Day after Christmas Celebration

We went over to my parents house the day after Christmas for our big Christmas dinner. We decided to put the dinner off for a day since my sister M had to work on Christmas day until 7 p.m. and her boyfriend R flew in from Arizona for a visit later that evening. Also my brother K & his family were visiting from Coeur d'Alene and were coming up to my parents' house the day after Christmas to spend a few days. The kids had a lot of fun playing with their cousins and Blondie & Kitty played a game of Jenga with M & R and did surprisingly well at it for their ages (and really with no help)...

Christmas 2007

Christmas this year was very relaxing and fun for the whole family. We kept things pretty low key and just tried to enjoy the season. I enjoyed shopping for the kids this year and only bought a few things online that were considerably cheaper online. It was a fun and exciting morning for the kids and they all enjoyed the presents they received. My parents came over in the morning to spend the day with us. Kitty was the last one we were waiting for to wake up and my parents were already on their way over here before she woke up that we just waited until Grandma & Grandpa arrived before we even let the kids downstairs to where the presents were. They emptied their stockings first to open the presents that were in there but I was surprised that they didn't eat any of the candy until evening time! Too much excitement with the toys I guess. We had the kids take turns opening each present one at a time so it took a little while to get through everything. I think that it's good though for the kids to see what each other received. Once we finished with the Santa presents though, we let them open the presents under the tree at the same time.

After we were finished opening the Santa presents, we ate breakfast of breakfast casserole, cinnamon rolls and oranges. Grandma S became the unofficial toy opener. I sent one of the kids to her to open one of the toy packages because I was handing out some of the presents from under the tree and then the kids kept going to her to open their toys when they saw her with her hands empty.

M&M got a lot of clothes that actually all fit her and a nice new winter coat. She also received some horses which she still loves to play with.

Luke Skywalker got a pop-out lightsaber which he has been wanting for a long time as well as a Star Wars transformer of the Death Star/Darth Vader.

Blondie received some My Little Pony toys and a ballerina Barbie whose skirt twirls around.

Kitty received a Dora doll and some My Little Pony toys as well.

The girls together received some Littlest Pet Shop toys which they all love playing with. All of us received some Nerf dart guns so we can have some shooting matches in the house together (if we can ever get things cleaned up from Christmas).

My big present to DH was a surprise trip to Orlando, FL. I have been thinking about DH & I taking a trip for some time now, since I don't have any nursing babies right now and it makes it a little easier now that my parents live not too far from us. So I talked with my parents about watching the kids for a few days and they agreed to it. I was up in the air for a long time about where we should go/do (i.e. cruise, Hawaii, California) so when I heard that Tan & Chez aren't planning on retiring in Florida, I decided that it might be fun to go there and visit them a little and do some sightseeing on our own. Plus I know that there is a lot to do there and my parents & a few siblings have been there somewhat recently. So I decided to plan a trip for January since the kids are out of school for most of the month and I won't be too pregnant to enjoy myself. My dad was able to find a 1-bedroom timeshare that was available near Orlando for the dates I was looking at and then I found a relatively good deal on some plane tickets for us. We will be leaving January 11th and coming back on the 16th. The only people that knew anything about it were my parents since I had to make sure they could watch the kids for us. Needless to say, DH was quite surprised and it looks like everything should be fine for him taking a couple of days off of work (when he checked the dates there was nothing scheduled on his work calendar which is unusual).

This will be our first trip for just the two of us since before we had M&M and we are very excited about it - it will be like a second honeymoon since we couldn't really afford much of one when we got married. It was hard for me to keep this a secret and there were several times where a subject was brought up that I had a hard time keeping from smiling too much because it hit a little too close to the mark. I was also very nervous because this is not a cheap surprise and I was unsure on how DH would react to it. After all is said and done though, I think that we will have a great time and will wonder why it took us so long to take a trip.

The kids are very excited about having a sleepover at Grandma & Grandpa's house. They were a bit confused on when we were going and they kept thinking that when we were going over to Grandma & Grandpa's the day after Christmas that we were going to be leaving them there and going on our trip to Florida. They keep asking me how many more days there are until we leave...

This was one of Heath's presents to me. I told him that we better be having a boy then because I don't want one of our daughters being called a geek. For those of you who are not computer savvy, this is a takeoff of the Intel logo seen on a lot of computers. Another one of DH's gifts for me was a gift certificate to the restaurants on Temple Square. We'll have to wait until after our trip to Florida to take advantage of that one though. I told DH that it's a good thing that we both didn't get expensive presents for each other since I'm not sure if we could have afforded that (plus my gift to him is more of a gift for both of us - it was just a surprise for him).

Christmas Eve Activities

On Christmas Eve, the kids decorated the Gingerbread House that Grandma N gave us. When the kids were finishing up decorating the house, we noticed that the roof was starting to slide apart (even though we followed the directions). The kids thought that it was a lot of fun watching the roof slowly fall off and they started pushing some of the candies into the hole that was forming on the top.

Grandma & Grandpa S drove over to our house during a nice snow storm and joined us for dinner. Then we sat around the piano singing Christmas songs and then we read the story of the birth of Jesus from the scriptures. The kids all opened up a new pair of pajamas and then we spent the next few minutes watching Kitty dance around like a ballerina in her new Dora nightgown with matching ballet-type slippers - it was a pretty funny sight.

The kids actually went to sleep relatively quickly and I mixed up a breakfast casserole and beef stew to start cooking when we got up in the morning. DH & I made it to bed before midnight!!

M&M's tumbling performance

M&M did a good job on her performance. She has a lot of talent with tumbling - most of it just comes naturally to her. The first little section is their "warm-up" where each of the students did some tumbling across the stage. The second section is the routine that her class did.

Blondie's first ballet recital

Here is the video of Blondie's class (3-4 year olds) in the ballet recital. They did a full length version of the Grinch - set to ballet. Each of the different classes did a dance to one of the songs and the older girls did some of the in-between stuff as well. The room where this took place was completely crowded with standing room only - but when you were sitting in a seat you couldn't see most of what was going on on the stage because of how the room was laid out. Blondie did a really good job though and loved that we were all there to support her. She loves watching the video of herself.

Unexpected repairs

On Friday we all piled into the van to go to the White Family Christmas Party. DH was driving and on the way there, the car was making a horrible grinding noise every time he hit the brakes. It was a painful drive there and back home again, the whole time wondering what was causing the noise and why we have never heard it before. I drive the van almost everyday and I'm sure I would have noticed that noise before (especially since it seemed to be coming more from the driver's side). We were pretty sure it had something to do with the brakes, but we were hoping that maybe there was something frozen in place since our high temperatures for the past week have been below freezing. After we got home, DH took off the front driver's side tire and sure enough, the brakes pads were completely gone and were grinding into the rotor - not a good thing. DH did some looking online and our hope was that he could figure out how to take the rotor off and find a place that could resurface it for us.

Unfortunately, this was horrible timing because we had a full day of activities planned for Saturday. M&M had her tumbling performance across the valley at 8:30 in the morning and then we were going to spend the day at my parents house decorating cookies and helping them put up their Christmas tree and then we were all going to attend Blondie's ballet performance in the evening.

So we decided to just pile everyone in our other car to make it to M&M's performance and then we drove to my parents afterwards and left the kids there while DH & I went back home to look into repairs for the van. Luckily we ran into someone at the tumbling performance from our ward that DH thought might know something about cars and so he asked him where we could go to get a rotor resurfaced. He said that Checkers does it at their store and it only costs about $10 dollars! So on our way home we stopped at Checkers, bought a repair manual for our van, bought some new brake pads and asked about getting a rotor resurfaced. They said it takes about an hour to do and said it would be about $11.

So DH & I went home and figured out how to take the brakes & rotor off and then took it to Checkers. They said it would take about 45 minutes to an hour and would be $9. So we left it with them and then went out to lunch (I must say it was nice not having the kids with us). Then we stopped at Sears and bought some halogen work lamps to give some more light in the garage and then went home to see if the store had called yet. Well, they had but unfortunately it wasn't good news. Apparently after we left the store the guy went back to start the resurfacing and realized that they were missing some of the pieces to their machine and so they couldn't do it for us. So we went back to the store, picked up the rotor and took it to another Checkers store that they had called to make sure they could do it (unfortunately we lost about an hour and a half of work time because of this delay).

After we finally got the rotor back it was pretty straight forward putting everything back together and then changing the brake pads on the other side (fortunately the rotor looked alright on the other side). Then we quickly cleaned up and drove to my parents house so I could pick up Blondie and take her to her ballet recital. Unfortunately we were late getting her there and the room was already packed so I wasn't able to get very good seats.

DH came with the rest of the family, my parents, sister M, brother D & his wife K after eating some dinner and were lucky that they made it there in time to see Blondie perform. Overall the repair on the van went pretty smoothly and it was nice not having the kids around so that I was able to be out there helping DH. It was a bitter cold day and it was nice having a garage to keep us out of the wind. I borrowed an electric heater from my parents that helped take some of the bitterness out of the air, but my hands are still suffering from the cold and dry temps. They were very red and raw on Saturday evening. Today they are finally looking a little better...

Thanks Mom & Dad and M for looking after the kids for us (& helping them decorate cookies)!

Week after Thanksgiving in Review

Monday morning M&M & Luke had to go back to school bright and early. I was signed up to help in Luke's class that morning so I went and took Blondie & Kitty with me. Put up and decorated the Christmas tree for Family Home Evening. Kitty threw up in her bed before I went to bed so I ended up sleeping on the couch with her all night and she threw up off and on all night. She kept asking for a drink of milk and then a couple of minutes after drinking some she would throw it all up. I think she went through about 4 pairs of pajamas that night.

Tuesday morning Blondie had ballet class. Kitty appeared to be feeling a little better so I just took her in her pajamas and she sat outside in the lobby area with me. Stopped by the post office afterwards to pick up our mail that was held while we were gone for Thanksgiving (I still can't figure out while they won't deliver it to my house like I indicate on my hold mail request). Thankfully Kitty didn't throw up at all that day and was finally able to eat some food - and thankfully no one else in the family got sick (I'm not sure how that happened - maybe it was something she ate). Did laundry pretty much all day. I had to pick M&M up from choir after school and then she had tumbling in the evening. I then had to pick my parents up at the airport at around 10:30 pm. They went to visit my sister in Michigan for Thanksgiving. We had had some snow/rain earlier in the day and the temperature was very cold so I had to drive a little slower than usual (I got home around 12:30).

Wednesday morning I had an appointment with my midwife and we were able to schedule an ultrasound for the following afternoon. We were having some snowfall when I left my house but as soon as I got over the point of the mountain it was clear sunny skies and no snow on the ground anywhere (weird). We stopped and picked up some groceries on the way home. I watched a neighbor girl for a few hours after school. I had a rehearsal for the city choir Christmas program that evening - got home around 10.

Thursday morning Blondie & Kitty & I went to the Festival of Trees to hear M&M's choir sing. Picked the kids up from school and then hurried over to the hospital for my ultrasound. DH met us there on his way home from work. We then rushed home and I ate a quick dinner (I had started a crockpot stew that morning) and then had to rush off to a dress rehearsal for the choir Christmas program. I left around 5:30 and got home around 11.

Friday morning my visiting teachers came over. M&M had choir practice again after school and then she had Activity Days (they went to the Festival of Trees). The rest of the kids & I finished putting up the Christmas & winter decorations.

Saturday morning we woke up to quite a bit of snow and the ground and it continued to fall into the early afternoon. DH took Blondie to a ballet rehearsal and had to get the car pushed out of the parking lot afterwards (they hadn't cleared any of it). The kids had a blast playing in the snow . That evening I had to leave around 5 pm for the Christmas performance later on. I only played in 3 of the choir's numbers, but I had a lot of fun practicing and performing for the Sounds of the Season. I played the piccolo & flute on two of the numbers and then just the flute on the third song (I wrote a second flute part for it since there were two of us). I had a lot of fun playing with the choir - I really miss participating in musical things like this. Hopefully I will be asked to participate again next year. DH brought the kids for the performance (but he said that they were not very well behaved)... I had told my parents about the choir and they ended up joining it as well as one of my uncles. I would have loved to have sung with the choir as well but they practiced every week on our YW activity night. So if I'm not involved with YW next year I will hopefully be singing in the concert too.

After we got home from the concert Kitty started singing, "Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah" - the choir's last number had been the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah - so I know that she at least listened to part of the concert... Now whenever we hear a choir Christmas number on the radio Kitty asks if my choir sang it.

First Big Snowstorm of the Season!

Saturday morning we woke up to a beautiful scene of snow everywhere! And contrary to what the weather forecasters predicted it continued to snow until the early afternoon. After the kids did some cleaning in the house and we ate lunch they went outside to play in it. I measured between 7-9 inches depending on where in the yard I stuck the yard stick.

Lots of helpers!
Kitty loved the snow -
she would just flop herself down in the middle of it.
Blondie loves to eat the snow...

Terrible Twos!

Kitty is definitely my worst child so far when it comes to temper tantrums. She can be the absolute most cutest little girl at times and then something doesn't go quite right or the way she wants it to and then its over for her. Yesterday I went to school to help out with Luke's class and my neighbor across the street watched Blondie & Kitty for me. They have a boy Blondie's age and then another boy who is about 18 months old (plus a girl in Luke's class). These kids play great together and it's really not much work having the 4 of them together. When I went to pick Blondie & Kitty up afterwards, they were having too much fun and didn't want to come home. Kitty was just standing there in the living room and wouldn't come towards the door to leave. So I had to pick her up and carry her kicking and screaming back to our house. Kitty kept acting like she had left something there and I kept asking her why she was crying and telling her that she would be able to play there another day. She was inconsolable though and I was finally able to understand some of what she was saying. She was yelling, "I don't want to go to the boring house (our house)! I want to go back to the fun house!"

I brought her in the house and set her down in the kitchen. Then I went upstairs to do something for a minute and when I came back down Kitty wasn't in the kitchen anymore. I noticed that the door going out to the garage wasn't closed tight and so I looked out in the garage and there was Kitty back near the garage door trying to get out. So I just left her there and when I looked out again a few minutes later she was trying to take her clothes off. Then a few minutes later I heard her trying to come back in the house and she was carrying her shirt & pants & shoes with her that she had managed to take off (she was just wearing a onesie and her socks). After a minute or two she had calmed down completely and was ready to eat some lunch and then she asked me to put her clothes back on her. While I was doing that she was explaining to me very calmly what she had been doing out in the garage (taking her clothes off). My fear is that when she gets a little older and gets mad about something, she will just walk out the door and run off somewhere. I just hope that she learns to control her temper before then so my fear doesn't come true...

Fort Vancouver

On Wednesday afternoon, November 21st, we went to visit Fort Vancouver. This is one place that I have wanted to see since DH & I got married but things just haven't worked out until this trip we finally made it. I must say that I was somewhat disappointed though. Half of the buildings were closed and there just wasn't a lot to do there. Apparently it is a site that is better to visit in the summer time when more people and workers are around. It was also a freezing day with a bitterly cold wind!

OMSI

On Tuesday, November 20th, we went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland. I was really surprised with how kid friendly the museum was. The kids all had a blast there - there was so much hands on stuff to do! There were a lot of science experiments and stations where the kids could build things. We spent close to 4 hours there and we probably could have easily spent another couple of hours! I think it will definitely be on our list of things to do on future visits.

Luke played a Connect 4 game with robotic arms against an older kid and beat him without any help!

At this station the kids were able to take small paper cups and cut them so that they would fly up in the air under these wind machines. They had a lot of fun taking the cups, throwing them onto the machine and watching them fly up into the air. Some of them went pretty high up and would stay up there for a little while.

The Van de Graaff generator was pretty fun to play with. You could stand up on the crate at the base of it and put one hand on the ball while holding these small metal tins in your hand. Then when someone cranked the belt to generate static electricity, the tins would go flying off your hand one at a time. M&M got shocked pretty good on it though when someone touched her while she was holding on...

Check out Kitty's hair!

Here are the kids pretending they are penguins sliding down the ice.

Thanksgiving Week in Review

Since Tan & Chez (plus C) decided to fly out to Washington for Thanksgiving this year, we decided to make a trip up there at the same time since they live in Florida now and we don't get to see much of them. We decided to take the kids out of school the Monday through Wednesday before Thanksgiving so we could make the most of our 12 hour drive. Our leaving time was a bit up in the air for a little while because I was involved with some rehearsals for the city Christmas program which I was asked to play my flute & piccolo on for a couple of numbers. I managed to get out of our ward YW in Excellence night so I could go to rehearsal that night and then I was able to miss the rehearsal on Saturday so we could leave early in the morning instead of around noon. We ended up leaving Saturday around 7 in the morning and arrived around dinner time. The weather was beautiful for travel and we made good time. We have a DVD player in the car with 4 sets of headphones, so the kids watched movies a good portion of the trip while DH and I listened to a book on CD in the front of the car. It worked out rather nicely and it seemed to make the trip go quicker.

The weather was pretty rainy for the first couple of days and we were all content to just hang out at the house. We went to church on Sunday and DH's Grandma N. was able to come over for dinner afterwards. We had a nice visit with her and she was apparently surprised to find out that Chez and I were both expecting.

On Tuesday we went to OMSI.

And then on Wednesday we went to Fort Vancouver.

S & V & family arrived late on Wednesday night which meant that our family of 6 had to all squeeze in one room for sleeping quarters. The family was all there for Thanksgiving on Thursday except for DH's sister. :( On Friday we went to a production called the Singing Christmas Tree which was a musical production put on by a choir and some featured groups & soloists. The concert was over 2 hours long and I was pleasantly surprised with how well the kids did.

On Saturday we just spent time together as a family at the house - which included watching the BYU vs. U of U game (Yea Cougars!) and a birthday party for cousins B & C. Tan & family left late Saturday night and our family left early Sunday morning.

The weather was quite a bit colder for a drive home but thankfully we had dry roads and mostly clear skies for the majority of the trip. Then it was back to school for the kids bright and early Monday morning.

Overall we had a very enjoyable visit. The food was great, meals were well organized, lots of good company & conversation and the kids had some great times playing with their cousins!

Thankfully for Luke (since there are so many girl cousins around) he found Tan's old Game Boy and we were able to get it to work. Luke spent some of his time away from the girls playing games on it.

Blondie, cousin P & Kitty were sitting around one day telling "jokes" to each other and laughing at them when Luke came over and started tickling them all.

Towards the end of our visit cousin C was starting to do "boy things" with Luke. He would go up to him and almost tackle him and keep throwing all of his weight onto him. It was funny to watch. C also took a great liking to M&M from our first day there. I'm not sure if it was because she was older and he felt safer with her, but he would go up to her and hold her hand to lead her somewhere whenever she was around and he would cry/scream whenever she tried to leave the room.

The kids all enjoyed Grandma's new play houses (although they had some difficulties at times keeping all of the pieces at the table).

Christmas Tree Time!

We usually put our Christmas tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving, but since we were out of town for Thanksgiving this year we had to wait a little longer. This year we put the tree up for Family Home Evening the Monday after Thanksgiving. We have an older version of the artificial trees which has a main pole that goes down the center and then the branches are attached on individually. The kids have a lot of fun with this project because they have to sort the branches first by color and then help add them onto the tree one layer at a time. This year we are trying the tree down in the family room since we finally have couches in our living room. DH wanted to move one of the couches to another room to make room for the tree but I like having the couches there. So we're trying it out for this year and will decide later what to do in the future (if we are still in this house). One day I'd like to have a real tree in the living room and keep the artificial one for the kids in the family room.

Ballet Class

Since Blondie loves princesses and anything girl related, I thought that she would love taking a ballet class. M&M took a ballet/tap class at about this same age, my only problem has been finding a class and teacher that I thought would work for our schedule. I finally found a morning class that taught ballet once a week and was at a reasonable price and distance from our house. She started taking them in September every Tuesday morning through our city rec center. I was hoping to find a combined ballet/tap class like M&M had, but they were all offered in the afternoons and I wanted to do it while the older kids were in school to simplify my life a little.

It's been a little hard on Kitty because she loves to dance and get dressed up as well, so each week I get them both dressed in ballet outfits and then I bring toys or coloring books for Kitty to play with while the class is going on (the class is for 3-4 year olds). Luckily it is only a half hour class so Kitty does just fine playing by herself during that time.

The first class was pretty interesting because I wasn't sure how Blondie would respond to being left in the room with a teacher and girls that she didn't know. There ended up only being one other girl there that week so I stayed in the class with Blondie and the teacher let Kitty participate as well. Kitty actually participated more than Blondie did - it was pretty cute to watch. The teacher would come around and help all the girls to put their arms and legs in the correct positions and Kitty would let her do it and stay in the positions. Blondie on the other hand pretty much clung on to me the whole time with her two fingers in her mouth.

The following week Blondie didn't want me to leave the room, but I didn't want to stay there because I seemed to be making things worse. So I left the room with Kitty and we watched through the windows. Blondie didn't participate too much at first and it was a little frustrating because she would be so excited the night before for her ballet class and then she would just sit there in the class. She finally loves the class now and has a good time with the other girls in it. It's been a good experience for her. They are now getting ready for their Christmas recital which will be on December 15th.

Festival of Trees

Last Thursday, M&M's school choir sang at the Festival of Trees in Sandy. This is an annual event where people decorate & donate Christmas trees to be sold to raise money for the Primary Children's Medical Center. Usually the trees are decorated with a particular theme and are usually in memory of someone who has died. I took Blondie & Kitty there with me and we walked around the trees for a little while and then we went to listen to the school choir sing.

Kitty & Blondie really liked this pink My Little Pony tree.

It's a...

baby!
Sorry, you'll have to wait until the baby is born to find out what it is. I went to my appointment with my midwife on Wednesday morning and she was able to call the hospital and schedule my 20 week ultrasound for us for the next day. So we went in on Thursday afternoon and everything appears to be just fine with the baby. We told the tech upfront that we didn't want to know what we were having (we haven't found out with any except the first two). Luke was asking part way through if it was a boy and we told him to watch the monitor to see if he could tell. The tech then told us that she hadn't even tried to look because she was afraid that she would accidentally give it away (i.e. saying, "There's his/her hand").

The measurements were all right on for when my due date is. The baby was being kind of shy with its head down really low and its face towards my lower back. It also had one hand up by its face the whole time so we weren't able to get any good profile or face shots.

We had the kids there with us and I had a hard time trying not to laugh at their comments (try lying flat on your back and not moving your stomach when you laugh). At one point DH was talking to the kids about the "water" that the baby is in inside of me and he asked the kids if any of them knew what it was called. Blondie piped up and said, "Crater Lake?" We then had to explain to the tech what she was talking about and it took a minute or two for me to stop laughing on that one.

The ultrasound tech really liked this picture because it looks like the baby is making the sign for I Love You with its right hand.

According to their best estimates, the baby weighs about 13 oz at this point and the head measures about 2 inches across. It's amazing to me that the baby can be so small still and yet I feel such big kicks and movements every day.