Sam turns 3!!!!

Wow can you beleive it! Sam is 3 years old. We can't say enought wonderful stuff about this little boy that we have been blessed with by being his parents. He is such a good natured little boy. I look at him lying down on the grown playing with his toys and think how did my little baby become a little boy. Happy Birthday Sam!!! We are so honored to have you in our family.

BJ, Sam and I are all about to ride the train at the Scottsdale train park. I must add I look particularly fabulous because I met them there from running in the Ragnar race.

BJ and Sam looking at the train engine.

The Scottsdale train park has a little train museum. Here are BJ and Sam in one of the trains.

Sam is checking out some of his new birthday presents. Are you noticing a theme here. Trains, trains, trains, Sam loves trains!(Taken out of a book we read every night.)

Ragnar Del Sol

My sister Mary asked me if I would like to run in the Ragnar Race with her Feb 26-27. For those of you who have never heard of it, it is a 202 mile relay race. It is run by a team of 12 people who run anywhere between 3-8 miles per leg and we each had 3 legs. I have been training for it hard since December. It was so much fun. I ran my 7.2 mile leg about 2-3 a.m. thinking this is crazy that I am having the time of my life. Right after Mary, our last runner from Van 1, finished her leg at 3:30 am we found out that there had been an accident during the race. A teenage boy who was in another team was struck by a car and tragically died a couple of days later. From that point the atmosphere of the race had changed a lot because no one really knew what had happened. They decided to cut out the part of the race that the accident had occurred, meaning that 6 legs of our race would be cut out, so instead of running 3 legs each 6 members of our team would run 2 legs and 6 would run 3 legs. They also flipped the order of the vans. I was suppose to be finished running mid morning on Saturday which happened to be Sam's birthday, but since everything got switched I wasn't going to be running until later that afternoon meaning I would miss most of Sam's birthday. I decided to leave early since I had already run 2 legs and be with Sam and BJ. (Brodi was staying the weekend with her grandparents since I was gone that weekend) Seeing the pictures of the end of the race I feel bad that I didn't stay with the team until the end, however, I would have felt worse about missing Sam's birthday. I would totally do this again. Now that I have caught up on sleep I feel somehow unfulfilled about not being there until the end so anyone up for next year, I'm totally in. Here are some of the pictures.

Van 1 on our way to Prescott.

Here is our team "Just for the Run of it." Alisha, Rachel, Mary, Misty, Allison, me, Stephaine, Katie, Elisha, Laree, and Jessica. I just realized Amanda isn't in the picture she is probably trying to sleep in the car, mind you she had a night shift the night before the race. Jessica the one bending down in front is 6 months pregnant.

Here we are at the starting line.

Mary and I in the van with our awesome headbands.

I'm getting ready for my first run. I apparently have something in my teeth. Thank goodness for sisters because heaven forbid I run with something in my teeth.

Allison passing off to me.

...and I'm off.

I really had a gorgeous run.

Now me passing off to Mary.

Van 1 before our night run.

4:30 am we are finally done with our night runs and at our hotel for a few hours. Can you say TIRED!!

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.