Lambson Land: Merry Christmas Month!!

I bought myself an early Christmas present! Chris Bogle is going to an art school in Tennessee and works with glass. I missed out last year, but I didn’t this year – I got some Chris Bogle original hand-blown candy canes!! I’m impressed with Chris and his dedication to his craft. His mother, Betty, showed me some pieces she had and I would have bought them if they had been for sale – I really did like them. I’ve known the Bogle family for many years and Chris was in my very first Cub Scout den that I had. It is fun to have something he did be a part of my Christmas decorations!

And, if it's December, it must be birthday time for Kennadi Ann! Sweet little Kenna had a party and it wasn't a Frozen party! Toy Story was the theme and she wore a Jessie shirt with a red tutu - adorable!! This little 2-year old princess is pretty special!

This picture cracks me up!

Don’t get it, do you. You have to know the back story and what happened a second before it was taken. Kendal, dear big sister, Kendal (blue top) has many, many Shopkins. Little plastic food-type creatures that someone dreamed up to suck the money out of parents’ wallets. Kenna is not allowed to play with Kendal’s Shopkins – Kendal’s rule. I’ve seen the rule enforced! So, along with other stuff in her Zebra backpack, we put in a couple of packages of Shopkins . Kenna was excited when she pulled them out and the little friend in the white shirt, looking like she was just chastised, took ahold of one of the packages just to look at it. Well, Miss Kenna jerked it back really quick – nobody was going to touch HER Shopkins! Mom is trying to reassure her nobody is taking her Shopkins. But take a look at older sister Kendal – she’s not caring about the action, she’s scoping out the Shopkins and probably planning on which ones will end up in her collection!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…I struggled with the Christmas tree again this year. I am so, so, so not in love with putting the lights on the tree. But I so, so, so love lots of lights on the tree! I’ll do the rest without batting an eye, just need somebody to put the darn lights on!

This is also concert and recital season!! We got 4 of those in – Ryan’s band concert, Kendal’s dance recital, Bremen’s band concert and Bremen’s flute recital. It’s funny how, since they are your grandchildren, you are so engrossed in what they are doing that you have no idea what the kids next to them are doing! At least that’s how I watch these things – there could be 2 kids or 20 – I’m only watching the 1!

Bass Pro has Santa come hang out and visit with the kids every year. We went with Patrick’s family and quickly decided seeing Santa wasn’t going to be necessary. When we got there, it was a 3 hour wait to see Santa! The line was long, sure. But what was happening is they were giving out cards with your time to come stand in line! At 4:30 pm, coming to stand in line at 7:00 pm was not appealing. So we amused ourselves with other things!

Papa had just as much fun as the boys did, maybe more!

And then we got our Christmas visitors…the California Lambsons!! It is much more fun at Christmas time when you have little people in the house!

Let me give you a tip – don’t worry about your window cleaning when guests are coming for a visit around the holidays. Give the kids window clings to play with and, voila! Instantly you can pass off fingerprints as child’s play!

For that matter, don’t worry about cleaning floors – just have a bunch of people make gingerbread houses! (Just kidding – I did do the floors!)

Let’s get a closer look at them and their makers…

If you will notice, there is one pink house. You see, our teams were pre-arranged – Sofia said she was doing her house with Grandpa even before they came to Arizona. Papa goes and buys a Hello Kitty kit for them to work on! I call foul! So, since he threw down the challenge, so to speak, the rest of us headed to Sweeties to make sure our houses could compete! And for the record, I was teamed up with Ryan and I specifically went to Sweeties to get Necco Wafers for tiles – score one for us for the original idea!

This year we spent a special evening Christmas Eve at the Temple hosting on the grounds as people came to see the lights. It was a sweet experience and I’m glad we were given the opportunity. We saw people we knew, met some very wonderful Sister missionaries, and enjoyed seeing families come with their kids dressed in Christmas jammies! I’m sure it must be tradition for some of those families to come see the Temple, drink in the spirit of the night and then go home and tuck the little ones in to wait for Christmas morning to arrive.