A little Christmas spirit

This month is flying by! There is always so much to do and so many events to attend in the month of December. I helped to organize and put on the Relief Society ornament exchange the first Thursday of the month. I was asked to sing and play a Christmas song that I hadn't heard before- "Let there be Peace on Earth". Everyone laughed at me that I had never heard it before :) Well, now I know a new song.
Then the second Sunday of the month I was asked to play and sing a song for the lesson in RS. Silent Night, not as nerve racking. We had a ward service project the following Wednesday and then this last Saturday was our ward Christmas dinner followed by a music "concert". Yes, I was asked to sing for that as well. Another new song that I did not know, "A long time ago". It is a really beautiful song, I was happy to learn that one as well.
I also have had two dentist appointments, a hair cut, tithing settlement and bunco at the neighbors.... I'm sure i'm missing some things too :)
Anyway- we bought a Christmas tree this year and I hung up the Christmas lights outside and tried to decorate a little in the house. William spoke up the other night and said "For family home evening, we should make snowflakes!". So, we spent an evening making paper snowflakes together and I hung them up on strings in the window. I also bought a book this year called, A Christ centered Christmas, and we have been reading the chapters together every few days. What a great book! So many touching stories and great traditions to incorporate into our own families. The boys went through their toys after the lesson on Joseph and "serving others" and picked out a bunch to give to children who don't have as much.
A thoughtful couple at church bought the boys an online advent calendar this year... they have been LOVING it. It's really neat. Each day there are new things to click on and do. (I am sure this is where William got the idea to make snow flakes, it's one of the activities they can do in "the house")
We are signed up to have the Elders over for Christmas :) I'm really excited for this. There are 3 of them right now, so it should be a lot of fun.
We are deep into the Christmas season and I am trying my best to prepare and enjoy every moment... it's always a juggle I think.

Mini Me

Well, I finally turned my head and let Billy give William a hair cut.... it's the only one he knows how to do. (kinda like I only know one way) Anyway, I'm getting used to it. If William didn't already look like Billy enough, now they really look like twins!

Disney Land!

 

We finally made it to Disney Land! We had planned to go in April before fire season and things kept coming up... so November 21st was finally our day.
Billy took a half day Wednesday and we left for LA to stay with Camie and her family in Redondo Beach so we could be closer. It ended up to be a helpful thing for Camie, who is a first grade teacher and was in the middle of parent teacher conferences. She wasn't sure how she was going to juggle her kids on her one late day at school, so we were able to pick them all up and take them home, feed them dinner and all that good stuff. I was so happy to be able to help her!!
Thursday morning we left Camie's house about 9am and were on the shuttle into Disney Land by 930. It had rained the night before and was a little cloudy and gray in the morning. This made for the PERFECT day to be there! We did not have to wait more than 5 minutes (with the exception of a couple times) if not walk right on to all the rides we chose.  We spent the first 5 hours of the day in Disney Land. I did not realize how many of the rides are on boats! The boys really loved the buzz light year ride, shooting at all the targets :)

We ate our packed lunches in toon town and the boys rode their first little roller coaster there.

Jameson was mesmerized in small world, he was so fun to watch, his cute little face was priceless.

After seeing lots of Disney Land we made our way over to California Adventure and spent the last 5 hours there. Billy and William went on soaring over California and Zachary fell asleep in the stroller for a while as we walked around waiting for them. The boys had a good time in the challenge hike and then we headed to cars land. It was just starting to get dark, Billy and William went to the racers ride and this was the longest wait of the day. (everyone must have gone here right at the same time) They were gone for an hour. I pushed Zachary and Jameson around cars land and into bugs land. We rode the caterpillar chew chew.... but there wasn't much else I could do with those two boys there. We saw Mater and Lightning drive down the street and had a dance party with DJ (I guess he is one of the new cars characters).  We went on maybe one more ride and then I went and got tickets for the light show. While we waited, we went back to Disney and rode the train around the park and admired all the Christmas lights.

Then back to the other side to watch the world of color light show on the water. It was neat... but we were all pretty worn out by that point. We left the show before it was over to head back to the car. The lines for the shuttle were super long, and we could only be in the handicap line with our big double stroller... so we decided to just walk. It was a good choice because we had two sleeping boys in the stroller that we would have had to take out to get on the shuttle. Zachary gave us our own little grand finale "firework" show getting into the car :) I wanted him to change into his jammies for the drive home so that when we got home I could plop him in bed without a hassle. He was so exhausted from a 9-9 day that he LOST IT. Wow, talk about a strong willed child! We heard about it for at least 20 or so minutes until he finally gave up and passed out. Poor kid, it really was a very long day for all of them.

The boys are still talking about how much fun they had and how they want to go back though. Disney Land is no walk in the park with little kids.... we had to take all of Friday just to recoup and feel back to normal. It's a pretty awesome place though, especially when it's not crowded, and I can see us getting back there next year :) Thanks again Mom and Tracy for giving us your tickets so we could have such a fun family experience without breaking the bank!

November catch up

A lot of fun has been had to this point in November and I thought I should record some of it.
I will start off with the November first, William gave us a small scare when he dove into the couch straight into a metal Tonka truck! He came up crying and then moments later there was blood running down his face. Luckily it was a really small split in his head.... and it was nice that Billy was actually home to help me with a bloody episode. (He always misses them!)

The first weekend in November I hosted an early Thanksgiving dinner for the "Wrenn" family. Billy's Dad and Grandma came for a visit and picked up Nathan on the way down. I called Ian & Stephanie who now just live in San Luis and told them they had to come for dinner so the whole family could be together. This hasn't happen in at least a couple years. I cheated and picked up rotisserie chickens from Costco... but I made a yummy squash gratin dish, salad, pumpkin pie muffins, fruit kabobs and a dessert. I asked Ian to bring a drink and some bread rolls. It was fun to be all together for an evening!

Billy made a super cool fort for the boys and it actually stayed up for a few days! (I didn't think I would be able to survive the "mess", but, I did it!) We all watched a movie in there and then the boys slept in it for two nights in a row. It was really fun for them. We will have to do it again.

The boys had another monthly book club, and this time we hosted! Some of their little friends came up and each brought an assignment. One brought a story of the a turkey with a temper, one brought a craft and the other brought a snack. Fun was had by all :)

Lastly (except for Disney Land which will be a separate post) we got a wood burning fire place insert and it is lovely! The house was really starting to get cold with no heat source. We had broke down one night and started a fire in the regular fire place, only to have the house fill with smoke and set off all the alarms and linger for days! The new insert is awesome. Our house is warm once again and everything is nice and contained, and it looks really nice too. It even has a blower to really get the heat back to the bedrooms.  With all the free wood we can imagine from the ranch, this was truly a wise investment for our home.

Utah visit

I finally have time (and energy) to sit down and write a little about our trip to Utah in October :) Billy is on a small fire tonight, so I'm solo and finally have my chance.
I did remember my camera for the trip... however, that doesn't mean I actually used it much. Oh well. This is me.
We had a smooth ride to Mapleton, Utah on the 14th of October. I got up about 430am and had everything and everyone loaded for a 5am departure. When we got to the bottom of the pass, I had to stop and put air in one of the front tires. It was during this first stop that Jameson threw up a little. I thought it was a little strange, but luckily there was little damage done and on we went. Around 745 all boys were waking up and getting a little hungry for breakfast. I had packed TJ's cereal bars and bananas for what I thought would be a perfect car breakfast. Unfortunately I packed the seasonal pumpkin bars and this did not go over well while in motion. Both William and Zachary had a couple bites of their bars and then felt sick. William was first to throw up and then Zachary followed. (Yes, I do carry a barf bucket in the car and yes, they both made it!) I tried to settle their stomachs with banana and Zachary ended up throwing that up as well.
So, by Victorville, all three boys had thrown up and we required an 8am stop to use a restroom and freshen up ;) Haha.
After all that, the drive went fine. We had planned to stop in Vegas at the children's museum for our half way stretch break... but it just so happened the museum was closed on Mondays. Bummer.
We made it to Grandma and Grandpa's by dinner and enjoyed having the drive behind us.
The boys played all week with their cousins and had SO MUCH FUN. William, Zachary and Grant were almost inseparable!  For the most part, everyone got along perfectly.
Our outings for the week included; lunch with Grandma great, pumpkin patch fun, a visit to Farm land at Thanksgiving point, playground fun by Provo temple and lots of play time with the cousins.
The big boys had their first pony rides at Farm Land and they were pretty siked about it!

Jameson got to watch from the fence... but he didn't mind. He loved looking at all the animals they had there. Maybe we will have a few of these animals at home one day ;)

The cousins made instruments one day and put on a parade... it was cute. I didn't capture it very well.

Jameson and Irelyn met for just about the first time on this trip. My brother and his wife came for family dinner on Sunday while we were there so we got to spend an evening with them also.

William was really good about doing school each morning. Luckily Grant is in Kindergarten, so it made it easy to do school with William while Grant was at school. It was so nice to be with the family for the week. I even got 3 nice (cold) runs in during the week which was awesome. Spent 3 days with my Grandma (a big reason I wanted to go out there) and got a lot of quality time with my sister Kristy. Would have had more with Tracy except she had an awesome backpacking trip to Havasupi planned for the weekend I chose to come. I know she will be out to SB to visit me soon enough though.... Tracy knows how to travel! :)
Our drive home was easy as well. I ended up leaving Monday night about 830pm and drove to Mesquite, Nevada. Got there about 1130, checked in, unloaded boys into beds and got a little rest. Woke up next morning about 7, fed the boys a little food and loaded them back into the car. We got home just after 2 in the afternoon, right behind Billy who had been out golfing all morning :) It made the trip seem SO much shorter to break it up like that.
I'm so glad we went and it was sure nice to break in the new car and test her out on the open roads :) Loving the Pilot.

Halloween Fun

This year for Halloween was the most low key costumes we have done for a long while. When we were driving through the Virgin River Gorge on our way to Utah a couple weeks ago, William was the only boy awake. I asked him what he thought of the neat mountains and rocks as we drove. His response " Mom, I wish I was a mountain climber so I could climb up there and find some really cool rocks!" From that point on, he had it set in his mind that he was going to be a mountain climber for Halloween. When Zachary heard that William wanted to be a climber, that is what he wanted to be too. So, 3 mountain climbers and a ballet we were.
We went to trunk or treat briefly, Jameson learned quickly what he needed to do to have people hand him treats. Billy got dropped off and joined us for about 10ish minutes. (Just long enough for someone to steal his backpack from under our car)
Then it was off to a neighborhood for the boys first "real" experience of trick or treating. We went to Foxen drive mostly to see all the work Anne Wright did on her front yard. Wow. She really went all out. We chatted for a while and got a laugh that she made all the older trick or treaters work for their candy. They had to tell her a joke!
The boys walked to about 10 houses or so on the street and then we went home. It was a nice Halloween overall.
Of course I didn't bring the camera on Halloween.... so we had a small photo shoot today. I should have found a rock, but the front of the house was good enough :)
Billy took on the project of making the boys harnesses! He took the belts we found at the thrift store and cut and sewed them at work and did a great job. The boys love them. All I did was drive us down to Carp where Justin Shuman (Billy's co-worker that climbs) let us borrow a bunch of his gear.
He are the tough rock climbers!

Lane Farms Pumpkin Patch

Today we met with our play group at Lane Farms to enjoy the holiday fun. I always love visiting the local pumpkin patch each year, they make it so fun for the kids. Unfortunately they didn't have the corn maze open, which is what William always wants to do. But they got to sit on a tractor, play in the hay, visit with the animals and enjoy a hay ride. We then found a hay bale to sit and enjoy our lunch under a big avocado tree... which was also an awesome climbing tree!
Billy had the day off and was able to join us for the fun, so we managed to snap a family picture too! Good day at the pumpkin patch :)