December 2012

December - whew - what a month!  We found out that Clara's school is going to year round next year and she is on the track that will have them off the entire month of December.  I'm not so sure that anybody needs to have their kids home the entire month of December - hmm.  We'll see how that goes - maybe when I'm not pregnant I'll be a little nicer during december!  We had our little neighborhood canned food drive this year again - I really like that tradition we've started.  Santa came and can I just say what a wonderful guy he is?  So thankful that he was able to come and be with us - the kids loved him and sang so cute for him.  I got a belly this month and quickly remembered that washing dishes while pregnant and holding a one year old is a little tricky! (that picture is courtesy of Grady - he likes to get the camera sometimes and walk around the house taking a few hundred pictures - awesome:).  We had Ashley and Parson stay with us for a couple days.  Don't let that happy face fool you though - he was not too thrilled about being left alone with me at all!  We need that little guy around more so he'll be my friend! The night we went to see the lights was pretty darn chilly and as soon as we got there it started to rain pretty good.  We darted through the wet streets and even though it was cold our kids were still pretty enchanted.  We hung out in the tabernacle for a good little while to warm up and listen to the pretty music.  

Thanksgiving stuff '12

Oh so much to catch up on - why do I feel so compelled to be "caught up"?  Here's a good try - we went up to Idaho for Thanksgiving again this year - I'm not a good rotator.  I like to do the same things each year - Idaho for Thanksgiving, my parents on Christmas eve, home for Christmas.  The rest of the holidays I'm up for change, but I like a little consistency with these ones.  We went up to Montana to get our tree and I realized when we got there that I had left my boots at the John's - eek!  Luckily there wasn't too much snow this year and what there was was pretty hard and easy to walk on - we found a good one!

 The tree Clara and Grady picked out for their room - they were so excited about this little lodgepole!

 We got a HUGE beautiful tree this year - and then I butchered it!  It started when I decided that I didn't want to drive around town the day after we got home with a tree tied to the roof of our car.  We actually had three trees on top of our car and instead of waiting for B to come home and lift them off, I just untied them and pushed.  And then the next night I decided I would cut it down to size and bring it in the house by myself too.  I found this awful little hand saw and after a really long time and a whole bunch of different tactics I got the bottom cut down - but it was still too big, so I took a bunch off the top too and then dragged it in the house.  Upon doing so I realized that the top of the tree was broken completely in half about two feet from the top!  (probably from being rolled off the top of a car I'm guessing:()  I had broken a bunch of other branches too and I had to prune and shape and the bottom part I had cut way too high up and our most beautiful tree turned into....well, it wasn't cute I'll say that.  And then we had this massive light dilemma and I had to re-string the lights on the bottom 1/2 of the tree 5 TIMES!  I threw away 8 sets of lights - 5 of them I had made two different trips to the store to get. I stayed up till midnight trying to make it all beautiful and finished to surprise Brandon who was working late and he had to come home at 12:30 to a grumpy wife and a wrecked tree!  HOLY COW that tree stressed me out.  The bottom two strands never did work, and poor B who found the most beautiful tree we've ever had had to look at that disaster all december:(  Next year - I'm leaving it all to the tree master:).

 This years thankful tree - I really like this activity.  Graham's foot was our little Indian man at the bottom.

About this time Clara got back her first set of school pictures.  How dang cute is she!  So fun what a big good girl she is becoming.  It's hard to believe how much she has grown up this past year.  Oh i love her.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Halloween '12

I'm a big fan of Halloween - I know lots of people aren't, but I really really like it.  This year I was a little lack luster, but I think we still had a lot of fun.  Me and B went to a party with some friends where you had to submit an idea for a costume for another couple and then one of the ideas someone else had suggested was given to you.  We got Sunny and Cher.  After watching a few old videos on you tube I decided I looked way more like Sunny than B did - and so somehow I talked him into going as Cher.... I still get the giggles just thinking about it.  He was looovely.  And don't I really kind of look like Sunny?

 Graham was our little Monkey of course

 Clara really wanted to be a princess fairy dressed up like an Indian dressed up like a witch - but I just wasn't sure how to pull all that together so we went with a fairy and she had a little indian feather in her hair too.  Grady was pretty sure he was going to go as hmmm..... I can't remember now! But he had this plan of what he wanted to be for months and then the week before decided he just wanted to be spider man.  And then the morning of decided he really wanted to be spiderman dressed up like a cowboy.  Can't imagine where these two get their indecisiveness from!

 We had the Groves and Kinneys over after trick or treating for some scones - I came up with a new recipe this year and I've gotta say it was pretty tasty.  Pumpkin spice - with cardamom and cinnamom honey butter - wow I wish I had one right now!!  Oh how we miss both of those families!!!!  They moved from our neighborhood at about the same time and it still feels so odd that they are gone:(

Like I said, I was a little lack luster this year, but B still made some awesome pumpkins - he just free hands a picture on those babies and cuts it right out - amazing!  Happy Halloween!  

Disleeland (according to Clara and Gray)

I'm still not sure how we ever got up the courage, but in October we went to Disneyland.  I love Disneyland, i really do.  But I don't love tired kids or pushing strollers through crowded places or long lines of people every where you look or  paying a billion dollars for a vacation.  But - we did it.  And Clara and Grady looooved it.  B had enough sky miles saved up that we could all fly for free (which is half of the adventure when you are 4 and 5) and we found a place with a fridge and microwave and a separate room for the kids to sleep in, so - it all worked out pretty well.  I knew that with another baby on the way it would be a long time before we would dare brave it again, so we sucked it up and planned the trip.  It wasn't my favorite vacation we've ever had (Disneyland is soo much work) but I think it was worth it. Even little Graham did pretty good - and so did I once I figured out I should let everyone else sleep in the bedroom and I would sleep in the peace and quiet of the family room on the pull out bed.  I was surprised how much I would learn about my kids in 3 days at disneyland.  Clara was amazingly adventurous!  She loved California Screamin' and Splash Mountain.  What a girl!  And Grady was so terrified on Pirates of the Carribean that he was almost in tears, and I think he was in tears on the nemo submarine ride.  Before we left home we had watched a video of Splash Mountain (the first part, not the end part) and they both wanted to go on it so bad.  I figured Gray would change his mind pretty quick, but he held his resolve and I about peed my pants when they put the two of us in the very front seat - with Gray in the very front! The picture at the end showed little Grady with a look of complete terror on his face and me holding on to him so tight my veins in my arms were popping out.   I'm not sure if I've ever been more proud of that kid than I was in the minute we came walking out, soaking wet with huge smiles on our faces.  He was so brave!  Clara's favorite ride was pirates and Grays was for sure the new cars ride. The weather was perfect and I don't think things could have gone any smoother - very few melt downs, not too many missed naps and happy kids.

I was a pretty proud Mama right then - too bad you can't see how soaked we were!

The new cars land is amazing!  It looks like you're walking around southern utah and the cars drive around with their little animated eyes looking and talking with the kids - the ride is amazing, one of my new favorites.

Such a happy little monkey:)

We told Clara and Grady to think hard about what fun treat they wanted while we were there, because we were only getting one!  On the last day they decided they wanted a big sundae from Clara Belle's ice cream parlor of course.   It was huge and pretty tasty - and they were way more excited about that sundae than they would have been had we let them have all the treats they wanted while we were there, so it was a pretty good trade off!

These were their prizes for the trip they chose at the very last minute before we had to leave on our last night there.  Such tough decisions!  What lucky kids!

A baby girl and a few other things...

This was a lovely day.  I still can't figure out why I haven't made the time to write about this new little girl that is coming to our family soon.  I'm 35 weeks pregnant for crying out loud and haven't mentioned it on here once!  But this was the day that we had our ultrasound last October and found out that we were having a new little girl.  The ultrasound tech didn't tell us at first, just typed the word "girl"up on the screen so I had Clara read to see what it said, "guh - ih - r.... Mom I already know it's a girl!" and she and Grady went right back to playing like it was no big deal.  They had been telling me for a long time we were having a baby girl and didn't need an ultrasound to confirm it for them:)  She looked wonderful and healthy and I couldn't be more grateful for her.  I will need to write more about all that later.  After that I went shopping all by myself at city creek for some bigger shirts - wonderful - and they came home and made these streamer things to play with in the yard. I

 I've wanted to put some pictures Brandon took that day of our amazing patio and pizza oven he built for us this summer on here for a long time and never have.  That patio was a beast - we built it with mostly donated materials - so we had three different pavers that were all three different depths.  We had to dig down about a foot and a half then fill it all in with road base and then sand and then level and re-level and re-level.  And all of that stuff had to first be brought to our house in the back of a truck, shoveled out onto the road and then brought back one wheel barrow full at a time - and that was after all the hundreds of wheel barrows full of mud we had to haul off that we had dug out of it!  Wow - I did about 15% of that patio and I think it was the hardest physical labor I've ever done! Brandon is a serious work horse - and our poor neighbors have had to have many many late nights listening to saws and drills and levelers and all sorts of crazy machines going off long after they've gone to bed.  The awesome food that we've gotten out of that oven has definitely been worth it though.  Such a creative guy I've got:)

Harvest

I love late summer/early fall when our garden is this huge treasure trove of lovely things to eat.  I'm not the most creative person in the world - but something in me needs to create sometimes and cooking seems to fill that need in me.  The colors and smells and textures and tastes are all so mesmerizing to me.  I love all of it.  A pan on the stove with fresh veggies and garlic and herbs creates my favorite smell in the whole world.  I love going out on warm, dewy mornings and picking bowls full of beautiful fresh food.  Even if it means I'm going to have to find some more people to eat my cucumbers.  For the past couple of years, Byron has gotten us the most beautiful heirloom tomato plants from up at the college.  This last year we had 18 plants - and wow they were amazing.  Pink and purple and green and striped and man did they taste so good.  I could eat tomato sandwiches about every day of my life.  The yield isn't as good as regular varieties, but when you have 18 plants, thats okay, and the taste is worth it.  

How beautiful is that!!!!

My not so favorite thing about the garden this fall was the snakes - guh.  I'm not a snake hater, or I used to not be but after the crazy number that we had this fall I could definitely do without them.  Clara and Gray would help my pick produce and pull weeds for a while, but then they would usually start snake hunting.  Most mornings I would try to sneak out before they did so I could throw their bucket of snakes out into the field.  One Sunday morning I went out to find their bucket on the porch full of 7 snakes - and two of them were pretty big ones!  That whole bucket got taken down the street a ways and dumped before anyone could object!  

We planted two little armenian cucumber starts this year and they went crazy,  We had cucumbers coming out our ears.  Our whole street got bag after bag of cucumbers, and I did about everything with them I could.  I think my favorite find was that recipes that call for zucchini work just as well with cucumbers.  We had lots of cucumber bread and cucumber muffins.  One morning after having ignored our little plant for a few days this was what we found....

Graham could be found most days carrying around a gnawed on cucumber - the perfect season for a teething baby!  I'd pop them in the fridge for an hour or so and hand them back to him and he was content as could be.  That big thing in front of Clara was a random hybrid plant we had show up next to the compost pile - half spaghetti squash half zucchini.  We got several of them, but unfortunately they weren't any good.

Graham's 1st

In October Baby Graham turned 1 year old.  For his birthday dinner we had fresh baked bread, bananas, green smoothies and cheese.  All his favorite foods.  After we went to Black Island farms for the halloween festival.  Some one year stats for my little man;
- He is chubby.  Sooo chubby.  When he stands up in the tub his little legs and bum are one roll after the other. Was 24 lbs at 15 months.
- He loves to eat (obviously) and up until pretty recently has been pretty willing to eat just about anything I put in his mouth, but these days he's being more picky.
- He loves to cuddle and give hugs and kisses - the open mouth, super slobbery kind.
- He is now an awesome sleeper - 7:30 - 7:30 most nights.  At his birthday he wast still waking up once in the morning around 5 or 6, but he would nurse and go right back to sleep.
- He is so busy!  I've never had a child that was so into everything!  He loves the kitchen (and the little play kitchen upstairs) and could spend all day playing in the drawer with the measuring cups and the cupboard with the tupperware.  He loves to get out bowls and a whisk and stir stir stir.  He's my little chef in training.  Lately his favorite toy is the bowl for my bosch and all the attachments for it.
- He could be held all day and would let me if only I was willing.
- He is sweet.  You can just feel it about him.  Something about him just exudes sweetness and he's got us all pretty smitten - especially Clara.  She loves him sooo much. She always wants to be in the same place as him and is genuinely disappointed when he goes down for his naps.
                                                         Happy Birthday my little Goose.

 Look how handsome my little brown eyed boy is...

 Right before going down the enormous grain chute slide - I think I was more nervous than they were!

 A few nights later B made all of us pizza in our awesome new pizza oven outside and we had dessert with my Mom and Dad and Joanna's family to celebrate.  Clara and Grady decorated his cake with all of his favorite toys (his favorites according to them anyway...).  I had forgotten to practice the whole blowing out the candles thing with him, so that was kind of a bust, but after all of the candles at Christmas, he's got it down!

I made up this tasty new dessert that we had a few times lasts fall.  For the crust I mixed equal parts oats, almonds and granola in the blender and mixed that with a couple tablespoons of melted butter, some vanilla, a pinch of salt and nutmeg and pressed it into the pan for the crust and cooked for 15 minutes or so.  Then I topped it with a combo of greek yogurt, neaufchatel cheese, and whipping cream sweetened with maple syrup and honey and topped that with either berries or fresh peaches.  It was so good!  Graham loves berries, so even though the fresh peaches were my topping of choice, this was perfect for his first birthday cake.