Eli Turned 5!

It was a party year for Eli this year--his very first one! He'd been looking forward to it for a long time :). We ended up having his party on the afternoon of his birthday so it was a big day for Eli! We had donuts for his breakfast, then he got to go to preschool while I finished prepping for his party. He helped me do more when he got home. I'd spent the night before putting together like 20 gingerbread houses with graham crackers and royal icing. That was the hard part. Eli waffled a bit about what to do for his party. He really wanted a pinata, but we settled on gingerbread houses and a Christmas-themed party. Of course I invited a ton of kids again. I didn't want to leave people out so we invited his preschool class and his Primary class. I thought there'd be some no-shows because it was a busy time, but all but one kid came!

Here's the whole group:

The girls were a big help with helping the kids put their houses together.

We also played a couple of games. This punch-out Christmas tree for a little prizes:

We also had a snowball fight with cotton balls:

That was a hit!

We let Eli blow out a candle in a marshmallow since the kids already had a ton of candy:

(Most of these pictures are courtesy of my awesome friend Mari)

Here are the kids' gingerbread houses:

Natalie's

Nate's:

Lizzy's:

Eli's:

After we cleaned up from the party, we picked up Joe and headed to Eli's favorite pizza place for dinner--Shaker's. He loves the arcade games they have there. We came home, opened presents, and had s'mores for dessert. Eli LOVES marshmallows. :)

He was really sweet about his presents. He got TONS of legos from all his friends and it was definitely a crazy amount for a kid his age. But, he was still so grateful for the little gifts like his very own watch.

One thing he really wanted--a belt!

It was a great day for Eli!

We all are so glad we have Eli in our family. He makes us all smile every day. His huge grin with his dimples by his eyes are pretty irresistible. He wakes up cheerful pretty much every day. Since he's the youngest, he provides us with quite a bit of entertainment, too, whether it's crazy dances and fight moves he does, or things he says.

I've been writing down funny little things he's said in a note on my phone over the last few months:

-One day we were walking into Wells Fargo and Eli really didn't want to go (he hates errands). We were talking about the fact that some Wells Fargos have lollipops they give away and some don't and he said, "If they don't have one (meaning a lollipop) I'm going to hate Wells Fargo forever."

-Eli was talking about when he got a pack of gum and he said, "Remember? It was yester-Sunday at church!"

-Eli pays close attention to music that we listen to, especially the words. One day we were listening to "Believer" by Imagine Dragons and Eli said, "I wonder what he's so excited about?"

-One day, we were driving around and he just said out of nowhere, "Remember that girl whose name is No?" (Meghan Trainor)

-One day at home we had this exchange: 

E: Who would you like to play Wii with? Someone that you're in love with... 

Me: Dad?

E: No, not a grown-up. 

M: You?

E: Yes!

-Here's another exchange:

M: Today is Matt's birthday! He's 11 now.

E: Lizzy is way older than him.

M: Not way older, just a year older.

E: That's what way means--way means one more year.

-Here are some of his cute comments about Jesus:

"What do you like better--Jesus when he's grateful or Jesus when he loves one another?"

"It's sad, he had a crown of thorns."

"My favorite part is when He comes again!"

One day our neighbor friend Zidan was over, who is Muslim. I was upstairs and suddenly they caught my attention because I heard someone say Jesus. They were looking at our little people nativity and Zidan must have asked something. He said that Jesus died. Then Eli says, all exasperated, "yeah but he was resurrected!" They talked about what that meant and that he was in heaven now. The funny thing was the way Eli was talking--like duh--everyone knows this and you should too. I was impressed with his knowledge, though. We'll have to work on tact and kindness before he goes on a mission!

-One day when we were waiting for the kids to come out of school, there were some wasps flying around and Eli said, "I think the wasps are the guardians for that house."

-He loves Harry Potter, especially the killing spell (unfortunately) but he always says, "Avada Kadabra!"

-One day when he won something while playing Wii, he said, "I am a miracle man!"

Eli is smart and is getting better and better at reading. He's starting to try and sound words out that he sees around. He's really good at math. I only recently started realizing that. He play a lot of Sleeping Queens together and he now knows how to add multiples of 5 together up to 50. One day he surprised me by coming up and saying, "24 minutes until we pick up the kids!" The clock did indeed say 2:06 and he knows that we leave at 2:30. I need to keep working with him on math to develop that talent of his.

He still loves playing video games, all things Mario, Ninjago, and Star Wars. He loves playing with his legos and I love watching me act out little scenarios with them. He needs help putting things together but he has a wonderful imagination and is great at pretend play. He loves his friends and begs every day to have Tess and Kate come play after Tess gets home from school. He loves going to preschool and is learning a lot there. He is very excited to start kindergarten and asks about it all the time.

We sure love our Eli.

Natalie is 11!

We entered the winter birthday season with Natalie's 11th birthday. It was a fun one! We started the day off with donuts for her birthday breakfast.  It was a regular school day for her. Her birthday request for dinner was to have a 4-course meal of her choosing. It was a lot of work but fun, too. We had roasted vegetables for the first course, then a baguette with a nice cheese she picked out (goat cheese), then roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy, then berry pie and ice cream for dessert. It was all delicious! We used the berry pie recipe my dad had made at Thanksgiving and it was a winner!

We had to decorate it somehow:

After dinner we opened presents. She got just what she wanted:

After presents we watched some Studio C. All in all, a pretty good day for Natalie!

It was a great year for Natalie. She is growing fast. She started babysitting this past year. Just at our house for starters, and then with Lizzy at other houses, and now a couple of friends trust to her to come on her own. She loves being able to earn money on her own and save for things she wants, or blow it all on candy and treats :). She is great with kids, especially preschoolers and elementary-age kids. She even signed up for an after-school tutoring program at her school as a tutor. I was impressed that she was willing to spend her time doing that and she seemed to enjoy it. She's done well with the school change she had this year. It was hard for her and she really didn't want to but she's made some good friends and is doing well. 

She still loves cooking and is getting better and better at it. She had a goal to learn how to make all the parts of a Thanksgiving dinner and is well on her way. She and Elizabeth have started rock climbing and are both doing really well at it. As long as we can make sure they go regularly, they will just better and better. She is trying to decide if she wants to do swim team again this year or try something else.She still reads constantly and recently got into the Ranger's apprentice series. She still loves to sing and is getting better and braver all the time. She sang a duet of What Child is This with another girl from our ward before Christmas and they sounded amazing! I was impressed she was able to hold her harmony part so well.

We sure love our Natalie and it's a pleasure to watch her grow up.

November

We had some fun times in November. I had a crazy adventure at the beginning of the month. My friends Whitney and Janine had planned a 30-mile, one day hike on the Ohlone Wilderness Trail from Livermore back to Fremont. We trained a little bit but not as much as we'd hoped. The longest hike I'd done before this 8 miles. It ended up being a really long, really awesome day with some awesome women (including Janine's 11 year-old hiking extraordinaire daughter). It was so fun to push myself that hard and see that I could do it. It took us 14 hours and we had 8,316 feet elevation change during the day. We were worried about the weather but when I checked the night before it said there wouldn't be any rain. Stupidly, I didn't prepare like I should have anyway and didn't really bring anything waterproof. Thankfully, I was able to borrow some things and it didn't really do more than sprinkle. It was really cold at times, though, and taking that hot bath after I got home was heavenly. 

I didn't get any pictures so I stole all of these from friends.

Starting off at 6am:

A beautiful sunrise:

5 miles in:

 We had a beautiful view of the bay all lit up as came down Mission peak in the dark:

It was a really challenging day but it definitely cemented my love of hiking.

The weekend after that, we got to dog-sit for our friends the Kings. They have a really well-behaved golden-doodle named Clark. We were hoping it would help the boys get a little more used to dogs and not so scared of them. I'm not sure if it helped with that but it sure was fun to have a little dog experience. The kids were all in love! I have to say I was a bit glad to get the dog smell out of the house and not to worry about the messes but he was so loveable. We were sad to see him go Sunday after church:

Elizabeth started getting more into crochet and made this awesome bag just by figuring it out on her own:

The kids had the whole week of Thanksgiving off of school so we decided to spend it at Old Greenwood. We were hoping to have some snow but there was none and it ended up being 60 degrees some days. So, we actually got to spend a couple of afternoons in the pool!

We also went to Reno one night and saw Wonder. That was a fantastic movie. Joe worked remotely but we went on some long walks in the morning together and got to go to the pizzeria one night together. It was a relaxing couple of days. The morning of Thanksgiving, we got packed up and left early so we could make it to Stockton in time for dinner at the country club.

It was another great meal there with my Mom and Dad, Chris and Lisa and their kids, and Lisa's parents came too.

Eli's Thanksgiving dinner:

Not so traditional maybe but he loved it!

More pictures:

We had a whole lot of delicious pie at my mom and dad's afterward and then headed home.

We had some more fun on Friday going bowling with the Ashby's:

We'd planned on hiking Mission Peak Saturday morning and we talked Mike and Max into joining us. Mari was kind enough to offer to watch Eli so he stayed behind. It was probably better that way for our first attempt at it. 

On the way up:

Elizabeth and Nate struggled the most but both made it up fine. We were proud of all of them for doing it even though it was hard.

We all enjoyed the view at the top:

I loved sneaking these pictures of Joe talking to his girls:

Here's one more of the boys putting on a puppet show from the back of the van:

It was a great month!

October Fun

We loved getting to have Mary, Andrew, Luke and Nora over for a BYU game one Saturday. She sure is fun to hold:

We also got to go to her baby blessing:

The kids had their Panther Prowl jog-a-thon. I got to volunteer there passing out water and marking laps:

They both ran hard. I was impressed!

We had a fun Saturday in the city. We needed to clean out Joe's office. He made a big transition at work--he basically opened his own firm within his firm. It means he'll have full control of the kind of work he does but also means his compensation is all on him, too. It also has the perk of a connection to the firm for referrals and support, if needed. The challenge has been learning to work at home again! He's figuring it out well.

Anyway, we cleaned out his office and then moved on to our other plans. We finally rode on a trolley!  We checked out Grace Cathedral. We'd planned on going to the Musuem of Modern Art but it had closed so instead we went to Ghiradelli Square. 

The kids can't resist a good climbing tree!

It was a beautiful day in SF!

Eli and I were the only ones at the big fun park on day--definitely a first! It was pretty hot so we didn't stay long but he had fun while it lasted.

The fires in the Napa area made it quite smoky for a few days. The kids couldn't have recess for about a week.

We had another great Conference Sunday in Stockton. For some reason I took this picture of a strawberry rhubarb pie I'd made for it. 

We've been finding every excuse we can to make that pie!

Eli saved up money to buy this mask for his Halloween costume and was so excited to show the kids when we picked them up:

Elizabeth's art class with their masks:

Nate got to be star student and had to write himself a letter, too, I guess. I thought it was funny:

Speaking of Nate, he and Joe went with some friends to see Cal play Arizona. It sounded like they had a fun time:

For one-on-one time, Elizabeth and Joe made a whole bunch of fondant and decorated a cake:

I couldn't resist snapping some pictures of Eli watching Looney Tunes. We always asks for a whole carrot ti eat like Bugs Bunny:

We had our ward Halloween party and trunk or treat, including a costume parade:

We did our pumpkin carving right before Halloween:

On Halloween, Eli had a little preschool party:

The elementary school had a parade through the neighborhood but Nate opted out. We had fun watching Natalie come through, though:

After school got out early, we went with some friends to the little pumpkin patch.  They were closing everything up but it was a fun little outing:

That night we got to experience trick or treating around our neighborhood for the first time and it was a lot of fun. We had our friends the Allreds with us, too.

The kids all had a ton og candy so I'd say it was a success! It was quite nice having Elizabeth old enough to pass out candy, too. She was a bit disappointed in not getting to go out but she got plenty of candy so don't feel too bad for her. I was thrilled to finally move onto November.... :)