5 years ago today...

I married this man. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. I love you, John.

Hello, Friends

I love it when my friends come to town for the holidays and I get to see them! It was extra fun to have Johnny along to hang out with the husbands.

We went to Cafe Rio to see Madelyn and Cody (in town from Texas) and Blake and Amy (in town from England by way of New York).

Amy, Susie, Madelyn, Barb

Johnny, Scott (who is now a new dad!), Blake, Amy (not pictured, cutie baby Kate), Cody, Mads

We met up with the Drs. April (and their baby in utero!) at Hires with Melanie and Riley and darling little Bronco.

Carolyn, Mike, Riley, Bronco, Melanie, Barb, Charlie (thanks, Johnny for taking the pic)

Charlie- 20 months

Charlie, you are still just the most fun ever. You are talking more and more (I started a spreadsheet of all the words you know to be able to keep track! It's two pages now). You say funny things, too, in your little baby language and we think you are hilarious. You are learning that hitting will get you a time out "sit down" and that you get lots of praise and love for "soft hugs", hopefully these measure will begin to pay off soon. It's sad for everyone when you aren't soft. You were 20 months old all of December and it was so fun to see you really understand some of the fun Christmas things. You know who Santa is and liked to find the Santa doll at Grandma and Grandpa T's house. You loved opening presents. You wanted every ornament on the tree to be a ball and you tested the aerodynamic properties of each one. Everything was more special with you around this year. We are so lucky that you are ours! Here's some of the photo highlights:

Finding a Charlie-sized hiding place under the coffee table

Helping Daddy set up the Christmas tree

A spontaneous hug you gave Sam just melted my heart

Having some toast with your cousin, James

Coloring with Sam and Lily- check out the look of concentration on Charlie's face

Charlie loves this bottom shelf of the kitchen bookshelf and one day he thought it'd be a nice spot to sit and enjoy an apple

"Playing" Wii bowling with Sam and Lily

Baby goth or marker eater?

I attempted a trip to Costco with all three kids one day. It actually was great- Lily wanted to sit next to Charlie and both big kids entertained him while we waited in line.

Playing in the snow with cousins- they wanted to build a snowman and Charlie just wanted to eat the snow

Charlie loves to put things on the phone cradle- look carefully, that's a remote control, not the cordless phone
All dressed up in his suit for church

My handsome boys
We bought Charlie a little potty seat, just so we'd have one to try to start using before baths and showers (you know, when he usually pees on the floor). He loved having his own little seat! I'm sure it will be many (many, many) months before we even start thinking about real potty training.

Charlie emptied his bucket of blocks and walked around with it on his head for fifteen minutes, slowly bumping into tables and chairs and walls as he went. What a funny little guy.

My first Monday of 2011 was spent...

-Coloring pictures with Charlie for an hour. He loved to pick out the crayons from the box, one by one, then carefully situating them in his coloring hand (he's a righty). Sometimes this took both hands to manage. Then he'd color a little bit then want to pull out the next one. Once he got them all out, I'd put them back in and he would start again.

-Skype-ing with my sister, who is so far away. She wrote a great post for going into the new year, you should check it out.

-Putting all of the frozen goods back into the freezer that after Charlie unloaded it. He knows that Daddy keeps a few snowballs in there for Charlie to have when he gets a bonk and needs a little snowball to eat feel better. After he unloaded all my bags of frozen fruit, vegetables and burritos, he found his snowball and contentedly ate it while sitting on the couch.

-Folding laundry, specifically towels. I prefer to have all white towels so that I can bleach them and dry them on hot without worrying about fading. I love a warm towel out of the dryer.

-And while I was folding towels, I watched Oprah's new network, OWN. I am such a groupie but I really do love Oprah. One of the shows featured Diane Sawyer (whom I didn't know I loved but I do after watching her for an hour) and she said the most incredible thing, "Criticism is just a bad way of making a request. Why don't you just make the request?" Life changing.

Christmas Day 2010

We had so much fun on Christmas morning with Charlie. He was a very good boy and got a few big presents. The first one, a basketball hoop, was set up in the kitchen. He saw it first thing when he woke up. His face was so priceless and he said, "Ba-baw!" (which, if you don't happen to speak Charlie's toddler language, means "Basketball!") He picked up the little rubber basketball and made his first basket! (He didn't make any of the ones after that, but he's a great dunker.)




Charlie's other big present was a new train set (and a very generous loan of Steve and Kerry's train set, too). Charlie loves connecting all the magnetic cars and pushing them around the track. We Skyped with my parents and Catherine and Richard and Elizabeth. It was so fun for them to see Charlie's excitement in his trains. He kept jumping up and down!





After we opened presents, we went to Steve and Kerry's house to exchange presents with them and see Sam and Lily's new toys. It was so fun to see them and eat Kerry's family's traditional breakfast rolls- white rolls stuffed with scrambled eggs and shaved beef. Yummy. Sam and Lily worked to earn money then bought us gifts from the dollar store. They were so proud of their purchases, it was really sweet. (You can see Charlie's cute Christmas outfit that only lasted a few hours, then he was back in his jammies for the rest of Christmas day.)






John's parents' house- we had our traditional brunch, while we waited for his brother Sam to call from his LDS mission. (Missionaries are only allowed to call home twice a year, otherwise they email and write). After talking with Sam, we opened presents. One of my favorite traditions is that we exchange dollar gifts with each other. They're always so creative! This year, one the favorites was a tiny flint and steel to put in our camping or emergency preparedness kits. Charlie and James were really into the presents this year. James gave Charlie a Mr. Potato Head set that kept him occupied for over an hour! (Which was really great because he didn't end up napping at all on Christmas day).

Christmas Nativity

John's family has a special Family Home Evening the Monday before Christmas where we read the Christmas story from the scriptures, re-enact the Nativity with figurines, and sing Christmas hymns. It's such a great tradition and I hope that Charlie will be more into next year. :)

Christmas Eve 2010

Christmas Eve was spent doing last minute gift preparations, making Christmas treats, listening to Christmas music, playing outside in the "snow", and a trip to see the Zoo Lights followed by a festive dinner and presents.

We didn't have any new snow on Christmas, but that didn't stop Charlie from finding the few patches on our lawn to munch on.

My parents bought Sam and Lily new bikes for Christmas and John assembled them, with lots of "help" from Charlie. He was really good at standing right where John was working to keep careful watch over everything.


We spent a huge chunk of time making homemade caramel chocolate dipped pretzels and peppermint marshmallows to give as gifts the next morning. Luckily, Charlie took a 4 (!) hour nap so we had lots of time to work. There was a steep learning curve, but we'll be better next year.

Then we met up with Steve, Kerry, Sam, Lily, and Grandma Barbara to hit the Zoo Lights. We'd never been before. It wasn't too cold, although pretty crowded. I just made it much worse by standing in the middle of the walkways to take pictures of the lights, whoopsies. It was fun to have an activity to do before we ate ourselves into a food coma.

I made my first Christmas Eve dinner- ham, mashed potatoes, cucumber/tomato salad, pomegranate, feta, walnut green salad, artisan bread, green beans, and pumpkin pie. Luckily I had lots of help, but I was still exhausted after!

Then it was time to open presents- we had Sam and Lily close their eyes and brought in their new bikes covered with blankets. I think the pictures say it all- the looks on their faces were priceless. They were thrilled!