Happy New Year!

Wow - I can't believe I'm finished with 2012.  My goal is to be completely caught up by my birthday, but I'm cutting it close, so we'll see how it goes :-)

We had a few fun little things we did to celebrate the New Year.  On New Year's Day, the kids woke up to balloons in the living room, which is always a hit.  Our neighbors came over later and thought it was very strange, haha.

Happy New Year!

"2013" Pancakes and sparkling cider for breakfast.

In the afternoon we invited some friends to join us roasting marshmallows in the backyard barbecue.
It was fun to be nice and warm while out in the 20-degree weather,
and Ben and Jack enjoyed burning the Christmas tree, branch by branch.

"Happy New Year, Baby Whit!"

   

We finished the day with a beautiful sunset reflecting on Mt. Timpanogos,
as seen from our kitchen window. 

And so we began our new year.  It's going to be an exciting one...

new baby, new job, and another move all in the next few months.

And who knows what other adventures 2013 will bring??

Year-End Video 2012

I think putting these videos together has become one of my favorite traditions.  I just love reflecting on our year this way.  Just like in the last two years, this was a wonderfully sentimental way to spend several hours - sifting through pictures, thinking about what would best represent the year for our family in a slideshow that would last about 3 minutes.  It's not an easy task, but it's not an unpleasant one by any means.  Anyway, enough writing and talking.  Let's get on with it.  

I present you with our 2012 Year in Review Video!

And just because it's always nice to have access to all of them in one place, here are our previous videos:

2011

2010

Here are our top memories of 2012:

Ben
camping in Heber Valley and hiking to Cascade Springs
Cat's first piano recital
seeing Appomatox Courthouse and Monticello
seeing the giant Sequoias and tall cliffs at Yosemite

Brett
sledding
Regency Ball
seeing Cat's progress in piano
cross country skiing
making a friendship quilt with good friends
learning and practicing cake decorating
Fourth of July

Cat
going to Nickel City with Daddy
going to lake for my birthday
going snowboarding (sledding)
Ben and Suz coming
playing tennis
soccer
swimming
Daisies
moving to the summer house and meeting new friends
sharing a room with Eliza

Jack
going to Trafalga on my birthday
sledding
playing soccer
learning to use the potty
seeing the "tree house" (huge tree in Yosemite)
going to the rodeo

Eliza
going swimming
playing with our friends
sharing my bathroom

Everyday Stuff - Year-End Edition

Bug!

This is what Cat wanted to as soon as she got home from school, on about her 8th day of school.  
No complaints from me.

J & E like to help in the kitchen, too.

Go Seminoles!

That's MISTER Eliza to you, buster.

Wax on, wax off.

It's so frustrating when you can't fit your entire body in a liner intended for a basket of baby books. 

Happy kids in the car.

Excited to sleep with Thomas and Annie and Clarabel.
(All snug under the Thomas blanket.)

Reading time after school.
I particularly love this because I have vivid memories of climbing the tree in
my front yard to read by myself when I was Cat's age.

Tickle time.

So, one Sunday afternoon I asked Ben to take pictures of me modeling a few items I was planning to teach
people how to make during an upcoming crafting class.  (Did you catch that?)
Anyway, he ended up with lots of funny pictures of the girls modeling and it made me wonder, were
they trying to do what they thought I was doing?  Hmmm...

Hangin' out in the apple tree.

GOOD NEWS: Cat made up a list of ways to cope with frustration instead of having a tantrum
during piano practice or other stress-inducing situations.
BAD NEWS: The first two items on the list are self-inflicted corporal punishment.

"There was NOT enough chocolate frosting on this doughnut." 

She must have been really thirsty.

This is how I found Jack when I went to tell him that quiet time was over.
Well, okay, you can nap if you really want to, Jack.

I laminated a bunch of the leaves we brought home from our
leaf-collecting excursion and asked Cat to put them on the walls in the kitchen.
This is what she came up with.

While Cat and Jack were sound asleep at our hotel during our trip to California over Thanksgiving,
Eliza was diligently taking an inventory of the contents of my purse.

Jack was nervous about driving through the mountains when we were in Yosemite,
so Eliza held his hand.

I have no explanation.

If I remember correctly, Cat chose to sleep in the playroom instead of clean
in the playroom.  Perhaps I didn't speak very clearly when giving instructions?

J & E "reading" with their friend Sadie.

Hmmm.... did something happen here?

12-12-12
I didn't prepare for this so I just scrambled to find things I had in the house.
12 marshmallows, 12 red hots, and 12 chocolate chips for everyone.
Cat's and Ben's went in their backpacks, Jack's and Eliza's were
intended to be a special treat and counting practice, but the bowls were discovered
and the special time disappeared.

So, apparently, when you play with a toy monster truck in the snow,
the cab fills up with snow.  Just FYI.

Oh, shoot.  I left one of Jack's picture on the art string.
Well, I can take care of that.

Cat, enjoying Jack's Christmas gift.

The first evidence of Jack playing with the Christmas gift I spent hours making,
an alphabet made from fleece.  And, yes, he's either giving them a ride in a truck
(which was also a Christmas gift, but it was free) or driving over them with a truck. 

A few more tidbits before I officially wrap up 2012:

• Jack still loves "tuh-nay-dohs"  We found out toward the end of the year that he prefers tomatoes to canned peaches, pizza, doughnuts, and fudge.  The exact exchange for the latter item was, "Jack stop eating the fudge!  If you stop eating fudge, I'll give you some tomatoes."  And... he immediately complied.  He walks around the table looking for tomatoes on people's plates when we've been eating something like salad with dinner.  And when he's upset about something, such as bumping his head, he can easily be consoled with tomatoes.
• Cat and Eliza have been sharing a room for the last few months.  They sleep in the bedroom in the basement, with Cat in a double bed and Eliza in her crib.  Eliza loves sleeping in the crib and has no desire to sleep in anything else.  She gets mad when we refer to the porta-crib as a "baby bed."  Being in the crib doesn't even faze her on the rare occasion that she needs to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.  She will climb out of the crib, walk up to our room, wake up Ben or me, and have us help her go potty.  It's amazing.  
• The other interesting thing about the sleeping arrangements in that room is that Cat sleeps with at least 3 blankets on, and if she's wearing thin pajamas, then it's more like 8 blankets.  Not kidding.  Eliza?  She sleeps with one.  Every night.  At first, Cat's bed was under the window so we thought maybe she was getting more cold air than Eliza because of that, but even after we rearranged the room and put Eliza's crib by the window, Cat still sleeps with a ton of blankets on and Eliza still sleeps with one.
• Cat and Jack started doing a job each every morning before they eat breakfast.  Cat earns 75 cents for emptying the main part of the dishwasher (with the potential to earn $1 if she does the job without having to be prompted by a parent) and Jack earns 25 cents for putting away the silverware.  It took some time to get this ingrained in our routine, but now they're used to it enough that they don't fight it.  If only we could find something for Eliza to do, because she really wants her own money.
• Cat finally started getting a later bedtime than the younger kids.  She feels special getting to stay up until 8:15 and will get really upset if we try to get her to go to bed any earlier.
• Cat also began doing her own laundry.  At first, she was being punished and had to just fold her own laundry for a few weeks.  But she wasn't taking very good care of her clothes and hadn't learned the lesson she needed to learn, so I extended it so that she was folding her own laundry for a longer period of time.  When the lesson still wasn't learned, I decided she just needed to wash her laundry as well.  So.  I usually still accompany her when she's operating the washer and dryer, but she does it.  And I admit that it's really nice to have only 4 people's laundry to do instead of 5.  (Yes, I know that will change in a few months, haha.)

Out With a BOUNCE

On New Year's Eve, we found more in-door entertainment for the whole family at Lowe's Xtreme Air Sports in Provo.  I'd been there with my younger kids before, but this was everyone else's first visit.  In short, we had a blast.  You pay for a two-hour session, and we filled that time and could have easily stayed longer.  A great way to stay warm and get some exercise when it was below freezing and snowy outside.

Cat wanted to try the trapeze right away.
Uncle Ben helped her get started.

By the time we were leaving, she was flipping off of the trapeze, with no help at all.

Ben did the trapeze a few times.

But once was enough for me.  It was scary!

Jack preferred to jump on / off of the various trampolines.

Jack-Jack was kung fu fighting...

Eliza could have just jumped all day long.
And check out Cat's moves!  She must have been watching Uncle Ben pretty closely.

Good job, Uncle Ben!

Jack had the nerve to get on Eliza's trampoline while she was still jumping.
"JAAAAAAAACK!!!"

Ben showed Jack and Eliza how much fun it is just to jump into the foam.

Or, to be dropped in the foam.

Uncle Ben helped Eliza climb the rock climbing wall, then she hung out for a minute
by herself before she was ready to drop down.

Ben didn't need any help on the rock climbing wall. 

Baby Whit even had a good time with his Dad and Mom.
Well, maybe until his Mom managed to give herself a black eye while flipping
into the foam pit.  Remember not to tuck too much next time, Suz.

Treats

A couple of days before Christmas, I enlisted Suz's help to get the "heavy" baking done.  We made cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning and crescent rolls for Christmas dinner.  I thought it would work out well for the Bens to decorate gingerbread houses with the kids while Suz and I were baking.  I'd taken the kids to the dollar store and let them each choose one candy to use as decoration, which was probably a mistake because they just chose candy they wanted to eat, and guess what they mostly did with it once they had free reign?  We also didn't form the gingerbread (graham cracker) houses early enough, so the frosting wasn't set when they were decorating.  Jack, in particular, enjoyed knocking his over.

Threatening to push it over.
Pushing it over.
Surveying the damage.
Laughing about it.

Cat enjoyed eating while decorating.
I think Eliza had a little help with her house.

Suz requested that we decorate sugar cookies because she hadn't done that before they left NC.  It worked out that my VT brought over a sugar cookie mix she'd made, so we baked it up and had a decorating session with Oma the morning before O&O left.  It was also good to have an excuse to sit down and decorate (minimally, as you'll see) the gingerbread I'd baked before Christmas.  We usually do this as a family, but I was just such a crazy person that I never made it happen.

The cookie decorating crew.

Our gingerbread family -
Ben, Me + Baby, Cat, Jack, Eliza

Cat doesn't decorate gingerbread as minimally as I do... 

The kids and I had fun cutting out these mini gingerbread men,
arranging their arms and legs into different poses.
We imagined they were doing all kinds of things when we posed them before they baked,
but now they all just look like they're dancing, haha.

Yeah for Christmas (and post-Christmas) treats!