An Eagle Mountain Christmas!

That title sounds like a cheesy TV special, but that's what we all started calling our Christmas this year when we were making plans. And the reason that we had to give it a corny name and make lots of plans was that we were ALL getting together at my sister, Marie's house out in Eagle Mountain. That's also why there are so many pictures. When you gather 22 people together in one house to have a huge Christmas Eve sleep-over with lots of holiday festivities, there's bound to be a lot of great pictures. Especially when 7 of those people (my oldest sister, Heather's family) live way out in Texas and we don't get to see them very often. We had a fabulous time! We had dinner, acted out the Nativity with the kids, sang carols, made sugar cookies for Santa, and let all the kids open the traditional Christmas Eve jammies, um I mean, one special present. Then we put the kids to bed full of anticipation for Santa to come. I was upstairs nursing Dex to sleep while all the kids were trying to go to bed. I heard them talking for only a minute or so before settling down. It was quiet for a few seconds and then I heard Oliver joyously exclaim, "Ollie B!" and then there was absolute silence. It was so funny! Then the adults got to wrap a few final presents, chat and catch up before heading off to bed. Unfortuantely, Oliver woke up right as we were all trying to go to bed. He wouldn't settle down and that woke Dex up. They were both crying and crying and in a house full of sleeping people, it was so terrible for me. My kind Mommy said that she'd come with me to take them for a car ride. We drove around for a while and Dexy fell asleep. But no lucky with Ollie. Although he did settle down. We went back to the house and finally at 3 o'clock in the morning, I woke Brian up and had him put Oliver playpen in the basement, eventhough it is unfinished and therefore some what cold, and I put him down there to sleep. He only fussed a little and happily fell to sleep. He must just be use to basements! Everyone, but Ollie woke up at about 7 and we opened presents and had a joyous time! Ollie woke up much later. I took off his wet jammies, changed his diaper and let him open presents. He was kind of in a daze while he opened presents, but after we gave him breakfast and got him dressed in his new Christmas outfit, he realized the joy of lots of cousins, aunts and uncles, and new toys to play with. We had a wonderful Christmas. The kids especially loved have saber fights with the cool light sabers they got from Grandma. We came back to our place and brought Derek, Cristina and Jude with us that night so that our babies could all get a better night's sleep. And they did! They all slept great. Cristina and I went to Ikea (Ollie knows that place by name now) while the guys went to enjoy a day after Christmas movie. While we were there, Ollie crawled up on one of the cute, kid chairs at a table and was all ready for dinner. It was so cute! We went back out to Eagle Mountain this afternoon for dinner and one last night of family fun before everyone starts heading home. I agree with Marie's oldest son, Drew, when he said, "this is the best Christmas ever!"

Pre-Christmas

This year is my family's turn for Christmas and since my sister Marie, just got a nice, new house in Eagle Mountain, my parents asked if we could hold the Christmas shindig at her house. That means that we did not go to St. George and are, obviously, still here. And of course, since we are here anyway, we went over to the Bowles house today to do some Christmas celebrating with them before we head off tomorrow for our "Eagle Mountain Christmas," as my family has taken to calling it. It was fun to see Brian's family and get to play with them, too. We had Chinese food, listened to Christmas music, and got to open our presents from them. The boys both got jammies and an outfit, and a fun electronic alphabet board to share (it was pretty quickly apparent that Ollie doesn't really want to share it). Brian got an old school Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt, I got a cute Tinkerbell hoodie strait from Disneyland, and we got a new convertable

carseat for Dex (yay! he's too big for the infant one that we've been stuffing him into). I then, of course wanted a cute picture of the boys in their new jammies and they of course didn't want to cooperate. Ollie has finally learned that the camera means sit and smile, but now Dexy is old enough to not want to sit still. Oh, well. They're still cute anyway! I'm so glad that we will get to see both sides of the family so close to Christmas this year!

Standing Tall

While we were in St. George, Dexy grew super fast for some reason! It must have been all that sunshine - lots of vitamin D to help him grow strong. The boys and I were down there for a little over a week. When we headed down, Dex was cutting one tooth, could only get up on his hands and knees but couldn't go anywhere, and had not pulled up into standing position on anything yet. By the time we were returning home, he was cutting four teeth, crawling up on his hands and knees like a pro, pulling himself up to standing with ease, and was even trying to walk with (or sometimes even without) help! He is starting to develop at break neck speed. He wants so much to be like his big brother. Here are some pics of him working on pulling up. My parents have a nice, soft, cushiony couch that was just perfect for practicing. He'd try to get up and then fall and then try and fall, but after only a few times of that he got all the way up to standing position. He's not even quite 8 months old, yet!

Double Stroller?

We just got back to chilly Salt Lake after a fun week in St. George. Since we have kind of a small car, I couldn't bring our big, beautiful double stroller with us. I figured that it wouldn't be a problem. It is winter after all. But a few of the days that we were there were not only not freezing, they were actually sunny and quite nice. I guess I have forgotten what winter in Southern Utah is like. My dad was so nice to walk to work a few of the days and let us borrow his truck. But on this sunny day, he had to do some work in Hurricane and therefore needed his truck. My mom was at work as well. It looked like we were stuck at home on such a nice day! I remembered a really cute picture of my siblings and I all stuffed into a double stroller and I thought to myself, "if my mom can stuff 4 kids into a double, then I can certainly stuff 2 into a single." So I did just that! They found it funny at first, but by the time we were almost to K-mart Ollie wasn't too happy about his legs getting squished and Dexy was about to fall out. I took Ollie out and let him walk and just pushed Dex the rest of the way to the store and in the store. When we left, we had to cross a busy street or two, so I carried Ollie on my shoulders from the store about 4 or 5 blocks. He walked a few more blocks and got a piggy back the rest of the way home. It was effort for me, but it was worth a lot to get the kids out of the house and keep us all from going crazy! The next day, Derek and I took our boys to the park and I put both of my boys in their bigger single stroller (the kind that you can hook an infant car seat into) and it worked much better. They were a couple of really nice days and I was so happy to even have the option to go outside, so it was worth it to make it work!

Sunny (and at least kind of warm) St. George

I was freezing my buns off up in Salt Lake, so my loving husband brought me and the boys down to St. George! He only got to stay for about a day and a half, but he left us here - yay! We miss Brian (he unfortunately had to return to finals and work - yuck), but we are having a grand old time playing with family that we get to see less and enjoying the sun. Jude is so big and so cute! He and Dex play well together. One day, everyone was hungry - even Ducats. So we sat them all up to eat. Poor, starving, little souls! They sure are adorable. Ollie loves Ducats and always wants to go visit him. In fact, this morning he was having his happy, naked time when he decided that he was ready to go and visit Ducats. He put on his Mickey Mouse cap and his Curious George sweatshirt (his favorites) and was all set to leave. He walked over to the door and started saying, "go, go!" He, however, neglected the most essential articles of clothing for going out visiting - socks, shoes, pants, shirt, and most important, a diaper! I guess that we've just been having so much fun that he lost his head. Or maybe it's because he's only 21 months old. Whatever it was, it was funny!

Girls Are Just That Way

Oliver and Dex have both been pretty sick the last couple of days. When Brooklyn got here this morning, she started right into bugging Ollie. Because he was sick, it was really driving him crazy and therefore was rather annoying to me to hear him whining over any little thing. But, after a few hours of her teasing Oliver for attention, she finally realized that we would just give her attention because we like her and stopped. From that point on, she was not only pleasant the rest of the day, but she was actually quite enjoyable. And I realized that eventhough girls can be divas (we see that from her sometimes), there are some beauties to having a girl around the house. After we ate lunch, I was wiping the table off and Brooklyn came over with something and started pretending to wipe off the bench. I tought to myself, "heck, if she's willing why just pretend!?" So, I got her a wet paper towel and she happily went to work. She helped me clean the bench, Dexy's chair, Ollie's chair and was even scrubbing the floor of her own choice! I gave Ollie one, too. He wiped down the bench for about a minute and then proceeded to just rip his paper towel into shreds.

He ran off to go play and Brooklyn continuued to help, even picking up the paper towle that Ollie had ripped up all over the place. Oliver only decided to help once I whipped out the camera to take pictures and as long as he got to use the "real" rag. Later she was putting her baby in the high chair, breaking up little crackers into small pieces to feed to her baby and she thought it was so great when I started feeding it pretend baby food. So domestic and only 20 months old! Girls just come that way I guess. She was such a good little helper today!

Dexy the Red-Cream-Oreo Clown?

Yesterday afternoon, Ollie woke up from his nap and was feeling kind of grumpy. He's been sick and wasn't feeling good. He wanted to run around naked, so I let him. Then he wanted to eat an oreo with red cream filling and since he was naked, I let him. I didn't, however, want to let Dexy eat one! But, Ollie being the nice and shareful big brother that he is, passed what he didn't want of his second oreo (at least half) down to Dexy. Dex of course started chowing down on it and by the time I got to him he looked like this. I figured the damage had been done, so I let him have a little bit more. By the time he had what he wanted, he looked like this! Maybe that was too much damage and I shouldn't have let him. Oh, well. No matter what I should or shouldn't have done, it's over now and it sure was cute!

2 Cute Brothies

Here are my 2 cute boys being such adorable friends! I put Dex down on the floor to go do something and Ollie crawled right down from the bed and laid on his tummy next to keep him to keep Dex company. He loves his little brother so much, eventhough he still doesn't want Dexy touching his stuff! Oliver is very nice to Dex, is so happy when he wakes up from his morning nap and is always concerned about him. I'm actually really glad that they came so close together (it wasn't my plan, but obviously someone smarter than me knew what He was doing) and I am already starting to see a small glimpse of what good they will do for each other as they grow. I'm so thankful for my 2 sweet boys!

Nice Try, Dexy

Dexter is starting to really want to be big and play with toys like Oliver. And many times he wants to not just play LIKE Oliver, but to play WITH Oliver. Too bad that Ollie is still working on the whole sharing thing. Here is Dexy's attempt at playing with Ollie. First, Dex sees the toy and the play that he wants to participate in. Next, he moves stealthfully forward. Then he lunges forward and goes from the grab, but is rejected! And finally, because he's bigger and he can, Ollie just stands up with the coveted toy and walks away. Oh, poor Dexy! Nice try, but better luck next time.

Just Some Cute Pictures

Here are some cute pictures from November that I didn't get around to posting earlier. There's Dexy excitedly gnawing on a fresh green bean, Dexy as the 'bathtime baby' from a cute book called "Baby Colors" (the green page says, "bathtime baby sit and think, while you soak in this green sink" - this pic just reminds me of that), Ollie climbing in on top of Dex in the infant tub (I've since purchased another bigger tub from Ikea so they both have the same one and because no one fit in the little tub anymore, especially not together), and Ollie oh so happy about getting not just one, but two cakesters to eat (the best part is that he refers to them as 'yellow')!

Thanksgiving

This year we got to spend Thanksgiving with Brian's family. We went to the Bowles' house Wednesday after Brian got home from work and spent the night there so that we could just wake up and celebrate the whole day together. We ate dinner at Wade and Wendy's with just our immediate family. The whole, gianormous Bowles family had Thanksgiving dinner at the Church near Wade's parents house, but he said that since his family is expanding, he was just going to have dinner with his family at his house. I'm actually really glad he did! Wendy made sure that the food was delicious and warm and that the table was set with the nice china and a lace table cloth - it just felt more festive and celebratory and was less noisy than if we had joined them at the church. We really enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner and then we meet them at the church for the talent show. The girls did a tap dance to the Chipmunks Christmas song, Wendy sang with Amanda at the piano and Wade sang with all of his brothers. Ollie joined the girls for the tap dance while they practiced at home, but I kept him off stage for their actual performance. He was way cute dancing with them! We had a great Thanksgiving and hope you all did as well!

Dexy is Just Growing Up

Watch this video and you'll see and hear how.

What Precarious Positions!

On the 19th, we had Evan and Robby over to play for a couple of hours in the morning while Marie took Kael to an appointment at Primary Children's Hospital. They had to come all the way from Eagle Mountain, so her boys hadn't had breakfast yet. I sat them up at the table with some cereal and of course, Oliver and Brooklyn both instantly had to sit at the table, too! There were 4 kids on the bench and the little one said, "move over, I'm crowded! So they all moved over and one fell off." OK, she didn't really, but this picture just reminds me of that song about the bears in the bed. Later, Dexy was crying and Evan asked me, "Why is Dexter crying? And I'm wondering - how was his day?" It was so funny and clever, especially since it was only like 9:30 am. The whole 2 hours of his day so far were good. They are such fun, nice boys! The next day, Marie came over again with just Robby and Kael to use our internet (theirs isn't hooked up yet). We were "dining room" area when we hear Oliver say, "hem meen (help me), hem meen." We walked around the cornor and found him like this! He had crawled up on the computer desk, not sure how since the chair was pretty far away, and couldn't get down. How precarious! And the day after that, the 21st, Dexy pulled our little basketball hoop over on himself. The situations these kids get themselves into!

Bath Time in a Little Tub!

We love splashing, kicking, and "swimming" in a big bath tub, but since we don't have one of those, we make the most out of bath time in our little tubs. We have just as much fun and can get more water everywhere in our own personal tubs (the carpet ends up soaking wet). Looks like it's time to get another toddler tub for Dexy, though. The infant one is getting mighty comfy. That's ok because the only place we could find a toddler tub was Ikea and I always love any excuse I can find to go to Ikea! It's like Disneyland for an obsessive compulsive, anal retentive, ogranizationalist such as myself. And it's inxpensive, too. Grandma Oliver thoughtfully bought us the one we have, but it was only $8 so I think I could spring for another one!