Christmas 2008

This Christmas has been very different than Christmases in the past. It was our first Christmas alone. Out here all by ourselves. Usually we go to about 4 houses on Christmas Day visiting family and eating food and opening gifts. It's crazy, busy, and fun, but we are exhausted at the end of the day! (As well as the kids who miss their naps!) We knew this Christmas would be a bit more relaxed and less scheduled.

Mallory was the first one up. She got up at 5:50am. The kids have been sleeping in until about 8 or 8:30am so I really didn't expect our day to start so soon! I tried to get her to go back to sleep until Chase and Clark woke up, but she wouldn't have it! It was fun to see her eyes filled with the anticipation of finding gifts from Santa downstairs! To let the boys sleep a little longer I had her "help" me put makeup on and do my hair. The distraction only lasted so long and we made enough noise that the boys woke up. Our tradition is that we all go see what Santa brought together, as a family. The kids were so excited!

Chase did end up getting his goat. Chase wants to be a farmer when he grows up. Well, technically he wants to be a "cow-milker". But he would love to be a farmer and take care of animals. I think that might have something to do with why he wanted a goat so bad!
And Miss Mallory has been OBSESSED with Rudolph this year. I don't know what got her started on Rudolph, but that's all she talks about. She can sing the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer song almost word for word. So she was ecstatic when she saw Rudolph sitting next to her stocking. He even sings his own theme song if you squeeze his ear. We can't wait till Rudolph runs out of batteries. If we have to hear that song one more time. . . . . .
Clark didn't really have any requests for Santa this year. He loves toys that light up and sing songs so Santa brought him a fun little Leap Frog table. Clark was really more interested in the candy that Santa stuffed in every one's stockings. He definitely has a sweet tooth! I actually posted a cute video of him teasing Craig with some M&M's that Santa left. It's 2 posts below if you want to check it out :)


We got Chase and Mallory those bouncy balls with the handles on top that you bounce around the house on. I loved these things as a kid! I gave them a proper demonstration on how to bounce around. It was a workout! I was out of breathe after bouncing back and forth across the house a few times. Wow, I'm out of shape! Chase picked up on it right away and loves it, but Mallory is a little too short for her ball. She's going to need to grow a few inches to bounce on hers!


Another hit was the umbrellas that Santa brought the kids. It rains here at least 3 days a week. When it rains - it rains all day! A nice, steady rain. So umbrellas are actually a necessity here. The kids have been begging for their own umbrellas lately. So we let "Santa" take the glory for fulfilling that item on their wish list! Here's Mallory with her Ariel umbrella:
Who's cuter? Mallory or Craig?
We went to the movies and saw Bolt in 3-D. Chase loved it! Mallory cried all the way through it. I guess all the stuff jumping out at her was a little scary. She would shrink down onto the floor of the movie theater and put her hands over her ears and cry! She didn't like it very much. We didn't have any family's house to go to so we came home and took naps and played games with the kids. The missionaries came over in the evening for pie and ice cream. And we've just tucked the kiddies into bed. We missed being with our families. We got to talk to every one on the phone, but it's not the same as being there. Nevertheless, it's been a fun and exciting day with the kids. I'm a little bit sad though. The days leading up to Christmas seem to be more fun than Christmas Day itself. I love the anticipation and having something to look forward to! I guess what we have to look forward to now is making our list of New Year's resolutions. . . . . oh boy, oh boy. . . .

Christmas Outfits

So every year we get our kids a formal outfit for Christmas. It was a family tradition for me growing up. It's good to get extra dressy every now and then! Here are the kiddos in their outfits:

CHASE
I can't hardly get this kid to smile nicely for a picture! Doesn't smiling look painful for him?!

MALLORY
I couldn't pass this dress up! It was a smokin' deal on sale too!

CLARK
Couldn't get him to hold still for a picture. So I had to snap the picture with him walking around.

The Little Teaser

Clark was obsessed with the Christmas candy that Santa left in our stockings! He started to feed it to Craig and then he would put it in his own mouth. He was so cute! Sorry the video is sideways. I couldn't figure out how to tip it the other way.

Merry Christmas

Wishing you a very merry Christmas!

Much Love,
The Kurtzeborn Family

Dear Santa. . . . .

Dear Santa,
All I want for Christmas is a goat.

When I tucked Chase into bed the night that we saw Santa I asked him what he talked to Santa about.

Chase: I told Santa I wanted a goat for Christmas.

Me (very puzzled): A goat? I thought you wanted Star Wars stuff for Christmas.

Chase: No Mom. I just want a goat.

Me: Where are we going to put a goat? We don't have a backyard anymore.

Chase (eyes glowing and face lit up): Right here in my bedroom!

Me (trying to figure a way out of this): Oh, you want him in your bedroom. He might be too big for your bedroom. I don't know if he'll fit. What are you going to do when your goat has to go to the bathroom?

Chase (eyes rolling and very exasperatedly): Not a REAL goat Mom. Just a toy goat.

Me (very relieved): Oh! Just a toy goat! That sounds great! Santa would love to bring you a toy goat!

Dear Santa,
All I want for Christmas is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and princess stuff.


Dear Santa,
For Christmas I desire nothing more than to be off your lap!

Trimming the Tree

For family night this week we ended up decorating the tree. Half of me loves putting up the tree and the other half hates it. Love it because it's fun to look at and it helps the excitement of the Christmas season begin when you pull out all the ornaments and the lights. The part of me that hates it always says, "How many ornaments are we going to break THIS year?" I lost track of how many ornaments got broken last Christmas season there were so many. And it wasn't Chase's fault. Chase insists that it was Superman that broke our ornaments. His large Superman action figure "flew" into the Christmas tree I don't know how many times sending glass shards of ornaments flying in every direction. Bad Superman. He saves people. He should know better than to fly into people's Christmas trees. And then there was the dinosaur. Again - it wasn't Chase's fault. That plastic toy dinosaur just "stomp, stomped down our stairs and jumped into our Christmas tree!" How rude.

So the tree has been up for two days now and so far we have 1 broken ornament. It was Craig's favorite. A Star Wars Starfighter Jet with R2D2 on the wing. When you push the button on it it makes Star Wars shooting noises. A pretty cool ornament. You'll never guess who broke it? Well, it wasn't Chase.
But if you ask Chase he'll tell you, "The jet just fell down off the Christmas tree and the wings broke off and went like this (he takes his two index fingers holding them close together and as he describes what happened to the wings when the jet "fell" from the tree, his fingers get farther and farther apart from each other in an outward motion.) Wow! Our Starfighter Jet took some fall!! If you ask Chase WHY the Starfighter Jet "fell" off the Christmas tree he will tell you that Clark (our little 13-month old) SHOOK our (7 and a half foot tall) Christmas tree causing the jet to fall from it's branch. Silly Clark. . . . .Christmas trees aren't for shaking!

Not to mention Clark is afraid of the Christmas tree. We were putting the tree up and he crawled underneath it and started screaming! I think the needles were poking him in the face. He freaked out and hasn't gone near it since. Which is a good thing. I really thought we were going to have some major problems with him wanting to play with the tree/ornaments/lights. Hopefully he stays afraid of it. We'll see if he gets more and more brave the longer it's up. I just hope we don't have anymore "shaking" incidences. . . . . :)

So getting out the tree and decorations was fun. We turned on some Christmas music and pulled all the boxes out. As always, the kids had a blast playing in the boxes!

Clark had fun taking the ornaments out:
Chase and Mallory hung them on the tree:
And Mallory got the honors of putting the angel on top this year:
We have loved having a fireplace here! Craig was excited that we have a mantle to hang stockings from. It's something he had as a child. Chase picked out the stocking holders. It makes a Christmas train. I LOVE the stockings! I got them on clearance last year at Target. They're velvet and the initial is in rhinestones. They have little tassels coming out the top too.
We've enjoyed the start of our Christmas season. And for once. . . . . it actually FEELS like Christmas! Baby, it's cold outside!

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving this year! We got to sleep in a little bit and then we got up to cook breakfast. The missionaries came over to eat with us. They come over almost every week for dinner so we have gotten to know them very well. They already had a dinner appointment for Thanksgiving dinner so we invited them over for breakfast. Our afternoon was very relaxing and we all took naps while our bird was cooking. The turkey turned out ok. It was a little on the dry side. But it was our first try at cooking one of these things. I'm sure we'll get better as the years go on and we practice and try new cooking techniques each year. We put fresh sprigs of rosemary under the breast skin while it cooked and the taste was amazing! I think we'll definitely repeat the rosemary. Everything else turned out great! Here's Craig carving our bird:
The kids all enjoyed different parts of the dinner. Chase ate a TON of rolls and little else. The only thing we could get Mallory to eat was turkey. And Clark absolutely loved the stuffing! I tried feeding it to him from a spoon at first and he seemed to like it, but he got really upset. So we just dumped it in front of him on the table and he started shoveling it into his mouth by the handful. We started laughing - he was eating it so fast! This picture looks like he's in a state of euphoria eating his stuffing! Ever since we started feeding him solid foods as a baby Clark has had a thing against anything green. He would not eat the peas or the green beans or the garden vegetables. If it was green he wouldn't eat it! Even as a four month old baby it was like he "knew" it was green. And he refused to swallow it! Every so often we still offer him those green veggies to see if he'll acquire a taste for them. As of Thanksgiving day - still no change. We put the green beans in front of him and he wouldn't touch them. He started screaming and crying the second we put them down on the table in front of him. Apparently he's terrified of them too now. He was trying to climb out of his booster chair to get away from them. Notice the look of disgust on his face: (Click on it to make it bigger for the full effect. We snapped the camera at just the right time to capture his true feelings of all things green.) It really was funny. You would have thought those greens beans were trying to attack him by the way he started acting. We ended up moving them away and gave him more stuffing - which put him back in a state of happiness. We had some friends in the ward come over for pie and ice cream in the evening and we called it a day! We missed being with family, but we still enjoyed each other's company and the company of friends. We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Help??

Some of you have on your blogs those things where under your links you have how long ago the person updated. It will have so and so's name and then underneath it the title of their new post and how many days ago they posted it. Do you know what I'm talking about? Is there anyone who can tell me how to get that feature on my blog? I think it will help me to blog more effectively, that way I know when my friends have posted something new. If the directions are too long to leave in the comments box you can email me at hollydolly413@yahoo.com. Thanks!

Some Randoms

Ok, so there are a hundred NEW posts below! I finally got all of my pictures downloaded from the past couple of months since we have been here. It's nice to get them all off my camera! We finally got all unpacked and all the decorations hung so we are feeling settled. Yay! It was not easy to get to this point. When we first got here the last half of September we stayed in an extended stay hotel. We shipped our stuff and stayed in the hotel until it arrived. We were only supposed to be in the hotel for 2 weeks. Craig's dad flew out here from Phoenix to help us unload everything. The next day we found out that our stuff wasn't going to be here for a whole nother week! Craig was checking his email at the hotel and there was an email from the moving company saying that our stuff was going to be late! A week late! We were very upset wondering why the company didn't try to contact us by phone to discuss this issue with us. We weren't checking our email every day at the hotel. The internet wasn't that great there and it didn't work all the time. So we didn't get the message in time! We were scheduled to check out of the hotel the next day and really we need to stay another week and Craig's dad has just flown out here for no reason now because there is no stuff to unpack!! Uggg! It was very frustrating! And I thought I was going to die if I had to stay in a hotel room with three cooped up children for one more day! You know how children can be in confined areas! Needless to say we were all going nuts! We just wanted our stuff! It finally came a week later. Our townhouse is small, but it felt like a dream after being in that hotel for 3 weeks! The kids were so excited to see their beds. It had been 4 1/2 months since they had slept in them! They were SOOOO excited to play with their toys. We went and bought a few toys for them to play with in the hotel, but the same 5 toys get boring after 3 weeks. Ya know?! It took us a whole month to unpack everything. Unpacking is hard to do with 3 little ones running around! They would run off with stuff that I was trying to put away or put it in a different box. It was crazy! But it's finally done and we have breathed out a big sigh of relief! A few people have asked for pictures of the townhouse. I will get those to you soon. :) I think I have done enough posting for one day! There were a few random pictures that I came across while I was unloading the pics off my camera. I wanted to share a few. They were too cute not to pass on!

First, a funny story:
Chase lost his second tooth while we were staying in the hotel. Exciting! Chase and Mallory were sharing a bedroom. The hotel had two bedrooms and a family room area and a tiny kitchen. One of the bedrooms had two beds in it. So we put Chase and Mallory in that bedroom with their own bed each. This made going to sleep difficult because they loved to talk and play with each other. Plus we were getting used to a 3 hour time difference. Going to bed at 8 felt like 5 o'clock dinner time to them! It took some adjusting! Anyway, Craig and I were watching TV in the family room area the night that Chase's tooth had fallen out and we can here Mallory just talking away. When all of a sudden we hear Chase scream at the top of his lungs, "Shutup Mallory, I want the tooth fairy to come to me!" We looked at each other and just busted up laughing! We should have gone in there and chastised him for saying the "shutup" word, but we were laughing too hard! And the funny thing is . . . . Mallory did shutup!

I have been finding Clark in the weirdest places. He loves to get into everything! He can already climb. He is tall enough to reach door handles and he has figured out how to pull them open. Great! Nothing can keep him out of a room now! I was cleaning out the fridge the other day and wiping the shelves down and I turned around and found this:
And everytime he hears us LOADING the dishwasher he is right there helping to UNLOAD as quickly as he can!

It is so cold here! I came out of the pediatrician's office with the kids yesterday and it was 33 degrees! The high for the day yesterday was only 37. Yikes! We have to plan an extra 10 minutes of bundling time before we go anywhere. We've had to adjust the carseat straps on Clark's booster to make room for his coat. He looks like a little sausage! He can't even sit all the way back in his seat bacause his coat is so big!
He falls asleep almost everytime we ride in the car and he's in all his winter gear. He can't really move! So he just falls asleep!


We got a chuckle out of this! Good advertising!


Grandpa Marc and Grandma Treesa brought the kids some baseball gear. We went to the park to go play catch one day.



We went to Wendy's in Phoenix the day we dropped off our second car to be shipped across the country.
Eating my veggies Mom!


Enough of the randoms. There are more specific posts of the last couple of months below! It's mostly pictures. Not too much reading. Enjoy!

Central Park Zoo

We took a trip into Manhattan to check out Central Park Zoo. We took a train. I would never drive in New York City! Way too crazy! And you can't bring your car seats on the train. So we didn't have car seats once we got to Manhattan. Car seats aren't required in the city either. So we all piled into a taxi cab to get from the train station to Central Park. The kids just jumped in the back seat and we held the babies on our laps. (Craig's sister and her baby came with us too.) I can see why car seats aren't required though. There is so much traffic you don't hardly go 20 mph. If you were to get in a wreck it wouldn't do anything but bend up the fender. Not that you would want your child to go flying off the seat or anything, but they would probably just get a little bump on the noggin. It rained all day the day we went :( And it was nasty humid! But the zoo was fun. It was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Central Park itself is pretty big. We want to go back and see the rest of it, but the zoo was little. There aren't very many exhibits. But the kids enjoyed it! Chase loved the polar bears. He actually got his first chance to take a picture. We have never let him use the camera before. He really wanted to take a picture of the polar bears so we gave him the camera. He was aiming for the polar bears and he came out with this: Not a bad picture of our Mally girl! So he tried to figure out how to aim the camera again and he came out with these:
Pretty good, huh?
Up by the Polar Bear exhibit there was a great view of the city. There are skyscrapers everywhere! The buildings go forever up into the sky! It was a very foggy day and it was neat to see the fog descend down over the buildings.
We were there when they fed the seals. They did tricks for us and then got their food. Clark was a very happy baby that day and just went with the flow. He didn't mind the stroller and loved looking around at all the animals. The flowers were very vibrant!
These eagle statues were everywhere in the middle of the zoo. The kids loved to play in the wings!
We all had a great time and were exhausted by the time we sat down on the train to head back to NJ. I think Chase displayed best how we all felt at the end of the day:
Mouth hanging open and everything!

Independence Hall

We got the chance to go to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I went about 8 years ago and it was just as neat to see the second time around. I love this area of Philadelphia. It's dripping with history! We saw the Liberty Bell first. And then moved on to Independence Hall. I love historical places. I would have loved to have lived back then when all of the architecture was so beautiful. You don't see many buildings built like that anymore. Everything looks so old, but it looks so nice at the same time.

Inside Independence Hall:

The Courtroom:

Room where the Declaration of Independence was signed:

I didn't really get to hear all of the historical facts the tour guides were telling us about Independence Hall because Clark had decided he had had enough of the stroller! He started screaming and I ended up out in the foyer with him. Sorry I don't have any cool facts to share with you! It really is a beautiful building though if you haven't been there yet!
After touring Independence Hall we went on a horse drawn carriage ride around the city. The tour guide showed us all the old buildings where famous historical people lived and did business or went to church.
Don't you love the architecture?



I wish they still built everything this way! We love the movie National Treasure. It was fun to be right there where all of the scenes in the movie took place! Cool vacation spot if you haven't been here!