365 Days Until Christmas

Here is Will doing his bit in the little Christmas program at our Church Christmas breakfast. He was supposed to sing jingle bells...and he had been singing it all week at home...but, of course, once on stage he just wanted to shake the bells and didn't sing at all. He got to see Santa too, but he was not about to get on his lap. He didn't go into hysterics like last year, however.

Christmas is over! It is kind of sad...all that work and anticipation and it only lasts for 1 day. I will back up a bit and catch up before I talk about Christmas.

We went to Zoo Lights at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City a week before Christmas. We got our friends Rich and Teresa and their little boy Max to go with us. Unfortunately it was fuh-reezing! And when the website warned that "you may not be able to see all of the animals because they are not active at night"...what they really meant was "you will be lucky if you see ANY animals." We saw a bear and a tiger and the tail of a kangaroo rat. It also didn't occur to me that the zoo would have no lighting besides the Christmas lights (hence the name "Zoo Lights"). It was dark...and did I mention cold? It was kind of a bust. Sorry Zoo but it was. At any rate we took some pictures.
In this one you can look closely at the two dots of light above Bryce's head and maybe tell that there was a tiger sitting on the overpass thing above us.
We got a "new to us" entertainment center. It's nice that this one has a compartment to put Will away.

Will wanted to hold Sawyer the other day. He hasn't wanted to hold him since shortly after he was born, but the other day all of the sudden he was desperate to hold him so I took some pictures of the two of them. Of course, after about 30 seconds Will decided it was more fun to suddenly let go of Sawyer and watch him face plant into the carpet so we had to take the baby away. I'm not sure why they are both naked...it could have been any number of reasons. Will keeps a close eye on Sawyer these days. If he sees Sawyer put anything near his mouth he freaks out. For instance, if Sawyer sucks on his hand Will runs over and grabs Sawyer's hand and pulls it out of his mouth and says "Don't put your hands in your mouth!" Or if Sawyer is sucking on a blanket or a toy Will will go yank it out of his mouth and yell "Don't put that in your mouth. It's disgusting!" I'm not sure why he is so concerned lately, but it is kind of obnoxious because Sawyer is perfectly content to sit there and suck on a blanket until Will starts messing with him.
Will helped me decorate the tree (which we didn't buy until the Tuesday before Christmas and didn't decorate until Thursday). He didn't quite catch on to the idea of using hooks to hang up ornaments...he kept trying to make them stay by just placing them on the branches. And he didn't like them to be spread out around the tree--he only liked them in big clusters.

Will had quite a Christmas. He came downstairs in the morning announcing "Santa's here! Santa's here!" The first thing he saw under the tree was the basketball hoop and he said "Whoa basketball!" Then he looked around and said "There are cars in some of these presents!" He grabbed the nearest package and said "Maybe there are cars in this box!" He was quite confident that Santa had left him some cars since that is all he has been asking for over the last few months. He did indeed get some cars and spent the entire rest of the day playing with them except for a few short breaks when he played basketball instead. He opened his first present around 9 a.m. and he played with his toys until 8:30 p.m. He didn't have any breakfast or lunch besides some chocolates out of his stocking and we finally strapped him down at the dinner table and got him to eat a roll, but other than that he was busy with his new toys all day. He didn't ask for any t.v. or anything. By 8:30 he was totally exhausted. I put him in bed (with his new cars right next to him of course) and he was asleep within 30 seconds I think. Today I think he was still recovering. He came down this morning and the first thing he said was "Look at all these toys! Merry Christmas!" He has been kind of sleepy today and mostly wanted to lounge on the couch and watch his cartoons.