookies!"

Me: "I'm making some for Santa because he's coming TOMORROW night!"

Taft: "Ah man, I don't WIKE Santa Cwaus ANY. MORE."

(eats a cookie)

Taft: "I don't WIKE Santa Cwaus."

He also went on to say that he didn't like reindeer, decorations, or presents. Then, he broke a snow globe on the kitchen floor (on accident). I don't know if Taft is really advanced for his age and knows the Santa thing is just smoke and mirrors, or if he's the Grinch. 

Despite the warm-ish weather, lack of snow, and presence of palm trees, it does feel like Christmas. I'm so excited for Christmas morning. Santa told me what he's giving Taft and I think he's going to loooove it.

Also, I love that Christmas is on a Sunday. I'm really looking forward to hearing the story of the Savior's birth and singing Christmas hymns. It's such a better way to spend Christmas as opposed to staying in pajamas until 4 and eating nothing but chocolate and cinnamon rolls all day.

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas! 

Yukie is an 11 monther

Yukie is what we call him now. Not yucky, yukie. Like Lukie but with a Y. That's what Taft calls him and  now we do too. Yukie finally had too teeth cut through the gum. I was starting to worry that he didn't have any teeth in his mouth.  He's starting to cruise along furniture a bit, will take steps while holding his hands, can regular crawl, but still prefers his super speedy army crawl. He loves to climb the stairs at the playground. He's becoming more interested in things Taft is doing. It's kind of a struggle because Luke is too little to understand to not take things from others and Taft is just learning how to share. There's a lot of crying going on at our house. Although I feel like just in the past week they are starting to play more and more together and Lukie has been crying less.  Lukie no longer eats baby food and seriously likes just about everything we give him. The only things he hasn't really liked are animal crackers and these baby arrowroot cookie things...so maybe he didn't inherit my sweet tooth? He still wakes up multiple times at night but we haven't really tried anything to get him to stop. I'm hoping when we make the switch to cow's milk and a bottle later this month that we can kick this habit. He doesn't love being held by other people. I think he's more of a mama's boy, but he's showing more interest in Seth.  Lukie loves bath time and had fun splashing in the baby pool in Palm Springs. Lukie still has his moments, but he's pretty good at going with the flow. I guess he has to because Taft is still running the show around here. Lukie is babbling more and it's starting to sound more like he's talking. It's pretty cute. I'm so sad this baby year is almost over! Although, I am looking forward for my two boys to be able to start playing together more and more.

Herway Sibling Christmas Thing

Last year Seth's siblings decided that instead of doing the usual Christmas gift exchange, that we'd pool the money that would be spent on each other to help provide a better Christmas to someone in need. Seth's older brother and his family were in charge of overseeing how the money was spent last year and this year it was our turn. I'm blogging about it so the Herway's can hear/read about what we did with it this year.

Originally, I wanted to spend the money to dinners to give to the homeless. San Diego, as you've probably heard, has a crazy huge homeless population. I envisioned us making a delicious homemade meal, boxing it up in individual sized aluminum take-out containers (like Cafe Rio) and taking them downtown and passing them out. I ran this idea by a friend to see if she thought it was stupid/unsafe to walk around downtown passing out food with little kids in tow. She told me that a couple of years ago some people either got arrested or fined for giving homemade food to the homeless. Apparently it's against the law! That's one of the dumbest things I've heard in my life.

We then got in touch with the Relief Society president in our ward to see if there was a family in our ward we could help out. Maybe provide food for a Christmas meal or something. Our ward takes in a pretty poor area and there are a lot of needy families. She told us our ward just likes to donate gift cards to the families and they can get what they need.

I looked for some other ideas and eventually settled on buying gifts for families staying at the YWCA. In addition to other programs which focus efforts on eliminating racism and empowering women the YWCA provides a Women and Children's center for victims of domestic violence. They also provide housing for homeless families when available. By the time I called the center most of the women and children had received everything they had requested but the YWCA said they were still in need of items for the fathers.

I think Seth and Taft look so much alike in this picture

The boys were a huge help

Taft thought all the dads might want their own Padres pillow pet

And Spiderman mask

And Lukie stayed happy devouring a box of chocolate Teddy Grahams

Monday night for FHE we headed to the temple to see the Christmas lights and then went to Target to pick out some things for the YWCA. Their list also highly recommended gift cards...but that's boring. We picked out a few other things on the list: NFL/MLB/NBA t-shirts, socks, and hair clippers. We also bought 4 gift cards. 2 for the YWCA and 2 for us. Just kidding, the other 2 were for families from our ward.

Tuesday the little boys and I dropped off the things at the YWCA. Tonight is our ward Christmas party and we'll turn in the other gift cards then.

When I was younger my family helped provide some Christmas gifts for a family staying at the homeless shelter in Salt Lake. We got to meet the family we bought the gifts for. The family was just a mom, a young boy, and a baby girl. I remember we bought the baby girl a dress from babyGap and I thought it was the cutest. I remember walking back to the room they stayed in. I probably was only 9 or 10 at the time and I still remember it. I wish we could have met the people we were able to help this Christmas. I'm glad we've started this tradition! Jake and Mel, you're up next!