Christmas Kids

Jackson: Mom, you should never make gingerbread cookies

Me: Why not? You don't like them?

Jackson: No, its because they'll just run away.

Lincoln: Grandma will you play Clue with me in the morning?

Gma: I have to go to work really early.

Lincoln: What time to you have to leave?

Gma: 5:30

Lincoln: I'll be up at 3

Harrison went "sledding" on the driveway with a pillow pet. He kept scooting down inch by inch and I couldn't figure out why until he got to the bottom. He picked up the pillow pet and ran up to the top just to sit on it again and start slowly scooting down again. Hilarious - it was about 56 degrees - definitely no snow for sledding.

I'll Tumble For You

Wednesday morning I sent the whole family off to do other things (like school and work) while I packed and cleaned to get ready for our trip to Oklahoma. I got plenty done and was ready and anxious to get on the road. Jeff's meetings went longer than he'd expected and I was getting antsy. He finally got home, but was on the phone and pacing in the front yard instead of inside grabbing luggage. I decided to take matters into my own hands and went to bring our large suitcase downstairs. I thought I could just bring it slowly down, but when I leaned it toward me it knocked me over. I lost my footing and soon found that I was spinning end over end down the staircase. I had so many thoughts go through my head in that moment. I knew that so much could go wrong. Had I ruined our whole trip? Please don't hit my head... etc. When I landed I was immediately grateful that it wasn't any worse than it was. I was a little bruised up and the suitcase had landed on my leg, but nothing was very hurt. I stayed there not wanting to move for a minute as Jeff came running. I'm so grateful to have a few tender muscles and otherwise feel just fine.

The kids traveled quite well and it is wonderful to be with family for Christmas. We miss all those that we can't see and send our love.

Snow!!!

We were so excited to finally see a little snow on the ground this morning. Just after breakfast we headed out to test our backyard hills. They are a huge hit. Except Lincoln just wants to stay in his pj's where it's warm. What 8 year old does that?

A Taste of Christmas

We've been trying to get in the Christmas spirit a little bit around here. The kids really like to see the lights that are set to music so we spent a long time trying to find a place that does that close to us. I couldn't find any online. We had to laugh when we pulled out to just go find some lights and there was a house set to music just around the corner from us!

The boys and I worked on a gingerbread village and Harrison is enjoying his new Little People nativity set. I got it for him for his birthday and left it sitting out (oops!). Everyone had already seen it, so we decided to open it up and used it in our FHE lesson.

Out of Order

A late camera upload = out of order posting!

Here are a few more pictures from our Thanksgiving week with Spencer and Aimee. For
Thanksgiving dinner we also had Lisa (Harrison's babysitter) and Paula (Harrison's nursery leader). They introduced themselves as Harrison's friends. He's so popular!

Hunter was a big help with the Christmas decorating. He made the hats look cute. ;)

Chess Quotes

Lincoln got a new chess set for his birthday and is in the chess club at school. He also like to play against the computer sometimes. Today while he was playing against the computer he said, "this guy likes checking.... but I like mating."

Later he told me that I was the queen of our family, he is the rook and Jackson is a pawn.

Little stinker.

An unrelated quote from yesterday... as I was tucking him in at night he said, "mom, you are times nineteen better than a zebra, and they are pretty nice." [random!]

Christmas Video 2011

Christmas Video 2011

I've been trying to get this e-mailed out, but it isn't working. Hopefully this will get me started!

New Nephew!

John Alexander (known as Alex) surprised everyone with an early showing on the 3rd! He was due Christmas Eve, but figured thought he'd avoid the Christmas commotion and showed up to get the season started early. He weighed just 5 lbs and 15 oz... so much smaller than any of my little guys, so it's killing me to be so far away and not get to see him while he's so tiny! He and mom are doing well. My mom is headed down today. Sadly, dad has a head cold and can't join her. I'm hoping that they will be up for travelling to Oklahoma for Christmas and I'll get to see the little guy soon. Is that too much to hope for?

Ten Years!

This week Jeff and I celebrated our tenth anniversary. The day was a very full one with Jeff's boss in town, a Dell event planned, a work day for me and cub scouts at our house right after school. It was a temple trip night for our youth so we had to find a new sitter that wasn't from church. We found a sweet girl from the neighborhood who arrived during the chaos of cub scouts just finishing up. We were planning on attending a meeting, but we were running late so we ended up going to the movies. We were surprised to find the theater very crowded for a Thursday night and there were no seats together for the show we wanted to see. While we stood and debated the other shows I spoke to a man who mentioned that he was there hosting a sneak preview. I asked him if we could get in on it and he handed us two tickets, though he had encouraged us to just go see the muppets! We saw War Horse - a new Steven Spielberg movie coming out Christmas day. It was a great story with beautiful cinematography. It was such a nice change to see an adult movie with a PG rating. On our way home it was snowing. I love driving in the dark when there is snow and it looks like you are traveling through space.

More important than our evening is the reason for it! I'm so grateful to be married to this fantastic man who takes such great care of me. He is very thoughtful, kind, giving, loving and generous. He is a great father and I can't imagine my life without him.

Breakfast Chef

Harrison loves to help me flip pancakes. He helped me this morning and just after breakfast as I was cleaning the griddle Jeff said, "Stop! Go sit down and I'm going to bring you your anniversary gift." He brought me this neat reversible griddle/grill that comes off of the warmer so that you can wash it in the sink or even in the dishwasher. As we were admiring it on the coffee table Harrison ran and grabbed the leftover pancakes from breakfast and threw them on. :)

Lincoln is Eight!

Happy Birthday to Lincoln! His birthday falls on Thanksgiving this year, so we had our party last night. He wanted to invite his whole class so we had a very large group! I know the picture is terrible, but Jeff set up his 20x10 screen in the backyard so that the kids could watch Megamind. It gets dark by 5 o'clock right now, so it was a fun way to enjoy the dark. The all bundled up and we brought out popcorn, corn dogs and cocoa to keep them warm and happy. Everyone made it through the whole movie out there! Afterward we attempted to play a few games (kids were too hyper and crazy!) and had cookie ice cream sandwiches (Lincoln's request! - so easy) It was crazy, but a lot of fun. Lincoln had a blast.

Also worth noting: a few days before the party Lincoln started asking to change the movie to a church movie, create a wordsearch with "things that make you reverent" and give out Books of Mormon to all of his friends. He is a much more bold missionary than I am!

More Visitors!

On Sunday Spencer, Aimee and Hunter joined us for Thanksgiving week. It has been so fun having them here! We have been doing lots of relaxing and chatting along with preparations for Lincoln's birthday party and Thanksgiving. Yesterday we took them to our favorite little hike to the beach. We are having a record breakingly warm Thanksgiving so we are enjoying the outdoors a little! Hunter is such a sweet and calm little guy. We're all in love. Harrison especially loves being bigger than someone and is always looking for a way to help him out.

Christmas Parade

Last Saturday we went downtown to enjoy Milwaukee's Christmas parade. We had a great time watching the floats, marching bands and costumes of all kinds. I loved watching the wise men on camels, Jackson loved the man in the giant rolling ball, Lincoln loved the Star Wars characters. Most entertaining was the man next to us who yelled out to each character and got their attention so that they looked our direction.

Jackson's Creation

Jackson caught me blogging about him the other night. He wanted to show everyone what I was talking about with his paper creations. He made his little man stand up, a 3d dog that stands up and two curly snakes that bounce up and down.

Big Boy!

Harrison has been showing a lot of interest in the big boy potty, so I got him a little seat, which he LOVES. He likes to sit up there and point at all of the Sesame Street characters and talk and say "pshhh" and stuff paper in the toilet. He knows to flush and wash his little hands. Today he asked to go in there and we followed our little routine. He stood next to the potty when we were done and started to do his business... I quickly grabbed him and set him back up there where he took care of things for the first time. He gets to wear big boy underwear today as a reward (over his diaper... shh don't tell).

Jackson's First Scrapbook

Jackson asked me to find all of the pictures of him that I've taken since we moved to Wisconsin and print them out. He found an empty notebook and had Lincoln help him with the writing.

He wanted to show all of his grandparents and family back in Oklahoma what he's been up to. In case you can't read it, it says "we did sevrle (several) things in Wisconsin"... "I had so much fun in Wisconsin"..."you got to come to Wisconsin, 'cause it's so fun"

This was all his doing. He's been super creative lately and is always coming up with new craft projects. Yesterday he figured out how to make a snake by cutting a spiral out of a piece of paper. Then he glued on a little tongue and drew an eye. Such a creative guy!

22 Months

For some reason I chose to record all of Lincoln's vocabulary at 22 months. I made a poster of all of the words. I felt the need to do the same for Jackson, so here I am continuing the tradition for Harrison.

ball

duh = drink, liquid of any kind

ee = cheese

ee = shoes too

oof = dog

ff = hot, fire

ro = rock

boe = bowl

nah = snack

whoa!

brrr = moving vehicle of some sort, kind of a vroom vroom sound

ma = mom, or any grown woman

da = dad or any grown man

more (signs more often than speaking)

hya = fighting (light sabers or his brother's video games)

animal sounds - owl hoot, wolf howl, lion, etc roar, camel, pig, cat, cow, sheep

ro = frog

dat = that

yick = yucky

ha = chop

buh = bike

His vocabulary seems to be smaller than I remember the others, but I rarely struggle with knowing what he wants. He is very good at pointing and showing us what he wants. He also already has an opinion about what he is wearing. My big boys rarely have an opinion about that! He loves stripes, trucks and animals on his clothes. He doesn't say "no," but he has the cutest head shake when that is his opinion (ie. would you like to go take a nap?). He's gotten very good with his "soft touches" and always pets people softly if they are sad. He is an excellent little waver, loves books and can identify most of the objects in his favorites.

He's pretty much too sweet for words.

Harrison's Newest Word

"Chop"

then he signs "more.."

"Chop" [more!]

Fall Leaves

This morning as part of the worldwide day of service through the church we were assigned a home to go and rake leaves. The whole family was able to participate and we ended up at a small yard where there was only about an hour's worth of work. We enjoyed meeting the nice lady though and she was very grateful for the help.

Afterward we went home and played with our own leaves... and leaves there are! The kids and I made a big pile at the bottom of the slide to jump and slide into. Lincoln was more interested in creating a clear path that would all around the yard.

We were mostly just

playing around, not too serious about getting the leaves taken care of because we have a lawn service. Soon though, the neighbor offered Jeff the use of his lawn tractor with a leaf catcher attachment. They spent about an hour with is and the whole thing was all cleaned up! I'm sure it will need doing again in a few weeks. Great day!

Indy Trip

After my parents visited us (a reat treat!) they headed to Indianapolis to visit my dad's mom and brother. When the rest of the siblings heard he was coming they all decided to head that way as well. Not one to miss a party, I rode along.

It had been too long since I'd seen grandma and it is always fun to be with family. Jeff was a trooper to play Mr. Mom for a few days so that I could take this trip. Grandma's home had a lot of beautiful improvements since I had been there last and she is always a delight to spend time with. She might just be the kindest person I've ever met.

We spent several enjoyable evenings out, but I was really bad about taking pictures. We ate at an old library one night and I took a few. Grandma was full of emotion - delight at being with all of her wonderful children and some sadness knowing that grandpa would love to have been there with us as well.

Since I had a one way ride I decided to be cheap and take the bus/train home. That didn't turn out so great, but it was definitely an adventure! The bus left nearly two hours late so I missed my connecting train in Chicago. I also learned in Chicago that the stations were in different locations. I had to walk to the train station to get a refund on my ticket. On my way there I noticed a lady from the bus that was waiting for a taxi and looking distraught. She had lots of luggage and no cash (the ATM at the bus stop wasn't working). I told her I was headed in the same direction and would love someone to walk with. I was happy to pull one of her bags so that it was manageable. She was a 53 year old business woman who had recently had surgery on her eye and was unable to fly. She was headed all the way to Florida and this would delay her 48 hour trip an entire day. She was beyond frazzled!

We walked and found Union Station and got our ticket situations all worked out. The lady directed us to the nearest hotel so that she could wait to catch a new train the next day. I told her that I was walking with her no matter which direction it was. I didn't know how she would get all of her stuff there without me! By the time we got there she was so grateful that she hugged me and hugged me. We had to cross some crazy intersections (one an off ramp!) and go up and down stairs and a couple of times. I told her that I'd rather be on that adventure than sitting at the bus station like we had been for two hours and she agreed. It turned out that my subway station was just on the corner of that block and I was able to meet up with Jeff and the kids (who had driven down to meet me) outside of all of the crazy Chicago traffic. What a night!

When I woke up this morning there was a deer walking down the street in front of our house and I was grateful to live where we do and not in a busy city (though I really enjoy visiting them too!).

They're Here!

My mom and dad are here for a quick visit this week and we are having such fun with them around! Of course I wanted to take them to the Seven Bridges beach/hike area that I talked about on my mom's birthday and we tried to squeeze it in last night before it got dark. It was gorgeous in the fall. I had to smile when my mom mentioned that her own mom would love this place. I guess there is something about these woods that make you think of your mom. The kids were feeling adventurous and went off the beaten path a bit. Jeff took them on an "alternate" route (Lincoln heard "ultimate") and they ended up lost in the dark. They ended up in a private campground, but quickly found their way out where we could drive and pick them up. Afterward we got lost again (because of construction) trying to find our dinner spot. Poor Jeff tried to find 3 different Pho places which were all either gone or changed into Mexican. We finally settled on Chipotle!

We are all really enjoying our time together, just wish we weren't so busy with regular week activities.

Halloween

This year's halloween has been pretty low key. We had a fun evening at the trunk or treat on Thursday night and pretty much called it quits there. The city dictated that our trick or treating would be done on Sunday, so we decided not to participate. The kids had fall parties at school last week and Harrison had a halloween playgroup day. The actual day of Halloween didn't feel like Halloween at all.