The stockings are hung

The stockings have been hung for weeks now but I can't believe that this time tomorrow night they will be filled with various things and the traditional orange in each toe. Is it really Christmas Eve in a matter of hours? Yesterday Ethan had his Christmas program at school. It was very cute and he did a great job. Driving around town after the program, with the snow swirling and Christmas tunes streaming in made it truly feel like Christmas, finally. Christmas really is coming! The kids are excited and so am I.

It's so fun to have kids this age that "get it", and yes both Santa and at a very basic level for now, the real reason we celebrate Christmas. Maybe the birthday cake isn't such a bad idea after all? I hadn't put any gifts under the tree for various reasons but then decided having a few out might help give incentive for good behavior. Within a few hours Kate had already unwrapped one of them so away they went.

I've been thinking about believing in Santa a lot lately. There is something magical about believing. I am sad to think that the day will come sooner than later when Ethan will ask me if "He" is real. I can still remember the day I found out that Santa wasn't real. I asked my Mom and thought she would deny it but she confirmed my fear. I think that moment is a sudden coming of age and you start to look at things very differently. So, I have decided that my answer to that question will always and forever be "yes, there is a Santa Claus." I don't see any harm in having my children believe in something that puts a face on giving and bringing happiness and Joy. They will find out in time that "the man in the red suit" may not exist but the season for giving is alive and well. I don't want to be the one to disappoint them when they may not really be ready or want to know the answer to that question. A friend gave me an article this week that I really liked. A granddaughter asked her grandmother if Santa was real and her answer was a very strong "Yes". She then took her granddaughter to a department store and gave her 10$ to spend on anyone. The girl chose a boy in her class that did not own a coat. The young girl picked a nice coat and gave it to the clerk to buy with her 10 dollars. When she got home her grandmother helped her wrap and deliver it in secret to this boy. The girl found the tag later and realized the coat was actually 20 dollars so the clerk had been generous as well. After the delivery of the coat and listening from a distance to the reaction of the young boy her grandmother told her "see, Santa does exist". I really liked that and hope to teach that concept to my children as they grow past Santa as they currently know him. Each year we try to help someone in some small way. It was good for the kids this year to see gifts that they would enjoy themselves,being wrapped for children who would not otherwise have gifts under their tree. I hope that each year we can be more and more generous and teach our children how important it is to think of others and see how very, very blessed we are. My heart breaks as I hear on the news or read in the newspaper of the many families out of work, or staying in homeless shelters. The numbers have increased dramatically this year. It brings renewed perspective of those things most important. I'm so grateful to be blessed with the knowledge of our Savior and his birth. Hope you have a magical and Merry Christmas!

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?

Out on the town

Friday Randall and I went to the Opera to see Macbeth. We initially weren't too excited. We had both had a stressful week and would have preferred to do something low key. Once we arrived down town we were glad we were there. It's fun to get away from the normal things of life and feel like for a moment you are someplace different and a tad more exciting. We even dressed in our Sunday best. People were dressed in everything from jeans to formal attire.

We had planned to just stay through the first intermission thinking we would find it boring especially since it was in Italian. We weren't aware there would be subtitles on a small screen above to help you along. Surprisingly we both really enjoyed it. The first intermission came and we decided we weren't ready to leave yet. The second intermission came and we would have stayed for the 3rd and final hour but it was already close to ten o'clock and had a drive ahead of us.

We're really glad that we took the chance to experience something we haven't done before. We enjoyed it and think should the opportunity arise again, we just might find ourselves at the opera.

Focus!

This morning Randall asked Ethan to say our family prayer before we all went our various ways. Ethan prayed first that he could focus in school and pay attention to his teacher. That he could focus on his tasks and do well. Then he prayed that Randall would be able to focus on his work and get everything done. At this point Randall and I had opened our eyes and kind of quietly smiled to each other. Ethan finally ended by asking "that Mom could please focus and get the house more cleaner". Well I can't argue with that. I'm usually a good house keeper but blame it on the pregnancy or laziness I don't know but I have not been as motivated lately as I probably should be. With Ethan's help, I am determined to focus. I already have the kitchen picked up with dishwasher running a load of laundry going, and the living room picked up ready to be vacuumed. I think I'll ask him to pray that I can be focused more often. It's made for a pretty productive morning. I sure love that guy!

Potty Pro!

She did it! Kate is officially a potty pro! We are only 11 days in and she has done amazingly well. She has had only one accident in the last 4 days. She is very independent and never has to be asked if she needs to go. I do ask occasionally if it seems that it's been awhile, but she acts annoyed that I'm asking and either goes on her own on the little potty or asks for help to go on the big potty.

We are so proud of her and how well and quickly she has basically mastered such a huge thing. Oh, how I was dreading this process but it has proven to be fairly painless. Now we have a good six months of no diapers(well other than at night for now) until the baby arrives. Way to go Kate, we our so proud of our big girl!

Broken ankle

Ok, so don't panic I haven't broken my ankle, let me explain. This morning was one of those mornings were it was only 8am and the day had been rather down hill from the beginning. Nothing completely out of the ordinary, and maybe it was just my attitude but not great just the same. As Randall was leaving for work I asked him somewhat in jest to pray for me to have patience today. His reply, "No way, because then you'll break your ankle or something terrible today."

It reminded me of about 4 years ago when Anna was a baby. She was a very, very hard baby. Basically she awakened at 5am every morning crying and that was basically the day from then on. Keep in mind there was also a 3 hour stint of crying every single night too. I was completely exhausted emotionally and physically. I was having I guess you could say an adult temper tantrum complaining about how I had just had it with our life and taking care of babies and "really needed a vacation". Rand was in graduate school at the time and money, leisure, dates or anything of that nature were fairly non existent. Well not more than an hour later my "vacation" came. I was holding Anna trying to quiet her crying and trying to dose her some medication and gave her the plastic syringe to hold for a minute while I reached for something. She turned and with much force stabbed me in the eye with the syringe. I'm not exaggerating when I say the pain was immediate and intense. Long story short I ended up in the ER and after hours of waiting in horrible pain not being able to see anything The Doc said I had a severely gouged my cornea. Needless to say this gouge in my eye made it necessary to sit on the couch for 3 days doing nothing. With an eye injury the other eye acts sympathetic and I could not open or use either eye for those 3 days. That eye proved to have nerve damage and bother me for years. I quickly learned my lesson. I wasn't going to be asking for a vacation anytime soon.

Rand had a similar experience once. When he was in the missionary training center getting ready to go to Albania he was really struggling. I don't know why exactly but he was praying for patience or to get through the experience there a little easier. I believe it was that day he was playing basketball and severely sprained his ankle and ended up on crutches for a few weeks. He quickly learned that things weren't really as bad as he had originally thought.

So,I guess what I am saying is that on those days in the land of Motherhood where I feel like it's groundhog day over and over loading and unloading dishes, and clothes, cleaning, bathing, I have learned that the best thing I can do at that moment is count my blessings. I consider myself completely blessed to live in a nice home where I stay with my children and don't have to work, 2 reliable cars to drive, a husband with a great job, 3 beautiful children, wonderful family and friends, health and strength and baby #4 on the way. Today I consider myself very blessed indeed.

Let's go swimming

This week I was either brave or dumb to decide to start potty training Kate. She has made great progress and I am excited to be on our way to no more diapers. Yesterday Kate kept saying "I wanna go swimming". She was out of the room so I didn't know what was making her think of that. She finally wandered into the room with the potty ring from the toilet around her waist like a swim ring. She is a funny little thing. The only problem is she has decided she is a big fan of being in the buff so now we are having a hard time keeping even panties on her. Hopefully this week we will have success with the potty even with clothes on.

Happy 5th Birthday Anna

Today was Anna's 5th Birthday. It has taken some convincing on our part to make her believe that she is 5 and not 5 and a half. Always in a hurry to grow up. Speaking of growing up, as a gift and a reward for good behavior as of late, Anna earned the privilege of having her ears pierced. She has been asking to have them pierced for the last two years. I was 5 when I had my ears pierced and my Mom had to bribe me to stop crying in order to get my ears pierced so it seems only fitting that we had to do the same with Anna. A few weeks ago she was in the middle of a full blown tantrum over only having two candy corns instead of 3. She was so upset flailing around and screaming that she took her glasses from her face and snapped them right in half. I was so shocked I hardly knew what to do or how to react. We decided she no longer deserved to have her ears pierced but that she would have to "earn" the right to be a big girl, just as I did so many years ago. Anna did great the last few weeks and I think we all learned that she really can be a lot more in control than we all thought. She rightfully earned her earrings.

It was just the two of us as we headed to the mall to have them pierced. She told me up front that she wasn't going to cry. I told her that she could cry because it was going to hurt. We have been telling her for some time that it was going to hurt a lot to make sure that she was ready and really wanted to have it done. She wasn't at all worried. No surprise when the ears were pierced and she didn't even flinch. I was holding her hand trying to comfort her, but she needed no comfort. Not a tear. She was a amazing. She really is so tough. She has not cried for a vaccination probably since she was 2 or younger. When she had her tonsils out at 2 years old they said she would have to be hospitalized over night. She was so brave and doing so well that we were discharged within hours. She is amazing. She proves to be a challenge at times but with that said she is also one of the most loving people I know. She loves to be showered and shower others with affection. She wants nothing more than love, approval and affection. She is very nurturing and loves to play with small children. We recently watched a neighbors new baby for a few hours and she didn't leave the baby's side. She loved every second. Anna is such a sweetheart and we are grateful that she came to our family 5 years ago. We count her as one of our greatest blessings.

For weeks she has been asking that she have breakfast in bed for her birthday. This morning she was still counting on it even though she had already been awake for an hour or more. When we asked her to hop back into bed to have her special breakfast as requested she didn't want to do that. She even insisted that she hadn't asked for that. Such a funny girl. I think truth be told she realized it would be more fun to have breakfast while watching Saturday morning cartoons.

After breakfast and some more cartoons, we headed down to the Big, red barn to pick this years pumpkins. This has been a birthday tradition for the past 3 years. We rode a tractor pulled hay ride down to the pumpkin patch to pick the best we could find. After finding our pumpkins the kids picked out treats, doughnuts of course. For dinner we had Hawaiian pizza, Anna's favorite, and had to do with a little Dora cake from the store since our attempted Princess cake that was originally meant to be a pink pony cake didn't cook in the middle and turned out to be a huge mess. After dinner the kids watched "Happy Feet" as Annas pick. Anna was sure to remind us several times a day that it was "her special day" She even got to pick out her own pack of gum at the store. I think it was a special day indeed. We sure love our Anna.

Fall Fiesta

Last night we had a fun,fall, family party. We convinced Anna it was to celebrate her birthday the next day as well as a pre Halloween bash. We had lots of food including the traditional hot dog mummies, chili, veggies, hot cider, and fruit with carmel and chocolate dip. What could be finer?

We played some fun games like wrapping the Daddies in toilet paper to make them "mummies" and "Boo am I" in place of Charades and then the best thing ever, eating a doughnut on a string without hands. I haven't done that since I was a little tiny girl at a neighborhood Halloween Party. It was hilarious. Everyone who participated was covered in sugar or chocolate when they finished.

It was a fun way to celebrate the up-coming Halloween holiday. The kids had a great time running around and playing in the balloons. Not one child cried the whole night. We ended the evening with the spider pinata. I think kids and adults had a fun time. I can't believe we are just weeks away from the full blown holiday season. Yikes!

Disneyland Trip August 2009

It has been so fun to look back at the pictures and remember what a wonderful time we had at Disneyland. It was one of the first "real" full blown vacations we have taken just as our family. We loved every minute of it.