The 5 Highlights of November 2009

Here's my quick Five point photo based recap of November:

First: Batman and Iron Man still reign supreme in our house-even when we're feeding the missionaries.

Second: Audrey has now turned 7 months and starts teething on everything...that first tooth finally popped in on November 14th. The next one was a week later.

Third: We had a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving dinner hosted by Katie & Ricky Irion, and enjoyed spending the afternoon with Chelsea & Matt Rowan, and Jenny & Richard Leake...and all of our children who mostly spent the time playing in their bless-ed basement! :)

Fourth: The influence of having mostly little girls his age finally overcame Nolan and he happily experienced the joy of being a Princess with the girls for a change. This made Kenny squirm quite a bit, but I just laughed and encouraged it-why should the girls have all of the dress up fun? Besides, the other 29 days of the month he spent in his Batman, Buzz Lightyear, Train conductor, or ninja costume-I think he'll be okay.

Fifth:The rest of the month was spent anticipating, preparing and waiting for Christmas vacation to begin! Hooray! Utah and Washington here we come!

Happy Halloween Nauvoo!

On Halloween weekend we decided to take our first trip to Nauvoo. I found a cheap hotel with an indoor pool about 9 miles away, so we packed up the kids, the costumes and the cooler and headed out for the 5 hr drive. We got there just in time for the Friday night trick-or-treating and Nolan was SOOO excited! He didn't even complain one bit about the freezing gale-force wind that shocked us the second we stepped out of the car! (That explains the Buzz Lightyear costume with new winter parka ensemble he's wearing.)

We trick or treated to as many stores down their main street as we could stand and then promised him that we'd take him again the next day (on Halloween).

The next day we hit the visitors center and then toured all of the sites that we could with our two kids in tow. The weather was still pretty chilly, but at least there was lots of sunshine. Note to everyone: if you ever want to check out Nauvoo and practically have the whole place to yourself, do it on Halloween weekend!! It was so great to be the only ones in every site and get to ask all of the questions and sit and chat with those sweet elder missionaries as much as we wanted! Plus we got all of the great 'handouts' at each station and Nolan thought that was a pretty cool trick or treat experience too.

Then after we saw as much as we could of the sites, we caught a quick buffet dinner at Hotel Nauvoo (everything was really good too by the way), and then grabbed the kids costumes again for the big Halloween parade and pumpkin festival. The town members carve and display over 300 pumpkins and the line them all down the main street, have trick or treating and the church sponsors a bunch of fun things for the kids in the pioneer village shops like cake walks and bean bag tosses, etc., just too much fun!

Nauvoo was even nice enough to put on this gorgeous sunset by the temple...Wow right?

The next day we were able to find one of the curious 'fruits' that our friend Katie Lindner told us about. They grow on some trees in the area and apparently people used to put them near their front and back doors to keep pests (bugs, spiders, etc.) away. The man I asked gave me the name...but I can't remember what it was.

Finally, on our way home we drove by Carthage and toured the jail. That truly is a very humbling experience. It's amazing to feel the power that is in that building. I'll be honest I was expecting to cry and be more emotional that I actually was during the tour. I was surprised at the sort of peace that was in that building. I guess it was just a confirmation from the Spirit of the what an amazing man the Prophet Joseph Smith was, and how admired and loved he was by the men that served in that jail and died with him. We were so glad that we were able to spend the weekend enjoying each other's company, watching our kids experience a one of a kind Halloween, and seeing for ourselves the testimony building sites and sacred places that our church has so wonderfully preserved and shares with everyone. It was by far a Halloween weekend that we won't forget for a long time!

Fall Fun

October was a busy month for us. The weather was chilly but the leaves this year were gorgeous! We probably took photos of our kids with the leaves once or twice a week!

The first weekend of October My Mom came to visit and keep us company while Kenny flew to San Francisco for a breast cancer symposium he was invited to attend. We did as much shopping and playing as we could in between me getting sick and then Nolan...plus it was REALLY cold for October out here so that hampered our plans a bit. We found time to hit the pumpkin patch, Johnson Creek outlets and even the Zoo when Kenny got home.

My Mom even got to witness Audrey eating her first cereal...this was her reaction:

Here are some of the pictures that stood out from the fall "portraits". Really there were so many I'm really struggling not to post them all!

Dear Blog Followers...

I will now start updating our blog with our fun family events that have taken place the last few months....I can no longer take the guilt of looking at other people's blogs and wishing that they would update theirs from a week ago when mine hasn't been touched since September. Ahh guilt...my only motivator. :)

Definition of a 3rd Birthday

So 3 things defined Nolan's 3rd birthday this year.

1- Batman

2- Iron Man

3- Wonder Pets

Are you starting to see a theme? If you guessed super heros you'd be right!

I don't know what started it, or where in a little boys genetic code it says that around their 3rd birthday they are to become the family super hero, but we've been pretty happy about it!

It's nice having a super hero around when you need him. It was also particularly fun to plan his birthday this year.

It started off with Batman PJ's from Grandma Merrell...

Then came the Batman mask and cape from Grandma Whittaker...

Then of course the Iron Man action figure...

and Wonder Pets from Mom and Dad...

Which when put together with a make shift "fly boat" from the basement...

Leads up to the big Wonder Pets Birthday Party!!

(That'll have to have it's own post.)

Remembering September 16th, 2006

Nolan looked surprised to see 3 candles in his birthday waffles

...and so were we!

There is always some denial and misbelief when a child turns another year older, and this year was no exception. I still remember my adorable 4lb 14 oz baby boy being born on the first snow storm of the year on Saturday, September 16th, 2006 at 11:05 AM. Mount Timpanogos was just getting it's red fall leaf coverage and the storm from the previous night had left a nice white cap on top of the mountain.

He was born at the Timpanogos hospital in Orem, surrounded by LOTS of great doctors, nurses and family. He started out his life exceeding our expectations, and he continually does so every single day. It's ironic that his stay in the NICU may have been the longest 19 days of my life, but these last 3 years have seemingly just flown by!

We love our handsome little man to pieces. He has such a love for life and he makes each new day an adventure. He has a great sense of humor, loves to learn new things, loves to play with his friends, and especially loves his family. He is a great big brother to Audrey, and she adores him. He is super smart-we've always been amazed at how quickly he picks up on new things. He is definitely a gadget/techie kinda guy-give him an iPhone and he'll show you how to play any game on it. He also LOVES to play his "Diego games" on the nickjr.com website and navigates it entirely on his own discovering new games and challenges with very little assistance. Yeah, we know he's only 3, but they help us teach him his shapes, colors, math and letters a lot better than anything else I've tried! He's always been a ball of energy and keeps us going along with him. So here's to you Little Man! Our lives are 1000% better since you've come along!

Portraits

A few weeks ago we took the kids to Picture People in the mall to have their portraits taken. I had made Audrey a little black Tutu with "Tiffany blue" ribbons and had this vision of a little "Audrey Hepburn" portrait with pearls and such. This is the one that turned out the best, and actually ended up winning their portrait contest and it will be going on to their national competition. We have a few others of her, but I haven't scanned them yet. Kenny also had a little fun with photoshop and created this B&W image that is hard not to love.

As for Nolan-he was not a big fan of the whole picture taking idea and no amount of ice cream or candy bribes were going to change that so for now we'll just have to enjoy the ones of him that have been taken in the comfort of our own backyard.

Audrey's 4 month Stats & Photos

On Sept 2nd we had a visit to the Dr. to check up on our little growing girl.

Her stats were: Ht. 24.5", Wt. 14lb 4.5oz, & Head 16.5" -Generally she's in the 60th percentile. That kinda blows my mind...I don't think that Nolan has been any higher than 20th the skinny kid!

Some of Audrey's favorite things right now:

1) She loves to roll over on to her tummy and then back-I have to supervise her though cause she tends to spit up when she's on her tummy and then roll back over onto it...not a pretty sight.

2) She still loves her swing and that cute little girl looking down at her in the mirror.

3) She loves her bath time-she splashes like a toddler would and sometimes I swear that if we were in a pool she could kick her way across it!

4) She still doesn't really cry, her cooing and squeals just get progressively louder until you finally give in and let her eat or go to sleep.

5)She LOVES her Daddy. She has a special smile reserved just for him that can visibly melt his heart even on his toughest days. (I'm sure that will come in handy down the road)

6) She LOVES her big brother Nolan and will laugh for him every time he tosses a stuffed animal her way or comes to see if she's awake in the morning. She already has the patience of an angel when it comes to getting bumped or pinched when he is trying to play with her.

7)She has always like holding her feet together when she's laying down, but now she's discovered that she can get those little toes into her mouth to suck on. It usually proves to be pretty entertaining to watch since she occasionally misses and gets poked in the eye. But that makes her all the more determined to try again!

Nolan and Daddy time

Right now Daddy time in our house is quite a special thing. Kenny has been on his OB rotation since the middle of August and it has required numerous days of overnight call-which means he's gone from 5:00 AM in the morning until 8:00 AM the NEXT morning. It really hasn't been too bad, and it's actually almost over. It's just made Kenny want to spend some extra special time with our kids when they are all awake at the same time. A few Saturdays ago Kenny took Nolan to the Zoo and visited the "Wings from down under" exhibit where you can feed the birds millet seed from a Popsicle stick. He caught a few pictures with his iPhone camera, and I was impressed to see Nolan actually holding the birds on his stick-I thought he'd be afraid with them flying all over the place! They had a great time though and actually inspired me to take them again a few days later so that I could experience it with him. Here's a few pictures to document the fun.

I love this photo for two reasons 1) it shows my boy bravely holding a pretty little parakeet, 2) it shows that he's also grown a couple inches during the past few months because these jeans weren't so short on him this spring!

This photo is from when we went to the Zoo, by then he was very comfortable with these little guys.

Kenny also took this video of Nolan running through the sprinklers in our backyard on Labor Day. He and I had been getting soaked until little Audrey finally decided that she was starving so I headed upstairs to feed her while Kenny went down to supervise. Apparently Nolan thought he should join in the fun too!

Boerner Botanical Gardens

On August 24th we ventured out of town a bit to the Boerner Botanical Gardens since I've been desperately trying to suck all that I can out of summer and right now getting out of the house is essential to the makings of a 'good day' in our household.

It was quite a pleasant afternoon, the gardens were great, my kids enjoyed exploring somewhere new, but most of all Nolan LOVED this giant butterfly sculpture and we spent easily an hour hanging out near, on and around it. He'd agree to take little walks to go investigate new areas, as long as we ended up back at the butterfly. Right now, Nolan's imagination is really kicking in to full swing so the availability of a giant butterfly that he could climb all over and enjoy was a really exciting thing. We had a great time-I'm really grateful that there are places here that can actually make me feel like I am not just somewhere in the city. I almost felt like I was out in nature!!