Birthday Boy

Our little Tommy had a birthday this week! We had a pretty chill day.

Damon always helps me bake, so he licks the beaters or spatulas. Since it was Tommy's special day, I let him have the spatula and boy did he love it!!

The boys put on their capes and flew around the living room.

Tommy loves cows, so we made him a cow cake and cow cupcakes. They didn't quite turn out, but he was excited about them.

Our sweet little birthday boy waiting to open his presents.

Damon kept wanting to "help" Tommy with his presents. He would not budge when we told him we needed a picture of only Tommy with his gifts.

Tommy got a tunnel and was really cute playing in it.

Damon was worried that Tommy wouldn't know how to blow out his candles. Well, from the second the candles were lit, Tommy was trying to blow them out.


This picture is for Uncle Quinny...the boys love their new birthday shirts. So perfect.


Some of the things Tommy is doing/saying:
-talking up a storm...full sentences
-ultra intense temper tantrums
-favorite saying: oh wats a rhonie (rats a rhonie)
-super polite
-instigating wrestling/tackling Damon
-apologizing when Damon is the one needing to apologize
-singing Jingle Bells and "Dasher" (Rudolph)
-playing with Little People and other toys...pretend play
-won't sit in his chair normally to eat...sits on the edge of his booster or is in and out of his chair throughout meal time
-loves to peel his own oranges (well, clemintines) and won't let anyone help even a little.
-loves watching "shows" or "moo-hies"
-loves Little Einsteins the last couple weeks
-loved playing with our nativity sets this Christmas

We just love this little boy!

Merry Christmas 2010

We had fun getting ready for Christmas this week. Finishing up with Christmas shopping and finally doing a project. My friend sent me a link to make these nativity figures using toilet paper tubes. Damon has been into coloring carefully lately, so he wanted each one perfect and often made me color for him. Tommy made the donkey and was pretty proud of it.


We were invited over to a friend's house for Christmas Eve dinner. It was good food and always fun with kids. We played a game from the show Minute to Win It...put a cookie on your forehead and get it to your mouth only using facial movements...pretty funny! We also did a white elephant gift exchange...always a good time. On our way home, we drove around to look at Christmas lights, then got milk and cookies ready for Santa. The boys were really excited about Santa coming!

The boys woke up around 6 or so, and sat in bed with me watching a little of Muppet Christmas Carol while Barrett got the breakfast casserole ready. When it was in the oven, we went down to look at what Santa brought. Santa didn't think we needed any really big items this year...so we each got a few smaller gifts that were awesome. Then we looked in our stockings. Tommy was hilarous all day. He loved opening his gifts and putting them to use right away. He got animal crackers in his stocking and started chowing down...as well as his chocolate marshmallow Santa. Most of my pictures were of Tommy playing with the toy he just opened. It was really cute. Damon loved opening his presents, but wanted a big pile before he played with anything.








Barrett has a tradition of each person taking pictures with all their Christmas loot. Instead of rallying the troops for their photo op, we took a picture of all the opened presents...Damon hopped in for a pose.

Tommy put on his Daddy's new snow boots and was walking around...I don't know how he could lift those heavy things, but he did!

We enjoyed playing with all our new stuff and talking with family on the phone and skype. We went over to a friend's house for a turkey dinner and other delicious food. It was a fun time, but like always, we needed to have left sooner...2 crazy animal boys were rushed home and put straight to bed with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads:)

Rock Star and Snow

I told you Damon is hilarious when he "thinks" he's playing the guitar. Kim, you'll notice he's wearing snow boots (on the wrong feet) with shorts (that he found buried in his closet), with a hat. So trendy, I know. And yes, we're listening to a Christmas song from Hansen (how long did those brothers produce songs...3 months?) Mmmm Bop!


It snowed this week. Damon was dying to wear his new boots in the snow, so we went out while Tommy was napping. He even convinced me to do a snow angel too.


These are from Friday in the snow. We got back from Sam's Club and I ran inside and brought the boys boots out to them so they could play in the snow while I unloaded the car. Tommy got an early Christmas present (snow boots from my mom). They had fun, but it didn't last long...isn't that how it goes?


I made these mint brownies for our Christmas party at church a few weeks ago. I was making them for Barrett to take to Mutual, but the snow caused it to get cancelled, so I finished them up for Barret to take to his work party the next day. I'm a total fan of making brownies in mini muffin tins now. They were pretty delicious. I just made a brownie mix then used a cookie scoop to put them in mini muffin tins. Cooked them about 20 minutes, then waited for them to cool. I had some leftover frosting in the fridge, added food coloring and a little peppermint extract. I used my cake decorating tools and squirted the frosting on them and added crushed candy cane. They are cute and yummy!

December

We've already had a super busy December. The first weekend we had a full Saturday with Christmas shopping, cleaning the church, and picking out a Christmas tree. That night I had to go buy a tree stand and lights. The tree trunk is really small, so not even 24 hours after putting it up, it fell over. We also had to take all the candy canes off because we discovered Tommy can open them and devour them.

Damon had a fun time coloring ornaments the following Sunday.

One day I helped Damon with his list for Santa. I tried to tell him that we should wait until after his birthday...he got a couple things for his birthday, so he needs a new list for Santa.

My friend and I have the same birthday, so Damon made her a picture. He spent a lot of time on it and was very careful in his sticker placement and drawings.

I start our string of birthdays in December. I took hot chocolate and danishes to seminary in the morning. The girls in my class gave me a present and surprised me by running down the stairs saying Happy Birthday. Then, Barrett got me my egg McMuffin that I had been craving for 2 or 3 weeks! It was just another normal "mom" day. We went out to dinner and the boys were pretty good...Damon colored his menu and Tommy was cracking us up saying his drink was delicious and giving us thumbs up after every bite. After dinner we went to Cold Stone to buy my cake and Barrett ran in next door to Toys R Us to buy Damon's birthday present. I opened my presents and we ate cake. It was a pretty great day!



Damon's birthday was the day after mine. He was super excited when we told him he got to choose his menu for the day. He wanted french toast for breakfast. Lunch was meat sandwiches and dinner was hot dogs.

We let him open one present in the morning...his BYU hat!

Damon wanted a pirate ship cake, but I tried to talk him out of it and into an easier cake to make. All he wanted for his birthday was a guitar, so that is what he finally decided on. It turned out pretty good and way easier than shaping a cake.

Damon ended up getting tons of presents. He loved the guitar we got him and thinks he is so good on it. He is hilarious when he plays it. Sunday, the boys had a "jam" session playing Jingle Bells. He is so cute, I can't believe he's four!





Nathan came for the weekend and we missed Kim. We met up with some friends in Philadelphia Saturday to see the Dickens Village at Macy's. Last year we hit everything perfect...parking, light show, village, lunch spot. This year...not so much. We couldn't find parking, we missed the light show, Dicken's village was ok, but we stood in line in the lingerie section forever with the little kids staring at the manequins (no idea how to spell that!) and Damon pulling a hand off one of them...while it was dressed in underwear. It was fun seeing our friends and doing something fun! We also stopped off at our old mall. Holy cow! It is super awesome now!! We were totally bummed that when we lived 5 minutes down the road from it, it was a pretty good mall, but now an hour down the road, it is way cool with really fun restaurants and stores! It has been a really busy December so far!

New Dance Moves

I finally got smart and found the other memory card, so I would be able to load my pictures and videos to the computer.Today I pulled out the Christmas Peter Breinholt CD. "I Saw Three Ships" is a little Irish gig and Damon went crazy when he heard it today. I video taped him and he went crazy...I was dying, he was sooo funny!!!
Make sure you pause the playlist on the right so you can hear the music on the video.

Christmas Party

Last year it seemed like we missed out on every Christmas party. This year, we've already had our first Christmas party! We had a pretty delicious dinner at the church, then the Primary children acted out the Nativity and we sang songs. Santa and Mrs. Claus came too!! Damon was a wiseman and since he loves gold, was asked to give Baby Jesus the gift of gold. We went to Michael's and found a treasure box, then painted it and put yellow and gold things inside...he's been playing with it all week. He was really cute standing on the stage with all the other kids...I can't believe he is old enough to participate. Tommy went crazy when he saw Santa...he was really excited to go up and see Santa and get a candy cane. Damon was pretty excited too except he was worried that he hadn't written his list yet. We talked all the way home about the "realness" of the Santa he spoke to and how he wanted to go to the North Pole and be an elf. We've had a busy, stressful week and it was nice to end the week with a happy reminder of the Christmas season.

Giving Thanks

Today I'm thankful that we can be with family. My brother, sister in law, and their 3 adorable kids are here. Damon has only cried maybe 3 times today...not 50!!! Tommy loves having so many people around. I love talking with other adults and feeling reassured. My 2 favorites of the day were seeing my little niece wear her construction paper turkey headband almost all day and watching a movie with a couch full of little kids that laughed at all the funny parts. There's nothing like family...especially on a holiday:)

No Pictures

So I don't have any pictures to post. Well, I really do, but when I went to load them to the computer from the camera, ALL 1200+ pictures on my camera were going to load!! There wasn't an option to select the ones I wanted to load. I'm afraid to delete the pictures on my camera until I burn those same pictures from my computer to a disk. I have a lot of pictures on the computer that need to be burned! My picture posting will be postponed until I can figure things out. I'm bummed because I think I have a couple really good pictures.

I figured I'd share some things we've been doing so I don't forget.

We have been making a turkey wall in our kitchen. We have 5 different types of turkeys we have made to hang on the wall. 1. we took a coffee filter and colored it with markers, then dropped water on it and waited for it to dry, then cut out a turkey body and glued googly eyes on it. 2. painted our fingers different colors for the tail and painted our foot for the body. 3. traced our hands on different colors of paper for the tail and cut a body and used googly eyes. Tommy wanted his turkey to have 4 eyes. 4. used a paper plate and painted it different colors and made a body. 5. used half a paper plate and glued fake leaves onto it (our leaf collecting was all in vein...they grew mold or crunched apart before we could use them) then colored a turkey body to glue on.

We painted all over a big brown piece of paper that had come in a package all crumpled up. After it dried, we cut out leaf shapes and glued them to a paper plate that I cut into a spiral. They are our falling leaves. (I modified this idea from No Time For Flashcards).

We've been trying to learn and sing new turkey songs. We made a turkey treat by putting chocolate frosting on a graham cracker, a whopper candy for a head, and candy corns for feathers. We made an apple gumdrop turkey at the library.

Sadly, Tommy has entered the Terrible Twos. He still has his super cute moments like when he's singing songs and talking about spooky ghosts and praying for his trick or treat candy, but he can be really ornery a lot of the time now and has a big temper. Last Saturday we all discovered he can climb out of his pack n play (yes, I don't own a crib and my children sleep in pack n plays when they're babies). This means nap times have not been happening!! I try every day to put him down, but he climbs out and bounds down the stairs then does a victory lap to show how awesome he is for escaping. Actually, he only did that a few times, he wisened up and plays upstairs in my room so he won't get caught. I've tried driving him around until he falls asleep, but then Damon falls asleep and I don't want him getting too much rest then he won't go to bed until late. One day I was trying to sing to Tommy and he was squirming, so I asked if he wanted me to put him in his bed. He replied, "I get out." As if to say to me, "mom, I'll just get out of my bed, go ahead and put me in there, I won't stay and I'll just get out!" So, I've been trying to decide if I can face yet another power struggle with my kids. I'm really tired of the power struggles and the tantrums. Sigh...

So, because I now have to entertain both boys during the afternoon hours, I made pumpkin pie playdough that I found here . It has been magical. I pulled out an old rolling pin, tongue depressers, toothpicks, canning rings, pumpkin cookie cutters, little heart cookie cutters, and pie tins. We've spent hours playing with this playdough. I'm so glad I made it, except I didn't have the recommended pumpkin pie spice, so I dumped in cinnamon, ground cloves, and nutmeg. I think I put way too much ground cloves in...the scent is a little strong.

The other day Barrett and I were talking about Tommy and hoping he wasn't getting more teeth. Damon piped in, "If I grow more teeth, I'll grow into a shark!!" Pretty funny.
I didn't really change our "school" calendar for November except the word "November." I told Damon the letters to write and he did it. He wrote the first letter then started doing something funny to it. He did the same thing with the next letter. I asked him what he was doing and he told me that the other words had little spiders on them(it was a Halloween font with little spiders hanging from each letter) and these letters needed pumpkins. He drew a little pumpkin on every letter!! He made his own font!!!! It was a super happy moment for me...I love cute fonts and it was pretty creative of my 3 year old!

Funny

Here's some cute and funny things the boys have been doing and saying...

1. While in Utah, Damon and Grandma were driving in the car. Grandma said, "Look! A Horse!" Damon replied, "Is it driving a buggy?" ---This makes me laugh every time! Can you tell we live a few short miles from Amish farms?!!

2. We have been putting Tommy in the zipper jammies with feet. When I put them on him I tell him we're going to make him warm and toasty. Once they're on, I ask if he is toasty warm. Now, he calls those type of pajamas "toasty warm". It is pretty cute.

3. One morning I came home from seminary and found Tommy watching tv in a diaper with his "toasty warm" jammies on the ground. I guess he knows how to unzip and get undressed...oh boy.

4. One night Damon and I were pretend playing hospital with lego guys. I was being silly and Damon was laughing. At one point he stopped laughing and froze with a panic look on his face. I asked him if he needed to use the bathroom. He thought about it, but decided not to, so I told him if he laughed again he'd wet his pants. He never did, but eventually had to use the bathroom. A few days later he wanted to make me wet my pants from laughing so hard at his made up jokes. He kept making up jokes and I would give a courtesy laugh...I think he was a little disappointed he wasn't super funny.

5. Tommy is always saying, "wats of tandee trih uh treeting pop-e-pops" which translates to "lots of candy trick or treating lollipops." He even says this in prayers and whenever he wants to say something.

Winterthur

Election Day was really exciting this year. Barrett had the day off work!! Woo-hoo! We went and voted then headed up north to a beautiful place called Winterthur. Since living on the east coast, we have only been here one other time and were only able to get a quick feel for it. We have been desperately wanting to return. It was a pretty chilly day, but so beautiful.
(I know...I probably could have narrowed the picture selection down more)

We rode a shuttle bus over to the museum and asked for directions to the Children's garden. The person helping us was awesome...she helped us out a lot throughout the day. We were able to borrow a little backpack with all kinds of fun stuff for kids to use to enhance their experience...notebook, binoculars, pictures of things to look for in the gardens, things to listen for, and lots more fun! Tommy has entered the stage of running and not wanting to be distracted, so he ran up and down the steps and all over the courtyard overlooking the bath house. He paused long enough to see the Koi pond with gigantic fish!





The leaves were awesome. The colors were gorgeous and they were falling on us all day...it was so fun. Damon found these huge leaves and even showed me which tree they fell from.


We finally made it to the Enchanted Woods children's garden. It was sooo fun! We had the entire place to ourselves!! We loved the giant nest, the little chairs, the rocks to play on. Our absolute favorite was the fairy house. It was the cutest thing I've ever seen! There was a little table inside, so we ate our lunch there. There was a strong cinnamon smell throughout the house and it smelled so good. It must have been fairy magic because we felt like we should be little fairies living there. After our lunch, a group of girl scouts joined the fairy land and we no longer had it to ourselves. One little girl showed me some cute little surprises in the garden...she most go there often:) The boys loved exploring and running and jumping and playing.












On our way to the children's garden, we had to walk through this little hallway. Damon froze and couldn't believe the amount of gold he was looking at! He is obsessed with gold...gold jewelry, gold swords, gold crowns, people wearing gold, kings that love gold, gold treasure... So, when he saw this (see picture below) he was in heaven and HAD to have his picture taken with it. His expression doesn't show how excited he really was...it was pretty funny!

We went back into the museum and they opened up the Please Touch room just for us. Once again, we were the only ones in there, so the boys played with the food and props and old plates and bowls and baskets. They made us a feast! Other children came and went, but we were there for an hour! We tried to take a tour of the house (more like mansion/estate), but Tommy was at the end of his little rope. I'm pretty sure the tour guides were so grateful we decided to leave instead of taking the tour. We picked up some Dominos Pizza on the way home and we all devoured it!! We had such a fun day and were so glad we finally made it back to Winterthur. )