Gingerbread Houses and Jimmy's Stage Debut

We made Gingerbread Houses a week ago. They were kits that came with everything. The Gingerbread already formed and cooked, the candy, the frosting and even the stand to put them on. It was fun. Eric concentrating.

Jimmy's Gingerbread Santa.

Helping Grandma with her house.

This Finished products.

This is Eric's and Jimmy's.

This is the one Grandma, Jimmy and I worked on. Grandma had to leave in the middle to go help take care of Grandpa Clark. He was having another nauseous spell.

This is Cindy's. She got a little frosting happy!!

This is from our Ward Christmas Breakfast. We of course had a nativity program with music and shepards and wise men and Mary and Joseph and ....... Jimmy the sheep. You can see him lying on the ground looking at baby Jesus. The other little boy who was a sheep somehow only ended up with his ears on.

Then he decided to crawl around.Now he is just chilling. He made a great sheep!!!

Look what happens when we let Jimmy loose with the Camera and Grandma With Christmas Lights!!!

We actually get a picture of me. Jimmy did pretty good with his pictures. I am moving furniture around to decorate for Christmas. Mom is helping me move furniture and yes we are doing this on a Sunday. Eric and I had already put the tree up, but there wasn't very much room to walk between it and the couch, so my interior decorator (Mom) helped me figure out what to do with the couches.

This is the tree. It is a pre-lit with 400 white lights, plus I made Eric cram 700 colored lights on it. We call it the beacon. It looks fantastic from outside. We put the tree up on a Friday and we didn't get around to putting the decorations on it until Monday. All it had was lights on it. We were going to decorate it Saturday, but we were sidetracked by Kristin. It just wouldn't be a Thanksgiving weekend if Eric didn't have to go over and put Christmas lights up on Kristin's house. Kurt had actually done some, but of course he didn't finish. Their new house roof line is much friendlier than their old one and Eric didn't feel like he was going to fall off of the roof while he was putting the lights on. He did get scared when he went to get off of the roof though. There was quite a distance between his feet and the ladder. Kaitlyn had to guide his feet onto the ladder. I have never seen him scared of anything before, but he was scared. He is not afraid of heights and shimmying right to the end of the roof, but something about dangling his feet off of the edge was scary. He survived though. We also helped Kristin put her Christmas tree up and her tree looks very beautiful. I don't have pictures, but maybe she could post some on her blog.

This is what happens when we let Grandma loose with Christmas lights.

These pictures I took, not Jimmy. I am so thankful for my beautiful Front room (Celestial room or the Useless room) to put my Christmas decorations in. One of my obsessions in house hunting was having a front room window that you could see a Christmas tree in.

This is my Santa Crosstitch that took me 5 years to finish and I actually have room to hang it up.

A nativity set.Here is my beautiful tree.

Optimus Prime, A Gypsy, Raking the Leaves and Reading Books

Okay, I haven't posted in awhile. Life has been very crazy!!!! Jimmy was Optimus Prime for Halloween (Thank you Mom for finding his costume). Cindy came and went Trick-or-Treating with him and she was a Gypsy. Mom made the skirt for her. One of our neighbors thought Cindy was me and tried to talk to her and Cindy had to say she was my sister. That's kind of flattering (I guess). After Trick-or-Treating we went back to Mom's and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows with her and the neighbors who have one of those portable fire pits. It was pouring rain, so the neighbor on the end of the apartments had his big outside umbrella over the fire and we pulled out Kristin's broken decrepit umbrella that she gave Mom when she moved and we sat under them and celebrated Halloween. Eric had to sit and hold Kristin's umbrella up every time a gust of wind would come by. Needless to say the umbrella bit the dust and is headed for the dump, because Eric duct taped it to get it to stay open and then he couldn't get it closed without breaking the spokes. It was the strangest Halloween I have ever had. We love our shade in our backyard, but it comes with a price. Leaves! Lots of Leaves!! We spent Saturday morning after Halloween raking leaves. As Eric and I would rake them Jimmy would leap into them and he also buried himself in them. It made him sopping wet, because the leaves were wet from the rain the night before. He was having lots of fun though.

This is Jimmy's Leaf Raking attire. Eric let him dress himself that morning.

For one of Jimmy's homework assignments he had to read to a Stuffed Animal. Well Jimmy being Jimmy he had to read to all of his Stuffed Animals.

Spooky Halloween Pumpkins

We had our annual Family Night of carving pumkins tonight with Mom and Cindy. Mom's is the first pumpkin. Mine is the next one and it is a Cat. Eric's is third and we have dubbed his "I"gor. Jimmy's is behind his head and it is a bat and Cindy's is the last one and it says Welcome.

A couple of weeks ago Jimmy and Eric went over to the Kaysville Fire Departments open house. Jimmy was in Seventh Heaven. He still maintains that he wants to be a Fire Fighter when he grows up. Jimmy strapped into the Life Flight helicopter.

Driving a Fire Truck
Being a goof.
More goofing.
I wonder what he is thinking?

The life flight helicopter. They watched it take off and the wind almost knocked Jimmy over!!!

The Circus

We went to the circus. I figured Jimmy is only young once and he has been talking about Circus' in general all summer. I got some discounted tickets from some coupons in the mail. It was a Ringling Brothers circus. They had a live band and one of the clowns would sing as well as the Ringmaster. We had good seats in the bottom part of the lower bowl. Eric said if we were going to a Jazz game the tickets would be $150.

This is Jimmy waiting at Crown Burger for his food. Of course we parked there to get dinner and parking.

Jimmy took this picture of Eric and I. He did a good job.

This is Jimmy's huge Snow Cone. He couldn't finish it. It was $9 bucks. OUCH. We got some popcorn and a $4 coloring book, so we didn't fall prey to bad to the Money Pit.

These next two pictures are from the opening parade.
These are goats riding on the back of minature ponies being led by Tom the clown. He would keep stealing the Ringmaster's hat and they fought through the whole Circus about whose Circus it really was.
Just some fun horses.
The Tigers. Jimmy was scaird they would get out of the cage and get him, but I told him that the trainer had been training them since they were babies and that they were just like big house cats. He felt a little better. Just an odd question though. Why do Lion Tamers have to wear vests with their extremely hairy chests showing?

This is just some acrobatic strength guys.

And Finally the Elephants!!!!

Jimmy and Friends

Jimmy was out playing with his friends Brock and Aiden from school last Friday and they were all wearing their Cool Cat EG King Shirts!! He is loving school. He is the shortest one in his class and he says his best friend is a little black girl named Triana who sits next to him. She is also a foot taller than him, but he doesn't care.

Jimmy is Sick

Jimmy has his first school time sniffles. He was complaining Wednesday night that his throat was hurting and sure enough Thursday morning he woke up with a runny nose. Poor Kid. He was happy though, because since he was sick Eric had to take the morning off, because I had a doctor's appointment with my OB that I couldn't miss. I have a recurring UTI that just won't die and we need to talk about the birth control pill she put me on for my endometriosis. I think it is suppressing the cramps, but lately I have been having weird hormonal issues making me even crazier than normal. Anyway, Jimmy was ecstatic to stay home with Dad. I got to the doctor and they said the appointment is next Thursday. My wonderful husband and his equally wonderful boss just shrugged it off and said "Oh well". Hopefully Jimmy won't get sick next week too, but knowing my luck he will. Jimmy is home again today (the nose is running even more and he sounds congested in his chest). His little friend Brock that lives behind us and who we carpool with was sick yesterday too. He is back in school today though. I asked his Mother what she did to him and she said she used her Witch Doctor ways on him (rubbing him with eucalyptus and frankincense and making him drink water every hour). I might have to try it.

Jimmy's First Sleepover at Grandma Bear's

Jimmy had his first sleepover. It was on the Sunday night before Labor Day. My Mom has Monday's off so while we were at Kristin's Sunday night celebrating the Labor Day weekend and Lindsay going through the temple on Saturday Mom asked Jimmy if he could spend the night. Of course he said yes!!! We were very concerned that he wouldn't sleep because he is a sleep in is own bed and no where else kind of kid. We didn't get him over to Mom's until 10:30 at night. It was raining and cold. He actually slept. Wow!!! It took him awhile to wind down. They read books and scriptures and Mom told him a Jimmy animal story and she tucked him in to the hide-a-bed in her living room. She said he got up twice, once to just say hello and another to say his sleeping bag was to hot, so they put TV Bunny (I don't know why he named his stuffed rabbit that, something to do with Hailey I think) and Bearby (his stuffed bear we got from Artic Circle a year ago, the thing kids get attached to) in the sleeping bag and Jimmy slept under the blanket Mom won at the Davis Cup Marching Band competition last year. He did go to sleep after that and was up at his normal 7:00 in the morning. So now we know he can sleep overnight at someone else's house. I wasn't worried about him at all, because he was with My Mom. He actually did start Kindergarten this week and he is loving it. They are doing color days and he has to wear the color of the day and the read a story, sing a song, and have a snack about the color of the day. He loves Miss Paul. I love her too. She is very soft spoken and organized.

Jimmy's First day of Kindergarten Kind Of?

Jimmy started school on Monday. Sort of. I took him to the school for an hour and his teacher Miss Paul sang a few songs for the kids and told them some stories and then sent them outside with the PTA President (who is one of my backyard neighbors by the way) to play outside. Miss Paul then told us parents about her class and what to expect from it. We also signed up to do Kindergarten Testing (this goes on all week, so no class until next Tuesday) and to volunteer in her class. I signed up to help on Computer Days. Jimmy has three kids from our ward that he already knows in his class and he is pretty excited. We just have to get to next Tuesday. He went in for his Testing today at 10:00 and I think he did really well. I sat in the classroom and filled out more paperwork while Miss Paul tested him. He knew all of his letters and all of their sounds except for the letter X. He knows his shapes and colors. He can Rhyme. He told Miss Paul he counted to 109 the other day and she told him that was great. He can recognize all of his numbers and then Miss Paul asked him to count as high as he could. He then proceeded to count to 109 much to her amazement. She told him he really could count to 109. She is a very nice lady. She was telling Jimmy she has a brother named Richard after he told her his full name James Richard Barrett and I asked her how many brothers the had. She said three and I asked her if she knew Kurt Price. She said yes, he is a good friend to her brother John. I told her that Kurt is my uncle. Its a Small World. I can't get Jimmy to stop making faces when I take his picture.
This is better but his eyes are closed.
He looks like he is in acute pain in this picture and he wouldn't let me take another, because the sun was shining in his eyes.