Pre-Christmas Catch-up!

Ok, I'm going to keep this a bit brief because I'm trying to do some catch up and there is a lot to cover.  Also, the pictures are really the best part, so we'll focus there on this post!  In the lead up to Christmas we saw Santa 3 times!!  I think there was just once where the girls sat on his lap together, or maybe they are in the last post and I'm just full of it.  Either way, here they are at my work Christmas party, and Winry was not very sure of Santa and definitely spent a little time crying!

Over these two weeks we also had Baby Lyla over again!  Monica used to watch her a year ago, but stopped when Winry was born.  Well, they needed a sitter for a day, and everyone had so much fun!!  Brooke was so excited to see Lyla again!

Winry continues to play with the Christmas tree.  We moved most things out of her reach.  About the only "interesting" thing left is the beads on the tree, so eat she did.

Monica had to go to the mall one day to pick up an online order, and while they were there they saw that Santa was there and there was no line!!  So just a quick stop in to say hi.  Brooke was excited and jumped right up on Santa's lap, but Eden was more hesitant.  She was okay talking to Santa if she could hold Brooke's hand!

Brooke had a winter showcase at dance class on the 13th!  All the parents got to sit in a full class for the kids.  It was a lot of fun for everyone, and we even got to see Brooke perform her Suzy Snowflake dance!!

Everyone had a blast, especially Winry!  She just loved it, and even did some dancing on the ground!

At the end of the class all the kids stood together for a group picture!

And I brought roses for Brooke because I just knew her performance would warrant some!

Winry has started to clap over the last two weeks, though she does it with her own unique style.

Also, as mentioned, on the 13th was also my work Christmas party.  We had a lot of fun seeing Santa and having a yummy dinner and doing arts and crafts.

Brooke continues to do check ups and take care of us.  She also started being a dentist too. Here she is all ready to check my teeth.

Brooke also helped us clean the bathrooms.  We told her if she cleaned the bathrooms she could watch a show.  I'm not sure she had more fun cleaning or watching her show, but either way she loved both!

We grabbed a family picture after church a few Sundays ago (the 16th I believe).  We like to get a picture in front of the Christmas tree each year.

All of these Christmas preparations have really been tiring Jelly out!  Also, we've been gone for a week and miss her so!!  But we hear she's doing great, so that's good.

As Winry continues to pull herself up and walk along objects she continues to find new fun things.  She's recently found she can pull herself up to the window next to the front door, and she loves to look out the window.  She's even been looking out the door watching for me when I came home before.

We headed out for Utah and Christmas on the 22nd.  The airport was of course decorated, but they also had these reindeer "bushes" sitting on benches and giant ornaments nearby.  You can see the ornament a little on the left of the picture.  It took a little convincing to get Brooke to sit down for a picture, but after she loved each and every reindeer she saw!

Here Brooke is watching our plane while we waited to board.  I asked her if I could take a picture, and she said no, and when she realized I took the pictures anyway she got upset at me...  Oh 3 year olds...

Our plane was small and just had 2 seats on each side of the isle.  That means we had to be split across the isle, and of course the side where we had 2 seats was also the side with extra oxygen masks for infant in arms, so I got to watch both kids on the flight while Monica took a nap, got a massage, etc.  You know, all those typical airplane coach things.

While we were flying, Brooke pulled up her shirt.  I asked her why and she said her tummy needed some air.  I'm glad we can still solve the problems of today's youth.

Of course getting off that flight put us in Utah.  We headed to my parents house to start things off.  On Sunday after church we made gingerbread houses.  Someone found a bunch of fun ones, and Brooke picked to do the (Super Mario) Princess Castle!!  Here it is all decorated!  She had a lot of fun putting it together.

That night we headed to Niki's house for dinner.  My sisters and parents all do a family dinner each week.  Winry quickly found the blinds, because that's what she loves, and had a blast!!  Just like home!

A master honing her craft.

And speaking of masters honing, here's Brooke playing the Wii for the very first time.  She's probably supposed to be holding the controller like that up over her head... :)

And Oriah got this wonderful picture of Winry!!!

Well, that doesn't actually quite catch everyone up, but I'm planning to write another post within the next few days (preferably before the new year).  I'll put all of the Christmas details in there, I just thought that'd be way to much to combine into this post.  Anyway, hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Meeting Santa and his Reindeer!!

Hello everyone!  I hope you all are doing great!  This was a pretty crazy week for us, whole lot of stuff going on almost every night!  But we had a lot of fun and we made it through!  It was all capped off with a Saturday that was literally scheduled from the moment I woke up until I went to bed!  Hopefully this upcoming week can be a little more relaxed.

One part of yesterday was our ward Christmas party where Winry got to meet Santa for the very first time!  She was very... concerned.  She didn't cry though, so she did better than Brooke did her first time.  Brooke was there with her though, so that probably helped.  Brooke's Christmas list for Santa was "a tea party, and a pink reindeer!"  And Santa gave her a candy cane!  She was very excited!

On Monday I was sick so I took a day at home.  Nothing too interesting happened, though Brooke and I did watch a Christmas show.  We watched Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas, which was one of my favorites from when I was a kid.

Oh my goodness do we have so many videos this week.  I may have stuck these between pictures that end up putting them on the wrong day, but none of them are really related to anything else.  Just some great glimpses into our lives right now.  Winry has started learning to wave!  I think she's gotten slightly confused though, because now she waves bye when she wants more to eat!

Um... this next one I don't know the story because I was at work.  But... Brooke is a bag?  I'm not sure there's anything I can say to enhance that.

On Tuesday night the young men were doing a game night, so I got invited back to mutual to supply the games.  It was fun to be back with the kids, and everyone had a great time playing!  I didn't bring anything that could play 13, so half played Tsuro, and half played King of Tokyo.

On Wednesday night I had a game night with some of my friends in the ward and we finally finished our legacy game we were playing, Charterstone.  A legacy game is a game you play several times, and each time to play you make changes to the board/cards/etc that affect the game forever after.  We've been playing this game for about 8 months and finally fnished!  Better yet, I won!!  So then everyone had to call me King (but they didn't... :( ).

Winry continues to crawl around and get into everything.  If she isn't lifting up the air vents and trying to get in there she's playing with the tree.  This past week she learned if you shake it long enough something will fall off...  Sigh, that little trouble maker!  She makes a good tag team partner for Jelly though.

Winry's other favorite game is to pull the curtain over her face.  She's really not in that for the peek a boo.  We'll just be cooking or washing dishes or something and look over and there's Winry next to the door with the curtain over her head!  What a crazy!

Also, this past week Monica made a double batch of caramels!!  I'll let her add her own comments if she'd like to say more...(I don't know what went wrong! I'm going to try again this week :(  )

Winry has lately started to love looking at us through her plate once she finishes eating!  In other news she's also started doing a great job feeding herself, and prefers to feed herself now.  She'll even get mad at us sometimes if we try to give her food.  She's growing up so much right now!!

Also, Winry has started to stand and walk along objects.  And whenever Winry does a new thing or something she's just learning she gets so incredibly happy!  We are so blessed to have such cute and wonderful kids!!  Also, I am so glad they are such great friends.  Winry will follow Brooke all around the house, and Brooke loves to get down and crawl to and around Winry, which makes them both laugh!  I hope they continue to best friends for a long time to come.

Saturday was crazy!  So first off Winry woke up at like 4 in the morning.  I stayed up with her and Monica put her down for her first nap at about 6:30 when Brooke woke up.  I fell back asleep on the couch and woke up at 8 just in time to get ready and go help with a move.  After I got back from the move Monica went to yoga at the rec center, and I got the kids ready so we could all meet her there after to go swimming!  I think this is the best picture of us there.

Here's another one of Winry since she was a little cut out of the last one.  Winry loves the water.  She had so much fun splashing, and loved when we swam her around in the lazy river!  Brooke also had a blast wearing her floaties and going down the slide.  She also swam around the lazy river mostly on her own!  It was great family time.

Shortly after we got home, the missionaries came by for our weekly meeting, and then after they left I had to bustle down to the treadmill to get a run in.  I cut the run a little short so that Brooke and I could get my hair cut and have time to go see some reindeer before the ward Christmas party!  An outdoors store nearby had a special event with reindeer on Saturday.  Brooke loved it!!  She got to see "two Svens, and they were tired from traveling from the north pole!"

Meanwhile at home Winry got her bowl of yogurt and went to town while Monica was trying to do a few dishes.  One step forward, one messy child back...

At the Christmas party the kids got to see Santa and have dinner.  We didn't stay too long because that night was also my work Christmas party.  Once the kids had eaten, we headed back home to put them to bed and Monica went and got our babysitter.  My work Christmas party was up at the Bronco's stadium again this year.  The party was a lot of fun, and they had their photo booths again.  The first picture we took was in a weird mode and was actually a short video, and we didn't know and thought it would be a picture, so I'm not going to include our normal one because we're both just standing there smiling, moving  a little... Instead you get this one!!

Winry seems like she's discovering her tongue!  She's just sticking it out all the time and waggling it around.  It's really cute.  We think it may be related to getting another tooth, but I guess we'll have to wait a week or two to find out.

Today I started working on memorizing the Living Christ.  I read it a few times recently and it just really stuck with me.  Our stake president challenged us to memorize it a while back, so I got started today.  I'm not far yet, and not actually sure if I remember everything I "memorized" this morning, but I definitely felt good working on it.  I encourage everyone to read the Living Christ.  It is an amazing testimony of Jesus Christ, of His divinity, and of His atoning sacrifice.  I am so grateful for my Savior.  I m grateful that I can repent, change, and work harder every day.  I am grateful for the hope that the Atonement brings to our lives.  I love our Savior.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Trim up the tree!

Howdy!  Hope all is going well out there.  I"m not feeling good, so I'm passing the baton to Monica.  Here she is!

On Monday we got our Christmas tree! Brooke was soooo excited to decorate it. In fact, while decorating she came up with her own song that went a little something like this, "We love when we do, we love when we do, we love when we decorate our Christmas tree!!!" She told us she was going to stay up all night decorating....luckily she didn't actually.

Thursday morning we got in the car at 9:27 to leave for Brooke's dance class that started at 9:30... and the car battery was dead. Turns out the trunk was open all night so there was a light on it that drained the battery. I tried to jump it, but I couldn't get it to start. So Alex came and saved the day and got the car started!

So Brooke made it to dance for the last 15 minutes still. And good thing she did because she got to try on her recital outfit! Her recital isn't until June, but their outfits came in this week. Isn't she just the cutest!? She is LOVING her dance class. She always comes home and turns on the songs they listen to in class on the echo and dances to them!

After Alex saved the day for us, he went back to work and got to meet an astronaut!! He said it was really cool..but I'll let him tell you more about it next week if he wants to.

 This little stinker below has been getting into EVERYTHING. She's pulling herself up to stand all the time now, which just gives her a much larger range of items to get into. But she's so happy about pulling all the books off the shelf!

Alex backed this game on kickstarter called Fireball Island. And it came this week. And we played it for date night and it was fun! He would probably have a lot more to say about it....but I'm writing this not him, so I'd say that's sufficient :)

 Every year after we get our Christmas tree, I make a wreath for our front door out of the branches we trim off the bottom of the tree. So I was working on it, and Jelly was really excited about the branches. She kept laying on them...and attacking them...you know, all the usual cat things.
Not pictured, Winry was also really excited about the branches. In fact I walked away for a minute, then came back and found a fistful of sticks in her hand and pine needles sticking out of her mouth.... So we're good parents. 

Note from Alex: no pine needles in the diaper yet though!

 Here's some more of Winry standing up and getting into everything!

Brooke went to her friend Libby's birthday party on Saturday and got some tattoos in her party favor bag and she was super excited about them! And of course made us put them on ASAP! This one's a chameleon and the other arm is a unicorn.

And we got all our Christmas lights up yesterday! It's kind of been a week long effort, but I think we're all done now! We added in some candy canes and a light up reindeer this year and Brooke is sooo excited about them (Alex note: Like, she shows me a surprise every morning, and it's the reindeer and candy canes!)! And if you look close, you can see my wreath on the door :)

 We got out the keyboard this week and Brooke and Winry have had a lot of fun playing with it! Winry has also started dancing a lot lately and it's so cute! She'll be crawling around and then just start feeling the beat and stop and dance. Or she'll start playing on the keyboard and dance along with it, like in this video!

A few years ago Alex wanted to get into bread making so I got him a book about making bread and some supplies to do it. He used them for a little while, but then life got busy and he never got too deep into it. Well, this past week we rediscovered the book and he decided to give it a shot again! So yesterday he started some bagels and they were finished just in time for breakfast this morning! And they were SO good! So he's going to keep making bagels over the next few weeks and try to perfect them. This is a hobby I sure won't complain about!

I had stake choir practice after church today, so Alex and Brooke made us enchiladas for dinner! She was wearing my onion goggles so the onion wouldn't make her cry! And she helped put the filling in! She always wants to help cook these days, and she's actually getting pretty good at helping!

And to wrap things up, Brooke decided it was my birthday and put party hats on everyone! And who doesn't love a baby in a party hat?

Today in our fast and testimony meeting we talked a lot about the temple and it just made me think about all the blessings the temple has brought to my life and how blessed I am to have one close by and to be sealed to my family! I'm so grateful for the temple!

I hope you all enjoyed the blog this week even though I was a guest author! Thanks for reading about our crazy lives! Hope everyone has a great week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Howdy all!  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We had a wonderful time here, and we even started our morning off with a 5k!  We took both the kids with us, and this was Winry's first run without crying!  I guess feeding her right before we started probably helped!  It was a cold morning, but we bundled up the kids and everyone had a wonderful time, and we ran the whole way!  It was a little rough at times as this is the biggest race of the year, and they funneled us onto a sidewalk, which made passing people quite bumpy in the grass, but we all made it through.

I wasn't home for this, but Monica may add some details when she reads through this.  But I would guess that in this video Brooke is being a penguin!  I know Brooke will stick things in between her legs and waddle walk like a penguin with an egg, so that's my guess, but the dress definitely enhances things!

Also, Brooke has been loving her bike.  We've gone for rides a few times, and she's still very cautious and hasn't tried to take both feet of the ground, but she loves it and has a great time every time we go!

On Wednesday I went to grab the last of our Thanksgiving supplies, and as you'd guess it was nuts at the store.  There were super longs lines at all the checkouts... except for the self checkout.  I'm not sure why people fear this so much, but there was literally an open register to walk up and use while all the other lines were at least 6 people long...  I won't complain though, it was great to get out quick.

I spent most of the day Wednesday playing with the kids.  We were in the back yard a lot doing bubbles, popping them with a stick, and swinging.  Winry joined Brooke and me out there, and Brooke just loves to swing Winry.  Winry really loves when Brooke swings her too!  We had a whole bunch of fun all day long!

Winry has also started to pull herself up to standing!  She does this mostly on the couches, and I know you cant see her legs, but this picture was too cute to not be the example.  She is very different than Brooke, and she's definitely much more of a risk taker.

Thursday morning as mentioned we ran the Parker 5k!  It was a lot of fun, and we got these cool... things.  I don't know what they're called, but they were nice for keeping our faces warm, and they're also nice for running on dusty roads too!

We had a Friends-giving and had a bunch of other people who were staying in town over to our house.  In total we had 18 people, and it was pretty crazy, but a ton of fun!  I tried to get a panorama with everyone, but I apparently turned my phone too fast and it's a little blurry... Oh well, it is what it is.  Thanks everyone who came over, and thanks for the food you brought!  I think everyone had a great time, and the food was wonderful!

Also, Winry has started drinking from a cup recently.  I don't know if Thursday was actually the first time (it wasn't), but it's when I got a video.  She'll just drink and drink and drink and then suddenly come off and take super deep breaths!  I think it's so cute!!

Friday we headed out for some black Friday shopping.  We just went to Target, and we found some great hats right inside the door!  Winry really wanted it over her whole face so she could look like the Grinch.

Brooke was satisfied wearing her hat normally, and sure loves Rudolph!

Shopping was fine, nothing special or amazing.  I did get my shopping done for sub for Santa, so now I just need to see if work does it again this year!

Friday night was also the tree lighting downtown!  We went last year and really liked it, so we had to go again this year.  While we were there Brooke spied a Santa cutout to take a picture in, and then she made us get pictures in it too!  I'm glad she saw it.

The lights were very pretty, but I unfortunately didn't get any pictures of them.  Maybe we'll go back sometime so we can get some pictures.  The lights were very similar to last year, so if you look at those pictures it was probably about the same.  Oh, there was also Olaf and Elsa there, but the guy that was Olaf was like... 7 feet tall, so Brooke didn't want to go by them because he was too tall and scary...

This past week I've been reading in Alma when Ammon and his brothers/friends go on their mission to the Lamanites.  What has really stuck out to me was the righteousness of the Lamanites after they were converted.  As new converts to the Gospel it is easy to see that they were examples to all others.  They were true followers and disciples of Christ.  As I thought about their example I definitely spent time pondering how I could be more like them, and thinking about where their deep conversion came from.  I would encourage everyone to read about them (Alma ~20s).  I know that as we align our wills with God's, and strive to learn more about Him and follow his commandments that we will be able to have greater peace in this life.  Our doubts and troubles can be swallowed up in our joy in Christ, and our knowledge that through Him all things are possible.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.