Patty Johnson's Blog

Merry Christmas! We got to my parents house at 8:30am and the kids where all sitting around the tree itching to dig into the presents. I played Santa for a while but the kids where too impatient so I let them hand out presents. We all got a bunch of great gifts and had lots of fun! All the kids had tons of fun playing throughout the day. Johnny, Lily and Zach had lots of fun playing with the pots and pans. & they all probably watched "cow moo" (Barnyard) about 20 times! The day was filled with fun but also naps. Here are two great napping photos. The first of the three guys napping (Steve, Mark, Adam) and one of Lily and Chico. Lily fell asleep while eating a cookie! After a yummy dinner we chit-chatted for a while before playing a very long game of Trivial Pursuit® Totally 80's Edition. It was Steve & Lori, Cindy & Ron and Adam and I. We ended up giving Cindy a really easy question at the end just to end the game at about midnight because Adam had to work in the morning and the rest of us were going shopping at 6am for post-Christmas sales.

We spent eight hours of Christmas Eve watching a marathon of the "World Series of Pop Culture" on VH1. It's a really addictive trivia show on VH1. Besides that we just hung out with the family.

We woke up this morning and had our family Christmas. It was lots of fun watching Lily open all of her presents. She's really good at ripping paper off now which makes it much more entertaining. After opening all the presents the floor was scattered with toys that she pretty much wanted opened immediately. I really dislike opening toys...they really make them hard to get out of the boxes and those super twist ties are the worst. Lily really liked her TMX Elmo which you can tell in the photos below.

Lily went and saw Santa today at Centerpoint Mall. She was pretty shy but sat on his lap nicely for lots of pictures that we took. She didn't smile all that much but the pictures turned out cute. Then, later when we were shopping at Shopko she made my dad bring her to see him again!

Lily appeared in the playgroup newsletter today. She is always so serious when reading a book!

Today my parents, Lily and I all went to Sam's Club in Wausau to get some food for Christmas. Mom and I picked out a cake there for my Dad even though he said he has had too many birthday cakes in his life. The cake was white with strawberry filling and boy was it delicious. Dad was very happy that we got it because he loved it too. For his birthday I stole all of my dads CDRs and DVDrs and organized them into two binders (one for pictures & videos and one for programs and files) He really liked it so I was happy!

Today we went to Stratford to do our Christmas with Adam's family. We usually do that on Christmas Eve, but this year they are all going to Illinois. We got to town at 11pm and they wanted to open presents right away so we did. Lily got lots of cute things like a waterproof elmo (who loves the hot tub), a TMX Barbie with little Elmo, Elmopalooza DVD, a little snuffleupagus and some Sesame street figures. Adam and I already got our Christmas presents from his parents (monitor and camera) but we did get an awesome hot dog cooker from Michelle!

Today they had a little Christmas Party at Playgroup. As you can see below we had lots of fun. The first thing we made was a wreath made out of Lily's green painted handprints. She was surprisingly very good and sat nice and still while I painted her fingers and made the prints. Next we made a Reindeer card holder outlining her handprints for the antlers. Finally we decorated a cookie and Lily decided that she REALLY likes sprinkles. I ran outside to put her other projects in the car and she apparently ate 3 spoonfuls of sprinkles while I was gone. She was quite sugared up after this playgroup!

Thanks to Ken Jennings blog I have found this cute video "Hey Ya Charlie Brown" on YouTube of the Peanuts dancing to Outkast's "Hey Ya" I figured I'd post it here because it's cute and festive since it's from the Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon.
Of course my favorite video is still "Zydeco". That guy is so crazy!
And while your at Youtube watch the "Triviatown" Trailer!

We put up our tree today and it was fun. I love going through all the old and new ornaments and deciding where they should be on the tree. We put a bunch of the shatterproof ones at the bottom of the tree so nobody can break the nicer ones. My favorite ornament is of course the one of me and Santa from 1982.

Here are a few more pictures from this weekend. The first was is just a cute picture of Lily in her cold weather gear. The other is Adam's dad putting the star on their huge tree.

Today we got our Christmas trees. Adam, Lily and I got a nice cute tree for our house and Adam's parents got a huge 16 foot tree! It's interesting watching them try and put Christmas lights up that high...they have to uses both the stairs and a big ladder!
1)Our Family with our tree (it's the one behind Adam's head) 2) Lily with a cute little tree 3) Adam with the biggest tree ever 4) Michelle & Lily with Adam's parents tree Video: The Chopping of Big Bruce the Spruce

Today Adam, Lily and I went to the Childrens Museum for a Multicultural Holiday Fun Day. Lily got to decorate a gingerbread man there. She was doing really good with him (even though she put frosting on both sides) until she realized that frosting is yummy. Then she just kept eating frosting. After that we played all around the museum. She ran through the log a few times and played the organ with Adam. Then Lily and I had fun with Maracas. Then she noticed the pet store so we had to go visit the fishies. That pet store looks like it's closing pretty soon because all the cages were either sold or for sale. I thought of taking her to see Santa but the Santa in the mall was terrible. I refuse to take Lily to see Santa if the Santa has a real beard and fake white hair.

Steve and Family came to town this weekend! One of the reasons they came was to get a Christmas tree because buying a tree in Illinois will cost you about $100. It was fun for a while looking for a tree but we kept finding trees with 2 trunks! They ended up getting a really pretty blue spruce tree. Adam, Lily and I are getting our tree next weekend in the Strat.
We went to Amherst Saturday for a Christmas Craft Fair and then ate lunch at Ambrosia's.(YUM!) Otherwise this weekend we just hung out at my parents house. The kids had fun playing together. Here is Lily and Jonathan sharing the dog's chair & one of them dancing by the tree.
VIDEO: Lily and Jonathan playing with Simba Toy
VIDEO: Lily and Braeden playing with spoons

Here is a few pictures and a video of Lily doing the dishes. She loves it even though most of the time it's more playing in the water & bubbles than actual cleaning. She's so fun!

VIDEO: Lily doing the dishes