Belated Christmas Break Post

I haven't done a post in a really long time! We had lots of fun up North playing with the Bowles clan for a couple of weeks and I have lots of pictures that I was going to post sooner. However when we got home, I found myself buried under a moutain of new toys to put away, a truck-bed full of our stuff that my parents brought down for us, and for some reason tons and tons of dirty laundry eventhough I had gotten most of the stuff from the trip clean before we came home. We have been spending many a day rearranging, organizine, washing, folding, and trying to find a place to fit everything. So anyway. Here's some more pictures from our fun up North. It was Grandma Bowles' idea to fold only one side of this table down and turn it into a slide. The boys thought it was spectacular that all of a sudden there was a slide! Cool Grandma, huh?
After sliding a few times, the took to running down it....one right after the other. We quickly had to implament turns to ensure safety. The had a ball playing on this thing!

We visited Great Grandma and Grandpa Bowles. Grandpa showed the boys his train. The were blown away by it!

Ollie especially loves trains right now, but they both like them and thought that a small, real moving train was the most amazing thing ever.

Great Grandma Bowles even showed them how to get down on the floor and take a closer look.

After all the excitement, Dexy had to chillax in this old fashioned rocking chair. I feel like this picture should be in black and white and in some really large, old world frame.

Then Great Grandpa Bowles took us to the near by parking lot where hundreds of birds wait for him to come and feed them everyday. And yes. That is a gianormous bucket of bird seed that he is carrying over to random parking lot pigeons. Odd? Of course......

.....but the boys had their brains wrinkled once again by something that they have never seen before. Again, they were fascinated. We love playing with the Bowles side of the family!

Then on the 30th of December, we went to the fabulous, new home of Brian's MTC companion, John Forsythe. Johny 5, as we call him, and his sweet wife Hailey and their little boy Landon, are good friends of ours. We had a great time. We did some catching up, ate delicious dinner, they boys had great fun playing with their long last friend (it's been a while since we've seen the 5s) and even got to take a bath together.

After bath time, they were all cozied and clean in their jammies, Hailey made them popcorn and got them all drinks and they got to watch some Shrek 4 and stay up late while we had some grown-up friend time, too. We had a sleep over, even! The boys did a great job sleeping there. I was so well pleased in them. And it was so nice for Brian and I to have real beds to sleep on, even 2 twin beds, rather than the bean bags and air mattress that we had been sleeping on for 2 weeks.

The next morning, we got up to Johny 5 and Hailey making us pancakes and hasbrowns. Then we bundled the kids up and attempted to take them sledding. There was a big hill really close to their house, so we just went there. And it was a good thing. It was sooooooooo cold!! Oliver basically hated the whole experience.

Dexy found a little joy in the sledding, but mostly just sat motionless and expressionless. I think he was trying to perserve his energy so that more could go to warming himself.
Our boys had more fun sliding down the cold, icey slide than sledding. Even that didn't last very long though. After only about 10 minutes, all the babies were totally finished with the freezing, winter wonderland experience.

Dexy and Landon let Johny 5 give them one last ride from the playground back up the hill to the car. Mental note to self: I took this sled down the hill once. It was wicked fast and totally awesome. Look into getting one. Johny 5 says that they are straight out of Canda. Probably going to have to start there to track one down.

After our fun in the cold, we all had to warm ourselves with cups of hot chocolate and snuggling on the couch while watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Landon even cuddled up to me. He's a fun, happy, friendly kid. I'm a fan! I'm so glad that we got to go spend some time with friends. We had a fabulous time! We had lots of fun up there. I still have to post the pictures of our New Years Day celebrations, but my lower back is killing me, so I'll have to do it another day. Hopefully I'll dig myself out of all the house work I've been doing and have time not only soon, but preferrably not at 1:25 am.

Christmas Fun!

We've been having such a good time with Brian's side of the family. This is very dark, but we all went up to Temple Square on Monday night for Family Home Evening, Christmas style.

The boys looked so cute bundled up in their winter clothes.



It was cold, but beautiful! While we were watching the nativity scene, people started taking pictures and Ollie freaked out, pulled his hat over his eyes and screamed, "I don't want the people to take pictures of me!! Don't take pictures of Ollie!" We all found it quite humorous, the poor kid.

This is kind of a fuzzy picture, but up at the Christus, the reflection of the statue was reflected in the window and with the Temple and the Christmas lights, it was just so beautiful. It was a great way to start out our Christmas holiday!

On Thursday, the boys and I went down to Eagle Mountain to my sister, Marie's house. My parents are up spending Christmas with her family, so they were there and then they invited us and Jeff's family. It was great to see some of my family eventhough it isn't our year for Christmas. My mom had brought up all the kid's nativity costumes and they loved it! Our little boys (Ollie, Dexy, and Bridger) were happy to play the parts of the animals.

The bigger kids did a great job acting out the story of the first Christmas. Jeff's wife, Melissa and I even got to get into the action (we ran out of kids and needed 2 more wisemen - or in our case, wisewomen).

Then we sat and sang a few Christmas carols and learned Grammy's song about pulling the covers over our heads with a flashlight.

The kids got their presents from Grammy and Granpy and they were - a book and a little flashlight that they could use to read their story in their beds under the covers! Just like in the song. It was such a cute idea!

We love books! We had fun and it was so nice to get to see so much family this year!

Back at the Bowles' house we played and enjoyed our Christmas Eve day. Grandma prepared a great Christmas Eve dinner that we all sat down and feasted upon. Well, except the boys. I think they were starting to understand and were getting too excited for Christmas to bother with such things as food.

Grandma Christensen and Brian's Uncle Ron joined us for Christmas Eve. After our delicious dinner, we read the scriptural accounts of Christ's birth. Ollie thought that he needed a paper to read, too, so Brian gave him and blank sheet and he just took off making up all sorts of crazy gibberish. He's so entertaining!

Then the present maddness began. Ron and Grandma C. brought gifts and they wanted to see the boys open them. Ron got them this fabulous toy called the Tri Bot, a Buzz Lightyear car that races off after you shake it, and a couple of packs of Hot Wheels. They were all big hits, if you couldn't tell by Dexy's reaction.

Grandma C. got them this. They loved it and have been wanting one for a long time! They have already had tons of fun racing all the little cars that they got down it.

They lastly got to open their traditional Christmas Eve jammies (it's always what we got on Christmas Eve in my family and I have insisted on carrying that tradition on). Dexy was even more excited about the letters on his jammies than I thought he'd be and the firetrucks and such were a great pick for Ollie, too.

And then it was Christmas morning! Now Brian's family has a tradition of waking up at 5 AM that they are insistant upon carrying on, even now that all their children are adults. I didn't want to wake the boys that early, so we left them sleeping (thankfully), but this year I finally decided that since I wasn't pregnant our breastfeeding all night long that I could get up with them at 5 AM, too. It wasn't too bad after all. Brian and I got a brilliant, red Wii console from Brian's parents! That's what Brian is triumphantly hoisting over his head! Then we all went back sleep until the boys got up.

Around 8:30 the boys woke up. A time that is much more to my liking!

They came out of their room a little confused at first, but once they saw the fun, new toys, they got the idea of Christmas morning real quickly! They ran right into their castle tent and started draging all their toys from last night in with them.

Then they saw their trikes and had to hop on and take them for a test drive.

I swear to you, Ollie WANTED the pink and purple one!

Then there was more presents to open. These great, big Cars pillows....

....a play city rug which is so fabulous because the boys bedroom has a wood floor......

.....more cars and trucks to drive on the fabulous rug, more train tracks to add to the sets we already have at home.....

.....a super, cool Lightning McQueen night light (I guess the boys' room's decor has been chosen for us this Christmas, but that's ok because we love Cars), 4 Gossie and Friends board books, and a big box of those freezer ice pops that Brian loves. Every gift was a score! The boys loved all of it and have been happily occupied all morning playing with their great new toys!

I brought the castle upstairs where everyone was obsessively playing the new Super Mario Brothers for the Wii that was included in our set (sweet!), so that the boys could play with all of us. Ollie dragged a bunch of his toys into his castle tent, came downstairs and got the rug, dragged it up there too, and then sat in his tent for a good hour just contently playing. A good investment, I'd say! Thanks to everyone who got them such good presents and helped make this Christmas great! It was looking like it was going to be pretty lame from our end, but so many family members helped to make sure that the boys got some good stuff. Thank you!!!

Merry Christmas!!!

We are moments away from heading up North to spend 2 weeks of joyous Christmas celebration with Brian's family. I just wanted to put our cute Christmas "letter" as our header, in case I don't get them mailed out to people (which, let's just be honest, is probably what's going to happen). We hope you all have a very merry Christmas!

Recent Dexy-isms

Dexy is really starting to get into all things academic - writing, coloring, letters, shapes, drawing pictures, etc. He loves getting to use the markers like a big boy.
He is such a puppy, especially when he eats. He'll stick his face down into his bowl to get his food, hang pieces of food from his teeth and shake his head back and forth, make a huge mess, and lick the table when he's finished.

Dexy has decided that it's time for him to have his own choice of clothing. Usually I can keep it within the realm of normal, but sometimes not. Like this day, he wouldn't hear of wearing anything other than this monkey romper eventhough it was like 30 degrees outside. So, then I made him choose some BabyLegs and of course, argyles. And then more stripes on the sweater. My brother told me he looked like a court jester! I actually found it quite adorable!

Here's more of my newly, academic Dexter. At the park, while we drive, wherever, he likes to find letters and make their sounds. He has kind of a hard time talking for some reason, so he's not able to say the letter names, but he can say most of their sounds and recognizes all 26 letters! My kids are awesome!

And again, here's Dexy enjoying his newly found love of learning. He will always bring the magnetic doodle board over to me and ask me to write certain letters or draw pictures of animals (he can make all the animal sounds too, even if he can't say their names). Then he'll take the pen from me and do some of his own writing. Once he even wrote an actual 'p'! He's just getting soooo big, not only physically (he's huge) but mentally as well! Dexy is growing up so much. I do need to teach him sign language, though, because he's having a lot of frustration with communication. We love his (generally) pleasant nature, his mischevious dimpled smile, and his willingness to give of his love with big hugs and cuddles!

Recent Ollie-isms

He loves, loves, loves to help me cook. If he sees me working with any manner of food, he drags over a chair, (usually a rather small one) climbs up on it, and asks, "Now we neeeed...?"
He wants lotion in his hair. I put lotion on his face every night after baths and rub it up into his hair a little bit trying to get all of his forhead, so maybe that has something to do with it. Brian also randomly uses lotion in his own hair rather than gel or mouse, but I didn't think that Ollie saw Brian doing his hair all that much. Perhaps I was wrong.

Ollie has also decided that he needs to eat figure foods, such as popcorn (like in this pic) and crackers, with a spoon. I don't know where he picks these things up.

He's taken to sleeping on the floor. While trying to wind down and get ready for sleep, Dexy throws all of his blankets and stuffed animals onto the floor. Ollie use to scream at him, "Dexy! Don't throw friends!" I guess that he's decided if he can't beat him, he should join him. So he started throwing all of his soft things onto the floor, too. Maybe all that cozy stuff made the floor look more inviting than his bed or maybe he just needs more sleeping space. I've decided that we'll try a bigger bed and see what happens.

Oliver has become quite the architect. I showed him once how to use his Mega Blocks to build a fort and now he wants to build them all the time. He'll ask me, "Mommy, wanna build a fot?" He still needs a little help getting the foundation, but once I've gotten it started, he'll take off building. When he's done he'll shout, "Look what I build!" I think he picked that saying up from his cousin, Ben Matthews, while they were here over Thanksgiving because the first few times he said it he followed it by saying, "that's what Ben says." He's such a funny boy! We love his talkative nature, his concern over rule breaking, and his (all-be-it dangerous) athleticism.

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!