November Variety

My favorite monthly post- the miscellaneous catch all.

Whining. Life is hard for 2-year-olds

 We are all thrilled to find out the girls will get their first Nielson cousin! Courtney and James are having a baby late May/early June. Sadie immediately set to work on a note for them. I did the proactive thing and took pictures instead of mailing them to Courtney.

I got a brand new phone. My first iPhone and here is the first picture I took on it.

Sadie in her natural habitat

Millie wore her sunglasses for a sunset car ride. 

More pictures from the first day I had my new phone. I was playing around with the camera at Daniel's game. 

 Not a lot of fans to capture in a panoramic shot for BYU women's basketball exhibition games

 Selfies with Millie to try to keep her from running up the stairs and around the concourse. She is so so tiring to bring to games. She wants to run around like her sisters but she is completely untrustworthy so someone has to follow her. She does like Cosmo.

Waiting on the front porch for Elise to get home from school one day when it was still warm in November. 

 A trip to the Museum of Natural Curiosity with other toddler friends.

Elise's gymnastics teacher texted me this picture of her doing a bridge in class. This is a big deal! Elise makes very slow progress, but she raised herself to the bridge all alone and held it. Elise is the second girl on the left in the back row, which dark shorts and a tank.

I drive the carpool to school every morning. Millie ends up in very strange outfits for the 5 minute ride.

Camille accompanied me to IKEA in an Elsa costume. 

Sparklers at Daniel's cousin Melanie's wedding. It was freezing outside that night. 

Just posing to send a picture to Daniel, with lots of toys spread on the kitchen table. That is the girls' favorite place to play with their Shopkins, small Disney princesses, Polly Pockets, and Legos. The table is frequently covered by that stuff.

Camille is a wild one- standing up while riding the rocking horse. Fearless.

Just hanging out with underwear over her pants. As you do.

Gessell Visitors

Next up on our November revolving door of visitors (visitors every weekend in November) was Alicia and her kids. They flew out before Bryce so they could spend some time with us and other friends in Utah County. Then when Bryce flew in right before Thanksgiving they all drove out to Vernal to be with his family. 

It was especially exciting because we had never met Brigham. He was already almost 9 months old! Of course Addy was much more grown up since it had been 15 months since we last saw her. Last time we saw her she was barely talking and now she is a full-blown kid. In fact, she is so tall Elise had a hard time understanding that she is closer to Millie's age than her own. 

 Adelaide and Camille will be in the same grade (along with their twin cousins). At this point Addy seems much older than Millie. Millie has a hard time playing very well, but they did play a bit. 

We mostly stuck around our house for the few days Alicia was here. One day the girls spent hours in swimsuits pretending the family room was a pool. It even included goggles. 

I love spending time with my siblings. Especially as I get to watch them (and their kids) interact with my kids. Family is everything. We wish their stay could have been longer than 3 days, but we will see them again in the summer of 2017. Hard to believe Addy will be almost 4 and Brigham 18 months by then. 

Nana & Papa Come to Town

My parents came for a quick visit over Veteran's Day weekend. This is a holiday Utah generally doesn't acknowledge, but Massachusetts does. The morning after they arrived Millie and I crashed their brunch with my Aunt Kathryn. Then we went to the car wash next door and my parents helped me clean out my car. 

Later that day my dad picked up Matt from Provo and then his mom from Bountiful and brought them back to our house. Grandma John had never been to my house and it was fun to have her. The girls enjoyed putting on a dance show for Grandma and then wrestling with Uncle Matt. 

I couldn't manage to get a picture of everyone looking at the camera at the same time. 

That night we all attended Daniel's game against UVU. It was a rough one. They were losing in the first half, but then came out and blew them out. Sadie and Elise played on the courts up above the main court that UVU has. Millie was all over the place and one of us had to watch her at all times. It was exhausting. She finally cried herself to sleep in my arms. That's when I realized I would not be attending any night games this season.

I don't even remember what we did the rest of the trip. It probably involved a trip to Chick fil a. My parents went up to Salt Lake to spend some more time with my mom's dad. We won't see my parents again until summer 2017!

John Visit #2

The first week of November we got another visit from the Johns. We seem to only know how to do visits in extremes with them. We hadn't all seen each other in years, then had 4 visits in 2016.

On Thursday night I took the 4 oldest cousins to Chick fil A and then one of Daniel's exhibition games. Carrie and Anthony went to the temple with Carrie's family as her sister went for the first time. They paid for a sitter who watched Millie, Elliott and some of their Crane cousins.

 The kids had a blast at the game, getting to hang out with Cosmo a whole lot. I finally had to tell them to leave Cosmo alone to let other kids get a chance. They were climbing all over in front of other fans to talk to Cosmo.

 At one point Cosmo picked Lauren up and ran around the arena with her, including down on the floor. I think she was slightly unnerved, but mostly enjoyed it.

A 7:00 start time makes for a late night once it is over, but the kids all had a great time. It was so nice to not have Millie with me. She is not fun at the games. 

Sadie brought Will and Lauren in for show and tell at school.

It was very cute and fun. The students got to have a Q & A with the foreigners. Everyone wanted to ask a question.

Camille loved to "help" feed Elliott. She is not stealing his food in this picture. She is picking it up and trying to stuff it in his mouth. I love the picture below on the right. It is Elliott's shy smile. You can get him to give you a big smile and then he kind of turns to the side, like he is shy about it.

On the wedding day I actually followed through with my commitment to do Lauren's hair! I love doing her hair because it is thicker than my girls' and thicker hair looks that much prettier in braids. We did a crown braid and she looked beautiful. I put tons of hair spray in it, hoping it would stay all day. 

 More bashful smiles from Elliott. Not sure why he had 2 bottles here.

My girls really enjoy wrestling with uncle Tony. Daniel is happy to wrestle with them, but we just don't think of it much. The John kids wrestle with their dad a lot and my kids now expect it from Tony. 

The older cousins spent a ton of time creating books. 

They wrote several about different types of habitats: the ocean, jungle, etc. Each page gave some info and frequently contained a fun fact, like below. Lots of pearls of wisdom in here. 

They really enjoyed reading them to everyone as pre-bedtime books

 The kids played outside as much as weather would permit.

 

Carrie caught a few adorable pictures after church on Sunday. Elliott is such a smiley guy.

A couple of unpictured important items:
1. A car accident. On Saturday morning Carrie and I were supposed to be taking a nice leisurely trip to browse for some journals and a few other things. Two blocks from our house a teenage kid drove into the side of the John's rental car. It was incredibly annoying, but luckily no one got hurt. The Johns didn't get rental car insurance, since, no one ever does. The kid who hit us had expired insurance, which the police officer didn't notice at the time. They just found out later when the John's personal insurance couldn't collect money from the kids' car insurance since he was no longer covered. I ended up doing a bunch of online sleuthing because their insurance company couldn't even find the kid/his parents and were trying to make the Johns pay for the accident. All we knew were the kid's name and phone number, but not his parents' names. Want to know how I found them? Instagram. Teenagers and their public profiles. Then I found his mom through her public instagram and facebook. Boo ya.
2. A stomach bug. It got passed around the household, with the only people escaping being me, Carrie and Sadie. I can't remember if Elliott got it when they arrived back home in KC. It was a strange bug because it took a couple days between people to hit. So we'd think we were all good and then the next person would get sick. Poor Elise and Camille got it the worst. Both because their sicknesses began in the middle of the night (AKA barf-covered bed) and because theirs seemed to last longer. Camille had never had a stomach flu before and it was very confusing for her. She would start to barf and then she would swallow it, which is painful. She still talks about burping in her bed. 

2016 Election

I voted early this year. Elise and Camille were very well-behaved as we waited in line and Elise asked lots of good questions about the process. I was excited to have them with me. I don't normally share much about my political leanings on any kind of social media because I have absolutely no interest in debating politics. I have friends representing a wide range of politics since I was raised in super liberal Massachusetts and I live in super conservative Utah. But I do want my kids to be able to read about my feelings on this important election.

We had numerous discussions at home about the presidential election this year. Sadie and Elise had heard many interesting things about both candidates at school. Unfortunately, most of the crazy things they heard about Donald Trump were 100% true, while much of what they heard about Clinton was exaggerated or just false. I was embarrassed for our country that he was even a candidate. I don't love everything about Hillary Clinton but I definitely agreed more with her. So I was planning on voting for her. I assumed, like most of the country, she would be elected. I got a little teary about my girls having a woman as the leader of our country. I absolutely subscribe to the notion that it is easier to become what you can see; in other words, girls are more likely to aspire to be world leaders if they see female world leaders. In the week before I voted, a poll came out showing that Evan McMullin had a real chance of beating Trump in Utah. I went back and forth on my vote between Clinton and McMullin. I was hoping to vote for whoever had a better chance of beating Trump. I chose McMullin but it turns out he didn't have much of a chance. I was appalled that Utah went overwhelmingly for Trump. I thought people would be repelled by how disgusting, immoral, and unprincipled he is, but no. He scared me as a candidate since who knows what he would actually do? He has no experience and no track record of sticking to one political stance. He is over-sensitive and reacts emotionally. 

On Election Day Sadie and Elise were both rooting for Clinton, absolutely just because she is a girl,. Daniel and I were both assuming she would win as well. Later that night as the results came in I was dumbfounded. I was also scared. For the first time ever, I got emotional about an election. I couldn't imagine telling my girls that the candidate who "is mean to girls"--as Sadie said--won. I am still dumbfounded. I realized how much I don't relate to many people in the country. I don't understand how someone with morals could want Donald Trump representing the United States. It is all so baffling to me. 

I hope Donald Trump proves me wrong. I hope he is the best President our country has ever had. I hope he gets off Twitter.