Our Trimmed Tree

We trimmed the tree earlier this year than any other year! I love the way the lighted Christmas tree brings the Christmas spirit into our home.

The kids were so into it this year. First, we got out their first Christmas ornaments and let them hang them. Sophie's is a silver baby shoe and Ben's is a little snowman. Nina's (which we didn't have the night of the trimming, but just put up yesterday) is a pewter baby carriage. Each ornament has a memory attached. I remember searching and searching for the perfect ornament for Sophie, while pushing her in her stroller at the mall. I remember we narrowed it down, after an afternoon of shopping, to the little silver shoe or a silver letter block - the shoe won. Sophie knows just what her first ornament box looks like and was so excited to look through the ornament bin, find hers, and hang it prominently on the tree. Every time we pulled out a new ornament Ben would say "Ben-a-min's turn." It was very cute and we are very happy that he is communicating so much better lately. Each time he put an ornament on the tree he would yell, "I Did It!". He was in charge putting on the candy canes - which are now all in one spot, but he was so proud of himself when he finished that we told him he did an amazing job. :) Nina loved the whole thing. She loves watching Sophie and Ben and actually helped grab the tissue paper off many ornaments :). She's definitely starting to control those little hands more. She also enjoyed the Christmas music that we had playing. (We love Directv's XM radio classical Christmas channel.)

The trimming concluded with Sophie topping the tree with our Santa Claus topper - an honor that she especially enjoys as the oldest. We've had a picture every year (well not when she was a baby, but you know) of her being hoisted up by Dad with a big smile on her face. The funny thing is that every year I think I'm going to go and get a star to put on top of the tree. I really do like the symbolism of putting a star up there to represent the star of Bethlehem, but I never actually have gotten around to doing it. So this is our 9th Christmas with Santa on the top. Its not even that I actually liked the Santa to begin with, but it was the cheapest tree topper at Walmart when we were newlyweds. I was telling Adrian that we really need to get a star now before the kids get attached to our Santa up there. I know my parents have the ugliest Santa Christmas decoration on record and they pull it out every year out of tradition. It just wouldn't be Christmas at my parents' house without this felt and painted-batting-cotton Santa, even though it's just hideous! I think the thing is even missing an eye, but I may be wrong :). I really need to head to the store with the kids and let them pick out a star otherwise we'll be stuck with the Santa forever! Maybe now because there is actually a story about how I don't like him and yet we've kept him, I'll have to keep him..... Isn't it weird how Christmas makes these things happen. All the memories, stories, and family folklore that this most special of holidays creates - its a wonderful thing and I wouldn't wish it any other way.

Homework and my short hair

Homework...ahhh....homework. Its a love hate relationship that I have with Sophie's homework. I'm really happy that Sophie goes to a good school and that they have high expectations for the kids. That's the good part, but the spelling words... my goodness. Do you know how to spell rationalization?

Really Sophie is pretty good about doing her homework, but Monday is book summary and those are always a little rough. I always start out with the encouraging, "Okay lets start your book summary. What book are you going to do?" Tonight the book was Rani in the Mermaid Lagoon, from the Disney Fairies series (super cute series). Then there's more encouraging, "lets add a little more detail here, Soph... What did Rani do at the fairy dance?" And then there's the correcting, "this needs a period and then you need to capitalize the next letter, wait... Do you think brother dove is a proper noun?....Yes, then what do you need to do to first letters...right." So really its kind of "our" homework isn't it?.. Tonight did go a little better and that was all due to Sophie's brand spanking new American Heritage Children's Dictionary. It is a wonderful thing! Whenever she had a question about how to spell something she just looked it up. We got it just this weekend at an outlet book store and I tell you it was worth every penny of the six dollars and ninety-eight cents! Sophie looked up purple, jewel, and middle all by herself without even asking me first... I had to take a picture of her with the dictionary. It was a wonderful stride for homework in our home!

Another great thing is that Sophie and I are part of a parent child book club. I am so excited for our first meeting. We are reading Ramona and her Mother, which is a laugh no matter how old you are. Tonight we read the part were Ramona squeezes out all the toothpaste from a brand new economy size tube. Its a funny scene and I was so happy when Sophie said, "I would never do that Mom. Sometimes I think that would be fun, but I would never do it because I'm not crazy like Ramona." Its just so much fun to talk with my sweet daughter about what she thinks and feels. I remember so clearly when she was Ben's age and we used to laugh at all the funny ways she would pronounce things ("grass-popper" instead of grass hopper was a favorite), but now she is talking about books and looking up words in dictionaries. Wow...its just amazing.

Oh, and I chopped off my hair! I donated 10 inched to Locks of Love. My hair feels so light and swishy now and the bonus is that Nina has a harder time grabbing it now! :)

Going Medieval All Over Thanksgiving

In full knowledge of the fact that feudal England and the Mayflower are separated by a few hundred years historically, we decided to have our Thanksgiving feast at Medieval Times! We had so much fun!

I should start out by saying that for lunch we did have turkey and avocado croissant sandwiches (turkey of course for turkey day), chips (for the mashed potatoes), olives, jellied cranberry sauce, and pumpkin cheesecake for dessert - that counts, right?! Then after a nice Thanksgiving nap for Adrian and Ben, (it wouldn't be Thanksgiving unless all the men in the house take a nap!!) we all got ready to go to Medieval Times. Sophie wore her Renaissance princess costume from Halloween '05 (courtesy of her cousin Kaitlyn - thanks!) complete with tiara. We tried to get Ben to wear his prince costume that matches Sophie's but he was not into that ("nope..DON'T LIKE IT"). So we let that one go, Adrian and I are firm believers in carefully picking battles with our almost 3 year old and that one just wasn't worth it.

Medieval Times has a cool castle like atmosphere with a big fireplace and faux stone lions and knights all over. The kids especially liked the shiny coat of armors, but did not like the executioner that wandered around with a big double headed axe, and rightly so. He was pretty scary looking! For our Thanksgiving feast we had 1/2 a chicken each, vegetable soup, roasted potatoes, ribs, garlic bread and apple turnovers. It was a lot of super yummy food, but I think the kids only ate the bread and pastries, and well the Pepsi too. We were really glad that kids were free on Thanksgiving - if we would have paid full price for them we might have been more miffed that they weren't in the mood for medieval food (well mock medieval food - I'm sure they didn't have garlic bread or Pepsi in the 1300's).

The show was great! There were jousts, sword fights, performing horses, and a falcon that swooped over the audience (the kids loved that). Nina was perfectly happy the whole night and didn't mind the cheers and bright lights at all. At one point during the performance a knight threw a flower to Sophie and it made her so happy - it was very sweet and made her evening. Benjamin being Benjamin took a while to warm up to the whole event. He was little leery of the whole spectacle at first, but by the end of the night he was jumping up and down and got near enough to the "king" to have his picture taken with him, and even gave the king a high-five, which is pretty much as good as it gets for Ben.

While we missed having a big traditional dinner with our families this Thanksgiving, we did have a great time and didn't have to do any dishes, yay!!

Our Thankful Family

Last night we decided to have a fun family activity. I called downstairs (where Sophie and Ben were playing with Legos) and said, "Hey let's do a Thanksgiving activity", Sophie said "Awww...do we have to...." and I called back, "Everyone up here! We're going to have some family fun!" At which point grudgingly Sophie and Ben joined us at the table. Not my most illustrious moment as a mother but from there things got much better.....

So Adrian and I talked to the kids about what Thanksgiving is all about. Sophie actually had a good answer for what Thanksgiving is, "a holiday were we think about all the things that we are thankful for." Then we read the story of Nephi building the ship and sailing to the promised land. I connected that with the pilgrims sailing here and how the land that we live on is special... It actually went quite well thanks to the lovely Book of Mormon Stories book for kids with its comic-bookish layout. For the activity we took Ben's paper plate wreath with leaves on it, that he got from preschool, and wrote all the things we are thankful for on the leaves. It really did turn out to be a spiritual and fun episode. This is not to say that there weren't many off topic moments of course; Ben has recently learned to breathe like Darth Vadar so we had A LOT of that.

Here's what everyone wrote on their leaves (we'll go youngest to oldest):

Nina (most of these are Sophie's answers for her) : milk, family, diapers, her Baby Bjorn, her swing, and swaddling blanket

Ben : preschool, chocolate, phones, Nina, Sophie, Daddy, Mommy, Darth Vadar, Jedi, bubbles, movies, lights, and Jesus

Sophie : Jesus, computers, Star Wars (can you tell our kids are on a Star Wars kick!), Legos, school, pictures, family, videos, friends, and her teacher at school

Mommy : our family, the gospel, our home, health, family outings, holidays, sleep, my Lazy Boy, blogging, cel phones and music

Daddy : Mommy, Sophie, Ben, Nina, the gospel, Jesus, computers, Sci - fi, good cooking, work, school, and the DVR

Our family (collectively) : each other, the Church, extended family, temples, holidays, and our cars

So there's our lists. Please don't judge, these lists were done with some Nina crying and Darth Vadar breathing going on so I wouldn't say its our complete list of all we're thankful for.... But as a family I must say we have been richly blessed and I am so grateful this Thanksgiving for everything that we are, have, and enjoy.

Fun Accent Quiz

This is pretty fun - its a quiz to see what U.S. accent you have.

www.gotoquiz.com/what_american_accent_do_you_have

Here's my result:

Your Result: The West

Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.

I think it was spot on for me - though its not the most scientific test. I've always thought that I just sound like the people on TV. Yet I must admit that against my best efforts to conceal it I occasionally utter a "heck" or "flip" which I know is that flipp'n Utah influence croppen up again - Oh my heck! (Meant in the nicest way of course :)!! )

I am thankful for Hoovers.

I just have to write a quick post about my vacuum. After 9 1/2 years of faithful service our Hoover died.. It really was quite sad. A belt in it shredded and left little black specks all over the carpet and of course when that happens you want to vacuum up all the little black specks.... and then you realize what a predicament you are in. :) So after a little reflection we decided to buy another Hoover since our 9 1/2 year old Hoover must have been like 105 years old in vacuum years when it died. I'd say that's a pretty good run.

I got up early and went to Target before Adrian went to work so I could look at all the vacuums sans children. (It was actually really nice to get up and out by myself even if it was only to go to the store.) First I saw all the Dysons....which are ridiculously priced....but look so neat. Then on to the Hoovers. The Hoover right next to the Dysons, the Wind Tunnel 2, was also outrageously priced so I moved on to the Hoover Savvy. It was a little more than I hoped to spend but seemed to have all the features I hoped for and hey its almost Christmas right?! So I got it. And I'm so happy I did - it is sooo cool! This vacuum makes our 13 year old family room carpet look semi-okay and that's a feat! It has this mini vacuum head attachment for the hose so you can really clean couches and hard to reach spots. It's also bagless, which is a first for me. No more vacuum bags to change - yay! And you can see the dirt collection compartment. I was amazed by how much dirt it picked up the first time I used it. It also has a hepa filter and a dirt sensor. It will turn on a little red light in the front if it sensed you haven't picked up all the dirt from an area. Isn't that cool?!

I know it might seem silly to blog about a vacuum but I really am thankful for my new vacuum. I figure it may be a small thing but life is made up of all these small things and I should remember to be thankful for them. I must be getting that Thanksgiving spirit!

Paula's so great but....

I love the food network and especially Paula Deen - she's my kind a non-foodie, cream-of-mushroom-soup-using-chef. I just love her! I share this love with my sister-in-law, Dore, too! She's given me wonderful Paula recipes to try - that french toast casserole is amazing (we're talking a stick of butter in the pecan topping - wow)!! Now, I've gone along with Paula on all of her sour cream, butter, sugar, fried food, cool whip and cream cheese adventures but this morning she just went too far....

I was watching the Food Network's Thanksgiving marathon whilst nursing Nina and then it happened.... Paula fried green beans!!! She dipped them in buttermilk, then flour, and fried them. It was horrible to watch. I mean green beans??? Aren't they a perfectly healthy vegetable to put next to the carbohydrate overload which is Thanksgiving - let's not start frying them. As I sit here I realize I've had fried zucchini so I should cut her some slack, but for some reason frying green beans just rattled my sensibilities.

Crazy.... Of course this green bean segment was promptly followed by a Nutri-System weight loss commercial.....fitting. :)