Well Hello There!

23 days into the new year and I'm finally posting.

New Years Eve we did our traditional "make beignets and have a dance party" thing. Dave turned on his volcano grill in the garage and we deep fried the beignets out there to save the whole house from the smell of oil. It was cold, but we were successful! We all made ourselves sick with powdered sugar beignets. Miles just licked the sugar off of them and ended up covered head-to-toe in the white stuff. The kitchen was a sugary mess! I wish I had gotten a picture of it, but we were busy trying to keep the sugar contained to the kitchen. 

After the boys bathed, we had a dance party in the front room. This consists of us putting on 90's hip hop on Pandora and dancing until someone gets hurt. Then, thanks to Netflix, we had the countdown at 9:30, Cruise presented a "2016" banner he had made, ringing in the new year, and we sent the kids to bed! 

New Years Day we went sledding up at Traverse Mountain and the boys practiced a little snowboarding as well. It was a gorgeous day out! 

This month, Jett has been really into building snowmen, and an awesome snow dog. Every now and then he gets home from school and heads back outside to build another one.

Miles lately has been extra silly. His personality comes out more and more every day. For example, he has started asking to wear certain clothing. He found a pair of Jett's underwear the other day and asked for us to put them on him. On top of his pants, of course.

 He dances, bounces, sings, and is just generally silly most of the time.

He comes up with things on his own and even solves problems without any prompting.

He loves taking baths, and now that the older two shower, he gets extra space to move around.

We've been working on identifying body parts lately and he's gotten pretty good. Like where's your eyes?

 Where's your nose?

 Where's your mouth?

That one comes in handy when we have to go to the doctor and they want to look in his mouth. I just have to ask him where his mouth is and we're good to go. 

He also asked me to help him dress up as Batman the other day by bringing me the costume. He ran and jumped around trying to fly. 

His speech is slowly coming, but he is trying and that's all that matters. 

Jett lost both his front teeth this month! One came out a couple weeks ago and the other came out last night. Here's the picture from the first front tooth that was lost. 

Cruise has been working in his lab regularly. Last week I went into the downstairs bathroom to get a load of laundry started and I found Cruise had turned on a timer, put on some classical music on his boom box, and was sitting, contemplative, on the edge of the bathtub in his lab coat as his experiments covered the entire sink area. I wish I had gotten a photo, but I did get one after his timer went off.

With the colder weather, the boys are actually pretty good about being creative and playing. Usually they like playing Star Wars. 

Dave took Cruise & Jett snowboarding up at Snowbird and the kids did awesome! Cruise made some incredible progress and started boarding ahead of Jett and Dave and eventually got the hang of undoing his binding and putting it back on, which means he started getting on the lift by himself. Dave would be helping Jett down the mountain and they'd hear a "Hi Dad!" above them, and there is Cruise just doing his thing. He boarded down the mountain on his own really well and rarely fell. I can't believe how good he's gotten! Jett is still getting the hang of it and falls a lot, but he keeps trying and by the end of the evening, he was doing so much better! 

While they were snowboarding, Miles and I ordered Applebee's Car Side and ate dinner on my bed while we watched cartoons. I got the fish, he got the chicken fingers. Definitely more relaxing than snowboarding.

Dave has been working hard out in the snow and cold. He got to go fishing yesterday and despite it being 11 degrees, he stood out there in the freezing water for 4 hours and caught a whole bunch of hungry fish! He put together a muff to stick between his waders and his chest and keeps Hot Hands in there so he can stick his hands in when they get cold. They worked really well! 

My therapist told me I needed to take time out for myself every day to help manage my mood. Dave has been so good about giving me an hour or so each evening for me to do whatever I want, so I have been drumming a lot more and it's been awesome! And it's definitely helped me. 

I think that's it for now. All caught up! I'm sure the next post will be about the upcoming Science Fair!

Christmas Week

Star Wars

In case you live under a rock, the new Star Wars came out this month and so of course we had to see it! The only problem was we couldn't find a sitter for Miles. So we decided to buy two tickets for the morning showing and two tickets for the evening showing. Dave took Jett at 9:30am and I took Cruise at 7:00pm after Dave got home from work. It worked out pretty well and we didn't have to find a sitter for the toddler. Jett got bored of the movie relatively quickly, complaining about how long it was, but Cruise was all into it the entire time! He loved it! And Dave and I really enjoyed it as well. Now we need to see it in 3D!

Gingerbread Cookies

We had fun making gingerbread cookies and decorating them. Camry came over and helped decorate too! Somehow she always knows when we're making cookies, ha ha!

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, we ran some errands earlier in the day, got root beer floats from A&W, went and bought new Christmas tree lights from Target because all but one strand of ours had gone out, and, of course, had to decorate the tree all over again. But it was worth it and we got the lights on sale!

For dinner, we had the traditional spaghetti and meatballs, french bread, and salad. Then we had Family Home Evening where we read the Christmas story and talked about the birth of Christ. And, of course, it was time to open family gifts. The boys got the usual book and pajamas from Dave & I,

I got Dave a watch that vibrates to take with him fishing (so he knows when it's time to leave for home) and a calendar I made containing pictures from his fishing trips. 

He and the boys got me Pyrex glass measuring cups and two new rubber spatulas which I desperately needed, and the boys each drew me a picture! 

This year it was the Condie's turn to swap gifts with us, so they sent us Pie Face, which is a hilarious game that uses A LOT of whipped cream and even more napkins. The boys absolutely love it and it's super funny to watch. They also sent us some giant root beer flavored candy canes, which, I'll admit, I've eaten most of them myself. 

When it was time for the kids to get ready for bed, I said, "Okay boys, go brush your teeth! It's time for bed!" Jett responded, "Wait, is Santa coming tonight?" I said, "Yep!" He stopped in his tracks. Looking concerned and wide-eyed, he said, "But I wasn't good this year!" At least he's honest. Okay, he was mostly good.

They set out the cookies, milk, carrots for the reindeer, and each wrote a note:

Christmas Day
Dave and I set out the gifts at about 1am before we went to bed.

After setting everything up, we looked outside and saw how much it had snowed. It was so bright out!

At around 5am, Jett came in and said Santa had come, and I told him not to open anything and I went back to sleep. Luckily my children have relatively good self-control. So at about 7:30 they came back in and asked if they could open their presents. So the day started there!

The upside to having a child obsessed with something is that Christmas shopping is relatively easy. For Jett this year, we got him a Minecraft torch light, Minecraft Legos, Minecraft stickers, a white MiP robot, some Easy Bake Oven mixes for his oven he got last year, and a Nerf gun. Stocking gifts for both he and Cruise were Andes mints, a candy cane with Reese's Pieces inside, a toothbrush, toothpaste, Chapstick, Playdoh, and Lego characters, 

Cruise was a bit harder this year. He really only asked for two things: a black MiP robot and a pet eagle. I had to break it to him that it's illegal to own an eagle, and even if it were legal, it's probably not a good idea. So we got him two robot birds and a bird cage. At first he was a little confused by it, but he warmed up to them. They will repeat what you say, sing songs, and chirp. They're like mini birds from the Tiki Room at Disneyland. We also got him another Gameboy game. Months ago he really wanted us to buy him the Pokemon red version game. It was expensive so I told him maybe Santa would bring it. He also got refills for his chemistry lab and a Nerf gun as well.

Poor Miles was up sick all night with a fever, so he wasn't feeling too well Christmas morning. And when it came time for presents, he was upset that he didn't get what the other boys got. But he finally was able to focus on his presents later in the day and enjoyed them. But...he still wants their presents. 

We got Miles a Hot Wheels accelerator which is cool because it just pulls the cars through. It's a little loud, but Miles will just sit there and put the car in and the machine shoots it out onto the track. He also got him a Baymax toy from Big Hero 6, a new Mr. Potato head with a bunch of accessories, and a Playdoh press. In his stocking he got a candy cane with Skittles inside, a toothbrush, Playdoh, and two Hot Wheels cars (one Batmobile and the other a Storm Trooper car).

The MiP robots are pretty cool and I like them much better than the robot dogs they got last year. The MiPs run on regular batteries, they have an accompanying App that allows them to be controlled like a remote. They can dance, carry stuff, play laser tag with each other, etc. They're pretty neat!

For breakfast, we had waffles with bananas and strawberry toppings, whipped cream, sausage, orange juice and hot cocoa. Dave let me got take a nap afterwards while he cleaned up before I had to get things started for lunch/dinner.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the dinner I worked so hard on. Of course! We ate around 3 and had Dave's brother Joe and his wife Linsey over to eat. We had ribeye topped with sautéed onions  and mushrooms, garlic mashed potatoes and gravy, asparagus, and rolls. Joe and Linsey brought drinks and some amazing desserts! Dave's other brother, Dan, and his wife Sofia and their daughter Liza stopped by later and munched and visited for a bit. It was fun to be able to catch up with them and see how big their daughter has gotten! She's younger than Miles by 6 weeks but she is soooo tall! I couldn't believe it!

It was a very nice, and blessed Christmas. However, it took me literally 2 days to recuperate. Now if I can just get through this last week with the kids out of school...