Arctic Blast 2008!!

We've had an unusual couple of weeks here in Portland. 10 consecutive days of snow and nearly a foot on the ground - the most snow on Christmas Eve EVER! Church and school have been canceled for 2 weeks and Nike shut down this week. It's been AWESOME!!! We've had a blast playing in the snow and have loved having Matt home since last Friday! Plus we will have a white Christmas!!

To enjoy the snow, Matt and Amelia went sledding with the neighbors. Here's a video clip showing how much Amelia enjoyed watching Matt have a snowball fight with 4-year-old, Sam. It makes me laugh every time I watch it :) Amelia had to wear her rain boots which she called her "reindeer boots" :)

Eating a bowl of snow - her favorite meal these days

Making an indoor snowman - it was too cold outside :)

Playing Connect-4 in front of the fireplace - our daily activity

The Ward Christmas party was last Friday and everyone was glad it wasn't canceled - the roads were better that day. It was a fun party. Amelia loved the food and music and Chase slept the entire time.

Amelia DOES NOT like Santa! When I told her Santa was going to come tonight she said "No, no, no" in a terrified voice and hugged me to "save" her from the idea of Santa

Since church was canceled for the Christmas program, the 4 Mormon families on our neighborhood got together to have a sacrament service. It was so fun. I will always remember this day. A high chair served as a pulpit, the Jensen family conducted and played the music, Stan gave a wonderful talk on the meaning of Christmas, and Amelia didn't hold still for one second :) Just like regular church. We had a nice lunch afterward and was able to hang out with friends after so many days of being cooped up. It was nice. If only every Sunday could be so fun.


Chase has been a hungry boy at night and instead of nursing him from 8pm-11pm while I watch Greys Anatomy (as I have been doing for the last few of weeks), I've been giving him a bottle of breastmilk I have stored in the freezer - now he falls right asleep and sleeps for 5-6 hours! Amelia wanted to help feed her "baby bruver some boobie milk baba" as opposed to the "cow milk babas" she gets.


Just some random pictures:

Chase stared at his reflection for a long time - it was cute - I love how happy his daddy is too. Matt loves his little boy.

I loved the look on Chase's face in this picture - click on it to see it up close

Just hangin' out

Amelis loves watching Pooh bear on our new TV. We finally got cable after 6 months without it. It's nice to have, but I realized I don't really like TV.

I just love it when Amelia keeps a ponytail in her hair - this is a rare picture of her without her hair in her face - but notice she's topless - I can't get both clothes and hair at the same time.

Happy Thanksgiving??

Ah, how wonderful Thanksgiving weekend is!! You get to eat to your hearts content, spend time with family, put up the Christmas tree while listening to Christmas music, and most importantly, have your husband home to help out with the kids and let you sleep in!! Thanks Matt!!

Our Thanksgiving was spent at home and celebrated with just our little family. I pre-ordered a turkey from the farm where we get Amelia's milk and it was HUGE!!!! I had no idea it would be so big, but it was the best turkey we've ever had! I researched cooking methods and found one I thought looked good and I will forever cook my turkey like this. YUM!!!


I made a complete Thanksgiving dinner with stuffing, yams, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and rolls(I forgot to cook the green beans, but who wants those anyway?), and for dessert, apple crumb pie and pecan pie (which is Matt's favorite). I tried to time everything to be ready at 3pm including Amelia getting a good nap and Chase being fed. Dinner was ready on time, but Amelia woke up grumpy from her nap and Chase started crying at exactly 3pm. So, I held a fussing baby while Matt shuttled Amelia to and from her bedroom for a "timeout" until she could calm down and eat dinner with us. In the end, I ate dinner by myself while holding Chase then moved to the couch to feed him. Then Matt came down and ate dinner by himself while Amelia cried in her bedroom. Midway through eating, Matt realized that we hadn't even blessed the food!! We said a quick prayer and looked at each other and said with an "I can't believe this just happened" smile, "Happy Thanksgiving."


Fortuantely about 30 minutes later, Chase was fed and sound asleep, Amelia had calmed down and was happily blowing bubbles with Matt. So our Thankgiving turned out just fine.


Later that evening some friends came over to eat pie and play games. It was nice to talk, laugh, and play with adults after a day so consumed with fussy kids.

All in all, I wasn't too worried about our thanksgiving dinner being a little off because to me, the best part is the leftovers. And since we have enough turkey and stuffing to feed a small army, we have A LOT of food leftover - and I couldn't be happier. My favorite is my ultimate turkey sandwich pictured below. It has the entire thanksgiving meal in one sandwich - gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, turkey and yams. It's the best thing ever! But it leaves you so full you don't want dinner, so you eat a piece of apple AND pecan pie with ice cream instead :)

But it's not all about the food, right? I have SOOOO much to be thankful for!! Healthy children, a wonderful husband, an amazing family, a roof over my head, and a loving Father in Heaven who makes this all possible. I feel so blessed.

Another great thing about Thanksgiving weekend is that once Black Friday hits, it's officially Christmas! YAY!!! We always get our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving so off we went to Home Depot (hey, they have great trees OK?) and picked out the perfect Christmas tree. And by the way, Oregon trees are amazing! They are full and green and smell incredible. According to Matt, this is the second good thing about Oregon (the berries are the first).

Amelia is scared of Santa, Snowmen and Nutcrackers, so Home Depot was like a haunted house to her. Luckily the doggy stocking made her more comfortable - until she pushed the button on his hand and his ears started moving.

Mommy the reindeer made her happy again ;)

Our tree. We hope to have it decorated by Christmas :)

We have had an amazing weekend of eating, singing and dancing to Christmas music, picking out our Christmas tree, and being together as a family. HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Halloween n' stuff

I have greatly neglected our blog over the last few weeks. Time is very tight these days and even when I do have a few spare moments, they have to go to other things like cleaning instead of blogging, but I decided it was time to post something new even if it takes me all day to do it. (Note: This actually took me 2 days to finish...)

The weekend before Halloween, we decided to go to Roloff Farms to pick out our pumpkins. We have never watched the show "Small People, Big World," but everyone around here was so excited that you could go visit them at their pumpkin patch - the only time the public is allowed on their property. It was only a few miles away from our house so we went and picked out a pumpkin for each of us. They were quite picked over and only a few good ones were left, so Chase got a green pumpkin - we figured it was appropriate since he was a bit un-ripe too :)

Amelia looking for the perfect pumpkin

Amelia riding with our loot

The star of the show

Our Halloween was celebrated by attending the ward trunk or treat. Amelia and I carved her pumpkin that morning to get in the Halloween spirit (her pumpkin was the only one that got carved - I told you time was tight). I drew some faces on a piece of paper based on some books Aunt Amber gave her that she loves and let her choose the face she wanted on her pumpkin - Happy, Sad, Scared or Angry. I was hoping she would choose Happy or Scared since those were the cutest, but she wanted Angry. I asked her a few more times to give her a chance to reconsider, but she kept saying Angry, so she got her Angry pumpkin.

Amelia making an Angry face like her pumpkin

Amelia was a fairy for the party. I can't believe she let me put curlers in her hair AND keep them in for 2 hours when she won't keep a hairclip in for 30 seconds. But she did thanks to the spray bottle that kept her busy.

I hadn't planned on being anything, but at the last minute decided to be a black cat, original, I know, but it was easy to do with what I had on hand - a black headband, construction paper, tape and eyeliner. Matt was a hippie - the same as last year - and just like last year, Amelia freaked out when she saw him in his wig - he is seriously unrecognizable. She cried so hard and was grumpy and crying for over an hour afterward even though he only wore the wig for a few seconds. Poor Chase didn't get much of a costume, just a pumpkin hat from the $1 bin at Target.

Matt's costume last year

Chase is still a good baby and a great sleeper, but less than he once was. He has a lot more fussy periods and needs to be held more often, but thanks to the DARLING sling my niece Brittany made for me, I can keep him happy and still make dinner or color with Amelia. Thank you, Brittany!!! (You can buy them here).


Amelia still has her moments of jealously and throws fits, but she's learning to play by herself much better. The other day while I was feeding Chase she started throwing a fit by rolling around on the bed grunting. Still grunting, she got down from the bed saying "go in room" then ran into her bedroom and shut the door. A few seconds later, she came running back into my room with a huge smile and said "I frow a fit, lock in room" then trotted off to the play room singing "I love you, you love me..." So it looks like she's understanding the consequences for her actions and can have fun without me.

She is constantly surprising us with the things she knows. Here are a few examples:

• She is speaking in full sentences: she made a request to watch something on YouTube by saying "Lets watch "True Loves Kiss," I like that part."
  
• She is singing songs and it's so cute to watch her sing: She sings Barney songs, princess songs and many more. I tried to get a clip of her singing the alphabet, but she wouldn't cooperate.
• She is playing pretend: Yesterday she dumped water in her bowl of chips and was stirring it with a spoon. She say "I making dinner!" I asked what she was making and she said "I making eggs - cook on stove?" so I put them on the stove, then she said "cook in oven" so I put them in the oven and set the timer. When the timer went off she said "dinners ready!" She also talks to Cinderella on her cell phone, puts diapers on her animals, wraps a white sheet around herself and says "I getting married!", and licks her drumstick and says she's eating a popsicle.
  
• 

Some of her favorite things to do are:

• Be "Sad." She runs from room to room whimpering and throwing herself on the floor, couch, bed, whatever, pretending to cry like she sees Cinderella, Belle, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White doing. She also loves to watch these crying scenes over and over on her DVD
  
• player.
• 
• 

Being Sad

• Break crayons and take the paper off. She'll spend over an hour a day snapping crayons in half saying "I broke it, tape off" then taking the paper off. It's nice that it occupies her so much, but the mess afterward is annoying. I find pieces of paper in every room in the house.
• Play with playdough, watch children's songs on YouTube (the most annoying, yet a favorite is here), watch Disney Princess and Barney DVD's, sing and dance in our dance studio (aka empty dining room), experiment with her food instead of eating it, hug and kiss her brother, and sleep (just kidding, this is her LEAST favorite thing to do, just seeing if you were paying attention).

Being a mom is very hard these days, but when I get enough sleep, our days are pretty good. Amelia makes me laugh (and cry), Chase makes my heart melt, and Matt is a great Daddy. I LOVE MY FAMILY!!!