Christmastime

Yay! Christmas is in full swing in the Smith household. I finally got all of our christmas cards and presents sent off (today...) and I think our Christmas shopping is finished. Which is very nice, because I'm getting a little sick of the drive to Lancaster/Palmdale. Our tree is up, the few presents I've wrapped are under it, and I have been obsessively baking cookies.

Evan helps.

He ate a lot of sprinkles that day. Pretty much every morning when he gets up he asks me if we're going to "bake cookies today mama?". He's actually a pretty good helper too!

Mike put up lights around the outside of our house, and he says that he "officially" feels like a man now. Not career or fatherhood, but hanging up Christmas lights is what does it, apparently. We didn't have any outlets outside our last house, so he jumped at the chance to decorate this one. He put up 10(!) strings of lights, and sadly, we still have about a 3 foot gap on one side of our house. Oh well, they look awesome anyway!

Evan has met santa about ten times now (seriously!) at various holiday parties and functions, so they're pretty tight now. When he finally got around to talking to him, he told Santa he wanted a Christmas tree, even though we already have one. We picked up an artificial tree this year (pre-lit! Best idea ever) due to our desert environment, so maybe he was hoping for a real one...I'm pretty excited about not having to vacuum up any needles. I don't think a fir tree would have a chance in this dry air! As an Oregonian, I swore I would never have an artificial tree, but:

1) I never planned on living in the Mojave desert (thanks for the adventures, Mikey!)

2) Turns out they're pretty awesome.

At this party Santa arrived on a fire truck, and I can't say I've ever seen Evan so excited. He screamed like a little girl and ran around yelling about Santa, then followed him diligently inside.

On top of that, Santa gave him a train.

Grandma Jean is coming on Tuesday, and we're all pretty excited about that. Unfortunately, (and he's been doing this for a while) Evan has been calling every woman over the age of 40 that he sees "Grandma Jean", which can be slightly embarassing. I mostly ignore it, and hope the poor woman didn't understand what he said. Also unfortunate in this instance is the fact that his speech is really getting good. And usually, he's pretty easy to understand.

His imagination is pretty entertaining too--lately he'll come running up to one of us and say that he's scared. When we ask him why, he usually thinks for a minute and then says something like "elephant right there!" or "helicopter!". Generally, theres no elephant. He's getting pretty good at entertaining himself.

Mike has all of next week off, so we're looking forward to some relaxation. And Christmas. Merry Christmas!