Santa 2011

 We went to a 4-H Christmas breakfast this year with Sarah's family, where the boys got to sit on Santa's lap.
Avery asked for a scooter and Jack asked for a new little buzz. The boys had fun and the food was decent...we sure miss the Santa at the Provo mall though. : )

 

Christmas vacation means...

 Fun activities every day! Playdough gives me a heart attack, so this was extra exciting for them! : )

 

Making a Christmas fort with Dad! They love sleeping in this every night, and I think Andy really enjoys passing on something he loved to do as a kid to the boys. They'll be sad to see it taken down, but I think they'll definitely look forward to it each year.

 

Ginger bread houses! Except this year we tried something new at Grandma Westover's house and made chocolate houses. The boys had so much fun decorating them all by themselves.

And eating the houses!!

 

We're having so much fun this Christmas! Spending time with family, relaxing, playing with all our new toys, eating yummy food and {not so}patiently waiting for the arrival of our new little baby!

I should...

...blog about Christmas. Soon. Hopefully. : )

The belly

This is for my family and friends who aren't lucky enough to see me large in person. You're welcome! :)

the count down begins

So, I haven't really done a "baby" update in a while. Truthfully there's not much to update. I'm still pregnant, she's still in there abusing me from the inside. And everything seems to be going normal. As of today I am 38 weeks, I have my next Dr. appointment on Monday. At my last appointment there was some concern about my blood pressure, so hopefully that was just a fluke. Also, hopefully it's just a fluke that I've gained so much weight?? A girl can hope. Baby girl is growing right on schedule, we're curious to see if she's small like Jack or small like Avery...or if she'll just be huge. I'm afraid of the latter!

Andy and I have been a little nervous as the time gets closer to have little Nora join our family because we feel like it's stepping back in time sort of. Both the boys are pretty self sufficient, they dress themselves, they use the bathroom, they play on their own and play well together, they feed themselves at the table and can even get themselves snacks and drinks throughout the day (with permission!). They buckle their own car seats, and can communicate to us clearly what they want and need, they're also able to be reasoned with. It's nice. We've gotten this nice 4 person family routine going and now we're about to throw it all off. For a very good and exciting reason, of course. We're excited and the boys are excited, and I know 3.5 years isn't that large a gap for most people, but we're having a hard time remembering baby things. People keep telling us it'll all come back to us quickly. I sure hope so!! It's just an interesting mix of first time parent nerves, and "been there, done that" feeling about some aspects. Also throwing in the different gender makes us nervous too! : )


Today I was looking at some pictures of the boys from almost 3 years ago. They were so little and chubby and babyish. And maybe I'm biased...but when we make 'em that cute it's a shame not to have another! I'm not saying I promise anymore after this...! My body has definitely taken a beating this pregnancy, but we're "ready" and excited for the cute little baby we'll be holding in the next couple of weeks!

Seriously though - with faces like these how can we not try and duplicate some of that?!

mmm...

...Christmas candy time!

 

 

We haven't made Christmas Candy for 2 years, since we moved into our house the week before Christmas last year we just didn't get to it. Unpacking and having a normal-ish Christmas took priority. So we are excited to get back into the Christmas candy making scene this year. Now to deliver it all so it's not in our house anymore!

Avery and Mom's night out

...sort of. A couple weeks ago Avery's school hosted a Kindergarten gingerbread house making event. We took all the stuff for Avery to create his own gingerbread house. He told me where to spread frosting and he went to town with the skittles he picked to decorate. He's quite proud of his house.

 

 

 

I think he spent about half the time licking frosting off the knife, and eating skittles. He was pretty cute the whole time, chatting it up with his friends, talking to his teacher and telling me all about how cool his school is. Sometimes I still can't believe he's in school, it's crazy.

Quiet times

 I love walking into the living room to scenes like these. Every once in a while the boys will pleasantly surprise me by playing quietly together, reading books, or just chilling on the couch. This was a nice lazy, gloomy afternoon activity. Sure it only lasted about 20 minutes, but I'll take what I can get!

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

I just finished making a stocking for the baby today. We probably won't need it this year but Andy convinced me to make it this year by kindly informing me that since we're keeping her and she'll need it for years to come I might as well do it now and get it done. Fine.

Anyway, as I was making it I was thinking about how the boys and Nora might feel about them when they're older. Will they think they're too homemade looking, will the hate that we all match, will they want to use them after they leave home? I hope they love them, and I hope that when they're grown they will remember all the Christmas' we've had and the traditions our family takes part in each year. I hope that the stockings will mean something to them, and they'll want the same things for their own families (not the same stockings...just the same happy Christmas memories). Is it weird that making a stocking made me think to when my kids are grown? I just want them to be happy, and think of our family Christmases fondly.

(Andy- Nativity; Kizzie- bells; Avery- snowman; Jack- snowflake; Nora- gingerbread girl)

Back to the stockings though. I made mine when I was a teenager, I'm not sure how many of us were still living at home, or who still uses theirs now. But when Andy and I got married I made him a matching one our first Christmas and then each year we've added to our little family I've made them for our babies. They're quite large, which is good and bad. Even when we have lots in them it feels like they're too empty...so we may overfill them each year. Oh well, another good Christmas memory for our kids right? : )

Anyway, I love our homemade looking matching stockings. And as long as the kids live at home they will too. : )

This is usually how it goes down...

I get something new and one of the little boys takes it over before I can test it out. : )
Jack has claimed my new boots as his own and loves to show me the cool tricks he can do in them.

 

 

And now he has taken over the recliner that we just had delivered today. He's kindly informed I can still sit in Nora's room, just on a different chair. Thanks.

Last project of the week...?

Maybe...we'll see. I've already got the itch for a couple more things I've seen online.

We don't mind the chandelier in the dining room, but I've never liked the look of the exposed light bulbs.

So I've been on the lookout for mini lamp shades. The problem I've run into is either stores don't have enough, or online shops are too expensive. Especially since I wanted to be able to get plain ones to re-cover.
While we were at Menards the other day we lucked out and found plain ol' mini lampshades, cheap. Awesome. I already knew what fabric I wanted to use and since I'd re-covered the lamps in our room I pretty much knew what to do.

so after a quick refresher course in re-covering the shades I got to it this morning.

And I'm glad to be done! I'm very happy with how they look, and love how finished it makes the dining room. I was surprised at how much it changed the lighting in there, it's much softer now. Not bad, just not as bright. Now I need to get some more fabric and re-cover the chairs!

Andy's Baby shower

Last week the secretary from Andy's office called me and told me they wanted to throw Andy a surprise baby shower and wanted to make sure I'd be able to make it.
I warned her I'm not great at keeping secrets from him (I'm the one who convinces him to open presents early for birthdays and Christmas, because I can hardly stand to not blab to him what I got him!) but promised I'd do my best.
So yesterday when he told me that they were having a pizza lunch for someone in the office who was leaving I tried not to sound too eager to ask if I could come. Jack and I have joined them for office lunches before, so it wasn't out of the ordinary for me to tag along.

When I got there and we went back to the lunch room he was a little confused walking in, wondering why they were taking pictures of him. : ) He caught on, don't worry.
He was totally out of his element being the center of attention at a very pink baby shower, it was fun watching him!
We got lots of nice things for Nora, and Andy was pleased with how thoughtful his co-workers are.

All in all it was a nice time, one I'm sure he is not eager to try again though! : )

Also...we're on the 6 week count down to D-Day! Crazy!!

Smarty Pants

Avery is our little smarty pants, he takes after his dad and catches onto things very quickly and remembers everything! (Jack is also very smart, I'm not saying he's not. Avery just does more now that he's in school)
He's LOVING Kindergarten and his teacher is very impressed with how smart he is.
This week we spent a couple days in Columbia, MO. While the boys and I were hanging out in the motel while Andy was at a work conference Avery worked on writing his very own book.

When we came home we stapled it together and he finished writing the words to his book.

 

 

He asked me how to spell a couple words, but did the rest on his own. And don't worry. after he finished and showed it to me I did let him know the proper order to write on the page. He gets confused, but sometimes I think it's cute and funny to see where it makes sense to him to squeeze letters onto pages when he runs out of room.

I let him pick his favorite pages to include in this blog post. He's very proud of his book, and even took it to school today to show his teacher and friends. He's also started sounding words out everywhere we go, he's gotten pretty good and trying out the longer and harder words. It's fun for us to see him so excited about reading, writing and all other school related things!

Dreaming

This is what Jack spent most of the morning doing. He loves looking at that toy catalog. He likes to get nice and comfy and just pour through the pages. Every once in a while I'd hear "mommy! mommy! come here!" and get to be wowed by some fancy new fangled toy that neither of us know what it is or does...but it's head has spikey hair that resembles wolverine. 
Or excited shouts over an "awesome looking millennium falcon!"
He's very excited for Christmas. hopefully he likes the things we got him as much as he thinks he'd like all the toys from Toys R Us! :)

 

And, yes, he is still in his pajamas. He prefers to wear them as often as possible and pretty much only gets dressed when we have to go somewhere. He really likes "Comfy pants". That's my boy. : )

More baby stuff

Today I finished Nora's quilt. I'm pretty happy with it. I did it all by myself, which makes me feel pretty good!
I hand quilted most of it, then used the machine and "cheated" to sew the appliqued flowers and the binding. The tips of my fingers were too sore to do anymore hand sewing! I still like it though, and Andy assures me it will be better and stronger machine stitched so the binding doesn't get ripped off.
I had 2 thoughts when he mentioned this. First: He thinks I can't hand sew very well,lame. And second: He thinks our daughter is going to come out a baby body builder and just tear through stuff. The jury's still out on which I think he meant.

Anyway. It also matches the car seat that my cousin re-covered for me. I bought all the fabric at the same time, and I love it! She did an amazing job, and it's so much better than the boyish gray/red fabric that was on there as the original cover. She even make a bonus little elephant baby toy to match. Spoiled little Nora. :)

 

 AND with some of the scraps I also made a matching diaper/wipes case. I may have gone a bit overboard with this fabric. oh well. : )

She just better come out a she now and not have been hiding extra body parts during the ultrasound! Otherwise we'll have very girly boy stuff!