Christmas Recap

Wow, I have really not been motivated to blog. I guess because I feel so behind. So, this post may be mostly pictures. Or who knows, maybe I'll get in a groove and jabber on like usual. We'll see...

We definitely had a great Christmas and holiday break. The best part about it was seeing family.

I am going to start out in the middle of December. Here's a picture of the girls getting in the Christmas spirit watching some Christmas movies. We rented pretty much every movie out there from the library and had a lot of fun. One of the favorites: Mickey's Christmas Carol. I loved that one as a kid.

In the middle of December we had our annual family gathering at my parents' house with a visit from Santa. On the way there we saw this amazing rainbow so we had to take a picture.
Just for fun, here's a picture of our little family's first visit from Santa in 2004 when I was pregnant with Elizabeth (Mom & Dad--I must admit that seeing our old ornaments makes me nostalgic :).

And here's us today:

What a difference 5 years makes, eh?

Here's all the kids with Santa.

Here's the cousins there singing some Primary Christmas songs, if a bit reluctantly
(Natalie sure wasn't! Elizabeth was throwing a tantrum and refused so she is not pictured)

I should put in the letter Elizabeth wrote to Santa this year.

She actually changed her mind later and decided she wanted a cash register, too, so the dolly got bumped.

Natalie wanted a walkie-talkie too along with a yo-yo.

Right after school got out for Joe, we left for Idaho to visit his mom. We left at 4am and it worked out really well. Joe and I were fully awake and the kids slept a lot. We were really lucky with Nate on this trip. He was so easy. I don't think he screamed once in the car and he didn't even cry all that much with Elizabeth right next to him entertaining him and keeping his binky in.

We had a fun-filled busy few days there. It wasn't enough time but we sure loved the time we had. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures although we did get some video of Nathaniel's first time laughing. Hopefully I can post that soon.

We left a couple days before Christmas for Utah to visit Joe's dad. I think it had been 4 years since we had been there for Christmas and it was a lot of fun. Thank you for being such great hosts, Tom and Lorna!

The kids sure enjoyed having a White Christmas. Here's some pictures of them playing in the snow with their cousins. I was actually impressed with how long they stayed out in the cold. Joe was a good sport and helped the kids build a snow cave and a snow table and chairs (pictured below).

All the kids

Snow cave

All bundled up

Finally, the big day came. We all slept in the same room so we could hear Elizabeth wake up on Christmas morning and say to Natalie, "Guess who came last night?" Natalie was still half-asleep and said, "I dunno..." Then she suddenly perked up and said "Santa came!" It was funny to listen to.

Here's our few pictures of Christmas morning. Santa came through although I don't have any good pictures of them with the things they asked for. Here's what I have:

Natalie loving an outfit she got

What cute girls

A toothbrush!!
It lights up and she seriously brushed her teeth 6 times that day just so she could use it.

The girls also received ballet outfits and lessons (as soon as I can find a place) from grandparents this year. They had to change into them of course.

This next picture is precisely why I worry about putting them in dance. Joe's not going to like it either :). Seriously, where does Elizabeth get these poses??

After a pretty bad bout of the flu that went through our family (minus Nate, thankfully), we managed to make it home. It is good to be home although it was so much fun seeing everyone.

And, since this post is suffering from a serious shortage of Nathaniel pictures, here are some:

Taking a quick nap while the girls were getting ready for bed

A happy dream....
Look at that chubby face!
Grabbing on to the toys on his bouncer
So proud of himself

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Happy Birthday to Natalie

We have the internet again after 2 weeks without it. It was kind of nice to have an internet cleanse, of sorts, but I'm so glad to have it back. Maybe I can at least scale back the amount of time I spend on the computer now that I know I can live without it.

Now, on to the task of trying to catch up on here. We have had a pretty busy couple of weeks. The most important event was Natalie's birthday. Unfortunately, the camera died right as the celebration began. We got some video of it at least.

Here are the only pictures from the day.

Natalie decided on a Don cake.
Don is a character from her new favorite show Dinosaur Train.

For some reason, the kids and I all ended up wearing red that day. It really wasn't intentional. We had to take some pictures, though:

I can't believe my Natalie is 3 now. At the same time, it seems like she has been 3 for awhile. I guess it's because she is always wanting to be older than she is. She definitely wants to be known as a "big girl". She tries so hard to act like one, too.

She has been SO excited to go to Primary (at church) and the nursery kids got to come in for part of it last Sunday. I had been helping Elizabeth write a talk she was giving (which she gave all by herself! We were so proud.) and Natalie insisted on writing one, too. I said that was fine and helped her write something out. As soon as Primary ended, she suddenly burst into tears because she didn't get a chance to give her talk. I didn't realize that she thought she was going to be able to say it in Primary. If she had been given a chance, I have no doubt she would have marched up there and done it perfectly and not been scared at all. She is so funny that way.

Natalie has always been musically minded. I remember when she was a baby, if someone was singing, she would just stop and stare at them. Just kind of taking it in. She still loves music. She is always singing whatever song is in her head at the time (I wonder where she gets that from? :). It is so cute. But, if she doesn't know the words to a song she gets VERY frustrated. It's kind of funny to watch, actually. So, Joe or I usually have to stop between lines and tell her the line ahead of time to she can sing it. She knows the words to lots of songs because of this.

We love our Natalie and are so proud of all that she is learning and who she is becoming. We can't imagine life without her.

Sayings to Remember

(I've been compiling this for awhile)

-As we were getting ready for lunch one day, I was holding Nate and Natalie all of the sudden asks, "Why didn't we buy a girl baby?"

-I was making a dessert one night for a Relief Society activity and Elizabeth asked me,"Are those for the young women or the big giant women?"

-"Foof": Definition: The certain quality of a dress or skirt that allows it to stick out while twirling or stationary. Used as a verb or adjective and commonly combined with "out". I.e. "I can't wear that dress. It doesn't foof out!" or, when asked why she is standing over the air vent, "It makes my dress foofier!"

-Joe was undoing his tie in the hallway when Elizabeth said: "You'd better get dressed in your room, Daddy, because no one wants to see that."

-Whenever the girls want to make a pile of blankets they always refer to it as the "Biggest Jumping Pile Ever" and nothing less, i.e. "Mom, can we make the Biggest Jumping Pile Ever?"

Photo Shoot

We had a fun photo shoot the other day. Nate was being so smiley. I loved it. I can't believe these three are mine. How amazing is that?






And here is Elizabeth's soccer picture. I thought her smile was so great. Is it possible to show more teeth in a single picture?

Blessing Day

We blessed Nathaniel in church on the 15th. Joe did such a good job with the blessing. It was a wonderful day spent with family. Joe's mom and his two oldest nieces drove out from ID. All of my CA family was there. Thank you for coming everyone! We missed those who couldn't make it.

Our not-so-little family

The whole crew

Nate with his cousin Hallie

Me and my sweet pea
(Thanks Matt & Melissa for the cute sleeper!)

More Pictures and Random Events

We've had a nice few days around here. We blessed Nathaniel in church on Sunday. I will post pictures from that later. I just wanted to post some new stuff before I forget it.

Taking care of little brother

Some recent Elizabeth events:

-She has been using a lot of big words lately and I'm always surprised to hear them come out of her mouth. For example, she was spinning around and around and said, "I can't stop rotating!". Also, one day I was in the kitchen with the dishwasher on and I asked her to go check and see if Nate was crying since I couldn't hear him. She came back and said, "I didn't hear him. All I heard was silence." I don't know where she gets this stuff. Probably PBS Kids--where she learns most everything. :)

-Her reading has really progressed lately. She has finally got a lot of words down by sight so it's not so tedious for her to read by herself. She likes to read a lot of the same books over and over again so when she's reading, I mostly think she just has it memorized. But, today she picked up a book we had never read before and just started reading at a really good pace. I couldn't believe it. She blows me away.

-We were cooped up last week when Natalie came down with a little fever and cold. She is basically over it now, luckily. It's always funny to see what sorts of activities the girls come up with to entertain themselves when we are at home a lot. One evening, Elizabeth gathered up a few rocks and leaves in a pile on our driveway. She then made a sign that said, "Free for you" and proceeded to try and sell her wares. Well, not sell I guess since they were free. It was funny though because she kept yelling "Free for sale!" This was about 5 o'clock at night so there were actually quite a few cars driving by but sadly no one stopped. If you know of any interested buyers, send them her way. :)

Natalie is as cute as ever although we have had some major difficulties with whining lately. A lot of it is because she has been sick or tired or both but a lot of it is because we have fallen into some bad habits. We are kind of trying to come out of the post-baby watching-way-too-much-TV phase. She is not happy about this. Her favorite activity is "watching a show" and she asks about a million times a day if we can, even if they've watched all morning. Her favorite show is Dinosaur Train on PBS and she likes it so much that I think it has even displaced princesses as what she would like featured on her birthday cake. Yes!

Her other favorite thing to whine about is treats. She wants a treat after every meal. Literally. She will frequently ask after finishing her breakfast. Pretty much every day when Joe comes home the first thing she asks him is if he has any candy. This is, of course, because we basically have had treats all day every day between having a baby, Halloween, and just our general love of baking.

I made chocolate chip cookies the other day and we had just finished them when we drew from our Thanksgiving jar (see a couple posts down) "I am thankful for my kitchen" and had to bake something again. So, we made some more cookies. We still have those around but Joe really wanted to try making something new last night and made some delicious cream puffs. Combine that with leftover Halloween candy and our standard tub of ice cream in the freezer and you get a whole heck of a lot of sugar. Not good for any of us. Anyway, so we are also trying to wean off of treats, although I don't think we'll have much luck with that with the holidays around the corner. Let's hope our teeth haven't all rotted out by January!

Little Nate is doing good. He had his 2-month old appointment last week and he is now 11 lb. 7 oz.! Hurray! He was average in height and weight and 75th percentile in head circumference.

He still has reflux issues but is doing a lot better. One evidence of just how much he arches his back all the time is the fact that he can roll over right away when you put him on his tummy with his arms under him like so:

Ta-da!

The girls actually love watching it. In fact, he even rolled over one time when I didn't put his arms under him. It is amazing to me since I don't think Elizabeth or Natalie rolled over at all until they were 5 months.

He loves his bouncer

Here are some more smiles from our happy guy:

Adventures in Negotiation

I wanted to remember this:

Elizabeth and Natalie both got suckers from their Halloween candy one day after lunch. Elizabeth was working hard on Natalie to give her a taste of her lollipop. She always does this and pretty much always wears Natalie down and ends up getting her way. I'm always telling Natalie she doesn't have to but she is very much a peacemaker in this way and I shouldn't fault her for it, I suppose. When Natalie finally relented this time, Elizabeth ended up biting a piece of her lollipop off instead just taking the lick. Natalie was upset of course and since this was the second time this had happened in a matter of days and she knew better, I told Elizabeth that she needed to make it up to Natalie somehow. I think she must have genuinely felt bad since she decided to switch lollipops with Natalie and take the broken one herself (all you germophobes out there are probably cringing over all the germ-swapping but hey--they're siblings).

Things were going fine from what I could tell until Elizabeth must have decided she regretted her decision and started trying to talk Natalie into switching back. I only heard bits and pieces here and there but I could tell Natalie wasn't going to give in easily. Finally, I looked over and they had indeed switched back. As soon as they were finished, we were getting ready for nap-time and Natalie said something about sleeping in Lizzie's bed (they have bunk beds and Elizabeth sleeps on top). Elizabeth started throwing a fit over this saying she didn't want the bottom bunk but then it came out that she had promised Natalie to switch beds if she traded her lollipop. We (well, I) decided that Natalie would indeed get at least one night on top but not immediately (since it takes about an hour to switch their piles and piles of stuffed animals and blankets and I just wanted her to go to sleep right then). She was upset about this and was crying about it.

Before going to sleep, she said to me, "You should have named me Elizabeth." I asked her why, wondering if she had suddenly decided she didn't like her name or something.

Then she said, "Because I really want that bed."

Gratitude

I've been kind of down lately. I'm sure it's just normal hormonal stuff but I've had a hard time shaking it. Do you ever get in a funk where you can feel that you're choosing to be negative and unhappy and you know you should just let go of it all but you can't let go? That's kind of how I've felt. I feel like when anyone asks me how I'm doing or how Nate is doing all I talk about is the hard stuff because that is what I am focusing on myself.

To try and get over this, I am trying to make a concerted effort to be more grateful, especially with Thanksgiving coming up. And, it has made a big difference for me.

The girls and I are doing this fun Thanksgiving jar. We love it so far. Not only does it help us be more thankful, but it forces us to do fun, productive things every day.

One blessing is that the little one slept six straight hours last night! Amazing. I'm trying not to expect anything like that tonight. In fact, I need to get this done quick and go to bed.

Another blessing as of late is that he is trying so hard to smile. He hasn't grinned or anything yet but we are loving his little half smiles at us. Here's the best we could catch on camera:

Don't you just want to eat up that neck chub? I know you do. :)

Here's some more pictures, just because:

I really love this outfit with the cute little track pants. I am loving dressing a boy!

And finally... Natalie posing for the camera, too:
I am very blessed.