The weather outside is frightful but Christmas was so delightful...

Here's our rundown!

Philburt makes his appearance! Sage was worried that since he normally comes to our home the day after Thanksgiving that if we weren't there when he arrived he may head back to the north pole or drop in on another family so she left him a note to alert him that we were in UT but would be back soon. In no way did she want to miss out on his antics so to entice him to return she left out some treats for him!



I have to say I missed our normal tradition of taking our photos with Santa and decorating the house on Thanksgiving weekend but we made sure to at least get the house done that next weekend! Here's Ty doing his now traditional chandelier decorating...



Festival of lights at the Cincinnati Zoo! Unfortunately Jack wasn't able to make it and didn't realize until he was in AZ that our tickets were with him in his backpack. Thankfully FexEx came through and the tickets arrived within a couple hours of heading out the door! As you can see we also got to check out Santa's reindeer!!! Highlight for Sage? Watching one of the elephants take care of business right in front of her...



Fire, fire, fire! We had a bunch of trees removed from the back yard (most of which had died due to some beetle out here that has killed off so many ash trees). Instead of having the crew remove all the wood we asked them to cut up some for us since I love a real fire in the fireplace and in past years we'd burn through the wood from the stores within an hour! It's been so fun for Sage and I to put together a fire each night for the family.



We finally made it to the mall for our photo with Santa! Sage cracked me up though because she had brought her list to share with Santa but apparently after getting to the second item she began feeling Santa pressing up against her back with his hand signaling her time was up...lol! She commented on how "Santa was getting grumpier with age"...haha! As we went up to pay for our photo I realized that Ty had left on his glasses. You can imagine how excited she was to return to sit on his lap one more time...haha!




Christmas Eve! And yes, our tree got a little taller this year! It seemed each year we went to plug in our last tree a new section of lights was out. We were never able to figure out what the problem was and were finding ourselves putting up new lights on top of the old ones that didn't work. It was starting to look a bit ghetto so Jack insisted on a new tree. After purchasing and setting up two different ones to see which one we preferred and having all my neighbors voice their opinions, not to mention having a couple friends share their thoughts after looking at photos we landed on this one! It takes a village but I think we got it right...



The big day! I have no doubt that I get as excited for this day as the kids do!!! You see Mrs. Clause pretty much runs the Christmas show in the Roddy household! Santa is as surprised as the kids to find what's under that tree. Mrs. Clause has spent the last month shopping for gifts, hiding gifts, wrapping gifts, returning gifts (yes, when you see Santa so late in the season, lists can change...)! So you bet I can't wait to see the kids' faces as they open their gifts! There is one other thing that I look forward to even more and that's seeing our Elf return back to the North Pole. Yes, that is a day of rejoicing indeed...

So this year Ty has been asking for a phone and we have been dragging our heels. There really has been no reason for either of the boys to have a phone. To dish out all the $$$ on a phone is bad enough (especially since T Mobile doesn't offer any subsidized phones and that's been our carrier for almost 15 years so we're not changing now) not to mention the monthly service plan. I've been tempted to give Ty Jack's personal phone since we pay on that anyway and Jack hardly glances at it but that wasn't realistically going to happen. As I prodded Ty for why he wanted a phone since it's not like he calls his friends all the time or has to call me for things and his itouch texts just fine, I learned that it wasn't actually the phone that he was wanting but he wanted a new apple device that had the new operating system. Yes, all his friends have phones but really it was the app part of it that he wanted. Since his itouch is a few years old, apple no longer supports it and so any apps he has that need updates couldn't be updated for some reason. After making him think there was no way he was getting a phone for Christmas (as I like to have surprises on Christmas) and basically helping him understand why a new itouch would fit the bill, I found myself weighing out the pluses and minuses of getting him a new itouch vs. a phone and it became clear I had dragged my heels long enough and for selfish reasons decided a phone would indeed be as beneficial for Ty as it would for me. So I caved. I was the last person on earth to get a smart phone so it only makes sense my children are too and it looks like Connor probably will be since he had no desire for one for Christmas. Connor instead had his heart on a GoPro. This was the first year he had asked for anything besides a video game or book...seriously. Clearly now he was making up for all those years. Haha! Sage on the other hand just had a few small things she wanted including a candy bar maker and a cotton candy maker. Well after begging for the easy bake oven last year and using it once and never again I knew Santa was going to have to be creative about coming up with other options that would make her just as happy. Luckily she must have not had her heart set on those things because when Santa didn't come through, she never said a word. She is big into Lego Friends and between that and her pink .22 gun she got, she was completely content. Thankfully the boys were so pleased with their gifts they didn't seem to mind that Santa overestimated Sage's gift count and she ended up with a half dozen more gifts than them... Once again Jack was good to me and I think I was pretty good to him and aside from a couple gifts that arrived AFTER Christmas, Christmas was a success!!!




Again this year Michael and Michele joined us for Christmas dinner along with Michael's sweet mom Gloria. They have truly become like family to us which is especially nice when we live so far away from our extended families...



And just like that it's over! For many years Jack has begged for a house full of Christmas trees. I was feeling two was plenty as that's what we had done for quite some time but for some reason he imagines every room with a tree...HEAVEN HELP ME! LOL! I agreed to four but you can bet I wasn't going to be in charge of taking down four trees so here are my helpers... Cheers to a wonderful 2015!