Gingerbread Houses

Some of our friends in the ward invited us over to make gingerbread houses...my boys made some out of graham crackers which K destroyed. I think they both still have to finesse the art of appreciating gingerbread houses...

After a while the boys got a bit rowdy so I brought home my fun gingerbread house kit that Sandra had made and finally put it all together on Monday. I'm proud to say it's still standing, but it's lacking greatly in many of the decor after almost a week with my boys near it :).



Thank you Will & Sandra for having us over! (sorry my boys made such a mess!)

Santa

Our ward Christmas party was this last Friday and we had a special visitor...SANTA! Poor guy got practically mobbed by all the kids, but both of my boys were finally willing to sit on Santa's lap.

When asked what he wanted for Christmas, K said he wanted candy canes...sweet deal for Santa! K was happy as a cucumber as soon as he got off Santa's lap because candy canes just happened to be Santa's little gift to all the kids :).

C sat on Santa's lap long enough to realize that Santa wasn't going to open his candy cane for him, but he sat long enough for me to snap a quick picture.

When we go anywhere that has a picture of Santa, ie every aisle of WalMart, C starts screaming "Oh, oh oh Santa...nother Santa!" I just love the fact that as my boys grow they understand more and more...it brings more joy and excitement to the holidays :).

Happy Birthday/Congratulations Dale!

I hereby dedicate this entire post to my husband for two reasons: it was his birthday this last week and he presented an oral argument for a client in the 10th District Court in Denver last week!

As for his birthday, he got home from Denver late the night before. On the morning of his birthday I attempted to make him breakfast in bed but he got up to soon :). After he got home from work we made wienerschnitzles and kartoffelkloesse and they didn't turn out nearly as well as we had hoped but it was definitely a new experience. Then I finished frosting his cake...

Afterwards Dale opened gifts from us and my family. K made him a popsicle stick box and Dale helped him write his name on the bottom.

As for Denver, Dale is in the legal clinic at school which provides free legal assistance to those in financial need...and the students get to act as their attorneys with a professor supervising the whole thing. Dale was super excited when he found out that one of his cases was going to be heard in the 10th District Court and spent oodles of time preparing for his argument. His professor traveled with him and even bought him his first briefcase.

Reportedly, Dale did a superb job. He got to eat with his cousin after the hearing and she messaged me to tell me that his professor was elated over the job Dale had done. Dale was still super excited when I picked him up at the airport and I am so proud of him...for the job well done and for all the work he put into preparing to the best of his ability to defend his client. I can't wait to see Dale once he's graduated and gets to regularly defend clients and help them.

Well done LOVE! We are so proud of you!

Happy Halloween!

 

Halloween was so much fun this year! K was a fireman and C...well, he ripped the zipper out of the doggie costume he was going to wear because he hated it so much, so he was a cowboy for the ward party and I finally convinced him to be a pumpkin for trick-or-treating.

We debated on whether or not to take the boys trick-or-treating but ended up taking them and I don't remember the last time I laughed so much! The first house we went to was Dale's former professor who told the boys to take as much as they wanted...big mistake. For the rest of the night, K & C thought they could do so at every house. Then the next house had a dog and the owners let the boys in their house to pet their dog...big mistake. The boys then thought they could go inside every house we went to so we had to hold C's hand a good portion of the night.

Between hearing K explain his version of everything he saw from "beautiful lights" to "spooky, scary skeletons" it was hilarious getting a 4 year old's perspective on Halloween. One house had a fog machine and we just died watching C try to blow the smoke out!

By the end of the night, C just wanted to plop down and eat his precious suckers but K never wanted to stop. I love that they are at an age where they can enjoy the holidays, and bring that much more joy to our lives as their parents!

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Patch

Recently, Groupon had a great deal for a local pumpkin patch, so while my mom was here, we drove out with K & C. It was 85 some odd degrees and very sunny, plus the boys were totally off of their sleep schedule (aka cranky, sleepy, grumpy, etc, etc). BUT we still had a fun time!


 I was very impressed by this pumpkin patch. They had a huge slide structure with hay bales and C, being the smallest kid, kept climbing his way up there and pushing through all the kids there on field trips.

 

There was a hay ride with small portions of hay sprinkled over the bed of a trailer.

And of course a corn maze.

C keeps taking the pumpkins off our front porch and chucking them down the driveway, effectively driving me nuts, but hopefully we'll get them carved soon and he'll leave them alone :).

My mom has since gone and C still asks "err gama?" I'm so grateful that my kids have grandparents close by!

Little Boys' Biggest Dreams

We regularly go to the Lowe's Build & Grow clinics and the Home Depot Kids Workshops, especially if they are building vehicles...and our boys love it. Yesterday before General Conference we went to Home Depot to build fire rescue helicopters and as soon as we pulled in I was instantly excited :). They had a bounce house, cookies, a police car...

A sheriff's Humvee which was requisitioned from the Army...

ATV's...

and a helicopter...

All of which my boys got to climb in and explore. I am just so grateful to the men and women who serve our country and community to keep us safe, and then go out into the community and give my children experiences like this that make them so incredibly happy!

Rainy Day

I walk almost every day to pick up Kimball from school and yesterday was the first rainy day in ages...it felt so good but it was a little chilly. Kimball was too funny on our walk home carrying his own umbrella and eventually wanting to wear my hoodie :)

County Fair

I love the county fair here...it's just the right size to have enough to entertain my boys while only requiring an hour and a half to see it all. From tractor rides to tractor trikes, my boys were in Heaven!

Cameron insisted on going on the hay ride, much to Kimball's dismay. When we got off, Cameron kept trying to climb back on.

They always have a little petting zoo and though Kimball held all the animals he could, it was just long enough to touch them briefly and hand them right back.

While the boys were playing in a huge sand pile, and fire truck pulled up right next to us and the firemen were so patient to let my boys climb all over the fire truck. All of the equipment was surprisingly secure and my boys were able to play for a good long time without risk of breaking anything or themselves :).

As I was talking to a fireman a gust of wind came and knocked over several of the canopies injuring a couple of people. It was amazing to watch the firemen immediately spring to action and take over caring for those people without hesitation. It made me gain a greater appreciation of who these brave men and women are, and what they do...especially this weekend as I have learned even more about the emergency personnel who sacrificed so much to help thousands of people on 9/11.

Thank you to all of the men and women who selflessly sacrificed their time, safety and lives on 9/11 and who have ever since!

Pre-Ker

Kimball is officially a "pre-Ker" as he likes to call himself! Here, kids can go to Pre-K at public schools at age 4. It's everyday for 2.5 hours and Kimball is loving it. For whatever reason he refused to let me take a picture on his first day of school so this is his second day of school:

Kimball loves his teacher and is starting to make friends in class. We really felt like it was time for him to go to school so he could have more interaction with kids his age. Cameron and I stay at home until it's time to pick Kimball up, and we often look at each other wondering what to do with just the 2 of us :).

Dale also just started his LAST year of law school...it feels so close yet so far! I'm terrified of how fast our boys are growing up and trying my best to enjoy this stage in life, but I can hardly wait for Dale to be done with school.

Georgia On My Mind

Holy smokes…we just got back from a crazy trip to Georgia! I went with Kimball and Cameron to a friend’s wedding, and we did it all in the back of our friend’s parents minivan (I grew up with this family, roomed with Becky @ BYU and love this family in general!).

Not to mention this trip happened in the middle of us moving to a new apartment and Dale being my hero for executing most of the move while I was gone!

Day 1: we drove to Memphis where Becky & Dustin (her hubby) live. On the way there we spotted this fantastic truck:

My boys loved Becky’s dog and that poor dog was worn out from being chased everywhere.

Day 2: we drove down to Atlanta, met the bride’s family, ate at a Mexican restaurant where my boys were given balloons and lost them to the ceiling…and were each given another one.

Day 3: we went shopping at Walmart, took a nap at the hotel and had the family dinner at Olive Garden. I may have gotten a little desperate in keeping my kids entertained (but thank goodness Olive Garden had Mac & Cheese!):

Day 4: we had breakfast at Wendy’s house where she spoiled us with the most incredible assortment of homemade yumminess. She also had a pot-bellied pig in her backyard named Isabelle. Before we left, she gave each of my boys a stuffed animal and crayons:

After breakfast we went and helped set up for the reception at the chapel…basically utter chaos because no one knew what they were doing. It was the first time doing this for the bride’s family and everyone was a little stressed out.

Day 5: the wedding! I was so grateful to be in the sealing room and to be able to watch Andy & Marcy become an eternal family. The sealing was beautiful, but the pictures after were exhausting. It was hot and lunch time so my boys did not want to cooperate much.

I really wanted to get a nice picture of my boys matching but I could never get Cameron to smile or really look at the camera-little stinker!

As soon as group pictures were done, we ran away with Becky & Dustin to find lunch and then everyone went to the church to finish setting up for the reception. The bride’s family hired a DJ who played rocking music throughout the whole reception and Kimball seriously started break dancing! Like, spinning on his bum on the floor. I was dying with laughter and still have to get the video from it.

Day 6: we drove back to Memphis, my boys tortured the poor dog more and I loved being with Becky.

Day 7: hung out in Memphis, went shopping and had too much fun at Sam’s Club (can you tell we’d been confined to a car a lot?)…

Day 8: drove to Missouri where we stayed with Larry’s brother Mike.

Day 9: drove to Kansas City where Larry visited his Mom and I got to go shopping with my boys…it is impossible to find affordable black dress pants for a 4 year old! Then we drove home and went straight back into the chaos of moving.

Thank you so much Sherry & Larry for carting us around everywhere with you and for spoiling us. I’m so glad I was able to be at Andy’s wedding, and that my boys are superb travelers, but I am also glad to be at home and to be getting back into our routines now that we’ve finally finished moving.

RedHawks VIP

Through my other blog, I get to advertise for Chevy here in Oklahoma. I was thrilled when they announced that we would get to be VIP guests to the RedHawks baseball game up in Oklahoma City. We were pretty spoiled and though the RedHawks lost, we had a great time as a family!

Kimball was climbing around like the monkey he is and one of the event coordinators for entertainment during the game asked if he would like to stand on the dugout and introduce the team...that would have been awesome but we knew Kimball would melt from shyness and it would not be pretty.

We got gated parking, a tour of the press box and dugout, hats, a baseball and cash for food during the game...it was awesome! Hopefully soon they'll e-mail us the pictures of us on the field and it the dugout :) It definitely brought me back to the days of going to sporting events with my dad when he was a sports journalist, or watching the softball games he coached!

4th of July

After parades in Provo being so exciting on the 4th of July, I was sure somewhere in Norman would have a parade so the night before I looked it up and on the 4th we got all loaded up and hurried to be there before it started…shortest parade I’ve ever been to! It consisted of a fire truck, followed by hundreds of kids on bikes and scooters, and finished up by a police car…some kids threw candy at our boys and that’s about all we got out of it. Dale might have laughed at me a few times over this.

That night, the boys were too tired to stay up for fireworks, so on the 5th we had our own little fireworks show with whistling pete’s, bees, and sparklers…lots of sparklers. Cameron burned his hand a little on one but kept coming back for more and the boys are both very proficient at asking to have their ears covered now (especially after Dale’s boss’ fireworks show a few nights before this!).

This was their first time really seeing fireworks/hearing them ever and they did really well…hopefully next year they’ll be able to enjoy them even more!

Father/Son Campout

This year, Dale decided to take both of our boys on the father/son campout. I was a little nervous how Cameron would do, but they all had fun, and I enjoyed my first night home completely alone...like ever! I watched a movie, read some and organized the boys' closet :). I am personally a fan of father/son camp outs!

Cousins from Down Under

Last week I got to drive 8 hours with my boys (Dale had to work) to see two of my cousins who had come to America for a few weeks from Australia. I hadn't seen them in 13 or so years and it was so fun to catch up and spend a few days with them! Krystal and Esther were so great with my boys and Kimball and Cameron loved being at Grandma's house for a week :)

While we were there, we went to Bandolier National Monument where there are Native American ruins and you get to climb up ladders to get into their caves. Kimball was a monkey and loved it.

The Saturday before Memorial Day we went to the lake where both of my boys were little fish and loved the boats/water. Cameron would even jump from boat to boat nearly scaring me to death!

All in all it was a great week and I can't wait until the next time (whenever that is) that I get to see all of my cousins from Australia...and all of their spouses that I have yet to meet!