Christmas Day 2009

This post should really be entitled "Photo Overload".

So here goes... our Christmas in only 23 photos. :)

The set up: Isaac's stocking and "BIG" present from us - what else? BALLS

The first reaction:
It was a little subdued - he didn't get overly excited. I think that he was sick and also just still waking up.

He brightened up when Jeremy put him IN the balls - now that was a whole new concept and level of joy for balls.

After a while of playing with the balls - I helped him explore his stocking. The puppets, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse coloring book (he's a big fan), stickers, and plastic horse were the highlights for him.

After the stocking we took some time to relax, play, and eat breakfast. The boys all played delightedly with the balls. Then Isaac busted out the stickers.

For breakfast we had monkey bread (it was my first time making it and it was SO easy and turned out FANTASTIC - that's definitely going to become a Johnston family tradition), an egg breakfast casserole, and grapes. Everything had been prepared the day before so it was SUPER quick and easy and YUMMY. After breakfast we followed in the tradition of my family and watched the Luke 2 video - a brief (2 minute) video of the story of Christ's birth - before opening any presents. Isaac LOVED it. He loved the animals and seeing the little baby Jesus. It was a big hit. And then we happily moved on to opening presents.

The Presents:

We took the present opening nice and slow. We opened each toy as we came to it and Isaac happily played with everything. It was relaxing and worked out perfectly for us this year. Here's Isaac with his new baby that we got him.

Opening his Quiet Book that I made for him.

Discovering each page.

Taking time to smell the roses.

Opening presents with Uncle Troy.

Opening presents with Jeremy.

Opening presents with me.

Playing with his loot!

Hanging with the boys.

And finally relaxing with mom and dad.

After presents it was already lunch and nap time (for everyone!). After naps - we actually got dressed :) and went on a lovely walk in the cold and snow. And then came home to play with new toys, call our families, watch a new Barney video, and eat a yummy dinner of ham, cheesy "funeral" potatoes, salad, and rolls. We finished off the night with pumpkin cake and watching "It's a Wonderful Life". It was a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve Festivities

This year was our first real experience with staying home for the holidays. We ended up missing everyone a ton (of course) but we made some great memories and enjoyed spending time together.

Christmas Eve:

I spent Christmas Eve morning completing last minute Christmas preparations - while Jeremy watched Isaac and prepped the house (aka cleaned like a mad man) for the festivities that lay ahead. During Isaac's nap Jeremy and I cooked and cooked and cooked - preparing all of the food for the rest of the holiday events (so that we wouldn't have to stress about it and clean up after it later). When Isaac woke up from his nap we realized that the temperature/mild illness that he had been fighting for a day or two was on the rise - he had a 103 degree fever (with tylenol and ibuprofen on board) - so we decided to take him to the doctor. Yay for spending 2 hours on Christmas Eve at the Pediatricians After Hours clinic. Isaac was miserable - and so were all the other sick kids in the waiting room. Fun times. Anyway, we were actually relieved to find out that it was just the "usual" for Isaac - a nice set of ear infections. So with yummy pink amoxicillin in hand - and more tylenol and ibuprofen and numbing ear drops to get us through - we decided to continue on with our Christmas Eve plans - and Isaac perked up pretty quickly (thank you tylenol!) and was able to enjoy the evening as well.

The evening festivities started off with an early relaxing dinner at Mimi's Cafe with Troy. Jeremy's brother, Troy, stayed in Provo for the holidays as well - so we were THRILLED to have him join us for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Here's the 3 of us at Mimi's. Check out the new "smile" that Isaac is developing for the camera. Classic.

After dinner we drove home through the neighborhoods - looking at the Christmas lights and singing rambunctious Christmas carols. When we got home the 4 of us (Jeremy, Troy, Isaac, and I) acted out the nativity and read the Christmas story. Here's the photos from our nativity... poor donkey had to have big pregnant Mary AND Joseph ride him.
Mary and Joseph with baby Jesus.

The angel appearing to the shepherd and his sheep (Isaac and I got to be the sheep and say "baa" - what a highlight).

The shepherd (Troy)

And my personal favorite - the 3 wisemen. (You have to get pretty creative with only 4 people to play all of the parts - and you know Jeremy, never lacking in creativity).

After the Christmas story was read we turned off the lights in the room, sat around the sparkling Christmas tree and sang lovely reverent Christmas carols. It was perfect. Then it was more medicine and off to bed for our little sicko Isaac.

After Isaac was in bed - the real party began. :) We had a yummy spread of appetizers and goodies to munch on through the evening.

We also spent at least 45 minutes playing some serious HORSE with Isaac's new basketball hoop. Highlights? Troy made an awesome shot off of the front door and straight into the hoop 3 or 4 times in a row. We were all impressed. Jeremy made some sweet backwards and "from below" shots. And I tried to monopolize on my only unique trait (huge pregnant belly) and came up with an off the belly - bump - shot. Good times.

After such intense playing - we were all wiped out and we curled up to eat more snacks and watch a Christmas movie, the Nativity Story.

Done: My Quiet Book Adventure

I had often seen the so - called "Quiet Books" being used to entertain kids during church meetings... and I always admired them from afar. I secretly wanted to have one for my own future children however, I KNEW that there was NO WAY that I could ever make one of them. Because...
a. I am NOT a seamstress.
b. I am not "crafty" or "creative"
c. I am a perfectionist and never satisfied with the end product anyway
d. I am notoriously NOT a craft "finisher". I get excited about projects... get started and then... get overwhelmed... lose momentum... and never finish.

Anyway, to make a long story short - this last semester I decided to prove myself wrong - and COMPLETE a Quiet Book. A friend and I organized a "Quiet Book Exchange". Essentially we looked through LOTS of Quiet Book page ideas and templates. We chose our favorite 18 pages. Next, we rounded up some wonderful friends - to create a group of 9 women - who committed to make 2 Quiet Book pages nine times each. Finally, we set a deadline - the date for the page swap, so that we could all exchange our finished pages and end up with a complete set of the 18 pages. We decided to do the "Quiet Book Exchange" to try to simplify the project (if you do a page once then it is easier to do it the next 8 times), save some money by "mass producing", and also encourage us to get it done on time since other people are counting on us. The whole concept worked out wonderfully. Here is my FINISHED product.

The Quiet Book front cover.

Look! I learned how to sew a button hole!

The back cover.
The two pages that I contributed to the Quiet Book Exchange.
The shoe page.
I got to learn how to put eyelets in. Fun stuff.

The train page.

These are the beautiful pages that my friends contributed.

The Noah's Ark page.

The car page.

This is Isaac's current favorite page. He loves it!

The tic-tac-toe page.

The lift-a-flap house page.

Lift five flaps to reveal family pictures placed inside of plastic pockets.

The bead counting page.

The flower page.

The flowers come on and off the buttons.

The shapes page.

This page uses snaps to match the shapes to their outline.

The find the bone page.

Four different hidden pockets are all great hiding places for the dog's bone.

The memory page.

The ice cream cone page.

6 different ice cream flavors can be hooked on and off of the ice cream cone to make delicious combinations.

The braid page.

The gumball machine page.

The gumballs come off and velcro back on to a matching circle of the same color.

The puzzle page.

Two different puzzles are stored in the pocket and put together on the puzzle board.

The mailbox page.

The mailbox opens and there is a felt envelope inside that you can really open and put a note inside.

The baseball mitt page.

The baseball velcros into place on the mitt - and the kids can put their hands in the glove to "catch" it.

During the "Quiet Book page idea finding process" I fell in love with some additional pages that we didn't assign out to anyone in the group (mostly because they were too time intensive to ask someone to make NINE of them) - but I decided to go ahead and make them as "extra" pages for Isaac's own Quiet Book.

The flower vase page.

The flowers come in and out of the pastic pocket vase.

The barn page.

The barn doors open to reveal these 5 homemade finger puppets.

The clothing/paper doll page.

Clothes from the laundry lines are used to dress the dolls on the right.

And that, my friends, is our completed Quiet Book!

FYI - If you are wanting to make your own Quiet Book... here is what we did.

1. We used unbleached muslin pages and cut them 10 1/2" x 12"

(planning for a 1/2" seam allowance).

2. We used heavyweight pellon interfacing to try to make the pages sturdier.

3. We came up with the page ideas, found a few templates, and found general page contruction guidelines by just searching blogs online. Primarily we referenced...

http://quietbook.blogspot.com

* she has links to LOTS of helpful Quiet Book posts online *

http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com

*the templates for the barn and mailbox pages came directly from her website*

4. For the most part we just saw pictures that we liked of Quiet Book pages and tried our best to figure out how to recreate something similar to it.

My Quiet Book Thoughts:

This may sound stupid - but I have deep thoughts about this Quiet Book.

In a nutshell, this project took SO MUCH TIME - that I started to wonder if I was really just inventing a big project that was wasting my time. I started to think that I had gotten myself in over my head and that this wasn't worth the time going into it - and that I should find more worthwhile things to do with my life! But... then I started wondering and pondering and thinking about all that I was learning. I learned SO MUCH from this project and am truly grateful for it.

First, I learned new technical sewing skills. I gained a LOT of confidence in myself and my own ability to create and do well at it. I gained confidence in my ability to learn new skills and to just try new things. I learned more creativity and problem solving. I learned how to plan out and organize the pages. I learned how to be thrifty in finding ways to complete the pages.

Second, I learned valuable organizational and group leadership life lessons.

Third, I learned to relax a little on my perfectionism. Each task was taking me SO long because I am SUCH a perfectionist. Then I said aloud to myself one day "completion is better than perfection" and that became my Quiet Book Mantra. I learned that in some things in life (a Quiet Book-esque project being one of those things) COMPLETION is sincerely better than perfection. It doesn't have to be perfect - it just has to fulfill its job. It's more important to get it done and move on with other life tasks than to sit still and agonize over every painstaking little detail.

Fourth, I learned a bit more about contentment. When you do this kind of a project with a group - pages undoubtedly turn out differently than you had envisioned (especially if you are the group organizer and actually spent time envisioning the final product). But in the end - it didn't matter at all! I love all of the pages - and more importantly - Isaac loves them! I am perfectly content and proud of the final product. Sometimes in life (with things like Quiet Books especially) - it is important for me to learn to let go, loosen up, and simply be happy.

Whew - my goal when I started the Quiet Book process was to give a FINISHED product to Isaac for Christmas. And guess what?? I did it!!!! I may have sewn the Quiet Book cover on Christmas Eve morning... but it is done! I set a goal, faced the overwhelming, worked consistently on it, didn't give up, and I achieved it. Looks like I might just be a "finisher" after all. :)