Christmas came early this year to our house since we will be with our families on Christmas. It's nice having a young child who doesn't have a clue if it is really Christmas or not that day. It was a lot of fun having our fake Christmas. We only got Shawn a few presents, but he loved what we gave him.

The room before we started opening presents

These are the matching pajamas I made for us. I finished them about an hour before we took this picture. :)


This is Shawn's new lawn mower. He loves to push it around the house. After listening to it for a couple days I am beginning to wonder if it was a smart purchase.


The two of us spend a lot of time together


I wish you could hear the grunting that went along with this picture. Apparently unwrapping presents is a lot harder than it looks.

Shawn used most of the presents as a seat. Probably should have just given him boxes to sit on.

This boy LOVES chocolate and I just can't figure out where he got that from. :0

This playset we got him comes with two tunnels, a tee pee, and a tent that all hook together. It's loads of fun, but will be more fun when it isn't sitting in my living room.

Family Photos

We had our family photos taken about a week ago, as you can tell from the gigantic picture at the top of the page. Here are my favorites.

We couldn't get Shawn to smile for the posed pictures, but the smile sure came out when he saw his teddy bear.
Several people have told me that this is their favorite picture. It would be mine too...if my bum wasn't in it. :)

Not afraid to go off alone

Oh, how precious :)

Now that is a handsome kid if I do say so myself.

This is what happens when you have Christmas decorations at a low level and then take your eyes off a 16 month old boy.

The other day Shawn got into my drawer, pulled out my fuzzy socks and begged me to put them on him. He left them on for about three hours that morning, which is a lot longer than normal socks last on him.

First few days of December

It's not snowing or even raining. There was just a lot of moisture in the air from fog and it made our pictures look like this for some reason.

Shawn making sure this tree feels the same as all the others
For FHE we went and picked out a real Christmas tree. Shawn had a blast running around the lot, touching every single tree. We chose to buy a smaller tree and put it up on the coffee table in an attempt to keep the ornaments higher away from Shawn.

As you can see our plan didnt' work. He still could reach the ornaments we thought we put up high enough. This is all the glitter Shawn dumped out of one of the balls.

Shawn trying to wipe the glitter off his hands. Little did he know it was all over his clothes and in his hair too.

I thought I would just write about a couple new things Shawn has started doing. First of all refuses to sit in his high chair anymore. He thinks he is too old for high chairs. If I happen to somehow get him into it, he won't eat. He insists upon sitting on the normal chairs, without a booster seat. He can barely see over the table, but he will eat if we put him there. He just sticks his fork up and tries to stab at whatever is on his plate. Silly boy.

Shawn very happy to be sitting like a big kid

When I shower in the morning I gather toys and bring Shawn in the bathroom with me so I can keep an eye on him. The last few days he has opened the shower door and handed me my towel whether the water is running or not. This is his way of telling me that my shower has been long enough. (sorry, I am not going to add photos of this event)

Thanksgiving trip

Ever since Shawn figured out what the ipod is used for, he insists upon having it if he sees it.

We were able to go to Utah for the Thanksgiving break. It was so much fun being back in the Salt Lake area. Boise is a nice place to live, but I LOVE Utah. It will always be home to me. We drove down on Wednesday. That night we had a birthday party for little James, J.P., and me.

Thursday we had a wonderful traditional Thanksgiving dinner at my Grandpa Jensen's home. Everything was so good. The only problem was that Grandma lost a pin somewhere in the stuffing and nobody found it. Hey, it added a little element of mystery. We spent time with Jon's family that afternoon and then went to J.P.'s for a movie and snacks. We watched Elf, which all of us love. We brought beds to put all the babies down. However, they were so hyper none of them went to bed. Shawn gets pushed around a bit by his two older boy cousins, but he stands his own. I saw him try to push those older boys down and he would get a really angry face and shake his fists. I have never seen Shawn's temper so much as I did on this trip.

Friday Jon and I went shopping with all the crazy people at 4 am. It was totally nuts, but pretty funny. Jon and I just kept laughing at everyone. We did find some great deals though. Tiff, Jon and I went to see Twilight that night. My expectations were so low for the movie, that I actually ended up liking it.

Saturday I went to lunch with my good friend Jen. We went to the Garden Room in the Joseph Smith Memorial building. It was great to spend time together with just the two of us. Saturday night Jon and I went to see the lights downtown. Then my whole family went to the Osmond 2nd Generation concert. My dad's fiancee is the Aunt of the boys who did the concert. They were very talented. There was a surprise visit by David Archuleta. You should have heard the girls scream. He is the tiniest little boy, but he has an amazing singing voice.

Well, I have babbled on about our trip, but I loved it. It was really nice to spend so much time with our families and friends.

Shawn and Jon digging in Grandpa's sandbox