Christmas Morning

It's funny how as a kid we couldn't wait for Christmas morning..............

I remember being so excited when I went to bed that I couldn't sleep. It seemed like it took me forever to actually fall asleep. Then when it was 4:00AM, my eyes would spring open --you know the feeling, like when you realize you've slept longer than you should have and now you're late for work--. My little body must have instinctively known that Christmas morning had finally come at last; Santa had read my Christmas wish list; My brother's and mine efforts to behave all month long were going to pay off!

We would excitedly run into our parent's room and wake them up. As a kid I was always amazed at how tired my parent's were Christmas morning. I mean, we could hardly contain ourselves. After all, it's Christmas MORNING mom and dad.... can't you wake up early once?!? Later I understood the meaning of WHY they were so tired...... Oh the joy we will have when our kids do the same thing we did to our parents.

When we were younger my mom would try to make us open one gift at a time so everyone could see.... but this proved to be pretty difficult because I'm quite positive that my brother's were never excited to watch me open my The Littlest Pet Shop present. As we got older this concept was more feasible.

The Christmas morning's came and went... each year our parent's and Santa were pretty generous to us (probably more than they should have been.) When we were older the Christmas morning's were a little less magical and the enthusiasm to rise at 4:00AM soon drifted to 10:00AM.

My most favorite part about Christmas now is being together as a family. I was so glad that we got to spend Christmas here at my parent's house.... it's not too frequent that we get to see them and so it's been nice to be here with them for this favorite holiday season.

Christmas morning was not rushed this year.... we all got up around 8:00AM and then ate some breakfast. After everyone had a chance to eat we opened presents.

This was Quincy's (and Tyler's) big present:

It was a Fisher's Price children's basketball hoop!

I knew about this present because my parent's told me I had to tell Tyler's parents that they were getting it, so Quincy wouldn't end up with 2 basketball hoops! I think Tyler really liked it... probably a little more than Quincy did.

After lots of work or effort putting it together, of course -- without reading the instructions-- Quincy was finally able to play some ball!

Much of the remainder of our Christmas morning was pretty low key. Tyler looks pretty tired in this picture:

Quincy enjoyed his stacking rings.....

We all received everything that we needed, thanks to my wonderful parents. I don't think we could have had a nicer Christmas.

Thanks Mom and Dad..... errr, I mean Thanks Grammie and Grandpa! :)

Hopefully the rest of you had a very Merry Christmas!

Michael Jackson takes Vancouver by Surprise...as told by Grammie

Some dude was driving down our street during the "ARCTIC BLAST", slid off the road a bit and took out the mailbox! Yikes! He was kind enough to stop, knock on the door and at least tell us.

He gave us his name, address and phone numbers. Guess what his name was????

**Michael Jackson!**
Ha ha! I hope he was telling the truth!

Mailcarriers won't deliver to downed boxes so off to Home Depot we went to find a new one.

After lots of consideration we determined this one would do just fine.

I'm pretty sure Quincy was the ONLY kid in the store. Everyone was ewwing and ahhing over him. I can't say I blame them. He *IS* pretty dang cute!

But then again, I AM his Grammie.

Y

I love you Quincy!
YYYYY

Bad Santa?

Last night for Christmas eve my dad dressed up in a Santa suit to go over to the Pickett's house to surprise all the little kids. Apparently it went pretty well, with Savannah being in the only one who was a little upset by the sight of Santa. ---- I have to admit, it wasn't the best of Santa suits---After he was finished visiting everyone at the Pickett's he came to our house to surprise Quincy. When he came in he looked like this:

And this was Quincy's reaction:

Notice that there are no tears, but he shows no signs of letting Santa get any closer than he already is.

After much persuasion, we were able to put Quincy on Santa's lap for a picture... I think it turned out pretty well.

This was the first attempt at a picture with Santa..... Quincy's looking a little apprehensive:

When Santa "left" we read the Christmas story from the bible and then Quincy opened one present. This took some effort to get him to focus long enough on opening the present instead of just playing with the wrapping paper....

It's new Pajamas!

Merry Christma everyone!

Quincy Bear..........................

Quincy loves his Grammie!

He loves his Grandpa Loren too!

He was helping Grandpa fix the lightbulb.

This was one of the new shirts Quincy got from Grammie and grandpa

Games anyone?

What do we do when everyone gets together?


Play games of course!


We played dueces (a game Tyler taught us to play):


Taboo, a favorite of mine:


And we even played Speak it Not. We weren't so good at this game.... it's basically the Morman version of Taboo..... only it was WAAAY harder since they had people's names. How do you describe Zorom without saying, Laban, Nephi, Plates, Jerusalem etc? It was tough, but we had fun. I suppose if you really studied your scriptures this would have been easier, we didn't know who several of the people were.

What games are household staples in you guys' homes?

I got the cookie fever....

On Tuesday afternoon my mom and I decided to make a bunch of cookies. In my parent's house my snickerdoodles are coveted..... once made they are easily devoured in 24 hours. I doubled the batch and made about 100 snickerdoodles. My mom also made a bunch of sugar cookies.... altogether we had quite a cookie bake off.

We told all the boys that they couldn't eat any of the cookies until we were all finished baking and decorating. It was killing them to wait! I like to bake and love to make cookies.... but the thing I hate the most when I come home to bake cookies is that I can't even enjoy all the hard work I've done to make them. The boys are always eating from the bowl of dough and picking off cookies as soon as they're out of the oven. By the time I finished there are maybe 10 cookies left... after I've made 50. This time we told them they would just have to wait.

Scott thought that decorating the sugar cookies with the colored icing would be a piece of cake... he was wrong.

Mom and I with a picture of all our hard work.

MMMMMmmmmMMMMMMmmmmm..........................

Don't they look so yummy?

Family fun.....

Monday we decided that we should get out of the house after being trapped inside for the weekend. On Sunday, church was canceled because of all the snow, which was sort of sad since it was the sunday before Christmas and all. My mom had to work for a couple of hours and after we dropped her off we did a little shopping. We had to make a return at Kohls and Quincy had fun riding around in the cart like this:

Later that night we stopped by the Pickett's house. There Quincy met lots of friends. He did pretty well will all the other kids, I mean he was nice and even shared some of the toys with Savannah:

I have to say, Savannah is the happiest baby! She was quite content running around in her jammies with this baby doll and stroller....

I think she needs a few lessons on baby safety though, check out the baby doll. :o)

Karleigh shared some of her toys with Quincy too....

Tuesday we went with all the boys to watch the annual Pickett vs. Lindquist's basketball game at the church. Quincy, Grammie, and I cheered from the sidelines.

This is how Quincy spent most of the game watching on this kid sized chair from the sidelines. He even would clap when they made baskets. It was cute!

Just like dad:

Look at my boys, twins in their camo army pants....

The performer:

Around the Lindquist home Quincy has been the entertainment.....here is some proof of his work:

There's no fun like snow fun!

Today it snowed another couple of inches.... and it was the perfect kind of snow for making a snowman. My dad decided that he would make a snowman for Quincy. All day Quincy was so excited to see this snowman. He would run into the dining room and say "no man",which of course, is snowman. Even during dinner he would look over every couple of minutes to make sure the snowman was still there. It was really cute.

Tyler and Kati after playing in the snow--- no make up and bed head, nice huh?

This is a picture I took Sunday of my parent's front deck, at the time there were 14 inches of snow... now there are at least 16 inches! Crazy!!

My brothers--- Scott and Karter:

My parent's back yard..... it's insane how much snow is everywhere! It never snows like this.

Scott, Tyler, and Quincy deciding the best way to sled down the hill:

Notice the frozen red apples still on the tree:

Quincy was able to sled down the hill a couple of times by himself. He was so bundled up that his little arm was frozen in this position:

My parent's front yard:

Tyler and Kati:

Quincy going for a sled ride:

Tyler and Quincy going for their first sled ride down the hill:

Quincy and Grandpa:

We had so much fun playing in the snow.... it looks like we'll have more for a while longer since the snow doesn't seem to be going anywhere.