Christmas Card 2009

I thought I'd start adding my Christmas picture and letter to my blog each year so that I can include them in my blog book for the year. Also, anyone that I happened to miss sending it to will get a chance to read it if they follow our blog! Merry Christmas 2009 and Happy New Year 2010!!!

Merry Christmas 2009! I can’t believe how fast this year has flown by! Our boys are getting so big and changing so fast. It’s the most fun thing in the world to watch, but brings tears to my eyes when I think how quickly they grow.

Mason is our smiley, happy 1 year old! Or at least he will be one on Dec. 14th. He made his appearance right before Christmas last year (hence no Christmas letter last year). Despite a rocky start due to some medical issues, he is now as healthy as can be and is such a joy! He is walking all over, following Cole anywhere he can. He smiles all the time and is starting to be a real chatter box. We’re catching a glimpse of a temper in there somewhere too which I’m sure will rear its’ ugly head in the next yearJ He is sweet and cuddly and loves his brother to no end!

Cole is now a very big boy at 3 years old! He has an incredible amount of energy and has only one volume… LOUD! He has such joyfulness about him and has the funniest sense of humor. (I’m sure he gets it from me!) He loves to help Adam in the yard and garage and can’t wait to be big enough to play football and soccer. Although he is still learning how to be gentle and patient with his little brother, you can see that he loves Mason and he is such a good big brother!

Adam is still working at Hubble Homes and we are thankful every day that we have been blessed with his job through this last year. He is now the internal operations manager and has taken on many more responsibilities there in the last few months. Though most of his time is spent at work, anyone can tell where his heart is. He is the most incredible dad and both Cole and Mason adore him! He walks through the door each day to two boys running (okay, one toddling) to him with huge smiles on their faces. He and his brothers drew a great elk tag this year and all three of them got nice elk which was really exciting! He’s hoping to get a little duck, goose, and deer hunting in during the next month too. I’m so blessed to have such a great husband and am thankful for all the hard work he puts in for our family!

I have really enjoyed the last year. Although adding another child to our family was an adjustment, it has been so much fun and such a blessing! I get to stay home with the boys most of the time which is where my heart is. I love having the chance to teach and watch Cole and Mason learn, it’s a very rewarding jobJ I do still love working as a nurse though and continue to do 2 days a week on the oncology floor at St. Luke’s in Boise. I know God put a special love for that in my heart when I started there and pray I can be a blessing to my patients.

We hope you’ve had as wonderful a year! We look forward to spending time with our family over the holidays and hope you are able to be with yours as well. God has blessed us richly, just in the fact that we have each other. Celebrating Jesus birth reminds us of the greatest gift of all… our Savior! We pray that you will be blessed through this season and in 2010 as well!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Love, The Bucher Family

Winter Happenings

We've been having lots of fun this winter despite bitter cold temperatures - it's been down to -6 in Boise! With Christmas sneaking up on us and a light dusting of snow on the ground, it feels like winter and like the holiday season.

The boys have enjoyed playing in the snow a bit. Cole couldn't wait to start "harvesting" snow for snow cones. We did that last year but by the time we got to the snow, it was a little less than snow cone worthy. Good thing I still have some from last year in the freezer:-) Mason discovered that snow is yummy to eat and kept bending over to get some on his hand to eat... until he toppled face first into it.

Last weekend we went downtown Meridian to watch the Winterland Parade with Jenny, Troy, and our friends the Daytons. It was fun though very chilly. We got a good spot that was out of the wind and the sun actually did warm us a little. It definitely was not the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but for Meridian, ID, it was our kind of fun! The kids got lots of candy and saw plenty of sports cars and Santa on the fire engine at the end! We attempted to go around the street fair after the parade but it was just too cold to be out longer than necessary.

The next day we headed to High Valley to meet up with Adam's family and cut down a Christmas tree. It has become one of the Bucher family traditions and I love it! A couple years ago I actually cut it down all by myself which I felt was quite an accomplishment. We picked one that we thought was perfect... about 22 feet or so! Then Adam chopped her down and Neil helped him drag it out. Too bad they didn't think to cut the extra 10 feet we didn't need off BEFORE killing themselves by dragging it a mile to the truck! We got it home and it is pretty much to the top of our 12 foot ceiling, I think the star touches the top! Adam helped me string the lights on and then Cole and I got all the ornaments put on. Mason helped a little until bedtime which came as a relief:-) Cole gave me a big speech about how he could only put the "unbreakable" ornaments on and that the "breakable" ones have to go up high on the tree. Apparently Cole had helped my mom decorate her tree the week before. Although it's not a perfectly manicured tree, I much prefer the character and fun of a personally cut down Christmas tree! We are also going to have really good luck this next year because we found a bird's nest in our Christmas tree!!! Isn't that the old wives tale? I'm sure it has something to do with good luck:-)

I'm so looking forward to Christmas at my parent's cabin in McCall this year. All the sibs are going to be there and it will be SO MUCH FUN!!!

Bath time

My boys LOVE taking baths! I love it too since I can sit in the bathroom and do my Sudoku puzzles or something as equally useless. I also take way too many pictures while they're in the bath because they're so darn cute! Here's some cute bath pics...

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I was supposed to work and though I've been working every other Thanksgiving for the last 7 1/2 years, it still is a bummer to have to work a holiday. At about 5am that morning though, work called to say I could just be on call for the day instead of coming in. Yeah!!! I called Adam's mom who was supposed to come over and watch the boys while Adam went duck hunting and went back to sleep. At about 6:30 work called again to say I could just have the day off, no on-call business. I was so happy to stay home with my family on Thanksgiving day!

We went over to Adam's parents just after noon. My Grandpa Johnson came too since my parents were in Hawaii (poor guys) and we spent the afternoon grazing on snacks, awaiting the big meal! It was worth the wait! We had way too much food as usual and stuffed ourselves silly. Keith and Michelle came over for pie after they ate dinner with her family and we all sat around looking at the ads, wondering if we should get up at 5am to do some shopping. It was a fun thought, but the bed eventually won the battle and Adam and I hit a few stores after 10am!

Overall it was a successful day and we have soooooooo much to be thankful for!

Fun with friends!

It's so much fun to have friends to play with! Cole just loves it when he gets to have friends over, go to their houses or meet up somewhere to play! We had the pleasure of watching our friends Tyler and Mel's little girl, Katelyn, for the day a couple weeks ago. She is such a doll and it gave me a little glimpse into what having a girl is like! (I even fixed her hair after her nap!) We had lots of fun and the boys love her!

We also got to go to Rafiki last week with my friend Brenda and her girls Rylie and Ella. Rafiki is an indoor play place with everything you could imagine from dress up clothes to a huge jungle gym with slides, etc. We like the couches the moms can sit on and watch their kids play! Rylie is 4 and Ella is 1 1/2 so they are great ages for our kids. We had such fun and can't wait to go back!

The best playmates though are siblings! We're getting closer to the stage of the boys being able to play together and it's really fun to watch. Mason laughs at Cole and Cole tickles and tackles Mason. I pray for them to to always love each other and have a life long friendship!

The Cowboy and Mr. Incredible

Here are the Halloween pictures I've been meaning to post for the last 2 weeks! The boys were so much fun to get dressed up and we had a fun evening of trick-or-treating. Cole was Mr. Incredible, muscles included:-) As soon as he put the costume on, he showed us how he could run so much faster! Mason was a little cowboy, handed down from his big brother. He probably won't have a ton of original costumes over the next few years because he'll have all the gently used costumes to choose from! I tried to get into the spirit a little too with a cowgirl outfit. Cole asked Adam what he was going to dress up as and Adam said, "A Daddy." Cole looked at him like, "You've gotta be kidding, that's the most boring thing ever!" Before trick-or-treating at a few houses in our neighborhood, we made stops at the grandparents houses, as well as Keith and Michelle's to see their little monkey, Gage. At my parents we met up with Jenny and Chad's little dragon, Troy, who was very cute too:) Besides getting a boatload of candy for ringing people's doorbells (Cole couldn't believe his luck!), he loved opening the door and handing out candy at our house. It was a fun Halloween!

Pumpkin Carving!

Happy Halloween!

I mentioned in the last post that we had done some pumpkin carving with some of our friends the other night. I realized I left out the pictures of that. We had such a fun time with the Childers and Martinez families and got some pretty creative pumpkins out of the bunch!