Big Thanksgiving Break

Ok here is the quick run down of our last week. I didn't take very many pictures, I'll have to get some from my mom later.

Monday:

Doug and I had to both drive to SLC to get our new mini-van. We traded in our Altima so then we drove the new van and the truck to Smithfield for the week. They had this fun ship thing that the boys played on. They also had some free arcade games that the boys had fun on as well. It was a good thing they had things to do since it took about 2 hours to get all the paper work done and things sorted out.Tuesday:

Doug and I were able to go do a session at the Logan Temple (thanks Wendy for watching the kids). We hadn't been in the Logan Temple for a long time and enjoyed being there again and were impressed with the new improvements.

In the afternoon Doug went and worked at the apartments and I went in the hot tub with the boys and made a banana cream pie and dinner at my mom's.

Wednesday:

We went to JCPenny's to get pictures taken of the boys. This was probably my worst sitting I've had. It was basically just Christopher who wouldn't cooperate. How do you get a 2 year old to stand still? He was also acting clingy at the time and wouldn't let go of either Doug or I. So the only good shot we got of Chris is when I'm holding him. And we sort of got an OK one of all 3. I had a great coupon to use, but I ended up wasting it because there weren't any good shots to choose from. Needless to say, it was pretty frustrating. Doug picked up some new shoes while we were at the mall and we watched Christopher have a total meltdown when Doug took away his candy cane that was getting all over his hand and making a mess. We love our children.

This is the play area at the mall:
Richard and Tannie meet us at the Fun Park after pictures and we let the kids play for a while. Then we had lunch at McDonald's and then everyone was feeling better :).

Mom and I got soup ready for dinner, then we had a girls night out with the three of us. We went and saw Breaking Dawn. It was pretty good. The husbands and grandpa were good to watch the children while we had a break.

Thursday:

Doug and I got to sleep in, thanks mom for playing with our kids who are always up around 6:30-7:00. Mom helped me get my food assignments ready for the Petersen dinner and I made a blueberry pie for the Datwyler one. We left at 12:00 to go over the Brenda's. We had a great meal and had fun visiting with the whole family. My boys love seeing their cousins. Damon especially likes his older boy cousin Alex, and Tyler kept telling me that Emily was his new friend. Chris enjoyed himself pushing a stroller around with Winnie the Pooh in it. We went to the school for a while to let the kids play ball and run around on the playground, it was cool but good to get out of the house. I took a fall trying to ride a skateboard - I'm not that great at balancing on moving objects. We stopped by my Grandma Datwyler's to say hi and we had a quick dinner with Thanksgiving leftovers. Some of my cousins were there so it was fun to visit.

Friday:

Mom and I took advantage of Black Friday. I got up at 4;30 (just because Tyler was coughing and I figured I should just get up). So we were shopping by 5:45. We couldn't believe how few people there were. We went to Kohl's first and found a lot of great things. There wasn't a single person in line when we were done. Then we went to Bed Bath and Beyond and found me a new bedding set. I'd been looking for months so we were very exciting to find one that I liked and it was a surprise bonus that it was on sale (we found out when we were checking out). We also went to Michael's, and Ross. We stopped by Best Buy, but the line there was too long. It was a great shopping trip and we were back home by 11:00.

Doug and my dad took the afternoon to saw down a dead tree. It took a while for them to figure out the best way for it to fall, but it was a success in the end.

Doug and I got to run some errands and go out for dinner in the evening. We went to Hamilton's and enjoyed their Early Bird Special. I got a salmon dish that was excellent. Doug then got a fun phone call from his childhood friend and got to go play basketball with his old gang.

Heather and Jennifer (my cousins) and Heather's husband Spencer came over in the evening and we had fun playing the Wii.

Friday night: Damon got the flu and threw up a couple of times in the night. He is such a good kid when he is sick. He made it to the bathroom on his own, while I was getting him a drink of water. We found out that my mom also was sick during the night. Not fun for either of them.

Saturday:

Chris got up at 4:30 because his diaper had leaked and he did not go back to bed. So I got up and started packing our lunches and stuff, since I knew we would want to leave earlier than planned to take advantage of Chris's nap time. Damon was still sick as was my mom. We left around 11:00. Chris and I in the mini-van; Damon, Tyler, and Doug in the Truck. Damon threw up in Wellsville canyon and again when we stopped in Heber. We made it back to Vernal around 4:00. It was a great break and fun to see family.

As a side note Doug got sick Saturday night and stayed home with the boys during church on Sunday. I'm leading the singing in Primary, so I had to go.

Thanks mom for letting us stay and watching our boys so much. They love playing with you and being with family. It was a great Thanksgiving.

Cakes

I did a surprise cake for my good friend. I had the extra fondant from my previous cake, so it was just fun to do. I'd never done fondant flowers before, so I think it turned out pretty well and I learned some things for next time. I'm helping another friend do a cake tomorrow, I'll add it later.
Fun, Fun, Fun.


cupcake toppers:

Fun Pictures

Here are some more fun shots of my cute boys.

Tyler was traced at preschool, then we colored it at home. He thought it was cool to have a basketball swishing in front of him. ( we added that after I took the picture, whoops)

As a side note, we measured Tyler yesterday for his 4 1/2 year mark and he is as tall as Damon was at 5 years. He's grown about 1 3/4 inches in the last 6 months.
Christopher is always carrying around at least 3 things. Usually it's cars, and having two cars in one little toddler hand is plenty. Then if he wants a cracker or his sippy he looks at his hands thinking, ok what do I do with these. He usually will put them down to get something new. Anyway, this day he hand an armful of stuffed animal and a toy alligator, which he calls a 'croc.'
Just for my future reference I wanted to put down the words that Chris is starting to say, or at least parrot back to us: bye, hi, cracker, more, please, thank you, croc, dog, hippo, sheep, frog, duck, key, door, car, ball, hat, McQueen, dump truck, digger, treat, no, mom, dad, help, bike, plane, boat, shoe, 1, 2, 3, 4 (it's cute when he tries to count), choo-choo. He probably says others and will try and say what you tell him to. He makes most animal sounds now, and will recognize things in books and outside and tell you what they are (if he knows them). He doesn't sign as much as Damon, but that's probably because we don't watch the shows much anymore and we don't sign to him.

A Child's Prayer

I have tell this story about our toy car Finn McMissile. Anyway, he'd been lost for awhile and we'd all looked everywhere for it. Under things, behind furniture, everywhere. Well, I was done looking but suggested that we say a prayer. Damon perked up and offered to say it. He says really cute prayers and said something like "help us find Finn McMissile on this Sabbath Day." Well, I smiled to myself since it was Friday. I thought to myself, well, we'll see if we find it on Sunday then. We looked more that day and on Saturday. Then, what do you think happened Sunday morning? Yep, Damon goes running up to Doug and shows him what he had found. He was so excited that he had found his lost car. We said a 'thank you' prayer, and the boys had a fun morning playing with Finn McMissile. I think it's great that Heavenly Father answers even the smallest prayer of a child. It strengthened all our testimonies of prayer.

What's New

This is what our boys look like in the morning:
They all get a small bowl of cereal and watch Curious George. Then we eat a real breakfast and finish getting ready.It's nice when they play together nicely.
Christopher would do these puzzles all day if I let him. He can't quite do them by himself yet, so I have to hand his which piece goes in next, then he can find the spot where it goes.

This is a nursing birthday cake I made last night, sorry it's sideways.

Halloween Fun

Alright, let's get Blogging.

So Halloween has come and gone. We had a lot of fun doing various activities this year, with lots of opportunities to wear our Star Wars Costumes - I think the boys looked really good this year.
Tyler as Darth Vader
Christopher as R2D2
Damon as Obi Won Kenobi - he didn't wear the robe though, but I like it.

First Tyler and Christopher and I went Trick-or-Treating at the Library. It was kind of crazy this year because of the construction for the new library. Chris got a little scared with some of the costumes, but over all we had a good time. I did have to carry Christopher most of the time, he's heavy.On Saturday we did some fun things on our own. We decorated and delivered some cookies and carved our pumpkins. I still had to scrap out the innards, but Damon carved his all by himself. He was pretty proud of it. Tyler didn't do anything this year. He watched Cars (which was to entertain Chris). So I carved the second one.

On Halloween Damon had a party at school, but they couldn't wear their costumes. (Tyler had a party at his Preschool previously). I picked him up from school then we went over to the Rec Center to go to the Carnival. They do a "Mayor's Walk" first where the kids get to walk around the building and get candy from different local businesses. There is always a huge line so that is why we went early. Damon had to change in the truck, but it's a pretty easy costume to put on. Then we waited for Doug because he was going to come and meet us. I also thought that the 'walk' had already started because it looked like the line was moving. But it wasn't, so by the time I decided to stop waiting for Doug and go get in the line, it was really long. Oh well, at least it was nice weather. The boys had light saber fights while we were waiting, but Chris was reaching his limit of sitting in the stroller.

Inside we did a few of the carnival games. It's really busy and crazy inside and the boys don't 'love' the games, so we didn't stay long. We did the bowling and mini-golf. Then did a cake walk, ping-pong game, and a duck one. What the boys really liked was going down the slide. The slide is there all the time, nothing new, but I guess that's what they really wanted to do.

Of course by now it's dinner time and I had planned to make homemade pizzas with rhodes rolls. I knew it was going to take some time even though I had everything ready. I'll do something else next year, but it was still good. It just put us a little behind on getting outside to do the neighborhood trick-or-treating. While we were eating our friends came by and invited us to join them. We told them we'd catch up when we were done. So after getting Tyler's costume back on we called them to see where they were and we were going to meet up. Well, it didn't all go quite as planned and we had to back track a bit, and Tyler was getting tired by the time we finally got together. But we still had fun going around. This was Tyler's first year. We actually went farther than we should have and everyone was ready to go home at the end.

Happy Halloween!

It only took about 5 shots to get this one, I won't make you look at the others. :)

Doug was good to answer the door and give Chris a bath at the same time.
The boys are already planning what they want to be for next year. (clones and other Star Wars characters).