Merry Christmas!

I've got to figure why my life feels so rushed all the time and what I can do to fix that but since Dec 23rd I finally feel like I can relax and enjoy life.  It feels great!  The house was decorated, the gifts all purchased (most done online!), Christmas letter done and accepted the fact that I wasn't doing any holiday baking this year.  A week long training in San Francisco mid-December made me make some decisions about what to cut.

Decorating the house was easy and fun this year.  Claire is old enough now to sort-of help.  We had a great time decorating the tree and listening to Christmas music.  I expected her to hang ornaments on the lower branches while I worked above, but that wasn't enough for her.  She was excited about each ornament to hang.  And after each one she would say, "Beautiful!  But not beautiful enough!" and grab another ornament.  She also did all sorts of acrobatics to hang ornaments where she thought there was too much space in the higher branches.  She tip-toed on the sofa arm, stacked Anson's Bumbo chair, boxes, and her bathroom stool, I got out the bar stool but that wasn't good enough so she brought her stool on top of THAT, too.  Ay!  I would get worried and stand close to catch her if she fell but that only made her nervous that I would take her down and she'd get shaky so I realized I needed to step AWAY for her safety.  In the end, she never lost her balance and she did a great job decorating.

Claire just had to get to the top of our 7-ft tree.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were nice and low-key.  Here's our happy two days.
  Yay for lots of time with family, lots of food, presents, and relaxing.

We got to call Uncle Sam on his mission in Brazil on Christmas morning.

This Christmas has been special.  It's Anson's first Christmas.  I think it's the first Christmas where Claire is really starting to "get it" but also not to the point where she has expectations.  She's starting to get the whole Christmas gift giving and Santa thing, but we've also taken time to talk about the meaning and symbols of Christmas.  It's a time when we think more about Jesus Christ, His life and love for us.  I've had some magic moments teaching her and I'm so glad that this season means so much to us.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Thanksgiving Vacation 2010 Via Pictures

1st Stop:  Las Vegas.  Luxor hotel.  Room on the 30th floor.
After checking in we went to dinner with my Uncle Kevin & his family.  We went to church with them the next day, too.  Why didn't I take pictures of them - dang!

At the Belagio waterfront

While we packed up to leave, Claire settled in to stay.

2nd Stop: Bumbleberry Inn at Zion National Park

The view from our room.

Lots of deer.

This waterfall had frozen and as it "melted" (we were still freezing) ice chunks would fall with a crash.

Last Destination:  Bountiful / No. Salt Lake for Thanksgiving with family.  We rented the Club House in Adrian & Jessica's neighborhood so we could have lots of room for food and play.  The kids play room with half-door and glass wall was a super bonus.

Claire had been waiting to play in the snow in the backyard since we arrived.  The last day she finally got to. :)

Anson at 5 Months

Here's our boy at 5 months.  Handsome.  Happy.  and ONE TOOTH!

update 11/10/10: TWO TEETH!

Halloween 2010

Where to start on the topic...  And be prepared for some boasting.  I've been busy!

Having Amanda living here she asked early on if she could come trick-or-treating with us.  We decided we should do a theme for all of our costumes.  Claire wanted to be a princess so we slotted Anson to be a dragon, Amanda the knight (or dragon slayer/tamer), and Blake and I as King and Queen. 

I always try to spend as little $$ as possible on costumes and I really don't like those expensive & flimsy packaged ones so the hunt was on.  I found Anson's costume first for $12 and decided I couldn't make it for less than that and it was reasonable.  That first purchase was the most expensive part.  Claire had a fancy Easter dress I figured we could use, and I still have some old prom dresses - which I still fit into!  So we'd just have to add on to those dresses to make them look royal.  I started asking around for costume pieces from Blake's and my mom.  My mom had Renaissance costumes from her step-sons in the attic which we used for Blake's costume AND she had REAL CHAIN MAIL that Amanda was excited to wear.  That stuff was HEAVY!!!  She didn't have any royal capes, but did have leftover fabric. 

Now, I'm not a seamstress by any stretch of the imagination.  I barely can sew a straight line.  But I figured capes for all three of us couldn't be too bad.  I looked online for some examples and was encouraged.  Each would be one piece of fabric with straight lines.  Thanks to some (ok, lots of) help & encouragement from my mother-in-law and her sewing machine & supplies I was able to make our capes.  My mantra was, "It's only a costume.  It's fine."  Decorating them was fun.  Claire loved putting the glitter on her and my capes and did a great job.  Amanda's knight cover took a little more doing but this amateur still got hers done and didn't have to buy a thing.

And then when we found out Christy would be here for Halloween we decided she needed to join the group costume.  She was a court jester and was able to make her costume out of things she already owned.  Wohoo!

Of all 6 costumes we only bought Anson's costume, gold clasps for the capes, jewel stickers, gold decorative ribbon, and crowns.

Here's our group photos:

And AFTER Halloween night I spent the next few days baking the pumpkin seeds and turning our jack-o-lanterns into pumpkin puree to bake with.  Baked pumpkin seeds were first.  I found the pumpkin seed recipe last year and we loved them just as much again.  Click HERE for the recipe.

Puree was next.  We had so much pumpkin that I had to do the puree in three batches.  And with lots of little interruptions it took quite a while.  But know we have at least 20 cups of puree.  It's a good thing we like pumpkin!  So far I've made pumpkin pancakes, froze cubes for baby food, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin chocolate chip bread.  Pumpkin pie is next.  YUM!

Auntie Time

My sister came to visit us for a good long trip.  (Thanks to her hubby & family for making that happen!)  It's been nothing short of wonderful to have her here.  We've been doing a lot of the ordinary but having her here has made it feel like special time.  Anson and Auntie got to meet for the first time, and after crying the first time she babysat has really bonded and loves her.  Claire has had lots of play time and attention.  I'm sure we'll all feel the void once she goes back home to Virginia.  But in the meantime we're loving her!

Scripture Recital

For family scripture time every night we've been reading the Book of Mormon as a family (in addition to individually).  But with a 3-yr-old we'd all read 1 verse each so it was taking a while.  We were in 2nd Nephi and some nights were better than others getting Claire to actually repeat what we read.  And, quite frankly, those verses of Isaiah quoted only 3 verses at a time the topic and context are hard to follow.  It was starting to be less than the glowing experience it started out as.

I decided it was more important that we have positive experiences with scripture reading at this point and that I wanted Claire to easily understand the words she was saying so that she could start to internalize the messages.  I took pictures from the Friend Magazine that had scriptures quoted on them and put them in a binder.  We work on a scripture until she has it down and then she gets to pick the next one to work on.  We started with half of a verse and she's surprised me with how fast she memorized it. 

It's been fun so far.  The first few nights of a new verse we read it to her and she repeats.  The next few nights she gets to play "teacher" and tells us the words to repeat.  And we get to talk about what it means.

The other night we told her she could recite all her scriptures so far for the camera.  Here's a peek at what she's learned.

Car Story #3

We were driving home the other night with happy kids in the backseat.  At a stop light Blake leaned over and we kissed. 

From the backseat we heard, "AWWWW!"  We smiled at each other and looked back but Claire was looking out the window. 

"How nice," she said, still looking out the window.

Not sure if she was talking about us or something she was watching outside Blake asked what was so nice.

"Daddy, you gave your Mama a kiss!" 
(Note: I heard "Mama."  Blake heard "Mom.")