Contrasts

The hummingbird feeder during a whiteout.



Frost on the storm door backlit by the tree outside.



Said tree. I seriously love the color of that sky.

Couple of Christmas Leftovers

Jessie, look who I found!



Our beloved manger scene, by Rhetta.

Second Annual Rice Family Christmas Concert

Last year's concert, in case you missed it.

Cameron's Christmas

We celebrated Christmas for Cameron this morning.

We let him sleep late.
We let open all his gifts.
We let him take as long a shower as he wanted.
We took him "mountain climbing".
We downloaded a bunch of stuff for his new mp3 player.

Here are some snapshots:

Santa woke up early - around 4 AM.



Two wise men, Joseph, some animals, a tractor, and Santa. I think Christmas is complete, don't you?



He got some cool stuff like the mp3 player he picked out.



And matching watches that he picked out for himself and Rob.



He and I picked out new jammies for the kids.



Willon picked out a Thomas game for his birthday but didn't forget about it as easily as I'd hoped. He got to "open" it early because he absolutely would not stop talking about it.



After lunch we went out to Escalante Canyon to climb around the rocks around the H. A. Smith cabin.











Sitting on the heater vent like always.



... and another one of my girl for good measure. *wink

Neato Lights

GJ Pipe in Grand Junction, CO have this display outside of their offices/yard. The kids and I stumbled upon them last night just after dark. Both the train and the stage coach were on their own 18 wheeler flatbed and done entirely in rope lights. There was music playing, all the wheels were turning, and a nice man was handing out last year's candy canes - LOL. Another man climbed up on the train and pulled a lever that set off a loud whistle and some smoke came out the funnel. It was a neat surprise.

Pennies TMI

This is what stomach acid does to shiny copper pennies in, oh, about 48 hours. (There were only 4, not 5 - just FYI - I compared stacks of pennies to the x-ray to make sure.) They came out in the same neat little stack you saw in the x-ray.

Hey, Mickey! (Dance Fall 2010)

I unfortunately did not get this one on video but I got a few pictures. They danced to the song Hey, Mickey by Toni Basil.

Here she is posing at home. Such a ham sometimes, I swear. ♥



They were playing Duck Duck Goose while waiting for their turn on stage.



A cute profile shot.



On stage having a good ol' time.

My 3.5 ft, tall Piggy Bank

What you are looking at is Willon's trunk. The white spot in his stomach is a neat little stack of pennies. 5, count them, 5! pennies.

He'd been playing with them for days, nay months, with no incident. He likes to put them in a box and shake them around. He counts them incessantly, and makes shapes with them on the table.

Yesterday afternoon he came to me and said, "5 monies went down my tummy."

I get to monitor the other end until I'm satisfied they all come out or they'll have to scope him and remove them from above.

Yup, that's right. I'm on Doody Duty! woo

Decorating the Tree

We always try to do this when we have an extra kid to help. Being 13 he groused and griped about having to do it but I know secretly he'll remember it fondly.

p.s. The 3 year old only got 1 time out (for hitting the big kid in the back of the head repeatedly with his Santa airplane toy). Ka-chow!

Oh, and if you look closely you can see Lola's new comfy spot.