In The Spirit

We did a few things after Thanksgiving that were Christmas-themed and in the past couple weeks we have done a few more.

In John family tradition Sadie painted some wooden ornaments. I think each ornament now has about 10 layers of paint, as she keeps telling me she needs to paint them again. 

We attended Sadie's school Christmas party. They have a school-wide party and a class party. This time Sadie told Santa she wanted a Jasmine doll. She also performed songs she learned in Music class. Elise insisted on standing with her.

Sadie wrote a letter to Santa asking for Jasmine doll for herself and a Mulan doll for Elise. She now thinks that because she asked Santa in person and wrote a letter she is guaranteed to get that doll.

I went and helped out with Sadie's class Christmas pj party. I am so sad that this picture came out so blurry since I never remember to take pictures with my kids and this one is actually cute.

Also not pictured: our completely dead tree. We know now for certain that no matter how recently it looks like the trunk has been trimmed we need to trim more off before we set up the tree. Our current tree just hasn't absorbed any water. It died a few days ago. The branches are hanging lower and lower. We cannot put any presents under the tree. They are placed around the tree.

Merry Christmas!

Ice Cream Date

Last week we went on a family date to get ice cream. What do you know, it was fun. No tears. No whining. Just cuteness and delicious treats. Maybe some day we will be able to go out in public regularly and have this same experience?

First Flu

For the first time ever we had a kid with a bad stomach flu. Maybe it's the karma from all the spitting up Sadie did in the first 15 months of her life, but we just have never had many stomach issues. Usually one barf and done. 

Elise finally broke that streak by throwing up 9 times in 3 1/2 hours. Poor girl had no idea what was going on. After 2 barfs she was still kind of running around and asking for food. I had to force her to stay on the blanket-covered couch. Barf #3 seemed to bring some sort of understanding. She just laid on the couch and occasionally told me she was sleepy. At the beginning of our third movie she told me she wanted to go to bed and she dragged her beloved blankie upstairs. I was convinced I would be cleaning throw up within 15 minutes, but that poor sick girl slept 12 hours and woke up ready to face the next day.

First Snow

We got our first real snow storm a couple weeks ago. Sadie was excited to play in it. 

She has since declared, almost daily, that she hates snow.

The Christmas Card Pictures That Never Were

I realized some time in November that we never took any kind of family pictures in 2013, and thus, didn't have a single picture for the Christmas card. I scheduled a Santa session with Foto Fly for the first week of December. They have a set up that I thought would be perfect. The dad dresses up as Santa and poses with the kids. It is only about 10 minutes long and then you have a few good pictures. I found some adorable dresses on sale and even let Sadie pick out her own new purple sparkly shoes.

When we showed up for the session Elise started melting down immediately. Sadie was excited about Daniel dressing up. There were 3 different photo areas with families and photographers in each one and other families awaiting their turn. We waited for about 15 minutes with Elise screaming and Sadie getting increasingly anxious. When it was finally our turn Sadie burst into tears. We tried to calm the girls down but eventually gave up. Not a single picture was taken.

Instead, I attempted to take a few photos with Hillary and Ben's nicer camera. You be the judge on how they turned out.

The only slightly usable one, which ended up on the card, even though it's a bit blurry and the lighting is off:

November Phone Pics

Here is a random assortment of other stuff from November

1. Probably the most exciting event. One of my best friends from college, Melissa, got married. And two of my other best friends, Julia and Margaret, flew out for the wedding. I got to hang out with some of my best friends as we watched another friend on the happiest day of her life. I basically had a mini stay-cation that weekend and completely avoided any responsibility with my kids. Congrats Mel and Jonathon!

2. Attended several of Daniel's games. Sadie loves Cosmo. Elise loves snacking during the games.

3. One afternoon Sadie told me she was going to write notes to Dad for him to find in his scriptures. This was my favorite note. It looks like a threat, or at the very least, an evil wish, but then you can see that she was writing her name next to "dad" and ran out of room so she finished below.

4. I took a picture of Sadie's preschool class picture so I knew we'd have a preserved copy of it. It was like $50 extra if you wanted a DVD copy of pictures. That little boy to the left of Sadie is named Crew and is apparently one of her best friends at school.

5. The girls played together. I love hearing them giggle together. Like in that first photo when I found them together in Elise's crib one morning, watching a show on the iPad.

Thanksgiving

Almost as soon we knew we were buying our house I started begging the Nielson family to come for Thanksgiving. I had grand ideas of how fun it would be. Even after I was pregnant and super sick I pictured this great week with lots of fun activities. Well, I was pretty much tired and lame the entire time, but we did get to have everyone at our house. We managed to squeeze in some fun around my grumpiness. Daniel, unfortunately, was gone both at the beginning and end of the trip. Such is life during basketball season.

The girls loved all the attention

On Wednesday had a girls afternoon and went shopping for wedding dresses for Courtney. Sadie was happy to offer opinions and advice.

Thanksgiving day was great. I did not do a single thing to help. Nothing. Tom and Carolyn prepared the entire meal and then other Nielsons cleaned up.

The morning after Thanksgiving we had another girls' outing to see Frozen. It was Elise's first time in a movie theater and she was absolutely mesmerized.

Saturday morning some people went to hike the Y. I really dislike that hike and the thought of carrying two children up while pregnant was not appealing so I declined. I included this picture to show that James, Courtney's fiance, came to Utah also. Sadie especially loves James, even if she cannot believe that his favorite color is brown.

Saturday afternoon Daniel had a game. We had a big family cheering section since several of Daniel's other relatives attended as well. The Cottles also came. The girls spent the game dancing and got on the jumbotron 3 or 4 times. Since this game Sadie's sole goal is to get on the "big tv" during games and she whines each time she doesn't appear.

 After the game we waited around so we could all go see Santa at the Riverwoods. Sadie was excited to tell Santa that she wanted a princess bike (which she has since changed to a Jasmine doll-too late) and Elise wanted nothing to do with him.

After the visit to Santa we grabbed some dinner, AKA the three kids ran around while the adults shoved dinner down our throats.
 We allowed the girls to ride the carousel one time and then headed home. Luckily Lexie thought to take a picture to prove that we actually spent some time together.

Sunday evening we went to the lights at Temple Square. The girls started off excited and then quickly melted down. Sadie tripped and hurt her knee. Elise didn't care about lights and wanted to throw leaves into fountains. That picture below is the best family photo we could get of the night. The girls trying to dive into the fountain with floating lights. The worst part was the drive home. Initially both girls were screaming, but then it turned into Sadie shrieking about hating everything and everyone, intermixed with random ear-piercing screams, until we were about 3 minutes from home. That's when she fell asleep.

Looking back over the week as I wrote this post I realize that we did much more than I originally thought. One of those nights (Saturday maybe?) we also went to a late showing of Catching Fire. Half-way through the movie Daniel leans over and tells me he had already seen the movie with his team on a roadtrip. The day everyone left we got a decent amount of snow, which made their drive to the airport extra fun.

Thank you so much for coming everyone! I will try to be more fun the next time you see me!