Curious George

One of the boys favorite cartoons is Curious George. We love it as well. It is educational and promotes creative thinking. After watching the crazy hat episode Ian had to make his own hat. With a little help taping from daddy he was able to create his own unique design. The cylinder on the top is full of cereal. There is a hidden door on the left (not really hidden but he calls it hidden) that opens to release cereal into a bowl or even better straight into your hands. He was so happy and proud of his hat. He had to show everyone -I am sure I have video somewhere but I can't seem to find it at the time. It was great! 

Christmas Decor

It is our favorite time of the year. Well -mine and the kids we call Tim scrooge :) We love pulling out the tree and getting it all decorated. Ian decided he wanted to add his own touch to the christmas tree with his superhero toys. It seemed every decoration I put up they pulled down. We ended up just putting up the tree. Once the kids went to bed then Tim and I finished decorating the house. 

 Ian loves Christmas lights so we decided we needed to add them to his house as well! He thought they were amazing! After having them plugged in every night they finally died and burned out in February. It was a sad day but thankfully there was not much we could do.

Ian also helped me make this felt christmas tree for the boys to have fun playing with and decorating. They are not allowed to touch my upstairs tree -it is my pretty tree. So this one is upstairs and they have there own big tree downstairs that they decorate themselves.

We picked up our ski passes!

And have the Christmas cards printed and ready to go!

We can hardly stand the wait, please Christmas don't be late!

As told from the boys favorite movie Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year got off to a bad start for our family. Mid-November we all ended up with horrible colds. Tim and Aaron were over it in just under a week but it lingered with Ian and I. No surprise given my year, I ended up with pneumonia the weekend before thanksgiving. Thankfully I was finally put on a wonderful z-pack of antibiotics and by the time thanksgiving rolled around I was feeling better -not perfect but better.  

Then as luck would have it just before thanksgiving Aaron started with a fever. We did not see anything associated with it until helping him use the restroom and he was covered in a rash from the top of his neck to his toes. He has had an allergic reaction before and it looks almost identical. We are still not sure what caused this or why it happened but thankfully the day after thanksgiving he was back to normal. He did have fun lounging with everyone especially, Grandpa, Great Grandpa and Uncle Doug. 

It is probably commonly know that our family enjoys electronics. When glancing through my pictures from thanksgiving I was amazed how many of them contained someone on an electronic device. I think we might have to start an electronic basket so we are forced to converse with one another :) Needless to say at least we can all enjoy electronics together. That's right even great grandpa diamond was having a rather enjoyable time playing monkey preschool with Aaron. 

We were able to reserve the church in our stake for all of us to get together the day of Thanksgiving. As a child I can still remember thanksgiving at my grandparents church house with all of the family -and lots of chocolate and mint fudge! We spent the morning cooking the food at home and then that afternoon we all headed to the church house for a Thanksgiving feast!

The little kids enjoyed coloring while waiting for the food to be ready. Kenna was a great sport and helped them with the color by numbers and letters. I love the picture of the table at the right. You can see Ian with Tim's phone taking a picture of his turkey hand he drew on the table. 

The nice thing about getting everyone together at the church house is there is plenty of room and a gym. We all enjoyed playing basketball and cleaning the floor ;)

Finally the time had come to dig in and eat! As usual I believe my mom's orange rolls were the favorite. They are delicious!

After a delicious meal and pies, basketball and running around doesn't sound to appealing. We enjoyed each others company talking and catching up. Except Chelsea and Ian, they were still ready to run!

After a day of hard work the guys were on clean up duty.  As you can see grandpa looks quite excited :)

Thanksgiving was wonderful! It was great getting together with the family and being able to talk to those that were far away. I am grateful that we did not have to travel and were lucky enough to be in our own home -but we appreciate those that did. While thanksgiving may have been over the family fun was just beginning!

The next day the guys hung out with the kiddos and the ladies did a little shopping -in black Friday spirit. Although not until around noon. Which meant we had plenty of time to lounge around and not do much of anything. Which leaves room for judgment errors and entertainment :)

The ladies then went to this crazy kitchen place Gygi Orson in Salt Lake. They had this giant pot and spoon that I don't know what you would do with it, but it was funny either way.  Grandma enjoyed trying on some silly cooking hats.

That night we all got together again to see the Christmas lights at The Riverwoods. It was freezing cold but an added bonus that Santa was there and the wait was not to bad.

Ian could not stop talking to Santa and telling him all of the things he wanted for Christmas. Superhero this, and superhero that. I could not even get him to turn and look at me to take a picture he had important things to tell Santa. Santa informed him that was a pretty long list but he would see what he could do.

Aaron was up next and just smiled the whole time. He never said anything so Ian jumped in from the side and began saying some items that Aaron wanted for Christmas (which happened to be on Ian's list). The boys waved good bye to Santa and Ian shouted as loud as he could for Santa to hear him, "I love you Santa." 

It was a great night and weekend and was wonderful to spend it with all of the family!

First snowfall of the season

Finally the beginning of November we actually got snow! We were not expecting much due to last years let down of snow accumulation here in Utah Valley, but we were hoping for the best this year. Ian had a fever that day but who could deny him the joy of playing in the snow -all we knew it would be gone tomorrow. So Tim got the boys all bundled up and away they went. Sledding, fort building, and trying to eat the clean snow.

Then it was inside to relax and watch a movie with mom! Yes, pike did not want to be left out. 

Life with boys

I am not sure that anything more needs to be said but life with boys is never dull....ever!

Aaron pretending to take a nap on the bongo board. 

Ian testing out his clothes for school in the morning. Looks like they will fit! 

Aaron has amazing bed head in the mornings!

These two have really been enjoying playing together lately. While it is most definitely not perfect all the time usually it is pretty good!

Preschool

I cannot believe how big he is getting, and how smart! This is his second year of preschool and call me crazy but due to his summer birthday he will have one more year of preschool. The decision did not come easy. I asked everyone and anyone their opinion (yes I probably asked you). Is he ready for kindergarten? Yes, he is very ready academically, socially, physically, etc. However we believe he could excel and be challenged even more if he is one of the oldest in his class. Plus, I will admit I am not ready to send him on a school bus to kindergarten :( So we are going to enjoy next year together as a family and hopefully with some added family traveling and learning.

Here is a little more about Ian this past year....

He loves science! Animals, Reptiles, Weather, Earth. Anatomy, everything

While he could have you read books to him over and over for hours. He is not a big fan of reading to you. However, ask him if he can spell a word and he is all over it! He loves breaking down the words into sounds and writing them out in his notebook. He just will not read to me :(

His favorite activities are biking and snow skiing. He learned to ride a bike without training wheels just before his fourth birthday and is extremely confident in his ability. He has also been skiing since he was two and is very excited for lessons to start again this year. 

This school year he also started in swimming lessons and loves it! He scares his teacher because as she says, "He is overly confident but not yet competent." Although in the last few weeks he has improved drastically. 

He is very kind and caring to others around him.  His teachers always comment on how polite and well mannered he is in school. Don't worry we tend to see the opposite side at home.

He has always been a boy that was full of energy from day one. Not much has changed there! We have noticed in the last few months that he will actually sit down for a good hour and either write. color, or play with legos. It is a welcomed change.

All and all we absolutely love this boy and are excited to get to have a little more time with him before sending him off to school!

Superhero Halloween!

Halloween this year was thankfully nice and warm. Ian had school the morning of halloween and was beyond excited to go dressed in a costume. Originally he had decided he would like to be Captain America however after our ward party he decided way to many people were dressed like Captain America. He borrowed a Wolverine costume from his friend Kimball but unfortunately Ian is much taller and the costume did not fit :( So while he listed off many other superheroes for me to go and buy for him he finally decided on Spiderman. We happened to already have a wonderful hand-me-down spiderman costume from Hunter plus spiderman shoes from Evan! He would always strike a spiderman pose at the door when trick-or-treating...it was hilarious!

Aaron enjoyed looking through Ian's superhero book that morning but had his mind set on dressing up like Ironman!

The kids in our area started early...very early. We were just sitting down to eat dinner before 5 o'clock and the doorbell started ringing and never stopped. We made the boys shove some homemade jack-o-lantern pizza in their mouths and then they were dressed before we knew it and ready to go! Of course I had to take some pictures which as you can see did not go very well. Threats were made, "If you do not look at me and smile, you will not go trick or treating." Which worked but only for one child at a time. 

 Enough was enough we were off! Spider Pike too!

Ian could hardly wait for Aaron he was so excited to collect candy. Aaron loved holding all of the candy in his hand while we walked from door to door. When his hands were full and he started dropping candy then he would let me put it inside his bag.

The Bawden's! Aaron absolutely loves them, they are his nursery leaders and do an amazing job! The moment he see's them he starts wildly waving with both hands high in the air. We are so grateful for them!

The boys were having so much fun and did not want to stop. Aaron started dragging his bag on the ground because he had so much candy. He finally broke into a candy bar (without me seeing that he had actually opened it) and shoved the whole thing in his mouth right before our neighbors house. When our neighbor Mike reached out to give Aaron a candy bar Aaron returned the favor by spitting out his candy bar into Mike's hand. Thankfully Mike has twin 3 year old girls and handled it very very well :) oops

When we arrived home Aaron enjoyed helping pass out candy with Daddy. Ian, Pike, and I decided to walk around another neighborhood in our ward. Pike was exhausted when we got home and did not mind the the kids were tossed various halloween costumes on him.

Ian loved making a big pile with all of his candy. Here are a couple of his favorite things that he received that night...

Bag of Popcorn: He was beyond excited and turned around immediately saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank you...how did you know that we were out of popcorn! Now we can have a movie night!" 

Halloween notepad, eraser, and pencil

Paddle Ball -sadly it broke the next day.

I was surprised that he really did not care to eat a lot of his candy. His favorites were fruit-roll-ups, m&m's, and suckers. Everything else he does really care for. That night Ian blew out the candles in the pumpkins and then we all headed to bed!

Everyone seemed to have a sugar hangover and be extremely tired the next day. Except for Aaron -probably because he spits out all of his candy!