Christmas Jingles

My life has been overtaken by a family history project, but this is just too awesome to pass up writing about it! Today started off with Frandsen family photos (with all of Jake's cousins and aunts and uncles), and I don't think Grant smiled once. Until the photographer pulled out his stuffed dog, that is. Grant started enthusiastically pointing and barking. His bark isn't just with his voice; it's a whole body bark, and Jake's poor mom was kicked in the back by Grant's little feet for the next two minutes.

As soon as that was over we sped to Pocatello for the Davis family Christmas party at a bouncing gym (I've never seen Grant as excited as he was when we let him slide down the blow-up toy). We'd been driving for several hours and Grant'd had just about all he could handle. To calm his screams Jake and I sang Christmas songs to him--and it worked! He clapped with us and calmly listened to our harmonies. It was wonderful. We struggled through I'm Gettin' Nothin' for Christmas because we couldn't remember the words or the tune as well as we'd thought. We finally just laughed and gave up. I turned to check on Grant in the back seat since he hadn't been singing with us this time and what I saw was priceless: his eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth was wide open, and his palms were pressed tight over his ears while pulling the skin on his face taut. I guess our song was even worse than we thought!

Words just can't do it justice, but I hope you all feel better about your singing skills now.