Christmas catch-up

I feel so behind!  Like how I had a goal to get some baby books finished for the twins before this next baby comes along. (Like three years wasn't long enough to be able to get some scrapbooking done?) Looks like that won't happen. Just like I just don't have the time for blogging so much anymore.  Which is why I am now just trying to finish up Christmas.

Some brotherly love on Christmas eve.

 There were a lot of fun moments this Christmas since they're all at such fun ages. Like watching them all grab their stockings to set them out for Santa and spontaneously run around yelling "trick or treat!" to everyone.  Or finding the plate of treats for Santa empty before everyone even went to bed...and then finding all the empty candy wrappers in their stockings.  :)

Let me mention my next comment on this photo - Cash.  We've had to have multiple discussions in our house that just because your tongue is long enough that you can pick your nose with it doesn't mean you should. Blech. He's a constant slobber face.

Lots of fun and excitement Christmas morning. Games, hot wheels, remote control trains, a scooter, and Cash got a Leapster so now he can hang with the big kids all playing their electronic devices.

 

 

Getting in some snow time and more cousin fun.

 

Watching Ryan carry both twins back up the hill was the point where I thought, phew, good thing I'm big and pregnant and can't go sledding.

All squished in the front seat rying to warm up. 

 

The hockey game.

I really had no idea my kids would be so enthralled going to a sporting event since we've never taken them to one, but they still keep asking to go back.

I loved looking over one night to see Cash cozying right up to his cousin.

Good times.

Now time to move on and think about the next things in life. Like having a baby.

Christmas pictures

Of course there were also many fantastic moments over the holidays.  Number one for my kids had to be hanging out with cousins.  I loved seeing Cash like this on a different cousin every time I turned around.  And then hearing in his sweetest little voice, "Can I have a turn??  Can I play with your iphone?"  Luckily he got a Leapster for Christmas so he could join in the male cousin sit-next-to-each-other-and-play-our-various-electronic-devices bonding.

He even attempted his first sleepover with the cousins (didn't last of course):

The boys loved visiting temple square. (And of course I love all the bodies to help keep track of them. :)

 

 

All great until it started snowing and my Miami-bred child was beside himself.




















Everyone was in love with nickelcade.

And it's really fun climbing up the skee-ball game to put your balls in. Until your twin throws one overhand and gives you a goose egg in the head. 











The best Christmas Eve surprise was answering a knock at the door to find dad finally making it there just in time for Santa.

 

Although not everyone could quite happy up for Santa.  :)

 

Super happy with the remote control Thomas trains Santa brought.

 

Mom and I worked up a new duet for the program this year.

Cash sang "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" with the actions he learned from school, and Phoenix played and sang a lovely rendition of "Jingle Bells".

So much fun with the family!!

Guess I'll have to post more pictures later to finish the trip since I haven't even made it to Christmas day yet.

Christmas

Let's start with the minuses, shall we?  Like our bank account after Christmas, for one.  Or like Phoenix erasing my mom's hard drive on Christmas eve.  Yes, that's right. I have no idea how a two year-old erases and completely re-formats a computer, since I'm sure I have no idea how to do that.  It's not like there's some big flashing button that says ERASE ME somewhere.  And I had used the computer only moments before, turned around to finish my phone conversation, and looked back to see Phoenix sitting there in front of a really funky screen that said ATTEMPTING SYSTEM RECOVERY.  That was the point where my stomach dropped and I immediately contemplated what moment during the Christmas festivities would be the best to tell your mother that you just lost everything on her computer.  Especially knowing that she had been working on a 200+ page life history of her aunt, numerous family history files.... and she had no computer backup. 

I guess the other minuses would be the amount of sickness that got passed around over Christmas, staying up all night with kids that couldn't breathe and finally calling my pediatrician at 2am and begging her to call in some steroids or something, and more of me getting sick and throwing up while extremely pregnant.  Although that didn't seem to result in any more minuses on the scale, and instead I seemed to gain an average of 2 lbs a week over my three-plus week stint there.  Yikes, I hope that sure doesn't keep up. I did manage to lose a good deal of my field of vision as pertaining to the lower half of my body, and my discomfort increased about 10 fold.  Which made me realize if I had been scared to fly out by myself with three kids pregnant, I was terrified to fly back even more pregnant, this time with all of us totally sick and hacking up a lung, having to wake the kids up four hours earlier than they were used to waking up to get to our flight, and then realizing we had TWO layovers on the way home.  Yes, we endured a good many tantrums on the plane. Yes people stared at our hacking brood in disgust silently praying they didn't have to sit by us. Yes, I finally just shut my eyes and ignored everything while everyone craned around to see who was throwing an absolute fit the whole descent since my child wanted nothing but to play with the seat tray in front of him and to get "OUT!!!!!"  And yes I again just stood there and watched and waited when the other twin lay on the jetway off the plane in complete tantrum-y meltdown so I just scooted his flailing body over so at least everyone could walk past us on their way off the plane.  I'm sure it was an amusing sight for everyone passing all of us, all our gear, my big belly, and my flopping child.  And I'm sure it reassured those praying passengers that didn't end up by us that their prayers had been answered.  But yes, I was rather grateful for the miracle of Benadryl that had at least made the first few hours of the flight more tolerable.

So yes, the computer in the shop explains the lack of holiday blogging. We tried our best to get it all figured out before we left. Ryan said it was taking 10 years off his life trying to put her computer back together and I spent my "restful" holiday up until 1am every night looking one by one through the 50,000 items that were recovered (most of them junk). Thankfully most of my mom's documents were recovered, except not all of the family history stuff and never the final draft of the life history in all it's glory.  :(   Some previous drafts in good form, and probably the latest mingled in with a corrupted and funky version of itself.  So sorry about that.

Oh, and we'll be looking for a good deal on a DVD player to send you since Phoenix probably broke that at your house too.  Um, happy holidays!  Bet you can't wait for us to come next year!

Loving it

Can I say how much I'm loving being in Utah???  Ok, flying all across the country 7 months pregnant by myself with all three kids (and they were still alive when we got here) was nothing short of a Christmas miracle, but we did it.  And 4 hours later I spent the night throwing up, but hey - can you imagine if that had been a few hours earlier?  While I was on the plane alone with all my kids??  For that reason I couldn't even be mad about being sick. 

Back to being in Utah.  I used to think maybe the gooey goodness of the Utah folk would drive me crazy after living out of state, but OH NOT SO.  Can I tell you I almost started crying last night in Costco when the lines were crazy long and I saw two women going for the same line and when the one noticed the other there, she said, "Oh, sorry, were you coming for this line?"  To which the woman cheerily responded, "Oh, no problem, I'll just go to another one!"  I about died.  Can I tell you THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN IN MIAMI!  And anytime someone was near me in the aisles they would so sweetly say, "Oh sorry, I'm just going to sneak around you here if that's ok!"  People have stopped to let your car in in crowded parking lots, chatted with you in store lines and talked to me as if I was the coolest person in the world with my out-of-state license.  The Wal-Mart workers are actually helpful (in Miami when I've asked for an item I couldn't find they say, "Did you see it?  If you didn't see it, we don't have it.") All the stores here are well-stocked, employees actually know what they're talking about, and Costco even carries different stuff that's cool and that local people would want. And people here actually think like I do.  It's been so pleasant.

The last little while in Miami my children and I have been screamed profanities at by some grown man who apparently wanted to cut into my line of traffic but I couldn't understand his ambiguous gestures out the opposite window of the way he wanted to go.... I've seen other grown men jump out of their cars and get in fights with pedestrians on their way to work; I've been trying to get on a train pregnant with a triple stroller and had not one person scoot over to let me on (when they easily could have and instead just sat there and stared at me without moving while the train stalled for 3 minutes. I had to wait for the next train.)  I have watched a man irritated with the ridiculous wait at the post office walk out the door and then turn and kick the post office door, bashing it in and shattering the glass all over the other customers.... And I've called my doctor's office when I finally got my test results after asking for them for months to say, "Um, the wrong tests were done on me" to be met by a prolonged silence and then a, "So?  What do you want me to do about it?"  Oh, I don't know, fix it??  Oh, Miami.

So a little Christmas cheer, some snow, family, courteous people, and lots of holiday festivities have been so welcome.  We have done so many fun things here - and it seems to all be so much easier and accessible than Miami. The kids have been in heaven.  We've gone to an indoor kids place full of bounce houses, the Children's museum, a hockey game, birthday parties, a nickel arcade, Temple Square to see the lights, cookie exchange parties, plus spent so much time with family and cousins.  And the kids have even slept in until 9am every day. (They won't go to bed until late, but it's so weird because it's not due to the time change because that's 11am our time!)

And oh Curves. Let me take a minute to talk about the entertaining nature of Curves.  I was worried that I would totally lose any level of fitness I had at this stage in the pregnancy while here in Utah since I was used to going to the gym a lot in Miami, so my mom came home one day and said that I could do 30 days free at Curves where she goes.  So I really know nothing about the place and have never been, but I figured it would be better than nothing.  Let me tell you, the first time I went in, it was me, 4 geriatric women with perms in those cozy brown old lady shoes and a 300lb woman with oxygen tubes in her nose.  Oh my goodness. It was really hard not to laugh.  Let's just say it's probably good for my pregnant self esteem - in Miami everyone is like exotic and Brazilian, full of implants in all sorts of places, perfectly spray-tanned, and they all have amazing bodies.  So I get comment after comment from the chatty old ladies about what good shape I'm in.  :)   And it's even cuter because in between each machine they have these little mats that you are supposed to just move in place or do something aerobic on and I love seeing the old ladies "jog" in place, dance around and twist their hips, or some just wave their hands in circles.  Oh man, it's fun.

Not to say we don't have any fun in Miami. I did realize the bonus of Christmas activities in Miami is that you can stand outside for hours and enjoy them cause it's like 75 degrees.  So here are a few pictures of some Christmas festivities we did before we left Miami.

 

 

 


(About as good as a "cute" posed Christmas picture of the boys gets)

 
 Cash and one of his best little buddies, Samuel:

 


Hope you all have a merry Christmas!!

School

I haven't mentioned much about Cash and his school since the start when he wasn't so fond of it.  It took a good couple months for the first words out of his mouth every morning not to be, "I don't want to go to school!" Man, I thought I hated mornings before - but having to get three dependent and unwilling children out the door by 8am every morning is miserable. It usually involves lots of yelling as we get closer and closer to 8am and the kids have been sitting in front of their breakfast for 35 minutes, multiple children have been put in timeout for yelling and screaming all morning and inevitably everyone has to poop at 8:01.

But, at least Cash finally enjoys it.  His teacher says he does very well and I have to laugh when I hear him talking about continents and all the things I wouldn't think he would know yet at this age.  We got to go for a little Thanksgiving party with him back in November. It was so funny to see that as soon as he came out Phoenix was beside himself with excitement running right up to him laughing and yelling "Cashy!!" and would hardly leave him alone the whole time we were there.

 

 

 
 
 




I could tell people were a little overwhelmed by the energy of my twins there (you can see the devious look on Phoenix's face as he's making a break for the tricycles in the play area when we should be sitting and listening to the Pilgrim lady give her lecture. Somehow other people's children sit still....)  Anyhow, it ended up with me dragging them out of the place in a tantrum-y screaming disaster as usual - but hey, what's new.















 We've also been doing a little pre-school with some friends for a few of our toddlers. This of course also involves a lot of timeouts trying to get them to just understand appropriate behavior for seriously a few minutes out of the week. But for the most part it's really fun and we've done lots of fun activities with the kids. I think some of these pictures are from a Halloween party (complete with treasure hunt for treat bags), B week with a "birthday" party and modified form of "bingo" and decorating gingerbread houses at Christmas.

 

Of course while the other kids are busy making gingerbread houses I look over to see this (not even just picking the candy off??)  -

 

 

(And of course days when I host I usually make extra materials and repeat it with Cash when he gets home so he doesn't feel left out.)

Now if only the twins were as well-behaved at school as Cash.  Oh, actually, he wasn't at first, believe it or not!  I forgot about that. When he first started I asked him what they did out at playtime and he said, "We play fight." Confused, I said, "You mean chase?" He said, "No, fight." Sure enough one day when I was waiting to pick him up I saw him turn and hit some kid next to him, who then shoved him back and all the boys then started wrestling and fighting and throwing each other on the ground. I was in shock!  Cash has never played that way with anyone!  That's why I had no idea what he would even mean by playing fight!  So yeah, my child was corrupted only weeks into school.  :)  Luckily I think it's settled down a bit now.