It's just not quite the same being back in Boise

Our trip home to Boise was less eventful than the trip to Vancouver. This, of course, was a blessing. The only downside to our trip home, besides having to leave Vancouver, was that poor little Quincy had developed quite the cold. He had a lovely snotty nose, and a beautiful wheezing cough. I felt so bad for him.


Thankfully we had lots of toys and snacks for the long trip. This is how Quincy spent the majority of our trip.................

..............Playing with his magic doodle and throwing all his toys across the back seat. When he had used the remainder of his energy throwing toys around our car he passed out like this:

All in all, Quincy was quite the trooper during our long trek home. He only got frustrated the last hour; The times he did start to cry he could hardly squeak with his scratchy little voice and so his whimpers were much more bearable.

Usually when we come home from our "vacations" we end up saying "Man, I think we need another vacation. It's nice to go, but it's always good to be home." It is nice to be home, but I think this time I was a little sad to be back. I love Christmas time it's always so pretty. Plus my mom has all these beautiful Christmas decorations:

In fact, growing up my mom always started putting up Christmas decorations well before Christmas. We always used to give her a hard time about it, but I find that as I've gotten older, I wish I had some, or any, Christmas decorations to put up.

Tyler and I never had decorations after we were first married because we were college students. Who had the room or space to hall around Christmas trees and breakable ornaments? Tyler always convinced me it wasn't such a big deal that we didn't have any Christmas decorations because we never spent Christmas at home. His argument was: Why buy Christmas decorations that we won't enjoy because we're spending Christmas somewhere else?

This year I was talking to my mom about it before Christmas. I told her I sorta wished we had some stuff to put up, but it's hard to justify spending the money on things we will only use once a year. She hinted that perhaps Santa could help us out.

Well, Santa did just fine.... he managed to get us a 7ft. artificial Christmas tree 75% off for a whopping $12.50! What a bargain shopper that Santa is. Santa also was able to help us by purchasing some beautiful ornaments for our tree. He even found us some pretty silver stockings. Santa did such a wonderful job getting our Christmas decor started. I decided that I wasn't going to take no for an answer from Tyler. On Friday we went shopping and hit up Target's 75% off Christmas Sale.

Taking my mom's advice, I had already searched Target's website to see what ornaments I wanted. When I knew what I wanted it was all downhill... all I had to do was wait until the 75% off sale came. I was very nervous that all the ornaments would be gone and that I'd only be able find bits and pieces of things.... boy was I wrong. I found every single ornament that I wanted and then some. We even got some white lights for the tree for .59 cents a box!! I made Tyler buy 10, which he wasn't too happy about.... Later he agreed that it wasn't so bad only paying .59 cents.

All in all I spent just barely over $20.00 and got well over 300 ornaments.... amazing wouldn't you say? It was worth the wait. I was so happy after we got home. It took everything in me to resist the urge to rip open our tree and decorate it. Tyler convinced me that it will be that much more exciting when next year's Christmas comes. I agree..... It will be magical.

As you can see, we're going to for an icy pale blue and silver Christmas decor theme.

Next year's conquest will be getting some nice dishes and silverware..... like this. My mom has beautiful china.

I am so thankful that Santa helped us out with our Christmas decorations....

I'm also thankful that we could spend Christmas with my family. It's hard living far away from them.... I mean, I know it could be worse, we could live in China, or Boston, or somewhere far far away, but sometimes Boise is far enough. It's also nice that all my brother's are still home around the holidays.

Even though there are times that my brothers would much rather hang out with their "cool" high school friends than their older sister, brother in-law, and nephew... it's nice to hang out together.

I miss being around my mom. It's nice having someone who understands exactly what I mean without having to explain it. My dad's pretty cool too.... although he teases a lot. Wednesday before New Year's the missionaries in my parent's ward came to their house in need of some hair cuts. I agreed to cut their hair free of charge, after all we needed some blessings and hopefully when my son is on a mission someone will be so kind to him. During the whole haircutting process my dad was teasing the Elder's about how bad their haircuts were looking. One of the Elder's name was Elder Prettyman (I thought his name sounded bogus like a porn stars name, or some weather man's name or something). I bet he got a lot of crap growing up with a last name like Prettyman.

Needless to say, this Elder was a little reluctant about letting some strange girl he'd never met, with no haircutting training, cut his hair. It didn't turn out bad.... although I accidentally nicked the back of his neck with the haircutting clippers, which I've NEVER done before! I felt really bad about that. This Elder had only been out four months and already was being relentlessly teased by my dad. Anyone who knows my dad, just puts up with it. Hopefully the experience wasn't too traumatic for Elder Prettyman.

Every family is a little nuts... that's why it's so refreshing to be around my family. It's nice to know you're not the only weird ones. Take Quincy for instance.... in my parent's home wearing metal bowls on your head is perfectly normal.

It is also perfectly acceptable to be yourself, in Quincy's case this means being a complete spaz!

If you don't want to see how crazy they are then you can look the other way............This is what Tyler has decided to do.

***Okay, just kidding, this was taken Christmas morning when Tyler wasn't supposed to be peeking at Quincy's (And his) basketball hoop which wasn't wrapped. He was told to advert his eyes.

At my parent's house it's not all chaos and weirdo's. Sometimes we do fun things.... like eating pumpkin pie.

Or hanging out with grandpa on the floor.

(***I thought this picture was cute because Quincy grabbed his own pillow and put it down on the floor to lay next to grandpa without any coaxing from us.)

Tyler and I look pretty normal here... don't we?

Quincy loves being at my parent's house because he can always find a comfy pillow to chill out on.

But when it becomes to much to look at, I just put this on:

This is one of my favorite gifts that Tyler got me. I'm such a light sleeper and it is by FAR the best sleep mask ever! Tyler turned on the light one night to find his phone and I didn't even flinch because I was still laying in the dark with my sleep mask!

If the weirdos in our house aren't enough there are always more at Walmart.... this is where Quincy found this cool tricycle.

And speaking of weirdos.... this is a great picture of Uncle Kar kar (as Quincy puts it). The rest of us call him Uncle Karter.

This is a pretty classy picture of another weirdo in the Lindquist home, Uncle Scott. Doesn't he look like trouble?

In Grammie and Grandpa's home it s perfectly acceptable to walk around with your buns hanging out... well only if your name is Quincy.

Okay, but seriously Quincy likes his potty chair. He sits on it all the time with his pants on, and even carries it around the house. Now if only we could talk him into sitting on it with his bare bum. This is what Tyler was trying to do in the picture below:

See how well the potty pep talk went? Notice that he is clinging to Tyler's legs for dear life.... Please don't make me touch my bare bum to the potty dad!

Since we've been home Quincy's shown more interest in sitting on his potty. He even took the initiative to sit on it with dad in the bathroom.

I guess you could call it a group poop. :)

***Just kiddin, they're both wearing pants... well Quincy has a diaper on.

Oh, how our little boy is growing up. And speaking of growing up...................

I had to help Tyler in primary because his teaching companion was gone. Lets just say that the class was a handful, mostly because the first of the year with new teacher's is pretty hard on the kids.... especially Tyler's class because they were sunbeams last year. Since the kids demanded that we both be hands on, I put Quincy in Nursery. I felt bad at first because he'll be in Nursery in 6 more Sundays..... but they only had two kids in there, this made me feel better. I came to get him at the end of sharing time and he was doing so good! It's crazy to see him in Nursery.... what happened to my sweet little helpless baby boy? He's getting so grown up.

Even though I took a little detour from what I was talking about... I just wanted to let my family know that we love spending time with them, even if they're all wierd. :o) HA!

*****Oh and before I forget.... A note to Ms. Jennifer P.

Liam is so funny. He was the best kid in class and knew all the right answers. He was being such a good example to the other boys..... it cracked me up that he gave us specific directions on how to make kool aide. :o) So you may not make it to church on time... so what, your kids are great!