til New Year's

I have to show what Faith gave Tony and I for Christmas. She loves to draw and made these gifts as well as the gift boxes! On the left is mine: a doggie & kitty tree ornament; in the middle was for both Tony & I: a Christmas tree picture in a frame with a stand on the back; and Tony's on the right: a Pittsburgh Steeler Christmas stocking tree ornament. We loved them!

This is what she made at school: a matted picture with her handprint on it. On the left is the gift wrapping which she got at school, but colored, cut and assembled at home (I guess they didn't have enough time for it) by herself so it would be a surprise. It sure was fancy!!




I also had to post the cute card she gave us.
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She wrote the message herself. It reads (with just a tiny bit of spelling correction), "Roses are red, violets are blue, you did lots of things good. Merry Christmas Mom and Dad!" Don't you love it :D

The day after Christmas, my mom & dad came over to see what the kids had gotten from Santa, us & Tony's family. Grandma loved the choo-choo table.



My dad took this pic of Faith hiding out in the "dinosaur habitat" they'd given Christian.




He also took this cute one of Buddy. I love when he does this little grin that you can see his adorable dimples!

Earlier that morning, Faith found that Santa had brought another gift! A note that said he'd found it in the bottom of his bag and had missed brining it to us the night before. It was a Wii!! (I think maybe Santa just knew it would be too hard to leave it to visit family, so getting it the next day would be better.)

We all played a bunch, but Faith and Tony litteraly played all day!



Christian, having jealously confiscated a pink, fuzzy gift of Faith's, conks out after playing with all of his new stuff and repeated attempts to master the Wii remote.

On Monday the 29th, we headed over to Lucky Buffet for some Chinese. The kids ate some actual food, but really had a blast with jello and straws.
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Anyone else remember doing this at school lunch in elementary?

We had a New Year's Eve party at our house when Tony's dad got sick and they postponed theirs. My mom & dad came for a few hours, Tammy was there, and Tina & Zach came over a bit later on. I made clam chowder and we had our chocolate fountain going.
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We had a fun time, but Christian didn't make it to midnight!




Faith and Zach spent most of the evening on the Wii, while the adults played Catchphrase. Welcome to 2009!!





New Year's day we just hung out and relaxed. I thought it was about time for another bubble beard pic!
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Woo hoo--I'm less than two months behind now!

Christmas Day

After opening stuff at home, we headed over to Ogden to swap gifts with my parents. This, I must tell you, is a VERY unbalanced swap. My mom & dad spoil us rotten and go way overboard with stuff for the kids. Christian, throwing a fit because he was unwilling to leave his train table, refused to get dressed for the day and was still in his pajamas. But, I guess it was an extremely comfortable gift unwrapping ensemble and didn't hurt anyone.

Here's Grandma Tesch on the couch with us.

It was hilarious to watch Christian navigate this huge box through the crowd and across the family room. It was his and he wanted to open it in his spot!

Inside was this awesome Black & Decker play work bench with tools.

Faith is opening some fabulous costume jewelry from my mom. Love those big girl dress up items!

Here is Celeste with what Santa brought their family--a Shih Tzu puppy named Tiff! I couldn't get enough of that puppy's puppy breath.

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After several hours of fun with my family, we headed over to Tony's parents.

They also completely spoil us! The mountain of gifts is a sight to behold over there. Lana also puts on an awesome Christmas day snack spread that's out of this world!

Christian is showing his Pa one of his favorite gifts of the day, a Mickey shirt (which he has worn 2-3 times per week since!).

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Faith, Zach and Christian each got one of these giant gifts. They turned out to be . . . new luggage!

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Faith's old little princess wheeled case is now too tiny to hold her overnight gear and too short for

her to comfortably manouver, so Lana set these kids up. I can't believe I didn't get pics of them, but Faith's are hot pink with black piping (a four piece set) and Christian got a wheeled duffel which is actually in the shape of Thomas the train. They're all set for trips, Park City, and sleepovers now!

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They each got cute outfits from the grandparents and from Tammy.

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Here's a chunk of Tina's family (clockwise starting at 11 o'clock): Chelsea, Tyler, Tina & Brian.

Christian didn't know how to pedal or steer when he first got this rad new trike, but he's awesome at it now!

By the end of the day, the kids were nearly comotose and in a snuggly high from all the present opening. Here Faith nestles against Tam while playing with her WowWee Alive Lion Cub that she got from my mom. We had an amazing Christmas and loved getting to spend time with so much of our family!

Christmas Eve & early Christmas morning

Not a good week last week! Christian threw up throughout two nights starting Tuesday at 3 a.m. and still felt sick as of yesterday, I got the yuck on Friday (but at least I wasn't sick while having to care for a cranky two-year-old and doing a bazillion loads of laundry), and Tony got sick on Saturday. Faith seems to have escaped the wrath of this stomach virus, let's hope I don't jinx her now!!!! On to catching up my journal/blog:

We spent Christmas Eve at my mom & dad's and first enjoyed some amazing hors d'oeuvres (spinach dip, crab rounds, barbeque bacon wrapped chestnuts, etc.) and a wonderful dinner. Afterward, we did our anual nativity with Sarah's gorgeous homemade costumes.

Alaura was Mary at the beginning, and aparently either was pretending to be "great with child" or thought that the wrap style of the dress conveniently doubled as a baby sling. Celeste is on the far left being an ever-vigilant shepherd.

At this point, Faith was an angel.

When it was time for the Wise Men to show, everyone switched costumes and Faith then got the coveted role of Mary.

Alaura's showing her angelic side & Noah looks pretty pleased with himself as a Wise Man here. Grandpa Quinn was even up to coming which was a really neat surprise.

Christian was absent from these festivities as he was sound asleep during the whole thing!

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A few days before when I teasingly asked Eric what he was going to do for the (non-existant) talent portion of the night, he said he didn't have anything planned, but my mom then proceeded to talk him into breaking out his magic tricks from back in the day. It's been a long while since he'd done them, but you couldn't even tell--they were awesome!! He first astounded us with his amazing card tricks

and then some other magic (he's doing a floating hankie trick here). The kids really enjoyed the show, too.

When we got home, the kids got to open one present.

Surprise!!! Jammies!!! Actually, after hugging them so cute, Christian tossed his aside and grumbled, "Clothes," obviously dissappointed. It's so hard to wait for Christmas day with all of the anticipation of new toys!

The kids tossed reindeer food out on the grass to prepare for their visit. Thank you to the Hustons and Parkinsons for the fun gift of it. Having two bags worked out perfectly for us!!!

When Faith set out the cookies and milk, Christian seemed really interested. He helped me tuck Faith in and then started saying "Ho-ho come, sky." I said, "Yep, Santa's going to come in the sky tonight!" He kept saying, "NO! Ho-ho come, sky!!!" I finally came the the realization that what he was actually saying was, "Ho-ho come, scary!" Christian was my two-year-old who was excited to sit on Santa's lap and everything! I guess seeing those snacks set out made it sink in that some big guy with crazy clothes and a bushy beard was coming into our house and around him as he slept, and it was just too much for him! He absolutely wouldn't go to sleep in his crib, so I let him fall asleep in our bed. The first time I tried to move him back to his crib, he was so jumpy that he woke up screaming in terror, "Ho-ho here?!!!"

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The next morning Faith woke up at five or so and finally Tony got up with her. He let her look in her stocking while he made us all a bacon and egg breakfast! When Christian woke up, all fear was forgotten when he saw what Santa had brought. He got this awesome, gigantic train table!

Then he dug every last thing out of his stocking.

The kids then opened thier gifts from us.

Here is Faith with her hot pink MP3 player from Santa. Luckily, Santa must have known early on that she wanted this color even though she forgot to tell him, because when we were looking for a similar one to give Tammy, we found that they were sold out all across the United States!

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We didn't forget the pets, either!

It was a wonderful Christmas morning . . . but that was just the beginning of our day!!!!

Our family has grown by four feet :)

FINALLY!!!! I'm getting around to posting our baby announcement. This is the new addition to the Braegger family. We adopted him from the Ogden Animal Shelter and brought him home on January 26th, named him Dusty and given him the honorary birthday of November 1st. He is very playful and also very loving, but gets scared and hides when we have guests over. He tries to play with Crumpet, but since she's old and grouchy she either ignores him or snarls. These pictures were all taken January 26-30, so I'm already really behind and need to get some new pics of him posted--he's already nearly doubled in size! (I also need to finish getting the rest of our Christmas pictures up and what's happened since then. I promise to work on it!)

Enjoy! Baby Dusty:

And a little video of him playing with his stuffed mouse:

One more Christmas card!

We got one more adorable Christmas card, and I forgot to post it!!! Well, here it is: Liz & Matt with their darling twins. Doesn't get much cuter than that!