Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve Traditional dinner with Falers and Nativity reenactment. Callie thought that the Angel needed a baby angel to accompany her. We had a small group this year because Corinne's family went to Idaho for the holidays. 

We crashed the Huber's Christmas Eve too! And miraculously got a family picture with EVERYONE! I think the last time they had one of these was when Mike got home from his mission?!?! I love this crazy family but they have got to work on their phobia of the camera! lol Seriously, they never take pictures! I think this one turned out great!

Santa came! (I never did finish decorating my poor tree! Oh well)

The new Family pet:

After much deliberation we decided to purchase a Bearded Dragon. I'm a little nervous that we might have bit off a little more than we can chew. This little guy as adorable as he is, can be a little high maintenance. He needs to live in a hot temp environment (which means he requires expensive equipment), has a high protein diet including live crickets, and he will grow as big as 2 feet long. Mason named him within minutes! 

Rocky

  He is very "tame" let's you hold him like this for long periods of time. The perfect reptile for little kids.

After a little research I learned you need to have a separate home for the crickets. You also need to buy cricket food and water (not just water it's called "cricket quencher" a gel you feed to them to prevent cricket drownings. If you give them just water they are so dumb they will crawl in the water and drown).

I've even learned to "dust" the crickets with vitamins and calcium that Rocky needs.

I still can't believe that we own a pet DRAGON!  

Mason, Mason, Mason

Mason came home from school with this card. I was shocked and sad to admit he never said anything to me about this Jimmy kid. I didn't want to make a big of a deal of the situation, but curiosity got to me. When I asked Mason he just shrugged his shoulders and not give me any concrete answers. So I turned to Mason's cousins (he rides the bus with my sister Maddy's kids). I love this because I feel like they have his back and he's not alone on the bus. Corbin was so fun to discuss this matter with, he read the card and agreed that Jimmy is a punk and wasn't very nice to Mason. He went on to explain that Jimmy is mean to other kids too and even made another kid cry on the bus. To quote Corbin "But Mason is really tough and never cried." (The look on Masons face was priceless as Corbin is relaying these events! His proud smile was so adorable.) I'm still not really sure the events that led up to this apology note but I've accepted the fact that I can't micromanage everything in Mason's life.

Mason's personality is very fun, I love how "tough" he is emotionally. Things just roll right off of him, he shrugs and keeps going. I admire this a lot about him. He is like this when he gets sick as well. In fact Ron and I were just discussing how Mason never gets sick and when he does you rarely know it, he handles it like a champ. I get to help in Mason's class 2 times a month. He really likes his teacher Ms. Rother, for the most part I think Mason is a good student. He makes friends very easily and is very social. In fact being social is what gets him in trouble. His weekly progress reports state his only issue is his socializing during class. Oops. He MAY have gotten that from me.

This progress report made me laugh out loud! This kid cracks me up!

Family pictures!

We had our family pictures taken a month ago. But I havn't posted about it because to be honest that day was just not a good one. Picture day is always stressful as it is but this year was particularly bad. We just had some wardrobe malfunctions and differences of opinions. I'm leaving it at that! Despite our last minute changes and being late to our own photo shoot, I think we got some decent pictures. I love the pictures with just the kids in them. Our photographer Mele is amazing!