Holiday Happenings

I should resolve to take more pictures. Maybe that would lead to more blogging.

Happening #1: We took a quick trip to Utah to see Preston's family because they wanted us to. The kids had a ton of fun in a long weekend.

Happening #2:

Andrew, Grace and I hosted a reindeer party for our toddler and preschool friends. We made these peanut butter cracker reindeers for the party. I was pretty proud of them.

The main event was making reindeer hats and marching around to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. 

Please excuse the itchy bum. 

Happening #3:  Instead of more toys or stuff, we took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge for their Christmas gift. Lauren had been wanting to go for years and we got a decent deal. They had a great time - Lauren reported that she had even more fun than she was expecting. Andrew would only go on the toddler slides and walk around the lazy river, but he seemed to have a lot of fun doing that. 

He stinks at looking at the camera. 

Grace wasn't sure at first, but she enjoyed herself too, especially the "ocean" (wave pool with a beach entry). 

Happening #4:  Christmas Eve: Our next door neighbor Arlene came over for our traditional Christmas Eve candlelight dinner. She is one of the few adults Grace likes and she thinks our kids should be models, so we get along well.  

The Christmas books I chose for the kids this year were a home run. Andrew got The Circus Ship and we have read it every night since. 

Grace got Blue Hat, Green Hat. I wish I had thought to take a video of the first time they read it together. There was lots of giggling. Now she reads it herself. "Yewwow hat! Yewwow hat! Yewwow hat!  Oops!"

Lauren got the next book in her favorite series, The Kingdom of Wrenly. It happened to be about mermaids which went perfectly with the mermaid tail she got from Aunt Joanna. 

Andrewisms: Road Trip Edition

We put Andrew in the back seat for our trip out to Minnesota, and it was definitely a good decision. He kept us chuckling with some of the things he said, however, like the following:

• McDonald's! We should stop there! (x50)
• Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!  (Every time we went up a hill. Pennsylvania was fun.)
• I give up. (somewhere around La Crosse, WI)
• CAN SOMEBODY OPEN THIS FOR ME? (three hours after we'd passed him back a snack)
• I hate highways. 

Likes and Dislikes: June Edition

In this post, we return to our favorite blog series to catch a glimpse into what is currently making our frowns turn upside down and our smiles look like they went through a frown machine.

Preston: 

Likes:  Scouts; mango sorbet; snickers

Dislikes:  not being able to eat a snickers


Emily: 

Likes:  working out; the fact that Preston doesn't have to go to Scout camp; 100 calorie greek yogurt bars

Dislikes:  Scouts; neighborhood kids who knock on our door from 7:30 am to 8 pm, leave trash all over our yard, and break our stuff; wet towels all over

Lauren:

Likes: fashion design; abcya.com; yoga

Dislikes: hairbrushing; having to be the first one inside

Andrew:

Likes:  the iPad; Crocs; digging in dirt; screaming

Dislikes:  sleeping in his bedroom alone; not being the first one upstairs

Grace:

Likes:  her shoes; her dad; being outside; pencils; the dishwasher

Dislikes: not having her shoes on; Dad leaving for work or going to the bathroom; not being able to go outside; when someone takes a pencil away from her

Andrew's Bedroom

I am a bad DIYer, which is why I buy t-shirts from the clearance rack instead of making them myself. But Andrew's bedroom badly needed to be painted, and unfortunately, there's not really a clearance rack for stripping wallpaper and painting, so we set out to do it ourselves. I thought it would be easy to paint because his room is so small. Wrong. His room is small, but it actually has eight different facades, a sloping ceiling, and the windows and door frames are right up against the wall. It was a pain to paint.

Andrew insisted he wanted a green room, but for some reason, I didn't think it would look good all green, so I painted two of the walls a brownish color. As soon as the first coat was up, Andrew said he didn't want green because green is his second favorite color; he wanted blue, which is his first favorite color. Now he says he likes the green, but not the brown. Oh well.

We found some nice decorations to put up on the walls, and his room is now the best decorated of any room in our house. He doesn't appreciate it, though, and usually comes downstairs after being put to bed saying he doesn't like being alone. He doesn't know how good he has it.

 I got these funky car pictures at Ikea a while ago, thinking they would be nice in Andrew's room someday. I searched around for cheap, plain frames and finally found some at Family Dollar and they go perfectly right here.

 Did Mom make all of you one of these baby boy poems when your boys were born, too?

 We also have some decorations that Preston's Nana made, like that one about "Why God Made Little Boys."

I finally had a perfect place to put up a gutter shelf, and I love it. Yes, it is crooked, but in our house, it's hard to tell if it's the shelf itself, the floor, or the ceiling that's crooked (most likely all three).

Jekyll/Hyde Baby

Preston made a comment recently that Grace makes it her mission to be as cute as possible, and then as difficult as possible. It's pretty accurate, but these pictures are all from the cute side. We don't need to be reminded of her difficult side.

Stairwell Gallery

I have finally finished a few projects that have been on my list forever. One of them was to decorate our stairwell. The two big walls on either side were begging to be used. I knew I wanted one side to be a family history wall; the other side ended up being a missionary wall. I am pleased with how it turned out. The pictures are not good because I can't get far enough away to take a decent one, so you'll have to come see it in person to fully appreciate it. There 's still some room for expansion, so if you have any cool old pictures, send them my way

Sibling collage

Grandma and Popee collages.

One of these things I got from the basement the  last time we were in Wausau.

Some old pictures we rescued from Uncle Bud's house.

By the way, why are frames so expensive? Even the cheap plastic ones are ridiculous. Thank goodness for dollar stores.

Birthday Week

                                           

Last week was birthday week at our house, starting with Andrew's on Tuesday. Since he sticks anything he can in the peanut butter jar and asks for peanut butter on his hot dogs, I made him a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. It was quite tasty.
                                           

He got a big boy bike for his birthday. It has a special vrooming feature and so far, that's the only part that's been used.

For the past couple of months, every time he says a prayer, it goes, "Thank you for this day, I know you live in heaven.....now what?"  He has also been asking a lot of "how" questions.  How do airplanes work? How do pipes work? How do birds fly?  We've watched some educational YouTube videos.

                                                
On Saturday, we celebrated Grace by swimming at the YMCA and having Dunkin' Donuts since I didn't feel like making (and eating) another cake. No one complained.

Grace likes squeezing herself into small places, taking things off shelves and out of drawers, and climbing stairs. She loves Preston and Lauren and gets super excited when she sees Lauren walking down the sidewalk from the bus stop.

                                                   
The past year with Grace has been tiring, but we think (hope) that we've finally figured out that the way to get her to sleep through the night is to put her to bed at 6:30. She's up by 5:30 regardless of when she goes to bed, so this might be the solution. Wish us luck. Please.

And then we got six inches of snow.