Thanksgiving!

My grandparents the Kohlers, on my mom side, recently got home from their 4th mission. Therefore, this year for Thanksgiving my mom's entire family gathered down here in St. George at my grandparents behest. They wanted to celebrate with EVERYONE! And so we did! There were 71 people at our Thanksgiving meal! We actually celebrated on Friday rather than Thursday to make sure that as many people as possible could be in attendence. The only 3 not there were my 3 cousins, Josh and Sara and Ian, who were spending the holiday with their other biological parent. Because it was a first in a long time for having us mostly all in one place, we met at a park on Friday morning to get a gianormous extended family picture. Don't have a copy of that yet, but just let me tell you now, Ollie was the one crying!

It was cold outside, but the kids all had lots of fun playing and running and climbing through and over this very dangerous, cement trench.

None of these pictures do any justice to how many people were actually there.

Ollie loved the dangerous cement trench! He crawled through it and jumped over it until....

...you guessed it, he cracked his head right on the jagged edge! This is the disgusting bloody burp cloth we used to mop up the blood. It was everywhere! Including dripping down both of our nice shirts that needed to be clean for 2 more pictures (the Oliver clan and our personal family pic, and yes, his crying only got worse - in my book, all of the pictures will be horrible).


Here's his gaping head wound. The shock and panic when it happened was almost unbearable for Ollie and I, with so many people telling me what I should do and trying to examine his head. When we finally got in our car to leave, he instantely settled down. We didn't take him to the hospital or anything, just left it all the rest of that day.

And it turns out, that he's fine and still as beautiful as ever!

Oh, and I can't forget my sweet Dexy, eventhough he wasn't injured. This is his new cheeser face that he makes whenever he realizes that I'm taking a picture. He kind of looks like a Klingon with his nose all scrunched up like that. He even says, "cheese!"

My beautiful, happy boys!!

We gathered at the clubhouse of my grandparents condo development a couple hours after the picture debaucle. Ollie was happier now, especially when he saw all the many, many cousins to play with. The kids loved all the fallen leaves! They would gather up huge armfuls, count to 3...


.....and throw leaves everywhere!



When it was eating time, Ollie refused to eat inside with the 60+ people, so I took a little table outside where my boys and Jude enjoyed their Thanksgiving dinner.

After the delicious meal, more leaf fun insued when uncle/cousin Derek (we have cousins as young or younger than our own children) started a leaf throwing chase!

Which culminated with him jumping into a tree to avoid the barrage of leaves coming his way! We then went home for a very short, very late nap, before returning for more massive extended family fun.
The families of each of my grandparents children (my mom and her 6 younger brothers and sisters) took a some time to do a little something for a semi-talent show. Ollie intently watched, for a while anyway. My mom's family now consists of 29 people, so my dad said that our talent was getting all 29 people in the same place for this shindig! We then sang a few of our little kids favorite songs (ie. ba ba black sheep and ABC's) before singing a few of the Kohler family favorites.

It was a long, long, long day! But still very fun and so good to get to see basically everyone! There were some families that we haven't seen for a very long time. I have soooooo many pictures from this weekend! We all had such a good time together. I'll have to post more later, becuase now I've been doing just this one, lengthy post for about as long as that Friday was. It was so fun to see family!

The 5 Hour Wait

I have been anxiously awaiting the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 for the whole month. Finally, the time arrived! My mom was the only person willing to go with me to the first ever, midnight showing. Brian isn't all that into it, so he sweetly agreed to stay home with the kids. However, it's a big deal so we had to go wait in line to make sure we could get a good seat (so missing the assigned seating of the Northern Utah theaters right about now). Brian had a very homework filled week, though. So my mom and I took the boys with us for the first 45 minutes or so. I had had meetings all day, therefore they didn't have a chance to go anywhere. It was good for all. They got out for a while to do something different, we got a place near the front of the line, and Brian got a little more time to finish some studying.They loved pretending to drive this car video game, getting drinks out of the drinking fountain, going under the line dividers, and just generally running around somewhere different.
But by the look on his face, the wanted posters made Dexy nervous. :)
Eventually they started getting bored and more people started showing up, as well as the fact that Ollie needed a diaper change, so I took the boys home for baths and bedtime with Daddy.

When I got back, my mom and I rigged up this portable DVD player and speakers and started watching the 5th movie with a really cool family that was right in front of us in line.

We watched the movie, talked with other fans, ate ice cream and waited and waited and waited.

At about 10 PM, they let us into one of the rooms to wait. This was much preferrable to sitting on the hard floor by the cold door. We got great seats, towards the back right in the middle. Then we ate popcorn and Twizzlers, drank so much soda (this came back to haunt me later when I needed to use the restroom, but refused to miss any of the movie and therefore had to hold it for over an hour), and played Catch Phrase with the same great family that was now in the row just in front of us. They were fun. Fianlly at 12:00 on the dot, one of the workers came in and asked us if we were ready to start the movie. We, of course, all replied with an exuberant "yes!" I don't care what the haters say. I have loved Harry Potter. All the books, all the movies, the people they cast, everything. And this movie was even more fabulous! It's so great having it split into 2 parts because they were actually able to follow the book fairly close and fill it with so much Harry Potter goodness! Loved it! I'm already going again in an hour! My sister-in-law, Cristina, really wanted to go, but has a 6 week old and didn't want to be the lady with the crying baby in the midnight showing full of crazed Potter fans. When she asked last night if we wanted to go agian so that she could have some friends, both my mom and I happily agreed!

Wizards in Training!

OK. Maybe this is a sign that I've been watching too much Harry Potter. Although in my view, that's not possible! And besides, these boys will need to learn to love it, because I'm obsessed! A couple of days ago, Dexy found a bag of chopsticks in one of our kitchen drawers, pulled them out, opened it himself and removed one chopstick. Then he began brandishing it back and forth saying, "hah, ba, ba, ugh." It looked so like he was trying to cast spells with it. It was perhaps the most joyous thing I've seen in a while! I was just sad that I didn't have my camera right there to take a video of him working his wand. Ollie then got 2 out and was working double magic. Dexy even took his to the dinner table where he used it in poitions making, mixing food into his drink, stiring, carefully concocting. I must say that it made my night!! Last night my mom and I sat in line for 5 hours waiting to see HP7 Part 1. It was worth it! I'll post the pictures from that soon. And no worries, no pics from the actual movie, just of my Mom and I waiting. I'm not illegal. :)

Ollie's Interesting Fashion Sense

This is me laughing my head off. Why? Well, just before Ollie took the camera from me and took this picture of me cracking up, I took these pictures of him....

He was naked and I guess decided that it was time for him to get dressed. So he went and got this pair of Brian's compression shorts out of....wait for it.....the dirty laundry and put them on!

These are the shorts that Brian wears under his basketball shorts when he's working out! Gross I know, but it was still so funny! I couldn't stop laughing. He pulled one leg up over his bottom from the bottom, so the waistband is what's hanging down by his knees. Brian and I decided that he was just trying to look fancy, seeing as it kind of looks like a prom dress.

He knows he looks fabulous! I love what he comes up with sometimes. I also love this new face of his. He's learned that it's time to put on the cheeser face when Mommy whips out the camera. We love our sill boy!

Just Like a 13 Year Old

To all you nay sayers, I know what you're thinking - "how ridiculous and annoying of her to put a Harry Potter background on her blog like some silly, obsessed 13 year old!" Is it silly? Yes. Do I care? No. If you think I'm ridiculous, then you've finally met the real me. I love Harry Potter, books and movies, and I'm so excited for part 1 of the 7th movie to come out in a couple of weeks. You'll all just have to deal with this until then - my HP obsession won't be satisified until I'm sitting in the theater at 12:01 on the 19th, watching the opening credits roll. And, anyone who would like join me, is welcome to! Try not to think about the fact that I'm 29. You can look at these pictures and imagine me younger if it helps.

A week or so ago, I actually full on did my hair and Ollie took these pictures of me. I figure that I look kind of young in them, so use them to just think of me as a crazy, fanatic teenager if you want. I, however, have come to terms with my ridiculousness. :)

Some Mornings

Some mornings, the boys wake up with crazy bed head. Like Dexy had this great bed head a couple of mornings ago. But that's usually as shocking as Dexy's apperance ever is. But Ollie, the same morning, some how managed to get his shirt in this position. He wasn't too happy when I tried to get him to let me take a picture of the front, but I just had to because I'm still not exactly sure how he did this!

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun Halloween this year. My mom was in Chicago for some teachers conference and my dad was staying with Marie's family, so we went up North to celebrate with Brian's family. We only got to go for a couple of days, but it was worth it! Brian got to golf in the Thanksgiving Point tournament with his dad and had the best round of golf in his life. While he was doing that, the boys and I went with Grandma to Ikea ("Oh, Itea. I love Itea!!" as Ollie puts it). That's where we found a wooden train set that Ollie spent the whole weekend playing with. After golf and Ikea, we carved pumpkins. Ollie wasn't too thrilled about putting his hand in the goo, but Dexy tried it. Then I helped Ollie do the carving. He did a great job and our happy pumpkin turned out brillant! After carving, it was costume time. Ollie has been talking about Halloween for 6 weeks, but when it came time to put on his costume he would have none of it! Flatly refusing, we let him go in his orange tee and camo pants. At least it was along the right lines and color schemes. Dexy, however, was very agreeable and very adorable in his pumpkin costume! He even held up his foot to showcase the matching booties when Brian went to take a picture. Then we had much visiting to do. We saw Brian's uncle Mark and family. That's where the boys got frosted ghost sugar cookies and Ollie started to decide that this whole Trick or Treating thing was actually a good thing after all. Then we saw Brian's Grandma Christensen and then headed off to Ben and Amanda's place. There's where we did our actual Trick or Treating (not a lot though, because it was unfortunately rainy, dark, and cold), had dinner, and watched Monster House. Funny story: at the last door that we knocked on, right across from Ben and Amanda's, Ollie had totally gotten into the groove and joy of Halloween. He knocked and called out, "Trick or Treat!" but no one answered. He knocked and called out a couple more times, but the door remained closed. Then he looked up at us (Ben, Amanda, Dexy and I), knocked one last desperate time and said, "I want tandy!" He definitely had it figured out by the end! We had a great Halloween "party." Then we went back to the Bowles' house to get the boys to bed, seeing as it was 10 PM by that point, but the boys were all hyped up and wanted to keep playing, plus they were covered in food, soda, and candy and therefore needed a bath. After they were cleaned and in jammies (Ollie refused to even wear the Halloween jammies, so Dexy got to), Ollie, of course, went right back to playing with his train and Dexy, of course, to throwing the ball for Haji. I had to drag them off to bed at quarter to 11! But they fell asleep quickly and were out!! Unfortunately, they woke up the next morning at 7:45!! Not only did they get little sleep, but Church wasn't even until 1 o'clock so we could have slept in. Oh, well. Too much fun going on, I guess. They wouldn't want to miss it. Happy Halloween!