Rounding out 2015 in SLC

Christmas morning was kind of quick because the Romneys were having a party up in SLC that night and we had decided to load up and be part of it! We cleaned up Christmas, packed our bags, and got on the road by 12:30 pm. Unfortunately, there was perfectly timed storm up the I-15 corridor that made driving not so fun in places for Dad. (Actually most places!)

It was worth it though! The whole Romney family was present! We danced and played blocks and ate yummy food together!

Iva was fascinated by Kate's bunny, Kiki. (Iva said "Peepee")

The best part of going to SLC is always staying with Aunt Rachel and Uncle Troy. We got to do FOUR nights. The one bummer was that an Arctic front was in town and it was COLD. Like below freezing as the HIGHS, but don't you worry! We still went out in the white stuff.

There was lots of holding of Sam, of course.

Which normally led to falling asleep in the warm and cozy sun spots...

And the BEST CHRISTMAS PHOTO EVER was captured...she fell asleep holding on to her new dolls.

We did make it downtown to see the candy windows and the lights at Temple Square. Fun fact for you: City Creek (the big mall) is CLOSED on Sundays and their escalators and elevators don't work. Problematic when you use their parking and you have a stroller!

We also braved the cold to visit the zoo because we CAN'T go to SLC and not use our passes. It would be criminal. We practically had the place to ourselves. We even went just before it closed which ended up being a bonus because they had turned on all the ZooLights by the time we had to exit. So pretty!

Sam didn't see much from his cocoon.

It was a great trip. Next time we might actually be able to stand to play in the snow more. Dang that cold!

Christmas!!

LONG POST! It's been edited to contain ALL of Christmas!

We have done our very best to celebrate this season. We have been busy as everyone is and have had some stress that Mom will write about later, but we have been watching Christmas movies non stop and enjoying our decorations and all things Christmas.

Our stockings look great now that we have Sam's. It's all even!

We went to Grandma's neighborhood party and coated her in hot chocolate...TWICE! Ha!

Our Christmas Sunday picture in front of the tree!

Just us kids!

Too funny not to include it!

We have REALLY enjoyed Christmas lights this year. We have gone by this home 6 times or more. They actually won a prize on a TV show called The Great Christmas Light Fight! They do such a great job each year and this year they even added on to the side of the house. We took the time to actually walk around it too!

There was actually ANOTHER St. George house that won the same prize on a different week of the show and we had never gone to it before. It's so cool. Definitely one that you walk around and see. They built a castle facade on their house and had lasers creating a fun dance atmosphere with a smoke gun. This year it was in the style of Phineas and Ferb. It was great.

Christmas Eve we spent with the Larsens! We tried to squeeze in all the traditions. We slept over at Grandma's house with Lexi and to kick off Christmas Eve, Aunt Angie took us in our jammies to breakfast. Mom and Dad joined us with the littles! Rudolph pancakes. (That ended with an unfortunate incident that involved Cara emptying the contents of her stomach in a public place for the THIRD time...gross!) Everyone else really enjoyed their food though!

We killed time during the day by going to the $2 theater by our house and watching Home Alone on the big screen! We also picked out toys to give to Santa to help him out. By 4 pm we were READY to go to Grandma and Grandpa's again and start the festivities! 

We dressed Sam up in his Santa outfit.

He did A LOT of sleeping at the party. Haha!

He woke up in time to enjoy one of the best parts about Christmas at the Larsens'! Jacuzzi time! His first time in the water.

We got all of us in the jacuzzi and used Grandpa's new selfie stick. Poor quality in the dark though!

Sam liked the water!

We got our traditional Christmas Eve jammies, but somehow in the chaos  Mom didn't snap a single picture. In fact, she ran in and took a picture when we were all home and crawling into bed. Iva fell asleep in the van so this was the best she could manage!

Christmas morning came! Cara and I popped our eyes open at about 7:00 am and much to our surprise found a wrapping paper blockade on our bedroom door. We kind of broke open the bottom and crawled under it. (Mom and Dad thought that was very funny! They would have just busted through it entirely!)

Santa was very sneaky with his present. We were a little disappointed because we only saw our stockings and no new presents, but tucked in Sam's stocking was a note that started us on a treasure hunt! Each clue was a riddle that we had to figure out and led us to every room in the house! Wouldn't you know it? The last clue was in OUR BEDROOM. We had no idea that there was present tucked in with our stuffed animals. We opened our box to find Disney shirts for the whole family and a note that we were going to Disneyland for LEAP DAY! It feels so far away!

We opened the rest of our presents and were really excited to get Lalaloopsy dolls for us big girls and an Elsa doll for Iva. It turned out Iva took her turn not feeling well that morning. She wasn't happy to have been woken up for presents and then it turned out her tummy was angry so her reaction to each gift was less than what we had hoped. Oh well. She loves them now!

Look, proof that Mom and Sam were awake too!

If you have time to kill and you are looking for some lower quality video footage, you can check out our video of us on our treasure hunt!

Sam is TWO MONTHS OLD!!!

Guest post by Mom:

As per usual, it cannot seem possible that my baby is already two months old. It just can't! Also, as usual, it feels like he's been part of the fam forever. 

We are pretty much not on a schedule. At all. Other than he eats. A lot. And then he sleeps. A lot. Nights with Sam are really not a treat. He's kind of all over the place. Never screaming or crying, but fussing and moving and eating and acting displeased yes. About 3 am I can tell that anywhere in the next few hours he is going to get what Pete has dubbed "the super wiggles" where he HAS to move every part of his body and quite forcefully. He's become quite the spit uppy baby. He tends to drool milk while he feeds too. Must just be a messy eater. Ha! In full disclosure, I am a co sleeper and I'm actually starting to wonder if Sam is not. He might want to be in his crib! It's been too cold for me to consider not feeding him in bed and just nodding off though. 

He is starting to be awake more though! I went back and read Iva's two month post and was surprised to find out how much alike they are! She was still sleeping quite a bit, but they both like to be awake when the girls get up for school. Then for Sam there are morning cat naps or a big long nap or whatever. He's really all over the place. He also likes to be awake in the evenings. I can get him to smile and kind of coo, but most people haven't seen that. He makes me work quite hard. I tend to blow in his face a little and he loves it, but only in the afternoon or evenings! 

He is still quite snuffily which is sad. I think he's been suffering from silent reflux meaning I can't hear it, but all his milk was ending up in his nose! Now he's inherited a cold from Iva and I. The three of us are a boogery mess. It's gross. Poor guy. He's pretty happy for not being able to breathe clearly though!

I took Sam in for his two month visit already and he is (or rather WAS at the time of the appointment!) 11 lbs 3 oz which put him in the 50th percentile I think. It also put him in the middle of my kids. Siena and Iva were both 12 lbs and Cara was only 10 lbs. He was 22 inches long which I think is pretty standard for my kiddos. He took his shots like a champ it hardly seemed to bother him except for that huge initial scream/cry!

He is great at photo ops though!!

Iva and Sam went together for their appointments. Iva is now 28 lbs which is in the 67% and she of course got short and was just about 33 inches tall which is only in the 20%. 

Dad's photos and random stuff

And here mom was all worried that we would go over our 100 blog post per year limit...instead she took like a three week break from blogging. It gets HARD at this time of year!

We couldn't leave out this awesome photo of us the day Sam came home from the hospital. Mom felt the love!

And proof we carved pumpkins.

We kind of love to hold Sam.

Dad even went and did a canyon with Grandpa! He hadn't been on a canyon in a long time. I'm pretty sure he had fun.

Here we have to give props to Cara! She can ride a two wheeler now! She did it with kind of no fan fare. We took off the training wheels awhile ago and she was tired of not having a bike to ride!

We love our neighborhood. Cara has some great friends and in fact this neighbor is actually packing up their house and moving to a different part of town as we speak. We have loved living next door the Broadheads and Cara will really miss having Makayla to play with.

And in more recent events, I got to go see Star Wars!! My parents surprised me! Dad and I were originally supposed to go up to SLC and see it with the Preslars, but it turned out to be a bad weekend to go. I was devastated and even woke up crying at 2 am because I wasn't going to see it. (I somehow thought it meant I would NEVER see it.) I had no idea that Dad had purchased tickets down here and Mom had bought me an awesome shirt.

Mom very much wishes she had filmed it when they told me we were going to the movie. I was the best kind of surprise receiver!

Sam at One Month

This is one of Mom's favorite photos to take of all her babes. A comparison with stuffed animals. She kind of meant for everyone to be compared with same animals, but it got messed up with Cara. Iva and Sam had the same ones though! 

Sam is exactly one month old in these pictures. There isn't much to report about him at one month. He's started being awake more, but not really engaging yet. No big surprise, but we think maybe his earliness might be contributing to it too. He's probably somewhere between eight and nine pounds, but Mom didn't weigh him. He eats a lot and is finally getting better at getting latched on during the first five tries instead of twenty frantic tries. He likes the soothie binkies, but doesn't take it a lot. He cries when he's laid down and prefers to be held, but he's not loud. He's more of a grunter, snorter, fusser. He's started to spit up more after not doing a single drop for the first four weeks of his life. And this boy can pee. It's an odd thing to say, but Mom struggles with nighttime changes. He ends up soaking his clothes more often than not due to his large bladder that fills quickly. 

These are the best outtakes from the photo shoot. We love these pictures. It's funny because Sam looks surprised most of the time anyway.

Opt Outside our Black Friday

Guest post by Mom:

REI started a movement for Black Friday this year to Opt Outside. They closed their stores and gave all their employees the day off and asked them to go outside and play. My dad has ALWAYS opted outside for Black Friday. If you've read my blog over the years, you know that we head to Zion each Black Friday. Sadly, in the last 10 years it has really changed. I only say sadly because nobody loves to hike in crowds, but it's probably better that more people are opting outside. Originally, when I was in high school, NOBODY was in Zion on that Friday. Now you have to get up early and hustle. They even run their shuttles instead of let you drive the canyon.

Anyway, this year the weather was predicted to be COLD. We have attempted Angel's Landing in the freezing cold before. The first time Siena was two and Cara was four months old. I even titled the blog post "Lesson Learned...Hopefully". It was a disaster. Frozen children and a sprint off of the trail. We attempted it two weeks later with much better results because the weather was warm. In 2010, the very next year, we did it in the cold AGAIN. The results were a little better but still involved crying children, but no sprint. We had dressed them warmer. Our 2011 was a banner attempt. Cara was even two and we didn't have any crying. The big help? Very warm and sunny. So can you guess what kind of a year we had?

I had learned my lesson...I thought. I doubled layered everyone. Double socks even. Iva was given THREE layers of pants and tops. She looked adorable and she was happy. Sam was tucked into me and was in double layers and a very warm blanket. I was PREPARED. Or so I thought.

We started out so well!!

We were happy and almost too warm if you were hiking. Pete was SWEATING. We took our first "break" at the base of Refrigerator Canyon. Iva was starting to be really unhappy and was asking to walk, but then be held. 

We started on our way again with optimism that was quickly shattered. I wasn't as prepared as I thought. I hadn't remembered a binky for Iva. She uses them mostly to sleep, but also when she gets upset and she was starting to be VERY unhappy. I had also left her gloves in the van by mistake so her fingers were cold. The next thirty minutes were filled with Pete, Grandma, Grandpa, and I trying desperately to cheer up Iva and get her fingers warm. It culminated in me making a declaration that Pete and I would just turn around with her go back. We pulled her out of the pack and she burrowed into Pete and kind of cheered up. I should mention that there were very tiny flurries of snow off and on throughout the hike. It was that cold. We made the decision though to HURRY up Walter's Wiggles with Pete carrying Iva in front of him and I would have Sam in the Bjorn and the empty pack. And we did it. We made it to Scout's Lookout much to the amusement of our other hikers. Iva was even happy up top! Pete and I tried to figure out if our darling big girls were on their way out to the end of Angel's Landing. We trusted everyone to watch out for them, but it was still a little stressful thinking of them exposed! It turned out that Grandma and the girls actually stayed back and we found them after a little bit. There was a little accumulation of snow on the trail out to the end and Grandpa had decided it was much too slick to take them. 

I would like to say it was fine from there, but it was not. The hike down was as quick as we could make it. Iva only lasted in the packer for maybe 15 minutes and then Pete wrapped her in his arms and an extra blanket and we headed down fast. It turns out it wasn't her fingers so much as her TOES. I should have put her in boots too big for her and had many layers of socks or even a toe warmer. Two layers wasn't enough. She eventually warmed up and we all enjoyed our meal at Oscar's even though we kind of did it in shifts.