Friday, March 5, 2010

Our retirement plan

Step one: Teach kids how to play basketball extremely well. They don't have to love it. They don't even have to like it. They just have to do it.

Step two: Make them enter the NBA/WNBA when they have completed stellar years in college basketball.

Step three: Sit back and let them pay for our retirement.

We are working on step one. It's not working too well so far.
Um, the ball is going the wrong way off of her fingers.
She was able to dunk with Daddy's help.
Yay! She made it! She has actually done pretty well in the weeks following these pictures. She is able to make baskets when the hoop is about four feet high.
Ben on the other hand gets easily distracted by the camera.
"You want me to do what???" (I love the drool dripping off of his chin)

Photo Shoot

Just playing around with the kids and the camera...
Checking out his sausage fingers...and showing a little cleavage
Yummy fingers
Who, me?
Goofy face
Pouty lips
Up the nose
Cheese face
Cheesier
They just love each other

Christmas Day

Christmas day was wonderful. Joel and I got up around 9:00 and had to wake Jenna up. We promptly went downstairs to see if Santa had come and fortunately for us, he had! He left out this great kitchen set which Jenna was so excited about. She ran over to get us all a drink and make a couple of phone calls before she even looked at all the other presents under the tree.
I love this picture of Jenna! I love how you can see in her eyes just how excited she is.

We took our time opening presents and just had a great time admiring each one. Jenna was so appreciative of each gift she got. She even thanked Santa again and again for the other pair of pajamas she got.
Hugging her pajamas. She hadn't even unfolded them to see what they looked like yet. She was just beside herself with joy.

Ben had a good Chrismas, too. Jenna was kind enough to help him open his gifts. He was more interested in eating the wrapping paper.

Ben with his stoking goodies. He got a bunch of stuff to chew on, but decided to chew on his new bibs instead.
Yummy presents
The tongue comes out in this one
I love the furrowed brow in this picture. He is determined to get the whole thing in his mouth.

After presents we watched one of Jenna's new movies and ate breakfast. We let Jenna play with her new things while we worked on a puzzle.
This is why our children were neglected for a day or two. Evil puzzle.

Both sets of grandparents stopped by later in the day to visit. I think they were a little disgusted with us because Jenna had just discover the "Flarp" in her stocking when they came over. It was this putty in a can that when you squeeze it into the can it makes a tooting noise. Jenna and Ben got such a kick out of it which then made Joel and I just crack up. We had hours of fun with that disgusting toy.

For dinner we had a wonderful prime rib cooked in our new roaster. It was fabulous! The rest of the night was filled with working on the puzzle and another movie. We had such a great Christmas and can't wait until next year!

Jenna was exhausted from all of the excitement of the day. She passed out on the couch for a little while with her new doll. What a sweet little girl.

Christmas Eve

Every year Santa's elves come to our house and leave us pajamas. This year they pulled through and made it to our house.
Jenna going upstairs to see if the elves came. She is tightly gripping the movie she wants to watch before going to bed.
They came! You can kind of see how Jenna's jaw dropped when she saw that she got Tinkerbell slippers!
She loves them so much she has to rub them on her face. Weird child.
Goofy girl. She was so excited to wear her new pajamas! She looks so funny in them because the pants are tight fitting and the slippers are ginormous!
Ben was asleep when we got home so he had no interest in finding out what the elves brought him. He got these cute jammies with little monkies on the toes.
When he woke up, I put him in the pajamas. He was not too happy about it. To show his disapproval he had a blowout first thing the next morning. Gotta love it. They didn't even make it 12 hours before getting poop on them.

After getting in our pajamas we got the cookies ready for Santa and sat down to watch a movie. Jenna quickly fell asleep so that ended our Christmas Eve night.

As a side note, we are always looking for new traditions to start as a family. What kind of Christmas Eve traditions do you have? Yes, I realize Christmas was three months ago, but I would still love to hear any suggestions. There are only 9 more months to get ready for next Christmas :)

Another Family Christmas Party

The Harrison's had their Christmas party on Christmas Eve.


This year started out with Janelle showing up and surprising everyone. She had come down for a quick visit and hadn't told anyone she was coming. It was nice to see her and she was able to meet Ben. Unfortunately he slept until right before she had to leave so they didn't get much "bonding" time.
I couldn't get a good picture of Janelle because the sequence on her shirt kept reflecting on her face. It was actually kind of funny.

Then we had a delicious dinner. We had chicken, veggies, rolls, etc. Joel and I made the molten lava cake for dessert...yum!

After dinner the kids prepared for the annual acting out of the nativity. Ben was the baby Jesus and Jenna was an angel. Jenna was just beside herself with excitement.
The cast. I love Bentley in this picture! (You'll have to blow this up bigger to get a better look at it, Chan!)

Then came what the kids had been waiting for...presents! Ben got a cute little toy cow from Grandma & Grandpa. They also gave Jenna a new doll. We got tickets to the BYU vs. Utah basketball game from Jeremy and Hillary. Thanks again everyone for the great gifts!
Jenna showing Ben how to use his new toy

Jenna was so excited to give her cousins a gift that she ended up grabbing it, unwrapping it and showing it to them. Fortunately it all happened so fast and she shoved the present so close in Preston's face that he couldn't tell what it was. Joel caught her and he wrapped it up again before anyone knew what happened. It was just so cute to see her excitement, though.

After presents, we raced home so we could start some our own Christmas Eve traditions (more to come on that later--if I remember)

Temple Square

It has been years since either Joel or I have been up to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights. We figured this was the year to go since Jenna is just fascinated with Christmas lights.

We had to wait until Joel was done with school for the semester (by the way, he got straight A's) so it wasn't until December 21st that we could go. We also had to wait until Joel got off of work for the night which wasn't until 5:00.

We got all bundled up and filled the trunk with more stuff to bundle up in once we got there.

Well, we hit rush hour traffic then realized that neither of us had been up to Salt Lake in quite some time so we didn't realized all of the construction that was going on. It took awhile to find a place to park but about an hour and a half later we were out of the car and walking only a few blocks to Temple Square. There were some people out playing Christmas carols just outside of the gates as well as some vendors selling hot drinks. It made it so much more festive. We walked in the gates and quickly had to find a bathroom. We walked in the visitor's center and it was wall-to-wall people. Joel went in the men's room and of course there was no line. The women's restroom, however, was like a twenty minute wait. Really, people??? We were able to find a hidden bathroom and were soon on our way.

Well, kind of.

We walk out of the building and Joel stops to take a picture. Well, the battery was nearly dead on the camera and he couldn't figure out how to take good pictures of the lights (new camera). So we spent about ten minutes playing with the camera, all the while getting colder and colder. We walked around until we got our fill of lights, then headed back to the car. We realized at this point that it was 8:00 and we hadn't eaten dinner. Luckily we were parked right next to the Red Iguana so we just went there to eat. Another hour later we were on our way home.

Even though it was cold and fairly uneventful we had a great time and hope to make going to Temple Square a tradition for our family.


Jenna is prepared with her all important glow sticks and cheese.
Ben was all bundled up; all you could see was part of his face.
One of the few pictures we were able to get.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Family Christmas Party

My family's Christmas party was on December 18th down at Mom and Dad's house.

The evening started with me locking the keys in the car. I only mention this because I know it will come up. I went out to get a bottle for Ben from the trunk. I was mixing stuff together and put the keys down. Kevin drove up, I got distracted, and closed the trunk. It was about halfway down when I realized what was happening. I blame Kevin for the whole thing.

Being 30 minutes from home and the spare set of keys, Jill and RaShelle suggested we just call the police. Since Mom & Dad live in a smaller town, so it was kind of an ordeal to even contact the police. RaShelle took the lead and got ahold of someone for us. Joel went out to wait for them in the cold. When the police officer got there he was a little dissappointed. Apparently there was another Joel Harrison that had several warrants outstanding. He was hoping he had caught his man. Really, would a guy that has warrants out for his arrest call to have the police break in to his car?

Anyway, while Joel was out waiting in the cold, the rest of us started eating. We had a yummy lasagna dinner with salad and bread. There's nothing that says Christmas more than lasagna.


After dinner we sat around and talked for a little while the kids played. For the last two years, RaShelle has given all of us questions to answer throughout the year, for example, What is your favorite movie; Did you have a hideout as a child, etc. At Christmas she compiles everyone's answers and prints us all off a copy. It's really fun to read through. It was really interesting to hear that both Mom and Grandma wanted to be opera singers when they grew up. It was fun to sit around and elaborate on some of the answers--especially Dad's. Mom said that she had to edit some of his answers :) This is what happens when we leave the kids alone to play. I guess they weren't alone--Joel helped Jenna put Ben in the doll stroller.


There was only one family missing from the party and that was Jill's so we called her and talked to her through Skype. We were able to talk to her and Caitlyn. We saw Caleb really quick, but he must have been too busy for us. We didn't talk long but it was sure nice to see Jill.

Next we went and acted out the nativity. We read it out of a pop up book that we used to read every year growing up. It is really beat up but it really brings back memories.

The narrator



Kevin really gets into it. Here he is helping the angels with their part



Next was the part that all the kids were waiting for--PRESENTS! Mom & Dad spoiled everyone. The kids all got warm clothes and the parents got gift cards. We drew Kyle's name and got him a gift card to Famous Dave's. We thought it was kind of boring so Jenna drew him a picture. She spent about an hour on it as well as 1/2 a package of googly eyes and a bottle of glue. She was so excited to give it to Kyle. It was all wrapped up and she could hardly contain himself. Kyle was nice enough to let her help him open it.

Ben opening presents


He was more interested in his socks than the presents


Brian won an iTouch the night before and was playing with Kevin's all during the party.


We finished the night with tons of yummy desserts. We had a lot of fun! Thanks Mom & Dad for letting us crash your house!