December Festivities

On Saturday we went down to our stake center where they were holding a beautiful open house called A Night in Bethlehem. The cultural hall was set up with all kinds of different nativities. There were musical numbers, cookies, and hot cocoa. Shae's favorite part was the live nativity that was set up outside. I thought he would be a bit timid with the animals but he had no fear. Walked straight up to them and started telling them his life story.

A week or so ago, Colonial Williamsburg was putting on the Grand Illumination, which they apparently do yearly...and it's big. Fourth of July was PACKED, as was this. I mean, who wouldn't want to see fireworks shooting off simultaneously from three distinct locations at the beginning of December? I would have to say that these fireworks were even better than the Fourth of July fireworks. I really enjoyed them, plus, we brought Shae this time (much easier since the fireworks started at seven, rather than nine thirty). He loved it. He was squealing and hopping up and down. That definitely doubled the firework excitement for me. 

We also made sure to hit up the Williamsburg parade, which we missed last year. I love that Williamsburg does so much for the city to celebrate Christmas. I was thinking, "Why did we never go to a Christmas parade in Utah or Idaho, this is brilliant?" Then Darin reminded me of the temperature difference between Williamsburg and Idaho... I didn't get any pictures of the parade, but it was full of Christmas music, fun Christmas floats, cool cars/firetrucks and Santa!

We also finally made it to Yankee Candle to see Santa. Shae was a little hesitant at first. He warmed up quickly and had an entire jibberish conversation with him.

So many fun things to do in December. May the festivities continue.

22 Months

I know I did a 21 month post last month and that there isn't THAT much that has changed since then (unlike that first year of life where one month is a BIG deal).  However, there are some little things that I really love about Shae right now that I wanted to make sure to document.

Poor kid has been really sick for the past month. Strep throat and yeast infection right before Thanksgiving. Last weekend we were pretty sure that he had croup. He had an awful cough and some really rough nights with fever, little eating, diarrhea, etc. He's doing mostly better now, still has a bit of a cold and a little nose infection that has been killing him, but we're crossing our fingers that we're on the upswing out of it all. 

Yes, I should have ripped off the bows, wasn't really thinking about it at the time...

1.  Shae is really into holding hands. Whenever we go anywhere he has to hold hands. When we take daddy to work in the morning he gets so excited to hold BOTH of our hands. I guess it's not just that he likes holding hands, but just the idea of the "-and" (hand, said with the slightest littlest "h" sound). When I am working at the table, he will come over, stick out his hand, say "-and", grab my hand and pull me over to play with whatever he is playing with on the floor. Pretty much anytime I try to get some work done while he is playing this happens. Really anytime he wants you to do anything now he does this.

Coming down the stairs after nap. He immediately said, "-and" and grabbed Flavabean's hand.

2. His favorite thing right now is piling up all the blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals.  He piles them, then moves them around, then piles them again, then pretends they are going night night, then pretends he is going night night, then adds a few cars to the pile...and it goes on.

Even while watching a show, he gets his pile together and lays on it.

3. Shopping carts are the worst. Thankfully Target and Lion King have "cool" carts that make shopping slightly easier. He loves the car cart that they have at Food Lion. It has made shopping much easier for me.

4. We always pray by the door before daddy leaves in the morning, but he has taken that to mean that we pray ANY time we leave the house. And why not? I did it as a missionary, I may as well do it as a mom too. I love seeing him run over to the door and immediately fold his arms.

5. If mama is cooking, he has to be cooking. He runs in, sees what I'm doing and starts shouting out "chair, chair, chair," until I get him one. He usually just plays in the drawers, or plays with the bowls and spoons and cheerios I give him to transfer from one bowl to another. A few days ago he made us a pretzel, lettuce, and clementine salad to have with dinner. It can sometimes make dinner prep a bit more stressful than I would like, but I (mostly) love having him there by my side trying to do whatever I do.

Just testing out the onion. (and his poor sick red eyes!)

6. Anytime he sees a Christmas tree he yells out, "Sana!" (Santa). He has clearly connected that Christmas trees and Santa go together. 

Thanksgiving Recap

I guess I should hurry up and post the rest of our Thanksgiving pictures before we get too much farther into December. 

The week seemed to go by too fast. I feel like I didn't get to "relax" as much as I had hoped. Shae got strep throat a few days before we left so he was getting over that. Darin got pretty sick for a few days while we were there. I had a ton of work to do and was busy with that during the day. I had all kinds of goals of finishing our Christmas stockings, watching a Christmas movie, finishing the book I've been reading for months, etc. None of that happened. However, we still had some really great visits/talks with my family. We stayed up a bit too late a few nights playing Munchkins with my brothers and dad. We played in the snow. We cooked and ate tons of yummy food (Darin's turkey was so moist and flavorful!) Darin and I got to go on a date to see Mockingjay for free (perks of having a brother who works at a movie theater). Darin fixed the kitchen sink. We ran a 5k. Shae played and played and played and loved every second of it. I think my family will be finding matchbox cars throughout the house for weeks to come.

I get so jealous that my mom can sleep anywhere, through anything. Why wasn't that gene passed on to me? But I especially love it because Razz always hops right on top of her and sleeps right along with her.

I didn't get any food/Thanksgivingesque photos, but here's all of us on Thanksgiving evening while the Elders were still over to take a picture of all of us.

 Just because we never seem to have enough pictures of Philip and he's such a good lucking guy:

Thanksgiving games. Hard at play.

The focus.

Darin showing off his skillzzz. Using the good old blow dryer and everything. Multi-purpose tool right there.

(Thank you Sharon for being awesome sending Darin to Powell for a summer. It's paying off). 

 Isn't my camera awesome? Or maybe it's just me...Either way, they're a good looking crowd. So glad we got to spend time with them.

Fun in the Snow

We were so lucky to get snow while up in PA last week! Usually we are lucky to get snow by Christmas out here, so I was more than surprised to have snow for Thanksgiving. We did not pack in anticipation of snow, so we were not well prepared, but still had quite a bit of fun. Shae absolutely loved it. He could have stayed out there all day with wet feet and a red, runny nose.  

He was not, however, too fond of the idea of eating snow.

Have I ever mentioned how much Shae LOVES Uncle Philip? (Rather, Uncle Peep, as Shae likes to say). Philip sure can work some magic with that boy.

The boys quickly tried to teach Shae how to make and throw snowballs. 

Shae was SO excited about the massive Olaf that daddy was building. I loved watching him copy everything that Darin would do.

I can't lie, when I saw all the snow coming down on Wednesday I had a few moments where I thought, "Sweet! Our 5k will be cancelled!" As much as I was looking forward to it, running in the cold snow did not sound very appealing. In the end, I was very glad that it did not get cancelled. It was such a fun way to start out Thanksgiving. 

I obviously was not going for a medal, or even to make or beat my last 5k time...*cough* 7 months pregnant *cough cough*... My goal was to run at least half of it, preferably 2 miles. I was pretty stoked when I got to the end and hadn't stopped to walk once! Of course, people were walking as fast as I was "trotting," but still... I was proud of myself. I finished at 38 minutes, which I will not complain about. What I will complain about is the fact that there were no Porta Potties anywhere on the track. They couldn't have at least had one? For the pregnant lady? That might have made the run slightly  easier for me...

Darin finished at 29 minutes, granted, he "ran" with me for the first mile. We kept trying to have a conversation but he kept getting a few feet ahead of me and would have to slow down. It was sweet of him to want to run with me (even though I told him from the start he really shouldn't bother).  In the end, Darin came in 843rd place and I came in 1489th place, out of almost 2500 people, not bad right? (This 5k was SO much bigger than our last one. It took us a while to weave through all the walkers at the beginning. It was kind of insane, but once we got going we had plenty of space. It was a really pretty run, through the neighborhoods of Carlisle--which is an adorable town in the first place. People were outside sitting in their lawn chairs with blankets and coffee watching as everyone went past. I really felt like a celebrity for about .0035 seconds).

Before the race, trying to walk around and keep warm:

After the race, pretending to be cool:

I hope we can make this a family tradition as our kids get older. We definitely aren't "runners" in any sense of the word, but we like to think we are :).