Rude Awakening

No, we were not awakened at 4:15 this morning by our children. They seem to have passed that stage except when sick or one of them has the rare scary dream. This morning, Max and I awoke to the loud purr, blare, roar of a snow blower. Our next door neighbor--who's retired and mows his lawn at least three times a week in the summer (and I'm not exaggerating at all)--was up at 4:15 snow-blowing his driveway. Yes, there was a big storm last night, but honestly, he's retired and is home all day! Max went out at about 6:45 to shovel before school and our next door neighbor was out again touching up his 4 am job. Max found out that his wife and son got stuck and had to stay in a hotel somewhere trying to come home last night because of road closures and so "the voice of reason" was not there to tell him he can't blast the snow blower at 4 in the morning. The worst part--we can't really complain because he has recently started to snow blow our sidewalk while he's meticulously cleaning his own.

Waterpark Fun

For Max's last week of vacation, we drove up to Wisconsin Dells and stayed at the Kalahari Resort. The Dells is this kind of weird little city that has a bunch of indoor and outdoor play places, live magic shows, a Ripley's Believe It or Not, and themed restaurants. The place we stayed had a great indoor water park with wave pool, lazy river, a bunch of water slides, arcades, a go-cart track, and more.  The boys were so excited for it because we let them see photos and video on the hotel website before we went. 

We had a blast. The boys loved the water slides. Wyatt was braver than I thought he would be. I think its because he has an older brother to follow around, but he would climb up this huge tower that had water spouting all around to get to the longer kid water slides. He also loved the scariest roller-coaster-like water slide that he rode on with one of us. Jonah loved everything about everything. He got a real kick out of the wave pool and liked jumping into and over the waves.

We also introduced the boys into the arcade--they played ski-ball, whack-a-mole, and stomp the spider. The whole "tickets we win can buy me candy" idea really had them excited. All in all, it was a great little vacation that we'd recommend to anyone. 

Christmas in Review

Max has been out of school since December 19 and so we have been playing and working a lot for the past three weeks. I realized I haven't recorded anything about our first Christmas as our own little family.

We had lots of time to play. One morning, Jonah and Wyatt--well mostly Jonah but Wyatt usually goes along with what his older brother wants to do--wanted me to make them dorsal fins. Jonah says "dorsal fin" with a slight English accent because it comes from a book-made- into-a-video narrated by a very proper speaking Englishman. So here they are being great, white, man-eating sharks.
And here is the shark sledding down the hill on the side of our house with his daddy. Wyatt liked the sledding until he fell off and got a big face-full of snow. It was a pretty bad fall though--cut up his cheek a little--so it was understandable. 
It is amazing how much more Jonah likes the snow this year than last year. He stays out for a long time and even asks to go out in the backyard by himself. He would never have done that a year ago.

The rainbow light-sabers came from Grandma Stirling and were opened on Christmas Eve. Earlier in the evening, we went to a friend's house with a bunch of other families for food and a children's nativity (forgot our camera though). There were probably 12-15 kids in the nativity and about 6 or more young ones not participating. It was kind of like being at home for me with all the kids except that these ones were all 6 and under. 

Christmas morning! Jonah is at the point where he is really excited and asks lots of questions about Santa. When they ran out Christmas morning, the first things they went to were these trampolines from Grandma and Grandpa Nelson. We let them jump for a little and then asked, "So do you want to see what Santa brought you?" Santa brought the bouncy blue balls and they seemed to think the two bouncy things went great together.

Jonah is ALL about pirates right now and this is his new fancy cutlass (by the way it is not a sword and he will correct anyone on that point). It has a button that makes the sword say things like, "Ye scallywag," "ahoy," and "arghh." 

The Christmas aftermath.

On New Year's Eve we opened those poppers that have crowns, toys, and jokes inside and wore the crowns for all of dinner. The boys went to bed at regular time and we watched a movie. Pretty exciting, huh!

And here we are dressed up as pirates. After church the first Sunday of the year, all Jonah could talk about was making pirate costumes. The pirates he uses as models are those from the VeggieTales movie, "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything." He is Robert the Terrible. I had to remake the symbol for his hat, put this same symbol on a pirate flag, and a very small symbol on the handle of his sword. In this picture, Wyatt has already taken off his costume, but he was Alexander earlier in the day. I am the king as you can tell from the star on my scarf. Jonah tells all of us our lines since he has really good memorization skills. 

All in all, we had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. We missed being with family and friends in Utah, but we had a great time together.

Iowa is c-c-c-c-cold

So let's just push that last post down a little. :) I love Max, and what's the greatest is that he loves me even with all my crazy ideas.

We had our first freezing rain this past weekend. It was crazy--it looks like rain coming from the sky and then it hits the ground and turns into ice. A nice layer of snow dusted the top. The next day, everyone was outside chipping away at the two layers of ice on their driveways and sidewalks. It must have stopped part way through the night because there really were two layers, each about an inch thick, that separated as you chipped through it. 

After the freezing rain, we had a high of -1 degree on Sunday. Getting in and out of church was COLD!!

Here is Max after shoveling one day. It wasn't snowing--his breath just gave him a nice frosty beard and hair. Quite the beard, eh!

Also, can anyone guess my Christmas present? Don't worry, it is exactly what I asked for.

Max is hijacking the Blog... because I love her.

I decided that Kate can't have full power over the blog otherwise some of you may miss the amazing things that she does because she is too humble to tell you. So I took the liberty of compiling a few photos of kate and one small movie clip of her incredible skillz to show you just a glimpse of how cool she is. I'd write more but I'm afraid I'll get caught by the editor in chief if I press my luck too far. Have fun.

Christmas Tree Hunt

For our first 5 Christmases, we always bought a tree permit, made a long drive up past Strawberry Reservoir or out past Toole, and hunted for the perfect tree. Sometimes they weren't so perfect--in fact one year was downright pathetic--but it was fun and often exciting. One year it started snowing quite hard, the wind was blowing, and our car started slipping down and kind of off the side of a hill. The last year we went, Jonah didn't want to get out of the car, Wyatt, only six months, was whining and needed to be fed so Max did the hunting and cutting himself. Last year we gave up and went tree hunting at Harmon's grocery store. We even took pictures.

This year, I think we found a good mix for the age of our family. We went to a local tree farm, only ten minutes away. It was $30 for ANY size pine or $40 for ANY size fir. Since we have a vaulted ceiling, we decided to go big. After walking around a bit, we found a beautiful 10 footer. Once we cut our tree and started dragging it to the parking area, an employee came and helped us drag it the rest of the way. Then, they put it on the shaker--probably the most entertaining part. Then, for $1 they wrapped it in netting and strapped it to our roof for us. Then--can you believe it could get any better?--when we went to pay, there were cookies, cider, and candy canes in the little cashier shed. We will definitely be returning next year.

We've never had cows on any of our previous tree-hunting trips

the winner (Also, this was almost a month ago and Max has been growing this beard ever since. I'll have to post a photo of that too.)

Wyatt stopped at this tree and said, "This is a good one!" He hasn't even seen A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The tree shaker.

It's a . . . .

BOY! 

We had our ultrasound this morning. I was pretty convinced, and I think Max was too, that we were going to have a girl because of how different this pregnancy has been from my others. I just thought there had to be something different to make me so sick--a girl, twins, a puppy, something. But it turns out that he is a little boy just like our other two. 

Jonah was a little sad at first because he has said for a long time that it is a girl and her name is Molly (a friend from preschool). It took a little while, but now he seems excited to have another little brother and says that we should name him Mikey (another friend from preschool). We'll see about that. Max and I have been very good at picking out names an hour before we leave the hospital. 

We're very excited!