Christmas Eve Eve or Christmas Adam

This year Christmas was on a Sunday which meant that there was this awesome Friday night for Christmas Eve Eve where you felt like you had to do something!

We decided we should have a fun special dinner and use our fun dishes. Mom and I had picked this plan early in the afternoon, but by dinner time Mom was exhausted. She had gotten up very early and didn't feel like cooking. She wanted to go pick up Panda Express on the way home, but I was insistent that we do spaghetti like we had talked about. We actually got in a fight about it at Grandma's house. I was crying and Mom was frustrated and Grandma just felt bad for everybody. I was only crying because Mom wasn't sticking to the plan and was kind of making me feel bad about it. (Which I think made Mom feel even more tired and feel bad also!) Dad was kind of stuck in the middle. I don't think anyone really knew what the right thing to do was.

We ended up making spaghetti at home like had planned, but Dad swung by Harmon's and grabbed us some garlic bread which I think cheered everyone up.

We also talked Mom and Dad into letting us use their tub for a giant bath. Sam still doesn't love bubbles. They seem to make him nervous and he was a slippery, falling mess the whole time. The bath didn't last long because of it.

As a side note, Mom was spoiled by the members of her gym. They are very sweet and generous to her with little treats and some money even!

Class parties and trips to the dentist...

Leading up to Christmas, I think, as a kid is much more magical. My mom still had to work and do grown up things. She tried really hard to make sure we did special Christmasy things like having hot chocolate whenever possible, but it's still hard. For example, we had our class parties for school on the same day as our dentist appointments. Not so much fun!

Mom is the room mom for Cara's class so she always helps in there. Which means, of course, that we don't have any pictures from my party, but a few of Cara's!

There was this awesome game of ring toss on the reindeer antlers! Even Iva wanted a turn!

After school, we promptly went over to the dentist office. Cara and I love the dentist. So much. We were very excited that we got to go a little early. Iva, however, is still quite scared of the dentist. When we arrived, she kept telling Mom that she was going to have her teeth counted later. But not today. She kept shaking her head and saying it so matter of factly. She kind of clung to Mom which was super fun considering she also had Sam clinging to her. Cara and I had our X-rays done and our cleanings before they even attempted doing something for Iva, but her turn came. She started panicking a little and started to cry pretty loud, but Mom got her squared away and showed her how awesome the movie was. Once she kind of figured out the whole watching a show thing, she even let them do X-rays! It was amazing and awesome and we are so proud of her.

The one bummer thing was that I had a couple of cavities. They even decided to give me a silver tooth. I was brave about it though and handled the dental work like a champ!

The weekend before Christmas

Holy cow...we are very very behind on our blog. That's okay. We are planning to post date all of this so you may never know how truly far behind we are. Except we just said it. Oh well.

Our van has needed new tires since probably October. I believe they told Mom about it in September and we have been to California and SLC since then. Oh dear. We were planning on trying to sneak up north the weekend before Christmas, but then there were storms that left most of the freeways in Utah covered in snow and some ice and Mom decided it wasn't worth the risk. However, Dad's friends were having a party and they very much didn't want us to miss it. What to do? Mozzy to the rescue! Who would have thought our Prius would be the safer winter car? Unfortunately, Mozzy only seats five of us and so we had to leave some people behind. Mom stuck around in St. George with the two littles and us bigs went with Dad.

Mom and the littles spent some time cuddling in bed. In fact, I think this photo was taken at like 9 in the morning. It was heavenly from what Mom said.

She got them all dressed all snazzy and Christmasy for church and they just looked too cute not to take pictures. 

Everyone was smitten with Iva and her dress. The funny part is that it took all of Mom's energy to convince her to even wear the dress!

Dad did not take any pictures of us up in SLC. He's not much of a photo taker. We had fun at the Millers house and seeing our friends. We also loved hanging out with the Preslars even though it was only for the briefest of times. We at least slept at their house!

Oh and one last picture of the Mom and Littles adventures. A three way face swap!

Pete's Work Party

Guest post by Mom:

I don't know if I ever fully followed up with our hard post back in March about Pete losing his job and feeling lost and not really have any strong leads. If you hadn't noticed, we didn't move from St. George. Pete was able to get a job with a friend's company here in town as their business manager. Initially he was just going to be helping out Flitch with bookkeeping and some sales while we kept looking, but then the manager position opened and it fit. So Pete is the business manager for Flitch Creative, a graphics design and website company!

Okay back to the real reason for the post. It's a small company so the party was pretty casual but they were having an ugly sweater contest and for some reason I was really in the mood to go big. So this is what we came up with....

We shaved a snowman in to Pete's stomach hair!

My sister first donned this sweater last year! It's so fun!

The party ended up being just a little bit anticlimactic with a couple of the employees not fully participating or coming, but Pete and I still had a great time.

Warm Weather? Maybe?

It felt like for most of December we had pretty mild weather! Of course we are typing this up in the middle of January and it feels almost impossible to remember. However we have these photos which were taken at that new awesome park. We don't have jackets on and we are playing in the freezing water which means it must have been warm, right?!

Boy does Sam love to be outside. I think he would have gone swimming if Mom had let him!

Sam's Shenanigans

Oh our Sam. Mom has been wondering if she finally noticed the difference between boy and girl babies. Sam seems to pull EVERYTHING out of drawers. EVERYTHING. He also just kind of toddles around and just wants to look at stuff. She didn't remember any of us doing that and then Facebook memories came to the rescue. She had posted that Iva was constantly undoing all of her things. She also apologized because it meant our house would be covered in towels, shoes, crayons, boxes and whatever else. WHICH IS EXACTLY HOW SAM IS BEHAVING. Hahaha! It turns out it's just more of a 12-15 month old thing.

One of Sam's favorite things to get out (probably because it's in a cupboard we can't lock!) is our Magic Bullet blender cups and our shaker cups. He also begs for "more" when he gets them. He genuinely wants our shakes that we make for breakfast!

I think Mom constantly uses SnapChat filters to try and distract Sam.

It's a hard habit for Mom to break, but she loves sleeping with her kids. I'm jealous actually. She says I'm too big now! I actually think this picture was of a rainy day when she got both of the littles to nap at the same time!

Sam loves his bath. Bubbles tend to freak him out at first, but then he figures it out and he doesn't want to get out. He also loves to shower with Mom or Dad. If he hears the water running, he will go running to whichever bathroom it is and try and get in. He even tugs at his clothes because he knows he should be naked. Which made us think of one thing that Mom think is a boy thing or just unique to Sam. He loves to play in the toilet. Us girls never did that. We have to be careful to close bathroom doors and make sure toilet lids are down because of it. (We also have to make sure bathroom doors are closed if we want to shower!)

It's a bummer that this picture got twisted, but this was a funny three way face swap Mom did with Sam and Iva. What's most funny is that Iva almost doesn't look different!!

Ice Cream Party!

We earned an ice cream party at school by reading enough minutes. Mom is on the PTA board so she's normally at all the extra activities which meant Iva got to eat some too!

It was a good chance for Mom to get some pictures of us with our friends too! This is Cara with her best friend for the year, Chloe. They have birthdays one day a part...which is actually one day and a YEAR a part because Cara didn't go to kindergarten completely on time. (Mom still feels good about that decision though!)

Here is Iva and her friend, Josie.

And this is Amelia. We were best friends in first grade, but then we weren't in the same class in second grade. Luckily, we are back in the same class and we are best friends again!