Shorty Pants

Dal had a birthday-he turned "fee." I love three year olds (it's my favorite age but don't tell my other boys). Dal is the light of my life (well, at least one of them). Being home with just him this year has been such a huge blessing and so much fun.

This kid is flat out lovable. He is fun and he is happy almost all the time. He talks up a storm and I mean it-we have full conversations about everything. He is happy to play with toys at my feet while I get stuff done-he will play for hours just chatting away with me or make believing with his "guys." He wants to be just like his big brothers. There is nothing Dal hates more than to be treated differently from them. Jack is his best friend (at least that's what he tells me. I try to convince him that I am his best friend.) He charms hearts everywhere he goes. It seems that people fall in love with him right away when they meet him. He is SO squeezable. He is getting sick of me squeezing his squeezy legs but they are just so squeezy! He is learning his letters and has started pointing out "D for Dallen" to me everywhere we go. Oh, and 3's "like I am!" Honestly he rarely, at least at this point in life, throws a tantrum or has to have time outs. Right now if he is mad at something he yells "stomach!" and then tells me he said a bad word. He loves to snuggle in bed with me, "get cozy" and read stories. He loves to help me bake. He has short legs. As in, he wears a size 18 months on the bottom-and he's 3. He truly is so much fun to spend my days with. Can you tell that I am head over heels in love?

Dal was SO excited for his Buzz Lightyear birthday party. He told everyone he saw about it-all of my friends, all of his friends, waitresses at the restaurant, checkers and the store, everyone. I hope it lived up to his dreams. It was only an hour long, involved three friends and featured bubble blowing, hot dogs and cheetos, cupcakes and presents. And that was it. Sweet and simple. He was jumping up and down with giddiness the day we sent out his invitations. He was so excited when they said they could come. And then they brought presents. Whoa-what a day!

Here are some pics from the party:

Hugging Van after getting a present:

I love this kid, Dal's buddy Coleson:

The 4 boys:

Excited before the party:

And, the cupcakes:

I love this kid-he's something special. Kind and considerate and loving and wonderful at the sweet age of three.

There's Something I Haven't Told You...

Josh and I have decided to take on a new way of life for the year 2011-or for this summer specifically.  No more namby pamby summers on the beach or sitting poolside enjoying the San Diego sun and swaying palm trees. The new program is called "Let's See How Much Change/Stress We Can Pack In to One Summer." Sounds fun. Anyone want to join us?

You know you see those lists of things that cause stress in life? Here are the ones we have chosen off that list to throw into our summer:

1. Move out of state. In June (around the 10th probably) we will move to Utah
2. Start a new job. Josh will start as a chemistry professor at BYU around June 15th
3. Buy a new house. Affiliated with above mentioned items.
4. Have a baby. Due July 22nd, but given my history HE (let's not kid ourselves now shall we?) could very likely arrive by early July at the latest.

We'll also throw in three birthdays (not counting the new baby's) and a baptism during the month of June as well just to spice things up a little.

What do you think? Sound like a good plan for summer? :) Oh bye bye my beloved beach and 70 degree days in January.

December Rerun

OK, on to December and the fun we had during it. This is the most low key Christmas I have ever pulled off and it made the season so much nicer. Everyone we know got the same present which we bought back in May, I was done shopping, wrapping, Christmas carding, etc. before Thanksgiving and just enjoyed the season (other than being a business owner which often makes me want to curse at this time of the year).

Here is some of what we did. On a whim one day I decided we should make gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. We just used stuff we had in the house. I guess this is Dal's idea of posing nicely for a picture:

Jack really got into this activity. And yes, that is food around his mouth from eating his art:

Nathan's house:

I had a Santa hat photo shoot for our Christmas cards and it left me with all kinds of great pictures of this guys. 

I'm in love...

I'm in Love....

And I don't care who knows it! 

Seeing Santa. I wish Nathan had you know, thought to look at the camera. I love the face Dal is making and made the whole time he was on Santa's lap. He kept his eyes averted and leaned out to avoid too much contact with the big guy.

 Christmas Eve of course included acting out the nativity. My favorite part is Sam the Lamanite who we attempted to slay with marshmallows. Nice of him to play that role, but hey, when your name is Sam, you HAVE to play Samuel the Lamanite right?

And last, the big day:
Adventure is out there! Tell me that those aren't the coolest Explorer hats you have ever seen?!? Aunt Natalie A. rocks!

It was our first time having Christmas completely by ourselves. It was pretty nice. Very relaxing. We built A LOT of legos. We watched movies, we played games. But by 5:00 we were wondering if the day was EVER going to end.

I love that in this picture Dal is very slyly checking to see what Jack is doing. In the next picture he was, of course, making the same face. 

November Highlights

Wow, not only has it been a while since I really blogged, but I even forgot about doing many of the things that I took pictures of. This is why I blog. So that in years to come I can remember the fun I had with my little kiddos.

Looking back to the month of November, here are some of the highlights.

The boys had a short week-I can't remember but I think it was a 3 day week-followed by half days for one full week, followed by the whole week off for Thanksgiving. I love having my kids home and I like to have some plans for fun activities to help us fill our days. Here are two things we did:

We learned about "Pointilism" and some artist who used to do art in this style. Obviously it was an engaging lesson since I don't even remember the artist's name, but we had fun and that's what counts.

Dallen's masterpiece (ok, maybe he didn't get the pointillism part, but still, pretty impressive for a two year old huh?)

 

Jack's Work:

 

Nathan's creation:

And the real reason I am even posting about this-so that I can demonstrate my mad art skillz. I mean come on, this baby should be in a museum or something....right?

Second, we made a balloon version of the solar system (idea courtesy of my friend Liz who home schools. I love to see ideas of fun things she does with her kids and then do them myself.)

This is a very rough estimate of the planet sizes in relation to each other and then strung up in order:

 And truthfully, those are the last cool things we have done for a while. 

But then, Grammy and Grampa came to visit along with Josh's sister and her hubby and son for Thanksgiving. It was so much fun. Someone commented to me that they couldn't believe my mother in law was staying for like 10 days. I have to say I am totally cool with it. I like my in laws. A lot. Plus she did all the laundry the whole time she was here. :) 

Here is Gramps with Dal and cousin Danny who are just 7 months apart in age. (And finally one of my nephews at least knows who Aunt Amber is.)

 On Thanksgiving evening we kept with our yearly tradition of a Polar Express Party. Complete with Josh dressing up funny and leading the whole gang around the house in a "train ride" for which they need tickets (which he of course punches). Following that we (or should I say the boys because the rest of us can't stomach it) watch the movie including a break for hot chocolate presented by their tap dancing mama at the hot chocolate scene. This is one of our best Christmas traditions.

Christmas Memories

I know I haven't blogged in a long time. Soon I will catch up. My computer which was dead and has my photo program on it was in the shop and now it is back-I just need to upload some photos to it. (In the meantime we had to buy a new computer.)

It's Christmas Eve and before I go to bed I wanted to record a few sweet things that I know I will want to remember in years to come.

This is Dal's first year of "getting" Christmas which has been an absolute blast so far. Today he was making up his own Christmas songs that went something like this "It's a light Christmas song!" or "It's a pumpkin Christmas song!" followed by a "sing with me mommy."

When I asked him what he thought Santa would bring him he said "I don't know." When I asked him what he hoped Santa would bring him he said "maybe clothes." :) Bet he would be thrilled with new clothes.

Tonight we acted out the Nativity. For the 5th year in a row Jack played the baby Jesus. He has a very tender heart and loves babies and so he always wants to be baby Jesus. The kid is sort of busting out of the manger, we may have to move him into a new role soon, but for now we let him play it.

Dallen, when asked which part he wanted to play, insisted that he wanted to be Mary. I tried to explain that Mary is a girl but he wouldn't relent. He figured once he "turned a girl" he could play Mary. After some talking tonight we finally had him being "Daddy Mary."

Nathan was our angel in the nativity, as always. Poor Nathan isn't feeling good at all so he wasn't a big part of tonight's fun. Still, he was sweet as always. When he opened his new jammies the reaction was great. "Thanks mom and dad-These jammies are so cute. Oooh, I love them. Thanks so much!" Then he wrote a letter to Santa that said "Don't you think it's a joy on this blessed season to know on Easter Jesus died and was born for us." He has a beautiful testimony and a great heart.

I love my family. This was a perfect Christmas Eve. We miss our families but we are so happy to be together as our own little family this year (and having Cousin Laura, Sam and Uncle Mike over tonight was icing on the cake.)

Halloween Happenings

It is with sadness that I bid October farewell. It's my favorite month of the year, though things have been so hectic and crazy with all my big ideas for fun that it will be a bit of a relief to move on to November...until the holiday stuff starts!

Here are some highlights from our October:

First, the costumes. We had a knight. The helmet (in the second picture) was not originally a part of the costume. This is a leftover costume from years ago but Jack insisted on wearing:

 

A Wizard:

 

And a Doggie:

Oh, and I was a witch. My dream is to find a really flouncy black petti skirt to wear with this costume someday:

We went to the Ward Trunk or Treat at the church last week and took some of the boys' friends from school, Amanda (the Leafy Sea Dragon below-bet you have never seen anyone dress up as that before!) and Andrew (Darth Sidius) and their parents.

The obligatory pumpkin carving which creates memories, messes and rotten pumpkins 2 days later:

Big bummer to have Halloween on Sunday this year, but I think we successfully made up for it with plenty of other fun. We hosted a Halloween Bash Saturday night before Halloween as a consolation for not getting to trick or treat. It was a blast and I think we will make it a yearly tradition:
Pin the nose on the pumpkin, Halloween bingo, bean bag toss, pinata (homemade by us), donuts on a string:

(That's my buddy Nithilan from Jack's class at school I love him. He figured out my name (you know, other than Mrs. P or Jack's mom) and now always yells "Hi Ambah!" every time I see him.)
and the best part, homemade rootbeer (or crazy potion full of acid, toxic sludge and radio active powder, topped off my Pluto rocks made by one mad scientist):

It was amazing, fun and the kid's LOVED it!
Tonight we played Trick or Treat Trivia-the boys answered questions and got candy. Then we played a scavenger hunt game in our house. Fun, fun, fun! The boys were busting with excitement and happiness.
Happy Halloween!

Lately

What have we been up to lately? I haven't blogged in close to a month and even now, I don't feel like I have any pressing things to blog about. It's not that life hasn't been fun or busy, I guess I have just lost my blogging motivation for now.

But I feel an obligation as I imagine grandmothers everywhere sighing when they log on to check my blog and find no new pictures of grandchildren or updates on their latest goings on. (Though certainly a certain sister in law of mine's lack of blogging should be more noticeable. And since I have only 2 sisters in law and one blogs regularly, this one will know who she is.) :) And so, I will blog.

In the past month:

The boys started their first ever organized sport. That is unless you count Nathan's soccer class when he was three from which I have pictures of him picking his nose rather than playing while his best friend Trey preferred to sit on the ball and watch the class happen. I guess Jack took a soccer class when he was 3 too, and loved it, but this is the first "real" soccer experience.

Jack thinks he is a soccer pro and Nathan is tolerating it/enjoying it more than I expected. Nathan's poor team has yet to win, but this week they tied instead of lost, so they were thrilled! Jack's team has won only once, but that was a big win-7-0. One little boy on the team scored 6 of those 7 goals.

I don't have great pictures because my camera has no zoom whatsoever (of of the few things I don't like about it) and it is hard to get a good picture from the sidelines with no zoom.

 This one is for Grandma A. I don't know if you can quite see it, but Nathan most definitely inherited the red face syndrome. 

One Friday afternoon recently me and the boys took a quick trip to the Miramar Air Show. We only had a one hour time window, so we didn't get to see much, just the most important part. The Blue Angels. The boys were going crazy with excitement. We were up close to where Fat Albert and a few of the Blue Angels parked. I didn't try to get any pictures of the Blue Angels in motion-have you seen how fast those things go?

Last, this is why I love being YW President. Where's Waldo. Can you find me?

We had an activity at the mall with about 10 of the leaders dressed up in crazy ensembles and the youth had to track us down and have us sign their card within about 35 minutes. I am proud to say only 3 of the 5 groups found me (I was sitting in the kid's play area with a book in front of my face).

More pictures are sure to come as our Halloween festivities begin...