Merry Christmas

We had a fabulous Christmas up at Nate’s parents’ house this year. We spent the couple days before Christmas relaxing and helping a little bit with Christmas prep, then all the siblings came up on Christmas Eve for a delicious salmon, rice, asparagus, and roll dinner. The kids opened matching pajamas from grandma and grandpa, then we enjoyed a mini talent show that included Kate’s piano song and Connor’s recitation of Twas the Night Before Christmas. Unfortunately, the kids had both had colds and Bennett came down with a fever and wanted to go to bed at 6:30 – he slept until about 7 the next morning! I felt bad that he missed all the Christmas Eve activities though. After reading the nativity, the nieces and nephews headed home with their parents and the rest of us got ready for Santa to come.

Bennett and Ryan were pretty excited Christmas morning. We gave Uncle Spencer until 8:00 to wake up, then let them go into the living room. Bennett was pretty excited to see his new pedal bike, and Ryan went straight to his car ramp – although throughout the rest of the day we learned the downfalls of Santa bringing different gifts to the kids when Ryan kept wanting to ride Bennett’s new bike.

Ryan trying out his new car ramp, and lining up the animals Grandma and Grandpa gave him

After short naps and more family time when the cousins joined us for a gift exchange, we let Bennett try out his bike that night and he did great! He’s had a balance bike for the last year & 1/2 that he’s gotten pretty good at, so we found what worked best was for him to push himself around on his legs like he does with his balance bike, then switch to the pedals once he got going. It was fun to see him learn!

Ryan had a stuffy nose and had a hard time sleeping in his bed (pack & play, which he learned how to climb out of :(, so I let him lie (lay?) on me and we had a little joint nap.

 

We just hung out and relaxed the next day – but were spoiled by willing grandparent babysitters and got to go out to dinner for a little break. It was a great Christmas! We headed to Oregon to spend some time with my family afterwards – more to come on that.

I thought I posted this a long time ago, but just got on to do another post and realized I didn’t ever post it after writing it. oops.

Snowmen

Not sure if those are extra heads or maybe extra stomachs?

Logan Canyon

Last weekend, some friends invited us to come up to their family’s cabin in Logan Canyon. Nate had just finished his finals so it was a fun little getaway to relax and spend some time in the snow. They have two little boys each a few months older than ours, and they seemed to all get along and play well together. We got up there just before dinner on Friday and decorated sugar cookies, then played some fun games after the kids went to bed. After breakfast on Saturday, we got geared up and went out to play in the snow. We went over to a little hill the kids could sled down and Nate and I snuck off to do a little cross-country skiing, then came back and sledded with the kids. After lunch and naps, we ventured up the canyon further to a place where there was a lot more snow, and a lot bigger hills. We didn’t have too much time there before it got dark, but I don’t know how many more times I could have walked up the huge hill carrying / helping one of the kids anyway. We left straight from there so we could get home before it was too late, but it was a great weekend – nobody else around when we were by the cabin and we loved the quiet beauty of the canyon and the snow.

Bennett was SO excited to get to wear his own cross country skis! He was mostly just walking in them but loved it.

 

Lights

Shortly after Thanksgiving, we drove by one of the houses that has tons of Christmas lights set to music (if you haven’t seen one, they are pretty fun – you set your radio to a certain station and the lights go along with the music). We were sitting there watching and Bennett had a big grin on his face, and said “this is making me really happy!”. We’ve enjoyed trips to see a couple more lights since then – one night to Riverwoods mall in Provo (Bennett didn’t want to be in any pictures but enjoyed throwing snowballs at Nate):

And a trip up to Temple Square in Salt Lake. We went up with some friends from the MBA program.  We thought it would be fun to try out the new frontrunner train line that goes all the way from Provo up to Salt Lake so we wouldn’t have to deal with traffic and parking, and because we thought the kids would have fun riding the train. Unfortunately, it took longer than we thought it would, but with how cold it was up there we felt like we had enough time (although we got back pretty late).

O Christmas Tree

 

We split our Christmas-tree-decorating into multiple nights – mostly because we kept starting late and it would get to be the boys’ bedtime before we finished. When they went to put the star on top, Bennett at first had his arms wrapped tightly around Nate’s forehead, and Ryan was holding onto Nate’s neck piggy-back style. Fortunately, we eventually got Bennett comfortable enough to reach out and put the star on, and I got Ryan sufficiently distracted. Bennett and Ryan of course loved helping put the ornaments on – in large clusters – and spent the next couple of weeks throwing the ornament balls and hiding various toys in the tree.

Thanksgiving

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving filled with food, family, and fun. We spent a few days up at Nate’s parents’ house and enjoyed the unusually warm weather. Bennett had fun helping rake up leaves in the yard (see pics below) – although one night, Nate and Cory had been out raking for hours and came in after dark, and after everyone came in Bennett said “my doggy is in one of the piles of leaves”. A flashlight-guided search for doggy ensued – there were probably 6-7 giant leaf piles, and we finally found him on our second pass through one of them. We never figured out why Bennett thought it would be a good idea to throw his dog in there.
I managed to not take any pictures on Thanksgiving day, but we enjoyed a delicious meal (followed by delicious pie) and mostly just hung out. For the first time ever, Nate went Black Friday shopping with me – much more enjoyable than going by myself! We went out about 8 on Thursday and mainly just went to Toys R Us (insanely long lines!!) and Walmart. We went back home Friday afternoon, and enjoyed a relaxing rest-of-the-weekend, including a visit from my brother & his family, who were in town with my sister-in-law’s family for Thanksgiving. Monday was a sad, sad day when Nate had to go back to school – the boys were both pretty heartbroken and kept asking for daddy all day long (asking for him multiple times is not unusual, but this was dramatic, incessant "I want my daddy").
The only pictures I took – raking leaves.

   

Jumping in the trash can to compact the leaves, and Bennett kept wanting to be buried in the pile of leaves. Apparently Ryan (in the background) had the same thoughts I did – huh?

Misc. November

It feels like we’ve been busy – with good stuff – but as I went back through my November pictures, there isn’t much I missed posting about (except Thanksgiving – that one’s next). A few random pictures though, and one blog-post-worthy event.

Left: We had a big snowstorm the 2nd weekend in November, and after wearing his froggy hat outside to play in the snow, Ryan had about a week where he wanted to wear it all the time.  Who can object when he looks this cute?  Right: I was making dinner one night, and the boys love to pull over their chairs and “help” me cook. I was turned around for a couple minutes working on something and turned back to find him putting the toothpicks in the salt & pepper shakers. I actually thought it was pretty smart of him (ignore the eye patch – this was the day, long after Halloween, when I finally got around to getting the boys back in their costumes to take pictures of them).

  

BYU Football Game: Nov 10 – We had a huge snowstorm on Nov 9, and had pretty much decided not to go to the football game the next day because 1) it started at 8:15pm, and 2) it was freezing. But it was the last home game and we hadn’t been to many others, so we got all bundled up (snow pants & boots for the kids), brought blankets, and braved the cold for the first half. We had to scrape 6” of snow & ice off our bench (which was on the top row of the stadium). But it was fun. The boys both fell asleep before we left, but we were glad we went. (we met up with Camille & Bryce before we left so we could get a picture – the others of the boys are from my phone so they are less than ideal).