Happy Christmas!

I had to post these pictures of my parent's Christmas village. Believe it or not, they did not even put out everything they had this year. They said they did not want to put out the entire village this year because it's too much work, but I secretly knew they wanted to. So I insisted, though I was questioning that decision about the tenth time up the stairs carrying boxes so high I couldn't even see. It was worth it though and has sort of become a tradition that we all love.

Here are the gingerbread houses we make every year with the MacKay's. Why do they all look the same you say? Well, we have this brilliant idea (please sense the sarcasm) of bringing candy and then splitting it equally among us. So, though the house are different shapes and the candy in different places, they essentially look the same.

This is Oliver's first Christmas so I had to buy him this cute onesie. What makes it even cuter is that my friend Allie bought one for her two month old baby, Jensen. Yes, this is the first step to them becoming best buds (or so we hope)! I don't have the pics, so here is Allie's blog with a couple of them on it.

Lots of Oliver

Baby...errr...Toddler Jesus

We had our ward Christmas party this past Saturday and of course there had to be a baby Jesus for the nativity in the skit. You guessed it, we were asked to be Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. I had to remind the lady asking that Oliver was eleven months old, walking all over the place and anything but peaceful and quiet. There is a younger baby in the ward, but it's a girl and I guess they wanted to be politically correct.

I have to say that before the skit even started, Oliver went to touch the curtains on the stage and nearly fell off! Yes, it was very scary and not too promising for the upcoming skit. However, he did pretty good for the first five minutes, I just held his hand while he stood there. He waved to my mom sitting in the front taking pictures and even conducted the music with the chorister. He put on quite the show, and luckily when he was about to go completely ballistic, someone handed a candy cane up and saved the day!

Why buy toys?

Why bother with this . . .



When you can use this!



This is Oliver's first Christmas and everyone keeps asking us what we're getting for him. It's not like he's a newborn since he was born in January, so yes, he might enjoy some fun toys. Little do most people know, Oliver is like a little adult. He is not so much interested in fun, colorful, noisy toys as he is in everyday things such as vacuums, remotes and plugs. He would rather play with an envelope that has a window in it (because it makes that fun noise), but I'm wondering why the toys that make that same scrunchy noise aren't just as fun for him?! I have been thinking about getting a box and filling it with odd things around the house. That way we all win, Oliver is entertained and we don't have to spend any money! (Just kidding...not really though, that whole money saving idea is brilliant!) To give you an idea, here are some pictures of Oliver and his favorite things.

Kids say the darndest (but cutest) things

My sister always has her kids make cards for birthdays and they are so personal and cute. Her nine-year-old made one for my mom this past week and it was such a classic I had to write about it.

You are the best in the world! I hope you have a wonderful birthday. I love you grandma! I love you more than mash patatos and gravy on thankgsgiving! And I love you more than chrismas and rooler blades! Your the best!!!!!

I agree with all of the above Austin, happy birthday mom!

Tagged

Hey, look at me blog two days in a row! Thanks to Margaret I am doing this whole tagging thing, so here goes six things/habits you may not know about me.

1. Everyone knows how much I love watching sports, especially Jazz basketball, college football and March Madness to name a few. When we moved to England there were no such classic sports, instead it was soccer, cricket and darts. In cricket they wear white sweater vests, take tea breaks and the same guy can be up to bat for days! I have never enjoyed a sport where the final score could be 1-0 and darts is played by a bunch of long haired big guys wearing gold rings and necklaces (how that is even considered a sport is beyond me). Anyhow, to get to my point, I have always been the girl who liked to watch sports with the guys while the other girls turned their heads in disgust. In England I got to be one of those other girls and seriously turned my head in disgust to watching any sports whatsoever, it was kind of a new fun thing for me.

2. When I was a little girl I was always afraid our house would burn down or there would be a big earthquake. That might of stemmed from the fact that we always had earthquake drills in elementary school and had to get under our desks. I'm not sure why I was scared of the fire thing. I used to pray every night that our house wouldn't burn down and that there wouldn't be an earthquake.

3. Olives are a weird food, which is what I thought when I was a little girl. However, when I saw you could put them on your fingers and eat them like that I thought it looked like a lot of fun. So, I forced myself to like olives only so I could put them on my fingers. I still like them to this day, though I don't always eat them off my fingers.

4. I have strict rules when it comes to names for our children. They are very simple: spellable, pronounceable and not in the top ten most common names (this might not always be foreseeable, but to the best of our abilities at the time).

5. I am petrified of snakes, whether I see them on the television, in a book or heaven help me, in person. I believe this stems from when we had a snake in our yard on two occasions when I was younger. On one of those times, it had somehow gotten into my brothers pigeon cage (I know, pigeons as pets it's weird), and it was all curled up in the corner. My dad killed it with a pitch fork, yes you read that right, and then put it in the garbage can. One of my brothers convinced me to look in the garbage can and I saw a dead snake with it's eyes wide open starring at me. Ohhh, it's giving me the chills right now just thinking about it!

6. My secret dream job is to host a cooking show. I could totally talk about the food and ingredients the chefs were using and I could most definitely do some tasting afterwards! It would be pure heaven.

So I'm suppose to tag six more people, but I gotta be honest, I don't know six more people in the blogging world who haven't already done this. I know I shouldn't admit this because it makes me sound super lame-o and friendless, but alas the truth really hurts sometimes! So I'm not even going to post the rules, shame on me.

To blog or not to blog

Okay, so I totally stink at this blogging thing, hey I wasn't promising anything good. I have had good intentions, but then the time past. Like when the Fall Classic (a.k.a. World Series) was on, but then the Red Sox swept the Rockies so fast I didn't even know it happened. Then of course there was Oliver's first Halloween, but to be perfectly honest I just did not do it. Now it's nearly Thanksgiving and boy are we excited! It has been three years since we had the big schmorgesborg (I know the spelling is completely wrong), so we can't wait to stuff our faces and watch football!

Oliver is officially walking and everyone keeps telling me, you're really in for it now! Seriously, what is that suppose to mean? He has already been crawling and into everything for at least three months, not to mention he fell down a flight of stairs a couple weeks ago. What about the whole sleeping or not sleeping thing? So let's be honest, I have "been in for it" since the day he was born, and I'm still enjoying it! Oh, and about the whole fall sports thing which I was going to write about earlier, I just have two words: Go Jazz!

Favorite Oliver pics

This has to be a favorite because the face is classic, yes, but more so because he is a newborn. It seems like he wasn't this small or cuddly for very long, seriously it's like he went from newborn to six month old after six weeks.

Oliver is definitely a little boy, or should I say little man. He likes to grunt and snort a lot, sounds weird but it is actually pretty funny. I happened to catch one such moment on camera.

My little swimmer boy. One reason it's so much fun to have kids is because you can do things like this to them for your own entertainment. This one had me laughing forever!

This makes me laugh also. Oliver isn't really a zombie baby as this shows (he is actually quite the opposite), but he is very interested in every little detail. The detail here is the water running out of the tap.

I give in

I have finally decided it's time to join the blogging world. You're probably wondering why I named my blog Trump-MacKay. Actually, I was trying to be creative and not just name it Sara MacKay, but unfortunately my impatience succumbed to my creativeness (okay so I'm not really that creative either).

So here's the real story...When Mike and I got married he wanted me to hyphenate my name. Being the liberal that he is, he thinks it's ridiculous that in our culture women always give up their maiden name when they get married. Fortunately for me MacKay is a great last name, otherwise I might have seriously thought about the hyphenation thing. I definitely wouldn't want to be a Julia Gulia.

Also, another funny story about the name thing. I was most definitely glad I did not hyphenate my name when we moved to England. Apparently, Trump is not the powerful, money-grabbing name in England as it is in America. Oh no, it's no where near that cool and posh. The Brits like to say, "I trumped" when they pass gas. Oh yes, and Mike got a kick out of telling people my maiden name, especially his young men (what teenage boy wouldn't think that's funny?).