Merry Christmas

The Pictures (no collages this week...oh well):

Everytime Cannon gets in the car (in Santa Clara) he says "Tows, Tows, Tows" (Cows) He LOVES helping feed.

We attempted gingerbread houses with Ann...

Pop "Sicles" with Grampa!

Sneaking into Grampa's computer...this kid loves technology!

Cannon was helping Sharley carry decorations out from church...and maybe the biggest reason this picture had to go on was the Red Mountain in the background!

Christmas Morning! Santa found us!

New Trucks!

Stories with mom

How do I sit in Grama's new Grandkid chairs AND ride my horse???

Opening presents at Grandma Ison's He's telling us this is "Big Bird"

Playing in Kate's new tent. He LOVED running into the sides and tipping it over. -He broke one of the poles :(

Kate painting my fingernails

Playing with a motor on Grandpa's work bench

Sledding with the Aunts Uncles and cousins.

Playing ball with Ethan on the stairs

Drawing on his new little tablet

Thursday we went to the Wave Pool in Price, it was really fun.

Still Chewing on that Silky! But with smile like that, why not?

The journal.
I need to write about this last SATURDAY. Cann Man would not go to bed, so finally I just laid him in his crib at my mom house hoping he'd give up and trying to keep myself from getting frustrated. Isaac was in the bedroom laying down faking like he was asleep. So I text him and said basically are we making any progress (with Cann falling asleep) well he heard his phone but ignored the text and a few others thinking it was just a friend texting him and taking this faking sleep thing pretty seriously, the good news is we were making progress. Well I'll give you 2 guesses what faking sleep turned into... and then my dad came home and Cannon heard him and well one of my boys ended up asleep and it was the wrong one. So I just got Cannon out of bed, shortly after my mom came home, and Cannon was hilarious playing with Grama. They had a pillow fight and he kept saying "I fight" "I fight" it was so funny. It was late and he was SO TIRED he was laughing so hard he could hardly breath then he'd make this funny noise as he sucked in air. Oh it was great. Then all of the sudden he got tired of that and started riding the legs of the ironing board like a horse and making all of his horse noises. This kid is SO FUNNY. I was cracking up. Of course we woke Isaac up laughing but he just stayed laying in bed and the good news is we really did tire Cannon out. So I finally got him to sleep, Victory!!! Then the next thing I know Isaac is on the phone... at 11 o'clock at night, I may or may not have been a little annoyed because I'd text him and no response-asleep, or so I thought- anyway he went out to the garage so he wouldn't wake anyone up but then he came back in still talking on the phone but very quiet. So heard him and headed that way mostly to see what the heck was going on then he held out the phone and said "Its President Boone, can you talk to him?" So what happened was not only my text got ignored but so did one from our stake president in Mississippi, (and one or 2 from the friend) Anyway he text back then called back (cuz it was even later there) but Isaac has a new calling, he's going to be the 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric. Wow huh? Its pretty wild reflecting on the past few months and how Heavenly Fathers hand has guided us to this point. When I posted, a while back about things getting better in Mississippi I had definitely felt like that was where we were needed, which as HUGE progress for us because ... well if you read the blog-you get it.  But there are a whole chain of events and important conversations -even as recent as last Monday- that we have had that have led us to or prepared us for this point. Its wild but I feel really good about it. Oh and it was also really cool that we'd been to the temple Sat. morning. Anyway, I had to write it down.

Christmas was good-see the pictures post :)
Cannon says "Oh shoot" all the time... I guess that means I do too.
He says "Santa" and "Ho Hoooo" We had so much fun.


Whenever we drive by a church he says "Bum-ple" "Bum-ple"  which is how he says "Temple" he started doing it in Mississippi but here we drive by SO MANY more (LDS) churches. He can says "Temp-le" when he's just heard it and he got a cool book about temples from Grandma Ison usually we just try to explain that its a church but both are Heavenly Fathers houses. He can kind of says "Church"

I watched my kids play basketball this weekend but I don't feel like a coach anymore. I think that's a good thing since I'm not, but I just feel more like a parent. I hope they know I care about them.

What a week! SO FUN. We headed to SLC and went to the Christmas Concert at he conference center. Very Cool. Isaac's younger brother works there so he hooked us up with tickets. The music was awesome especially the bells and the guy who sang Tenor was awesome to. Then Tom Brokaw told the story of the "Candy Bomber" Hal Halverson in WWII. Then as they introduced him (now 92 years old) they "bombed" the conference center with parachutes and little pieces of candy and that part of the show was totally Bryan's doing. It was really really cool.

He wasn't really up for a photo shoot with the parachute :(

Link to Desnews story where I stole this pic from

Levi and Staci tended for us but we stayed with Grama and Grampa Kenworthy, Cannon sure loves Dolly Dog but she's not so sure about him. We went to church at Isaac's Aunt Marjorie's ward then headed for Huntington. One of my favorite things was when we sat down at Grama Ison's kitchen table Sunday night and Isaac started humming or singing or something "there's no place like home for the holidays" it was great, he so adventurous that sometimes I think he doesn't even miss home (as opposed to me) anyway it was really fun to have him so happy to be home. And we had a blast.
Let the projects with dad begin...
At first it was just screwing screws into a board then they decided they could turn it into an airplane. Then "How a Sponge works" experiment. (and the bottom corner pic is just Cann riding Grandma Kenworthy's exercise equipment. 

Grandma Ison loves having the toys out for the kids to play with and she just kept bringing more and more fun stuff. Then we went made some cookies and took down to the Parrish crew when we went to visit Buck. We always have so much fun there.
Originally we were going to go back to St. George Tuesday but then Buck had a lion hunt lined up for Wed. Isaac was SO excited. It turned out really great to because Tuesday it snowed ALL DAY. It was so pretty! And SO FUN.

 I wish the bottom pictures were on top on the above collage but I couldn't figure out how to do it so oh well.  Anyway...see the bottom left pic up Isaac pulling Cann up the "little hill" I tried to remind him that our son is only 1 1/2 but to no avail. The top pics in the above collage are how it turned out and little wonder that Cannon was clingy to me the rest of the time. He wasn't about to get back on that sled unless I was holding him (next collage top left pic) and even then he wasn't real sure.

 There was snow on the ground in Salt Lake too so  it was like we just got this great taste of winter on our trip north. We  had such a good time.
Here's a quick movie of the snow in SL

the lion

No place like home for the Holidays!!!

Oh it is so good to be home. I'm in heaven. We went to our ward party last Saturday, then taught our lessons on Sunday and headed out Monday.
We flew out of Shreveport and it was SO NICE to have Isaac with is. Plus he was a ton help. 2 seats for Cannon to tromp all over is way better than one. Then it was just home stuff-feed the dogs-feed the cows-play with Ann and so on, check on the house.

Carrots from out garden!

Tuesday we got to watch by girls play basketball, Wednesday went to the temple, Thursday I got to go to basketball practice, I had a blast it was just like old times and I think my cute players loved me being there as much as I loved it, it was just great. We've been staying up watching the National Finals Rodeo, its so fun. I used to do it all the time. Grandma and Grandpa Ison stopped by on their way home from Hawaii, and we're headed to SLC then down to Huntington this weekend. Keep the good times coming!!! :)

 

Before we left Cannon found some mega-blocks that I'd bought him for Christmas and stashed under the bed (note to self- under the bed will not work for hiding presents from him in the future) I figured he's not going to get to play with them until after Christmas anyway so what the heck-he had a blast. He'd hook them together then tap on the top to make sure it was secure, so cute. Then the bottom center and left pics-all yellow blocks! It was so fun to watch him color sort all on his own. I wouldn't have guessed that yet-but then again I don't exactly read the books. :)

So for our fun date we went to the State Championship football game Friday night because Brandon was playing in it.  (we don't technically live in Brandon but close enough)  It was really fun though and Cann Man-he might have had more fun than us!

Saturday morning we went to the Baton Rouge temple. A trip to the temple is a good 10 hour project here. We had to be gone by 5:30 in the morning to make the 9:00 session but it was really really cool. They had this temple day planned all year as one of the ward goals (We found that out later, all we knew was it had been announced since Aug when we got here so we figured it was kind of a big deal and made plans to go.) They had a nursery in the adjacent chapel so Cann Man hung out there. I had an old timer in our ward snap a quick picture. I'm thankful he did, I just snapped the one on the right to get the Angel Moroni and spire in it. :)

It was really really neat, ward temple days seems to be a little different here-I guess that it takes so much time is probably part of it. And we found out that our Bishop will be moving at the end of this month. I'm sad for us, but so so so excited for their family. Bishop Jordan totally holds a special place in our hearts already, and we have grown to love his is family so quickly, great people.
Sunday Annie took some family pictures for us. The 10 minutes before we walked out the door it wasn't looking good but Isaac was SO super cooperative, I was so proud of him and happy happy happy. Most of my favorites are in the new blog header (We've needed a new once of those for a while.) If I really get after it I might even get Christmas cards sent...
Then since we live right by the Nativity Lutheran Church and they were having a live nativity-we checked it out before listening to the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional. It was no tuachan, that 's for sure, but it was still fun cool and they had a camel so Isaac had a great time talking to the camel owner.

 

The Christmas devotional was good, it was just a good day.
Then we did normal things, story time at the library, the play date at the park-so wet and muddy...little boy heaven. We also made Christmas tree ornaments with Ayla and Henry (another little boy from our ward) one day, it was really fun.

Apparently Cannon thought they should be edible...

He runs to the window every time he hears and airplane. I feel like we live in a good area and a safe part of town but when my kid picks up the word "Siren" then makes a very accurate siren noise I'm very aware that we live in the city. We hear them all the time.
I know there was one other thing he's been doing a lot that I wanted to mention and was sure I wouldn't forget but...
Isaac is all but done! One semester down. YEA!!!