Pretty Christmas Dress

Brodi was not too happy about getting ready for church today. We were given a cute red velvet dress and thought today the Sunday before Christmas would be the perfect time to wear it. Brodi for whatever reason did not agree. The second we put it on she started protesting and tried pulling it off. We tried another dress with the same effect. I think she knows that when she is put in nice clothes it can't mean we are doing something super fun. Since she didn't want the other dress either we decided to be mean parents and just make her wear the Christmas dress, poor dear.

I sometimes feel like this when I have to wear nice clothes too. (The table and chairs are upside down to keep her from climbing on them.)

Getting her hair done didn't help either.

Here is proof that she didn't cry all day, just until we got to church. She was awfully glad to get the tights off, and I can't say that I blame her.

Like Father like son

Since Sam was a tiny baby we have been told by everyone the uncanny resemblance of BJ and Sam. One of our favorites was when we were in a store when Sam was probably 4 months old and a total stranger came up to BJ and said, "Wow, you sure can tell who's Daddy that baby has, can't you?!" We had no reply. I was sorting through some of our pictures and happened to notice how Sam is now imitating BJ's big cheesy smile in pictures, come on, you know the one. If you don't know it I'll give you an example. Other than Sam's beautiful brown eyes inherited from his birthfather, do you notice the resemblance?

"Mom...I'm taking a shower!"

Wow you can see all the way down to his uvula!

Going on the train at the zoo, SO EXCITING!!!

Now where would he have learned this smile from? Any guesses?

So thrilled about matching pajamas

One of the Watkins traditions is to get matching pajamas to wear for Christmas. The BJ and Shannon spin on it this year is to let everyone wear their pajamas all December (because of course they were Black Friday finds) so that you aren't fashionably out of season in your sleep wear all winter, except of course for Christmas Eve night. Also they both really needed new pajamas. I tried my hardest to get just one picture in which they were both looking at me, possibly smiling, or at least not crying. As you can tell it was not an easy feat and I'm not sure I ever accomplished my task.

Here we have Sam elbowing Brodi to get her off of the chair. Note the thumb never leaves the mouth.

Now Sam's looking but Brodi isn't, and tears are going to happen in just a few moments when Brodi realizes that her feet are stuck through the back of the chair.
New location. However, Brodi is trying to escape.

New angle, new chairs, both looking at me, it could be a winner, but something just isn't quite right.

Now this picture captures the true feeling of this photo shoot, you can just tell how trilled they both are by me taking pictures. I almost get a sence of the scene in the Christmas Story when Ralphie has to show his new pajamas. Here's the winner!

Temple lights

Here are a couple of pictures of us at the Mesa Temple lights.

This is our little Jacob Marley from the Christmas Carol. Brodi found a couple of long stands of beaded tree garland. She insisted on wearing them around her neck like a necklace, but she kept on stepping on the beads, hurting her feet, then tripping, but did not want to give them up. This is after we saved her from the longer stands. She reminded us of Jacob Marley carrying around his chains.


Here is Brodi at the temple lights.

Here we all are.

Sam checking out the lights in his warm coat.

Zoo lights

To start out our Thanksgiving vacation we took advantage of the zoo members preview of Zoolights thinking that it wouldn't be too crowded. We were wrong. Apparently there are a lot of zoo members and a lot of them had the same idea. It was very fun anyway.

Here is Brodi in the stroller.

Here is BJ and Sam looking at the ducks which ironically were one of Sam's favorite things that night.

Brodi, Sammy, and me.

Here is our cute family. My mom is in the background.

A Haircut

I just found this funny little video of Sam doing his hair.

Cute pictures of some cute kids.

I let Sam play the computer while I was getting ready. When I got back I found Sam like this, with the tips of his shoes just barely reaching the chair behind him. He started out in the chair, I guess this was more comfortable.


Cute Sam eating a carrot. Be amazed, he is eating a vegetable. It was a picture worthy moment.

This is how you know your kid goes to a Montessori School. At school when Sam is doing his work, he gets a work rug, does his work on it, and then this is the amazing part, puts his work back, and then rolls up the rug really tight as always tells us and puts the rug away. We will sometimes find one of our bathmats "put away". Notice how the pretty side is on the outside, very important.

Here is our clever little lad showing off his handy work. Ok so when I got him dressed that morning I couldn't find matching socks and thought oh well, no one will see that they don't match. Little did I know that I would be posting a picture of it.

Here is a picture of Brodi taking a picture of me, taking a picture of her. Such clever kids.

Computer time

So we knew that it was just a matter of time, but Sam has mastered the computer. We have to limit his computer time or else he really would be on the computer all day long. In these pictures he is navigating through starfall.com. Mind you we can leave him and he will independently play all the games. In fact last night he was playing a memory game and asked me to help after I missed a couple of matches he took control of the mouse again and finished the game. Note the complete concentration on his face, do you see those little wheels turning. This kid is going to be reading before too long. He already knows the alphabet by sight and sound, his shapes, his colors, and can count things up to 10. So, so smart Sammy.

I love his tiny hand controlling the mouse in this picture. He's gotten quite good at it already. For some reason tonight I couldn't get the mouse to work on my old laptop so I showed him how he could move the cursor with his finger on the pad or whatever you call it. He picked that up within about 5 minutes.

Halloween

Ok. So we did an awful job taking pictures for Halloween, but here they are. In our defence Sam and Brodi weren't cooperating with us very well. Sam is a knight in shining armor, however, he didn't like either his shoulder pads or his breast plate so they are not in the pictures. Brodi is princess, however she was none to happy about dressing up in her frilly dress. These pictures are of us going to our ward Trunk r Treat on Friday. We decided to give Brodi a break on Halloween and dress her up in Sam's costume last year a fluffy duck, but as I was uploading these pictures I realized that we never took a picture of her, and let's face it, it would be creul and unusual punishment for us to make her put it on again. If you really want to know what she looked like look up last October and imagine her cute little face instead of Sam's cute little face. Because she was shorter than Sam was last year she looked a little like a penguin chick rather than a duck. She was much happier in that costume and was mauled by all the little girls at our neighbor hood party, which she didn't seem to mind at all.



Here are the shoulder pads for a couple of brief seconds. He loved Halloween this year. It's awesome to have him get all of the holidays for the first time.

Nope Brodi isn't too happy at all.

Welcome home Brodi!!

This has been a big week for us. Brodi moved in with us on Thursday. We are so excited to have her here. We have all had our moments adjusting to this big change in all of our lives, but when we are all together it just feels right. A 2 year old and a 1 year old who have never had to share in their lives don't have the greatest negotiating skills believe it or not, but we will have wonderful moments when neither of us were in the room mediating between the fairness of who has what toy (Of course what ever toy the other one has is the most amazing and coolest toy in our whole house) where they are both happily playing together. Sam will come up to Brodi several times a day and give her a hug (ok true he will also go up to her several times a day and push her down, but they're siblings for heavens sake) and Brodi just thinks Sam is the coolest thing ever and fully appreciates it when he shows off for her. It is so fun to see these to bond together. It is so wonderful to have another little one in our lives to love. She is truly growing on us and our lives would just not be the same without her.

Partners in crime.

Pumpkin Patch

Sam and Brodi looking at the baby chicks at the pumpkin patch

My little pumpkin.

Cute, cute, girl.

Daddy and Sam. He had a hard day (Brodi learned the power behind her teeth) and had woken up not too long since we took these pictures so we were lucky to get him in a picture, but he wasn't about to smile.

Pork

The best thing about Sam talking is that we now he graces us with those hilarious little kid tid-bits. We got the first one worthy of actually telling others last night. I hope I can tell this story in a way that you to can see the humor in it and not just one of those well you had to have been there moments. Yesterday we we reading some good night books to Sam. His favorite lately are this series that I got years ago for therapy that tell a story then have a "look up book" embedded within the regular book like a little encyclopedia. I think the book within a book concept just blows his mind. Last night we were reading a book about a farm, and the little look up book teaches what each of the farm animals does for us. The pictures in the look up book has a picture of an egg for chickens give us eggs, some yarn for sheep give us wool, a glass of milk and cheese for cows give us milk, and some pork chops and sausage for what pigs give us. Apparently for our little 2 year old this was a pretty graphic picture because with all the seriousness and concern he could muster he pointed to the pork chops looked at BJ and I and declared "Pig broke!" Yes, it is true the pig actually has to break for us to be able to use it. Then giving us all the faith and confidence that a 2 year old gives his parents who can in fact fix most everything in the world with the aid of batteries he looked at us and said "Fix it, fix pig." Mind you BJ and I are rolling on the floor trying not to pee our pants. Sam as serious as he was to begin with kept on asking us to fix the pig. The only way we could appease him was finding a picture of a pig in the book that wasn't "broken" yet and saying see he's all fixed. Did we mention that one of Sam's favorite movies is Babe? Heaven help us if we ever show him Charlotte's Web, he might become vegetarian.