Jed is trying to start a new onesie style I think!!
I have to brag about Avery - today Oliver was counting (he days left until Christmas I think), and he started 1-2-3-4-5-6, and then paused. Avery chimed in, "7-8-9-10-11-12." What?! She isn't even two years old yet and she can count to 12!? What else is in her little brain that we don't know about yet?
I haven't blogged in a while, so bear with me...this could be a long post! BTW - happy thanksgiving to everyone - I am morally opposed to skipping over Thanksgiving and going straight into Christmas without a mention, but I did not take any pics on Thanksgiving (Maybe because I was coking all day - it was a blast and so yummy!), but when I borrow pictures from my father-in-law I will give Thanksgiving the attention it deserves. For now, this will have to do!
The day after Thanksgiving, we went to Temple Square to see the lights, as well as Gateway. We ate out (it's a good thing, because I was DONE cooking for the rest of the weekend!), then rode the TRAX train up to Temple square. The train ride was Avery's favorite part of the night - the second we stepped off, she started saying, "again, again." She talked about it the whole time we were walking around seeing lights, the nativity, etc. After our ride back, she was a bit sad to say goodbye to the train for good! The tree at Gateway was lit as well, and the fountain was going, "dancing" to all your favorite Christmas tunes! It was a bit chilly, but nothing like the weather is now. Good times! I was exhausted by the end of the night because of my 4:00 AM "Black Friday" shopping rendesvous at Walmart, Home Depot, and Shopko, but it was worth it!
Flash Forward to this last weekend: We went to the Festival of trees, where Oliver and his cousin Kade got to make crafts in the kiddie korner. The kids loved all the themed trees and gingerbread houses too. Avery decided that day that she would truly become a two year old, terrible and all. She "asserted her independence" all day, which is really quite fun in public! Check the pictures - there is a really good one of her during one of her fits! Wendy, me, and the kids all ate at Spaghetti Mama's afterword.
Then on Saturday, we had our "Meatball" holiday party at our house. I got the idea of a meatball party from my cousin Mark - it is an annual tradition for he and his wife, and it sounded so fun that I thought we would give it a whirl. Basically, a meatball party is an appetizer party where everything is ball-shaped. Everyone got really creative with their recipes and it was super-yummy - chicken cordon bleu balls, sweet and sour meatballs, mozzerella balls, truffles, bleu cheese and bacon stuffed mushrooms, rice balls, grape balls, and ice cream balls. A bonus to the meatball party over a regular appetizer party is that the food is its own conversation piece - the jokes never ended! It was great to get together with all our friends and celebrate the holiday season.
I love it!! The colorful thing on the right is a pack of smarties, and if you notice there is some orange by his mouth. He informed me this is because he is eating an orange smartie.
This is Avery's new favorite phrase - whenever she needs help with anything, she says "Help me build." It is so cute!! Other things about her right now: -She loves to sing -She can name virtually all the candies in her Halloween bag by their real name! -She repeats the last two words of every sentence Oliver utters. -She is really into play doh and stickers right now -When she doesn't want to go to bed, she tells us she is "happy." I explained to her tonight that even happy girls and boys have to sleep so their bodies can grow, and she said, "shoot." That was that!
Oliver had his fifth birthday last week (OMG!!!), and just like Halloween, the celebration seemed to go on for a week! Lucky kid! We celebrated his big day as a family on the actual day (last Thursday. Jed took the day off, and Oliver pretty much played with toys and his dad all day. He did go to preschool that day too, where he got to be king, show off some pictures of himself, and share a treat. In his own words, "You also get to do all the stuff," which I think means you get to be the leader for the weather, the pledge, etc. His teacher also sent home a cute little bag of goodies to make him feel special. We had a Yoda cake at home for dinner, and Jed cooked up some #5 grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner (Oliver requested a birthday dinner last minute, had to think fast, and got out the #5 cookie cutters - phew!) He had quite a few visitors that day too. We decided we would show Oliver one of the old Star Wars movies on the night of his birthday as he is very interested in Star Wars, and even chose it as the theme of his birthday party, despite the fact that he has never watched a minute of any Star Wars show. Still trying to figure out where he has gotten his Star Wars knowledge from...but anyway, we made it through about 15 minutes, and he said he wanted to play with his toys and that was that! He wasn't scared, so it must have been boredom that caught up with him! We'll have to try again soon :) We had his party with all his little friends on Saturday afternoon, and it was a blast. Oliver was so excited for it. We had decorated the basement with black tablecloths hanging around to inclose the room, then stars hanging from the ceiling to make it feel like "a galaxy far, far away." We put together some cute little clone trooper and darth vader guys that I found on the internet - they were a really cool, cheap party favor, but the kicker was each one took about an hour to put together. I am a little crazy, so yes, with Jed's help I put together 12 of the little things. We played some fun games including pod racing, save the princess, hot lava, and astroid hunting, then ate a Star Wars lunch complete with light sabers (corn dogs), Vader taters (french fries), and Yoda soda (lime sherbet floats). It was a great production, and after we just cleaned up the mess at our leisure - you can do that when it is in your basement and not in your primary living space (very convenient). Oliver had more guests to visit him through the weekend, and Sunday night, after all was said and done, he asked me, "Now what are we going to do tomorrow?" I think he would have the celebrations go on with no stops in between - that is the beauty of a kid. I am glad for a little break before Thanksgiving, Ave's birthday, and Christmas! But I am getting excited for all of those too now....more to look forward to.
Let me just get confession out of the way...I have been a blog-slacker the last month or so!! But I have been busy too, so something has got to give! I know it is late, but here is a run-down of our Halloween celebrations (seriously, I think it went on all week!) We had a great kid party at Nicole's house - she got the week kicked off with painting pumpkins and decorating cupcakes. Then we got booed (with a treat, it is a good thing even though it sounds bad!), so Oliver helped me make caramel popcorn to do the next round of booing. He took it upon himself to draw and cut out a ghost for every popcorn we had (four of them, plus one for me because they were so cute). I mention this part because Oliver has really blossomed as an artist recently. He is spending a lot of time these days coloring and creating things, and it is one of the things I enjoy most as a mother to see how he recreates the things he sees in his life. He also did an amazing self-portrait this last week. I'll post it in its own post. Anyway, he and I went out after dark to deliver all the treats, and he LOVED it because we had to be sneaky to avoid the neighbors seeing who was booing them. It turned out to be a great family activity. We carved pumpkins the same night we did our booing (I think it was Wednesday) - and we had some great jack-o-lanterns this year. Jed did a classic Jack, Avery wanted a cat, and Oliver picked out a really cool monster thing from his book. I was very nervous to cut it out for him, but it turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. I also did a Dora the Explorer for my pumpkin. Jed baked up some pumpkin seeds for us too, and they were the BEST pumpkin seeds we've ever had!! I think we will do a second batch they were so good. Next came Trunk-or-treat on Friday. You actually have to decorate your trunk for trunk or treat, so Oliver and Avery made some ghosts out of napkins earlier in the day, and we strung them up in our trunk. It was our first trunk or treat ever, and everyone had a great time. After we got done, the kids came home and dumped out their candy in piles, and just started playing with it. The didn't really ask to eat any (I think they had one piece that night), they just kept playing with it. Oliver sorted it by candy type, and Avery made a little "nest" with her blanket and put all the candy inside, then she sat on it! So cute! The next night was the real Halloween, and we visited my family, then headed up to Sharma's for Chili and rolls before trick-or-treating in her neighborhood. We also went to the Harry Potter house before calling it a night!
We had a great lunch today at "Mama Nicole's," as Ollie refers to her (from his preschool days at her house!) She always puts on the best parties, and the kids had a blast. We had pumpkin bread bowls - I did not know that the grocery stores made bread bowls that look like pumpkin (orange and everything, with a gree stem) - but it makes soup so much more exciting! Don't get the wrong idea, the soup tasted great all on its own, but it was so fun to eat in the pumpkin. We painted pumpkins, played Halloween bingo, and decorated cupcakes to look like monsters. It was really fun to see how each of the different children approached the activities. Oliver was in an "everything" mood, which goes right along with his long attention span. For example, his cupcake ended up having every candy on it, and his pumpkin ended up being painted with every color. Avery named all the facial features as she put the candies on her cupcake - eyes, nose, mouth, ears. She is figuring so much out these days. Oliver's friend Presley is a natural-born picasso - she made two spiders, one a girl and one a boy, out of her cupcakes. All these activities give me the experience of seeing the world through a kid's eyes. And, as I am sure most of you know, the world is so much more fun through the eyes of a child than through an adult's eyes! I highly reccomend putting your "kid-goggles" on this week to enjoy Halloween :) P.S. The decorating of the cupcakes was so fun the kids had to do it again when Dad got home!!
I am really enjoying Fall - we are full-fledged decorated for Halloween, it is cooling down, leaves are changing, and we've done pumpkin hayrides (2 to be exact), caramel apples, and lots of soups to go along with the season. Also of note, our yard has grass seed now! Jed is working hard to keep it watered, which is a lot like feeding a newborn - seems to need it round the clock! I can't wait to see how it looks in the spring. Everyone should be so lucky to have a hardworking husband with the patience to figure each step out and turn a rather large pile of dirt into an actual work of art. It also helps to have a saint for a brother-in-law (Ryan) to help every step of the way. Happy fall to everyone!
We decided to rid ourselves of the sprinkler job for one night and headed up to the VanDyke farm in Eden on Friday. It is definitely my style of camping - running water, bathrooms, and an entire house of stuff in case you forget anything! Ryan came up with us too, and after we got the fire and tents set up (we have a rediculously complicated tent, you'd never know it by looking at it because it is nothing special) we cooked our tin foil dinners, fresh peach cobbler (YUM) and homemade ice cream (double YUM). The kids loved the ice cream experience and made salt stew in the ice cream maker after we were done with it. It was an interesting experience to get Avery to sleep in the tent - she was SO tired by the end of the night as she has had a cold for a few days, but she kind of went crazy right before bedtime and find some extra energy. She was climbing all over everyone, talking loudly, and just avoiding sleep in general. It only lasted about 15 minutes though, and she calmed down and slept like a log the rest of the night. It got quite a bit colder than we expected that night, so I was glad to have the two little ones all cozied up with us to stay warm! Some of the highlights from the trip: -Uncle Lee's garden at the farm - not much to look at, but an amazing amount of great food growing in there - the best green beans I have ever tasted! -Ollie riding the motorcycle and shooting the BB gun with his Daddy - good ol' male bonding at its best. -Leaves starting to change color up in the valley - BEAUTIFUL!
My sister Amy came over today to hang out and put the ultimate trust in me: putting foils of highlights in her hair. I had never done it before, and although I knew it would not be the easiest thing in the world, I thought that since I had highlights done several times on my own hair, I might know something about it. Anyway, it turns out there is a level of physical coordination that I do not have to perform this task well. We muddled through, and although some of her foils were DONE before I even got the ones in on the bottom, she looks great! (Turns out there is a time coordination that also goes along with this task!) It was great to hang out with her, as always.
I know that everyone looking at this post right now may be having deja vu, seeing as how this is Ollie's THIRD year of preschool (maybe we will win some award for the most school EVER!!), but he started at Miss Sheralyn's today. He was so excited, and slightly perplexed when he woke up this morning and found out he had to wait until AFTER lunch for it (he's in the afternoon class). It felt like an eternity, and we were the first ones to show up when the time finally came! He had a great time, made some fun crafts, had a great snack, and got to sit next to his buddy from across the street too. I am so proud of him - I can't believe how big he has gotten. We made the day extra special with ABC (NOT already been chewed) sandwiches for lunch. And when Dad got home and asked how preschool was, Avery proudly answered "good!" Apparently she liked something about the experience too. She was quite concerned when we left without Oliver and mentioned his name about a hundred times throughout the afternoon!
The sewing bug got me this last week - I think I caught it at Joann's Fabric where the patterns were only $1. So far I have made a little jumper for Ave, a "frilly" skirt for Ave, and matching PJ pants for both kids. The bananas on the monkey PJ pants are mostly yellow but kind of orange (for shading I think), and every time Avery sees them she says "hot nanas". She is very interested in identifying hot things these days.
Today was our last Tuesday play date with the Petersen's before school starts, so we headed over to the Treehouse for some good playtime. The've added a lot of new exhibits since the last time we went, so it was a pretty exciting trip. The kids got really into making sea serpants in the art garden which came out great. Avery's favorite exhibit was the fish tank again, where she saw Nemo, Gil, Dory, and Bubbles. She was a really good sport and got packed along at Oliver Speed through the whole place. Some of the new exhibits in the Treehouse feature life-size animals that move, and she wasn't really sure about these. It was a really good picture-taking opportunity because the kids got dressed up in make-believe clothing quite a bit too. Oliver said the cutest thing while playing on the fire engine with his friends and another boy. The other boy who was there playing had taken it upon himself to put the 5 year olds in charge as "bosses" because they were the oldest. Oliver told the boy he was the boss too, and when the boy disagreed with him because he was was only four, Oliver told him, "Well, I am really brave. When its dark, I don't even got scared, so I'm in charge too." And the boy didn't argue with it! He is too clever for words. Check out the vido at the end of the post for Oliver's puppet show. (You may need to turn off the music player to hear the audio on Ollie's video)
A couple of weeks ago we decided to load up the kids at 7:30 at night and go to Lagoon with some free passes we aquired. It was a bad sign when I was yawning on the walk INTO Lagoon from the parking lot, but we ended up having a really good time. We just had tickets for a few of the "classic" rides, so we split the spinning rides in half and Jed went on half of them with Ollie and I took the other half with him. Avery was able to go on the Merry-Go-Round and the train, which she loved. Oliver had been wanting to go to Lagoon for a long time, so we decided to seize the opportunity and not worry about bedtime for one night. It was a great family time and even though it was short, we managed to get the whole experience, included the nauseous feeling when you are all done (me and Jed anyway, I think the kids were fine!) Oliver decided his favorite ride was Tilt-a-whirl, and ever since we went he has been setting up mock-carnival games at home, complete with small, medium, large, and X-large prizes to win!
Sorry to talk about nausea so much in this post, but the next notable thing to blog about is the sotmach flu that everyone except Avery got. It had the absolute worst timing as Jed was working overtime that week and my family was in town from Colorado at the same time. Needless to say, we did not get as much time with our extended family as we had hoped - only Avery and I were able to go over and see them on Sunday for the evening. But the little bit we got with them was wonderful! It is so surreal to see my cousins whom I really knew better when I was a kid as full-fledged adults, going to college, holding down jobs, getting tattoos, and doing other adult stuff!
I must apologize in advance - this post starts with what we did on Sunday and then back tracks through the rest of the weekend. SOrry about the reverse chronological order, its weird.
Anyway, we had the annual VanDyke family reunion up at the farm on Sunday. Oliver was so excited to go up, and rightly so. There was delicious food, wonderful people (plenty of 4 year olds for Ollie), a pinata stuffed to the gills, and a hayride to boot. The pinata was shaped like a pig, and Oliver said, "that is a perfect pinata for the farm, because animals live on farms, haha!" He was great at giving the other kids encouragement during the pinata activity (hit it as hard as you can, give it all you got, etc.) and everyone got a turn to hit it before all the candy came crashing out. Avery was tired and pretty skiddish around all the new faces, so she spent a lot of time with Mom, but enjoyed the farm tire swing and the lollipop she got from the pinata. Michelle and Eddie (Eddie is Jed's Uncle, Scott's brother) made all different kinds of beef for sandwiches, and it was to die for. We had an array of salads, the sweetest corn I've ever had, and get this...yellow watermelon. Then we finished off with dutch oven desserts and ice cream. It was great to see everyone that made it this year, even Grandpers was in attendance. We did miss everyone who couldn't make it this year, and not having Grammers there with us definitely leaves a void. Something about the farm and the farm house makes you feel nostalgic for earlier times, and although I did not know Grampers and Grammers when they were really young, I like to try and imagine what their lives were like at that farm with all their kids (before their kids had kids who now have kids) - how much harder it was than life is now, but also simpler in a way. As we were driving away at about 9:00 PM we saw Leigh out in the fields moving sprinklers around, and it reminded me how the farm has shaped every one of their kids, become a part of them in some way. I think it is still shaping the rest of us too.
The Cooks were so gracious to take us up boating on Friday at Pineview. We got up early (though not as early as the Cook family) and got on the water with enough time for the guys to wakeboard. Garrison was awesome - he totally looked like a natural. Jed got on the board with ease too, which is amazing as we have not gone boating in something like four years. After all the wakeboarding, we got out the triple tube and Ollie, Jed, and Kade went for a ride. Ollie loved it and did not want to get off. He kept pointing up with his pointer finger to go faster rather than giving a thumbs up (so cute), but got the a-okay hand movement down too. He loved the bumps and waves. We even took Avery out for a slow leisurely ride. She was pretty skiddish on the boat just as she was at the reunion, so again she spent a lot of time on my lap. When we got home from boating everyone was exhausted, except for her, since all she did was sit all day! Garrison also took a turn on the tube by himself, which was wild and wooly to say the least. I made the mistake of hanging out in the cuddy with the kids during that part - I got pretty sick, but recovered in time for some lunch and fishing. We didn't catch anything, but that did not bother Oliver. That night when he was saying a prayer, I prompted him to say, "Thank you for time with family boating today," and he added on his own, "and fishing was fun too." After boating and dinner on Friday we went and got fireworks and lit them at our house with Ryan. A wonderful end to our Pioneer day.
We also sealed up some rice and flour this weekend. The LDS church lends out the coolest machine that seals the big #10 cans, so Wendy and I loaded up on these basic necessities. Jed loved the big contraption and helped me with all of our cans. The best part is the flour should last for 10 years and the rice for 30! I thought this was a pretty appropriate way to observe Pioneer Day.
The rest of the pics in the slideshow above are just random moments from the summer that I think are fun. Enjoy!
