Christmas 2011

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 Christmas started early at our house this year. Since we were going to be in Denver for Christmas and wanted to minimize our packing, we had "Christmas morning" at our house the week before Christmas. The night before we had cheezy potato soup for dinner, drank eggnog, and Will slept in his santa suit. Then, the next morning we opened stockings, had strawberry banana crepes, read books, and played with toys all day! We very quickly forgot it wasn't actually Christmas, but were really excited that we got to do it all again the next week.

Denver was a ton of fun. We spent a lot of time with family!

 Will received flying lessons from Uncle Scott. Every time he heard that helicopter fire up he was running to go find it! Unfortunately, even when it was nap time.

 He also received piano lessons from Aunt Crystal. He is pretty good with the piano, plays it rather than bangs on it. He did suffer a battle wound with the cover though... now a month later he still has a black fingernail! Oh well it'll grow out eventually if not I guess it's a cool battle wound?

 Played with cousin Maddie & Caleb. We were able to be there for Maddie's birthday. I took pictures, but it was on my sister's camera and I still have to get copies from her.

 I ran out to the car to get my camera so Will could have a picture with the santa cow, but he wanted nothing to do with him. He just wanted to go play some more. oh well.

We also went to the Denver Zoo lights which Will absolutely love! He especially loved the spiders. I think that has something to do with a certain itsy bitsy spider. Once again though I'll have to get pictures from Tiff because I was too cold, and busy carrying Will to take my own.

Thanksgiving 2011

I found this hidden in my drafts from 2011, but I'm posting it now to see it Grandma Rich now gets these emails :)

For Thanksgiving we packed up the car and headed to Houston. It was so nice to be able to go see family and "get away" without having to spend a whole day traveling! We had an amazing traditional family dinner with almost all of Danny's family. I brought rolls and tried my hand at making a bread cornucopia. It turned out better than I could have ever hoped. It was fun to have the time to make something extra special since I didn't have to put the energy into making everything else. :)

We then went to the park and Will showed off his sliding skills. He is totally fearless and must go down the tallest slide. Even after falling on his face he gets up and runs to do it again!

Will's a makeup artist

I came upstairs the other day and Will was covered in tabs. He then started to stick them to me as well. It was a lot of fun! Here we are in our "war" paint. 

 Silly Faces

"Oh man mom, are we done yet?"

Where's Will?

 Where's Will?

 I'll give you a hint

 Peek-a-boo

This is Will's favorite thing right now. He'll be playing in the kitchen with me, and I'll look around as he's vanished. (He normally closes both doors) Then, I hear him clearing his throat trying to get my attention. When I say "Where did Will go?" he pops out. He'll play in the cupboards forever, super cute!

Will is out!

 My house is very child-proof, we have the child swirly knobs on all the doors, all the chemicals in magnetic locking cabinets, a security bar on the backdoor, all precious books on the top shelf, ect. However, Will is ALWAYS one step ahead of me! This day I was having a R.S. meeting at my house when one of the sisters looks in the kitchen and says, "oh my, I think it's your son's fault". I look and her son (who is the same age as Will) and Will have opened the freezer and are grabbing handfuls of flour and eating them. Thus, they are both covered in flour, so is my freezer and my floor and yes I have zero doubt that it was my son's fault. Well, whats done is done so I let them sit and play with it until the end of our meeting. Then, I fix Will lunch and sit down to write a couple follow up emails from my meeting. When I finish I notice it's quiet, like really quiet. That's not really a good thing in my house, but Will is all buckled up in his seat so he can't be getting into too much trouble. I look over and find this. This is the first time Will has ever fallen asleep at the table and he is completely out! I later found out that his flour friend didn't even make it home before he fell asleep. Let me just say it was magical, I'm thinking of renting this kid for my daily tire Will out use :)

On another note Will is officially out of his crib. It was a little bit of an adjustment getting him to sleep on his "big boy" mattress on the floor, but once we finally but a gate up on his door it's worked pretty well. We tried just taking him back to bed every time he got up and skip the gate, but after 3+ hours of this he won and I lost so the gate went up the next day. One more step to big boyhood while we prepare to have another little one. I wish I could potty train him so that I didn't get to have 2 kids in diapers, but he's not showing any interest in that at all yet so it'll wait. 

On another note taking this picture woke the sleeping giant and nap time was officially cancelled for the remainder of the day. I would not recommend it.

Rise & Shout the Cougars are out in Dallas

Danny's parents invited us out to the BYU vs TCU football game in Dallas. We couldn't turn down a chance to feel like old alums and hang out with family so Danny took a 1/2 day of vacation and we headed down.. well I guess up to Dallas. We decided to board Sadie at the vet after our last not so successful attempt at letting her camp out in the backyard. 

(In the course of 2 hrs. she managed to move a cinderblock, a 2x4, pull the wire cattle fence we had stapled to the bottom of our fence off with her teeth, and dig under our fence to get out. We now affectionately call her Houdini dog!)

Anyways, it was funny though because Sadie really likes our current vet for some reason. She has never really done well being boarded, she always comes back skinny with marks on her nose from rubbing against the cage. Except, this vet for some reason she loves! Maybe the have a good view from the window or their treats taste better we're not quite sure. Anyways, we pull up to the vet and Sadie is jumping to get out she's so excited. So I fill out all the paperwork at they take her back, that's when I look at Will. I seriously think he is going to cry. He has a look of total udder betrayal on his face. He took the whole leaving Sadie at the vet thing incredibly hard poor little guy, she's his best friend.

 The puppy was quickly forgotten by the time we got to Dallas though. Will found his seat and settled in next to Uncle Scott to watch the game.

  Pre-game 

 Will had a lot of fun with Grandma and Grandpa this weekend. He really loved walking back and forth and making everyone adjust so that he could fit through :) I was pleasantly surprised that Will lasted through the entire game in good spirits. The people around us kept asking if he was just a happy kid and if he ever got upset.... um, they should have seen him at 4am the next morning that would have cleared things up :)

After private tutoring from Grandma and Aunt Crystal, Will finally figured out which team to cheer for, too bad it was a little too late the cougars finished the game with a loss. :( Oh well, we got what we came for... a fantastic weekend with some of our favorite people. Thanks for such a great weekend!

Our Almost Not so Halloween & Adventure of super baby

 We were just sitting down to our dinner of slimy worm soup (french onion) and witch fingers (breadsticks) when the alert came in.

 

There was trouble so Super Baby ackem... sorry Boy stepped up to action.

He arrived at the scene of the crime and scouted for evidence. This looks like the work of the evil Bizzaro.

 Superboy began his search

 Of course he encountered a few obstacles in his path. That he had to move out of the way before continuing. Of course they were of little consequence because he is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Thus, moving a house was no big deal... really.

 

 Dodging speeding bullets

 

Then at last Superbaby spotted Bizzaro's secret lair. 

 

 He cautiously scoped out the scene.

 Found his opportunity

 And went for it!

 But Bizzaro was quick and escaped and so the chase continued.

 But Superboy discovered a plan that would shut him down for good. 

 Now the world is once again safe

 

 And Superboy went home with the spoils

We weren't going to do anything for Halloween this year since we missed all of the parties and trunk-or-treats while we were in Dallas. I figured I would concentrate my creative efforts on finishing his room and working on Christmas projects. But when Halloween rolled around I felt bad that Will would miss out. So I found this superman outfit in a box of clothes our neighbor gave us, made the cape while making dinner, and voila we were ready for Halloween. Not my usual level of creativity but it worked. We let Will trick-or-treat our street and he had an absolute blast! It took about 1/2 the street for him to figure the whole thing out but once he did he was quite good at it. 

Blue + Yellow = Green

Our house is fairly childproof, but every once in awhile Will catches us in a slip up. This just happens to be the forgotten bottle of food coloring. Oh well at least we can chalk it up to an art lesson right? I'm just glad we found him on the tile and not the carpet.

Movies in the Park

 Our Parks and Rec department sponsor movies in the park during the fall and spring. It's a lot of fun to bring our blanket and a picnic dinner and watch a free movie. Will has yet to make it through the whole movie, but we're working on it.

Will really likes being outside until it gets past his bed time.

Can you believe it rain!

We've had a horrific drought this year that has threatened to kill everything including all of the native trees in our area. The lakes are all closed because they are too low for the boat ramps, and the lakeside restaurants are advertising their view of "sometime islands". Needless to say, when it started to rain we all had to go outside to enjoy.

Do you want to ship something to me?

Danny's parents shipped some crystal to our house because they weren't sure where they would be when it arrived, moving and all. When it arrived I carefully put it in our guest bedroom (aka stuff room) so that it would be safe. Well in the meantime Will learned how to open doors.

I found out that he had this new found skill when I found him like this. I think the "with care" adds a nice irony to this picture. We later went and bought child door locks. Btw they have opened this box and everything is fine, that's the only reason it's funny to share this picture. (Otherwise, I might have been tempted to delete it and blame DHL :)