Finding balance and JOY

It's just 11 days until Christmas and I can hardly believe it. We have done a lot of fun and festive things but I know that it will come and go and I will hardly believe it happened. I am trying to focus on the now, and what is and not what could be or should be. We are so blessed and it will have a great Christmas. It's hard for me at times to find the balance between the kids being excited Christmas morning about the things they receive and yet not be spoiled all at the same time. I of course more importantly want them to understand why we are celebrating this special holiday. I read yesterday of a family who makes an actual birthday cake to reinforce to their children that it's Christ's birthday we are celebrating. Admittedly the idea seems a tad casual and irreverent to me,singing happy birthday to Jesus, but maybe it would help them understand. What do you think? I'm not sure that's something I'm going to embrace this year anyway.

The kids are in the middle of all of their school activities decorating gingerbread men and gift exchanges. I'm kind of glad they have those things so I don't feel as much pressure to have so many activities planned at home. Due to weather we weren't able to get up to SLC to see the lights so I still really want to do that. This weekend we are having our Wilson family Christmas party, and then next week I think Rand is going to try to go to the BYU bowl game. I hope he can make it work out with his work schedule. He rarely does something fun that's just for him. We are still contemplating our Christmas Eve plans, right now we thinking we are going to have a dinner and then go see all the luminaries in Alpine that night. We will track Santa on line and scatter reindeer food and leaves cookies for Santa of course. It's just stressful to me wanting everything to be magical. I want my children to have bright memories of their childhood Christmas's. I guess I need to remember that it wasn't the gifts or the foods we ate or activities we did when I was young, I just remember being together as a family. These days having the blessing of a Mom and Dad and brothers and sisters happily together in a warm home with groceries in the pantry is more than most people will enjoy this Christmas.

A few of my favorite things...

Getting Ms. Kate up in the morning is one of those things that gives me a warm fuzzy. You walk in and she is never mad, never crying, and usually says something cute like "hi mom, can you change my diaper?" Then she often stands up and starts to jump and jump and jump and then as soon as you try to get her out she makes a dive for it and ends up lying down again and then we repeat over and over again. It makes my morning happy. I often think I should probably put a monitor in her room because I often don't even know when she awakens because she just plays, or sings or jumps until we go and get her. She, like my other children is one of my favorite things.

On Sunday she tried and tried and finally escaped out of the pew, past my leg after climbing higher and higher over it. She gave me that look like "I did it, I got out!" and then quietly and casually proceeded to the back of the chapel all along the way waving to each family in each pew waving and saying "hello, hello" like she was the appointed greeter. I looked back to see what she was up to and witnessed this cute scene. She wasn't really being disruptive and each family she passed got bigger and bigger smiles on their faces as she passed them with her greeting.

She is very much into the "trying two's" and tries my patience on occasion. She recently has spent her share of time-out in our laundry room. Initially she was quite upset but yesterday after several time outs for hitting she discovered that if she clanked the glass bottles of canned peaches we have in there, I would quickly open the door to make sure she wasn't breaking anything. So after about the 2nd or 3rd time in there, as soon as I would close the door for her timeout she wouldn't fuss at all but immediatelely start her clanking. I couldn't believe how smart she is and how well she had trained me to open the door to interrupt her time out.

We are exciting for the holidays and think the kids are at such a fun age. They all still believe in the Magic of Santa and get excited about the smallest things. Tonight we are hoping to go see the lights at temple square if the weather will cooperate. Just one more of my favorite things.

Pink or blue?

Today we had our 20 week ultrasound. It was so great to see our little one. It makes all the sickness and everything so worth it. She looks great. As far as we can tell anyway. Did you catch the she? Yes, it's a girl! I guess I was a little shocked. Somehow I was expecting a boy, but am thrilled with another little girl. Boys are great but there's something fun about pink and bows and all that stuff. Plus I need girls to take care of me some day in my old age right? It really is such a miracle to see a real live child moving around in my tummy. The ultrasound tech said she was one of the most active little girls she had ever witnessed. Should we be nervous? I guess we'll just put her dance or soccer to get her energy out.

When I told Anna she was very excited and said that we should name her "Katie", which is funny since if it was a boy she wanted to name him "Nathan". Call me crazy but that seems just a tad close to Kate, and Ethan. I was a little more nervous to tell Ethan the news. When he came home from school I told him and asked him how he felt about that. He just said "I guess I'll just be the big brother." How sweet is that? I am really glad that he wasn't sad or disappointed it wasn't a brother.

Here are some pictures of our little one.
This is one of my favorite looking at her back and seeing her little ear. It just seems so incredible to me that she is all developed and you can see even her ear!

She liked to keep her arms up by her head and kept covering her ears or face.

Her arm streched back.

The best profile picture she would give us. She wasn't very willing to cooperate.


This is a view looking straight on at her face with her hand in front pointing up.

She had her arms over her ears like she was mad we woke her up and trying to go back to sleep. Isn't she cute?

A view looking down above her head with her cute little fingers.

Her legs all stretched out.



I told Rand that seeing her I already love and am endeared to her so much more. Half way there!

On our way,

To Christmas that is. Friday we went over to my parents house to help them put up Christmas, and to "shop" through the oodles of decorations my Mom has accumulated over the years, to bring home to our house. Friday night before bed we watched "The Grinch" before sending the kids off to bed. Yesterday we put up our tree and decorations. I had forgotten what a huge mess it is to take down the fall things, clean up the house, put up Christmas then clean up the remaining mess. Other than a wreath for the front door I think we are set. While we decked the halls we watched "A Christmas Story" which is Randall's favorite holiday show.

This morning we thought we would load up the kids with sugar before church and let them decorate the gingerbread house. The house has been sitting in my closet for probably over a month and the kids haven't been able to wait. Last night Anna was devastated going to bed because we just didn't have the energy on top of everything else we had done to decorate the gingerbread house.

Ethan and Anna did very well at first. I explained to them that they were working together as a team and had to communicate with each other. Initially they used their manners and were very polite and things were working out. After about an hour into it they both ended up in time out because of the fighting over who's side was who's and who had more candy etc. They are now back to finish their efforts, and almost done since almost all of the candy has been used.

Kate likes to participate too of course so I thought the best thing for her would be to "decorate" the gingerbread men that came with it. She had a different idea. If we tried to show her how to attach the candy to the man she would quickly rip it off and throw it in her mouth. At least she was occupied and happy and I'm just glad she didn't think that she needed to be in on the house as well.

I'm feeling pretty good about things. I feel like we are on course of having fun filled holidays. My shopping was mostly done weeks ago, other than little stocking things to pick up etc. The gifts are half way wrapped. My invites for my cookie exchange went out about two weeks ago and that will take place this Saturday. Hope your holidays are happy and less time- out filled than ours.

Giving thanks on Thanksgiving

I am sitting here nearly baked out. For me the fun of the actual Thanksgiving day is the baking and preparing. If I had nothing to do or bake it just wouldn't be the same for me. So to make this holiday extra special I took it upon myself to make 4 different desserts as well as the mashed potatoes and homemade cranberry sauce. I think I like to make pies for the challenge of the crust. I even chill all the ingredients including my wooden rolling pin to do everything in my power to make that pie crust as beautiful and flaky as possible. I made a pumpkin and apple crumb pie, then a pumpkin cheesecake roll, that looks so pretty when cut all swirled up. Then for the first time ever I made a pumpkin cream cheese creme caramel. It looks basically like a glorified flan with pumpkin and spices. I've had it in the back of my recipe box for the past year or so and I finally tried it. I can't wait to find out how tasty it is. Oh, and our home teacher brought us by a banana creme and berry pie from Kneaders. I think we will be set for dessert, you think?

We have had the Macey's day parade on today as we have made our preparations. I thankfully have a wonderful husband that also cooks and bakes. He is able and willing to do whatever I ask of him but knows I'm a tad particular about the details and how things look, so he generally sticks to things like potatoes that don't have to look that great.

One of my dreams would be to one day go to New York city the week before or after Thanksgiving, to enjoy the sites and smells, and shops of course for Christmas. Last year Rand and I had the chance to spend a few days down town NY while he had some business meetings. I tagged a long of course and enjoyed a few days of alone time exploring the city and attending "Wicked". We loved every minute of our experience and would like to return many more times and for a much longer period of time. I think I am truly a city girl at heart but for now am content being a Mother to my great kids.

On that note, I know that Thanksgiving is a lot more than pies and potatoes. I love this season that gives us a little more time to reflect on the many things we are blessed with. We have been very blessed this year in many ways. Randall has been very blessed in his work and we are so grateful to have not just work but in a place where he wants to continue his career. We enjoyed our first "real" vacation as our own family at Disneyland for a week, one of my favorite places on earth. We are living in a comfortable home and have been blessed with health and strength. We are expecting our 4th child, something I don't take lightly. There are so many people I know that struggle to have a child or who have lost a child this past year. It is truly a miracle and blessing to have 3 healthy and happy(some of the time) kids. Monday we have our first ultrasound and initially thought we weren't going to find out the sex of the baby, but being the planner I am I can't stand it anymore and have to know what this baby is going to be. We are hoping to find a healthy growing baby and don't care even the tiniest bit whether the baby is a boy or girl. Anna wishes we were having a dog instead of a baby but you can't make everybody happy.

Well, I could go on and on and feel very blessed and know I have much to be grateful for. I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving and blessed holiday season.

The witch is in

Do you ever feel like you've been tagged to have lots of little things come your way to make things more difficult. Nothing life altering mind you, but there have been several in my life lately. Today I just kept getting dumb news or having conflict somewhere. I was dealing with some of that "bad news" on the phone today when a friend came calling for Ethan. When I got off the phone he wasn't home anymore. I found him outside down the street. I told him to come home and he couldn't play right now because had broken some of the rules. 1st he has to ask if he can play with friends, and 2nd if he can leave the house and tell me where he is going. He was really mad and I just said "what would you have done if you were me?" his response, "clean the house". Are you seeing a reoccurring theme here? It's moments or days or weeks like these where I try to count my blessings. Today I'm not in the mood. Maybe I will just put on a big witches costume and go with it!

Things to come

I am so excited! In just 6 days is Halloween, and before that on Friday is Rand's work Halloween party and they go crazy all out. On Thursday Ethan has his Halloween carnival at school that I am helping with. Wednesday is my 15 week Dr.'s appointment which is a huge milestone.

Then in 1 month is Randall's Birthday on Nov. 24th with one of my very most favorite holidays, Thanksgiving closely to follow in just 1 month and 1 day! I already have my Thanksgiving dinner assignments and I am so excited. This year we will be with my husband's side of the family and there will only be 3 or 4 of the siblings of the 7 together so it will be comparatively quiet. We get to make pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes and bring black olives and celery with easy cheese on top, a tradition from my side of the family.

Then the mac daddy of them all, in just 2 months from today is CHRISTMAS! Can you believe it? Are you ready? I have purchased one gift. Today Rand and I have decided to sit down and go over our Christmas budget. Such a challenge that one. We want to stay within our budget while ensuring that our kids kids are thrilled Christmas morning while not being spoiled and not being dissapointed all at the same time. Is that even possible? I really want to get the must do's done early this year so I can enjoy the fun things. I have decided I want to host my first ever Christmas cookie exchange the first Saturday in December. Won't that be a fun way to kick of the season with friends and yummy things to taste and take? That way, I have no choice but to make some of the cookies I have dreamt about making for years pouring through magazine after magazine, cook book after cook book dreaming about, things other than the typical sugar cookie, like Giant coconut macaroons, chocolate-gingerbread drops, spritz blossoms,oatmeal spice cookies, redvelvet shortbread cookies, the list goes on and on. I figure each weekend we could spend time with the kids making a new cookie each week. Cookies freeze right?