A Bjorkman Christmas

The Snowman Building

The Snowball Fight



The Christmas Music

The Nativity

Narrator= Jon; Angel= Jeff; Joseph= Kate; Mary= Reese; The Star=Samuel; Innkeeper=Tom; shepherd=Becky; Wiseman=Andrea

This year's Mary may look sweet but she was constantly yelling "No!" at all her castmates and throwing baby Jesus on the ground. Apparently her stage demands were not being met. (I edited a lot of it out, but see the post below for just a small sample of some of the attitude.)

The "Buffet"

The Marilyn Bjorkman at the 9 o'clock hour

The Gifts

Thanks Karen for the fun and way creative apron!

The Nose-picking

The Football

The Wife Who Was Bribed to Play Football with the Promise of a Back-Massage (She's still waiting to collect)

The (Almost) Birthday Boy

Tom picked pizza for his birthday dinner this year.

The Goodbyes

We had a great time Bjorkmans! Thanks for all the fun and memories!

Nativity

I think the cutest part about the play was Samuel "the star." Originally we wanted him to be Joseph, Kate to be Mary, and Reese to be baby Jesus. Samuel just didn't like the idea of being Joseph. We kept telling him how cool that part was and somebody finally said, "Don't you want to be the star of the show?" He paused for a minute then looked up at us excitedly and replied, "Yeah, I do want to be the star of the show." He is only 4 so he meant that literally. Thus, Samuel the Star of Bethlehem.

Merry Christmas!

I know little Reesey's bum is cute to look at, but her face is even cuter! Merry Christmas!

My Silly Family

Just some fun family moments:

Tom flipping Reese around. I love baby bums!

Every baby needs a mohawk picture.

Babysitting Gavin. Man, the anticipation must be killing them. Too bad they have to wait for their first kiss to be over the alter just like Tom and me! ;)

Tom "reading" a bedtime story. He's trying to launch his rap-master career so we thought this would be a good place to start. I love how the kids aren't even phased. They're so used to Tom being such a goof-ball.

Bless Their Little Hearts!

I was out and about running errands yesterday and one of my stops was Wal-Mart. I had some returns (like always) so on the way in the little greeter lady put some tags on my stuff then said "Have a nice day Miss." Miss? Oh, so sweet! But it didn't stop there. One of the things on my list of things to get was Krazy Glue. So as I was checking out, the Krazy Glue beeped a weird beep over the scanner and the check out lady paused, looked at me and said, "Are you over 18?" I gasped and exclaimed, "Thank you for asking!" I wanted to hug her. She still waited there for me to respond yes or no. Even better! I'm only 27 so why do I care so much? Well, I used to be mistaken for younger until I hit about 25. Then people started calling me "ma'am" and thinking I was at least my real age which was about the same time my zits were replaced with dark splotches (I'm forever cursed with bad skin). I'm sure she didn't really think I was under 18 and that she was just doing her job, but man that made my day! Kind of funny that they have to ask about Krazy Glue huh? Little does she know...MUHAHAHA!!!

Crazy, crazy week. I have never in my life had to keep a calendar to remember the things I have going on. I typically don't forget things, but with the addition of my new calling (wowsers!), babysitting everyday, two of Tom's work activities, a birthday party, my own work, a girl's night out, an Enrichment activity and a few other things, I felt like my head was spinning. I forgot things right and left. I used to laugh at my mom and her giant planner, but now I'm understanding...and I only have 1 kid. (Does the line "go get me my green notebook" sound familiar to any of my siblings?)

Here are a few highlights of some of the fun things that I did remember this week.

Have you seen the 80's movie "Mannequin"? It's only the best movie ever! hehe The movie is about a guy and this mannequin that only comes to life when he's around and nobody else. He gets so frustrated that nobody believes him and that nobody ever gets to see this person be animated. Well, I was thinking the other night after Reese sat on Santa's lap, "Oh my gosh, that's my little Reese." She can be so shy as soon as we step out the door. It's fun for me to be able to show the silly, fun side of her that we see at home on this blog though.

Thursday afternoon Tom's work had an afternoon reserved at the Children's Museum. We were positive that she would scream her little head off as soon as we put her on Santa's lap. Instead, she sat there and wouldn't look at anybody. Not Santa, not Tom, not me. Nobody! She looked straight forward totally expressionless. We got a big kick out it. Here's some footage of our little mannequin.

A few other activities at the Children's Museum.

Trying to remember what else was on her shopping list.

First art project. She's a natural!

And now brace yourself for "Nerdfest 2007!"

Tom and about 10 other guys got together to play Risk on Friday night. I think they're going to make this a monthly thing.

Kassiah, Hollie, and I just put the kids all to bed upstairs then headed out for a girl's night (of course I mean the kids were in the same house as the guys). We did a little shopping then saw "August Rush." It was so cute when I'd call Tom to see how things were going. His responses were super abrupt and he was always in the biggest rush to get off the phone. I've found that Risk is a very intense game.

We finally got snow this weekend. This is pretty late for our first real snow fall.

All cozy and ready to run errands.

Last night was Tom's work party. It's typically a pretty fancy shindig with good food.

This year, not so much. There were just little appetizers and none of our friends were there. So instead of staying to make awkward conversation with people we really didn't know we took off after only 20 minutes and went out to dinner by ourselves. It ended up being the perfect date night.

All in all, it was a busy week, but pretty fun! But here's to a much more mellow week!

All Done!

We taught Reese a while ago to say "all done" when she's done eating. Of course it sounds a little more like "ah-dun." So the other day Reese was taking a nap and after an hour or so Tom and I hear the sweetest little voice over the monitor say "ah-dun." She repeated it several times until we got her. It cracked us up. She's only done it one other time since, but I think it's so precious and I would love it if she kept it up.

By the way, I think this is a pretty good picture to see Reese's eye color (of course they look different in different lighting like outside, but this is pretty true to what we normally see). The only thing is that we're kind of stuck on what color to call them. We've had people call them brown, hazel, blue, grey, and greenish. I won't say which color Tom and I normally say because I'm curious as to what you think.

Wait, here's a better one of her eyes in outside light.

It's been 5 years?!?!

So Tom and I were out putting Christmas lights up yesterday (yeah we did it), and as we were talking we realized that today would be exactly 5 years since our very first date. We got a little nostalgic reminiscing about that night. It was the best date either of us had ever had. Of course you'd think we'd say that because we got married, but it really was. We talked for 8 straight hours! It was a big group date with all my roommates and he and I might as well have been alone because we were just in complete la-la land with each other. I remember thinking it was so refreshing not having to even try to keep up conversation. I actually had to fight to squeeze in a question before he could ask me another one about myself. When he dropped me off at my apartment that night he didn't skip a beat before asking me out for the very next weekend. And the rest is history. Well, there's definitely more to the story, but I'll save that for another time. My friend Marisa did one of those tag posts with her whole dating story which I thought was so fun. I think I'll do that sometime too.

Not that we usually celebrate our first date, but it gave us a good excuse to go out last night. We went to Coldstone and then to see "Enchanted." Alright, that's now 2 movies we've seen since Reese has been born! I'd give the movie a "medium" rating. It started out cute, then got annoying, then got really cute again. I'm a great movie critic huh? Let's just say that it was good, but I thought it would be better.

Tom putting up our Christmas lights. What a guy! Can you believe that we've been in our house for 3 years and this is our first time putting outside lights up? What a bunch of bah-humbugers we've been!

We tried to get one of those oh so cute shots of our child all tangled up in Christmas lights...not so much! She was fascinated at first when we plugged them in, but freaked out when we put them around her.