Tagged again.

This Tag of 8s is courtesy of my liberal friend Joel.

8 TV Shows I Watch.
Hmm, hard one. I don't watch TV. Ok, every now and then I catch SNL and I did watch the Olympics religiously...but that's not even close to 8, so instead, I'm going to say my 8 favorite radio shows because I'm a talk radio junkie:

1. Rush...if I can only hear one show a day, that's the one I must hear.
2. Sean Hannity
3. Mark Levin...sometimes a little strident but I learn so much from him and you can't find a more passionate patriot.
4. Victoria Taft...local show...she's fabulous and Portland politics always supply plenty of talking material.
5. Coast-to-Coast-AM...ok, it embarrasses me a little to admit to that one since half the time it's goofy conspiracy theorists and UFO stuff, but every now and then they have a really great interview about natural disaster kinds of things or history...it's great to go to sleep to on nights when George is out of town.
6. Mark & Dave...another local duo
7. Laura Ingraham
8. Dr. Laura...so I don't listen to her as much as I used to but I think she's right on the money so much of the time. The callers get old though.

8 Favorite Restaurants
It's really hard thinking of 8 of anything...

1. Bombay House in Provo
2. Melting Pot
3. Clark Lewis
4. Burgerville
5. Wendy's...always a must on road trips...I love the good old baked potato.
6. McDonald's...an occasional treat with the boys to my old stomping grounds. : )
7. Papa Haydn
8. Anywhere I can find a really good Philly Cheesesteak

8 Things That Happened to Me or That I Did Today
See how unexciting my daily life can be...

1. Rolled drowsily out of bed
2. Showered
3. Cleaned up last night's dishes (yummy enchilada dinner with the missionaries!)
4. Watched my friend's kids while she ran to a dr's appt.
5. Was paid a surprise visit by my son Aaron's 1st grade teachers who delivered a thank you gift that would have been sent home the week before Christmas if it hadn't been cancelled by snow.
6. Did some laundry
7. Signed papers for a refinance we're not sure we'll do after all.
8. Put Benno down for a nap...ah, such a cutie. I love that little fellow!

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To:

1. New Year's Eve
2. Putting away all the Christmas decor
3. Anticipation of a special delivery in the coming year (no news yet)
4. Possibly illustrating my first children's book--fingers crossed!!! It's being reviewed by committees right now...yikes!
5. A few more years down the road, being DONE with diapers.
6. My sister's wedding (if it happens) in March
7. My brother-in-law's wedding in May
8. Anthony's next gymnastics meet in a few weeks!

8 Things I Wish For:

1. Mitt Romney for President. : )
2. Financial success for Frutzzo
3. That I would miraculously grow 5 more inches taller (without adding to my girth)
4. Any family member would move here to Oregon...anyone, anyone...parent, brother/sister, cousin, distant relation...we are deprived of family here.
5. An addition to my house that would include another bedroom, an office, and a mudroom (really just an expansion of the laundry room on that one)...a larger kitchen would be nice too...
6. Any old friends moving to Oregon...love & miss them too.
7. A long vacation back east...with a special visit to Massachusetts in the Fall.
8. All the time to spend reading as I want...never enough time to read!

8 People I Tag:
How I hate tagging...the few times I've ever tagged anyone, they don't play along anyway...so I'll tag the few who actually do these kinds of things and anyone else who reads and thinks this sounds fun, do it. I'll see it if you do and I'll be happy you did.

1. M2-3M
2. Candy
3. Heather

ZooLights

We finally got to go see ZooLights last night...we'd wanted to go the week before Christmas, but then the snow happened and the Zoo along with the rest of Portland was closed. The lights were pretty with the little bit of snow that was left on the ground too. All the snow at our house has melted (the bottom pic is our backyard on Friday...all of that was gone by Saturday and there's hardly a sign of snow anywhere today--church was NOT cancelled, hooray!)

And a video below too of the train...watching the train go by was actually more fun than riding the train--they need more lights along the train route...you're mostly riding in darkness on cold metal seats!

Christmas Day!

Lucky for us, our crew slept rather late and we weren't woken up until 8:30am (owing to our late bedtime, no doubt)!!! Aaron was the one to run in and share the news that "Santa CAME!!! He ATE the cookies and DRANK the milk!!! And the reindeer ate the carrot!!!"

The obligatory line-up photo. So hard to get one good photo...my boys are much too silly, and much too addicted to chocolate milk:

Benno's sad because we took his cup away. Notice Christopher's holding a cookie as well. These were the best two of all that I took (and I took a TON.)

Then it was time to open presents. We held fast to the one gift at a time rule--only one person may open a gift at one time so that we can all see (and good thing too because it would've all been over with after 5 minutes otherwise...it was a rather lean year compared to years past, and that's not a bad thing.)

The 3 big boys each got a remote control car from Santa:

Santa brought the entire family a Wii, but it came with a condition--boys are only allowed to play it if and only if their room & toy room are clean and homework has been finished, otherwise the elves will come back overnight and take the Wii away until the job is done. The boys each had to sign their names to the agreement. Aaron grumbled, "The Bennions just bought their Wii and didn't have any agreement."

Benno is such a character. Lately he's been helping himself to my bathroom drawer & cabinets, where he pulls out my make-up sponges and the little boxes of soap. He loves them so much that I just wrapped up a bunch of them and gave them to him for Christmas--you should've seen how excited he was to open those and then he paraded around the room. Funny guy!

Notice he's still holding the sponges and soap:

My other favorite gift of the year was for Christopher. Back in November I asked him what he wanted for Christmas and the first thing out of his mouth was "Doughnuts." So he got his "Donuts" (both glazed and chocolate!)

The Wii is definitely a hit and was going for most of the day today (though we've decided we should definitely invest in a few more games...WiiSports & WiiPlay are only fun for so long.)

And one of my most favorite things about the day was that we had our white Christmas here at home!!! The snow was falling for a while today and it was just the most magical and memorable moment...  It was a truly successful and memorable first Christmas at home!

Christmas Eve

As much as we missed being with family this Christmas, being at home for Christmas Eve was so much fun. 

We had the NORAD Santa Tracker going all day and the boys were running to the computer periodically to check on Santa's whereabouts.

We were excited to see him over Athens:

And I was most excited to spot him over Paris:

And Nice as well:

It's funny how much traditions are tied to food. Since it was our first Christmas at home without family, we were trying to start some traditions of our own but when it came to food we were all about all the best family food traditions.

The boys & I had fun making "Trash" (thank you Maury for including that one in the family cookbook!!!) My stepmom Barbara always made the best Trash!

Dinner wasn't terribly extravagant but my favorite part was Grandma's "Blessing Potatoes" and the boys devoured the ham (see Benno below!) And we love our Great Harvest rolls and of course, what's a holiday without Martinelli's???  *I tried to make Grandma's 3 layer Christmas Jell-O but failed miserably. My 2nd layer didn't set. Will have to practice that one!

Check out Benno's plate, and his mouth is stuffed full of ham. Somebody around here loves ham. Make that somebodies...all the boys ate ham like crazy.

So after dinner, we gathered everyone into the living room where we did our scripture reading of the Nativity Story and sang carols interspersed with the scripture story with George accompanying us on guitar. Then we watched the "Joy to the World" DVD produced by the church (which for some reason I was confusing with "Luke II" which is much shorter...) so it was quite late when that finally finished though it was wonderful--we just have to remember to start our Christmas Eve festivities earlier! The boys opened their new Christmas pajamas, set out their plate of cookies & carrot & milk for Santa & his reindeer, and were soundly dismissed to bed.

I was up afterward cleaning up, and another glance at the Santa Tracker revealed that Santa was VERY close--here he's in Aloha, OR, which is our neighboring city (and for non-locals, that is pronounced A-LOW-uh, not the Hawaiian way.)

I run upstairs and come back to find that Santa has visited us! The stockings are filled:

And Santa's left presents!!!

The evening was so peaceful & quiet, aside from the soft sounds of Christmas carols playing on the radio...for once everything was clean and there was a palpable feeling of excited anticipation hanging in the air... The photo can't do the moment full justice but it makes me happy to look at it again and remember.

Caroling

Together with our friends/neighbors we caroled around our neighborhood, delivering our Christmas cards and plates of goodies along the way. It was fun...mostly it was just fun to be out at night with all the kids in the snow and to see each neighbor's happy face as they opened their doors.

Best moment (or worst, depending how you look at it) came when it was Christopher's turn to give the plate of cookies. (We paired off the kids--one rang the doorbell & handed the card while the other handed the plate to the neighbor.) Christopher decided he was going to ring the doorbell too, which is hard to do when you're just 4 years old, balancing a plate of cookies on one arm and trying desperately to reach up with the other and ring the doorbell while wearing a big cumbersome winter coat & gloves. The kids were all hovering around him as he tried to ring the bell and were getting impatient. Anthony reached over Christopher & rang the bell, meanwhile Christopher DROPPED the plate of cookies and while turning to give Anthony a giant angry shove, he STEPPED ON THE COOKIES just as the neighbor opened the door and saw the whole thing happen. We rescued the cookies and Christopher finally did ring the doorbell (after the door was open.) Thank goodness we wrapped that plate up really well with plastic wrap...so they're still edible. : )


Just walking through the neighborhood...this pic is blurry but the snow looked so cool as if it was "frosting" the bushes and the yard.
And this is my favorite of all the lights in the neighborhood--a happy circumstance of the snow...so these lights line this neighbors yard on the ground...the snow fell and when the lights are on, they generate heat and melt the snow around them, so they turned into little "cups" around each light which glowed with color...  Super pretty!

What else is there to talk about but...

SNOW!

I got out to take some photos today. We really don't get this kind of snow around here...and I've lost track exactly (and the wind has blown it around a bit) but it looks as though we got pretty close to 12 inches!

And then we played in the snow. Of course.