Christmas Month

We had such a fun Christmas season this year.  Probably one of my all time favorite Christmas years I've had.  The kids are at such a fun age, we had a warm December which allowed us to get out and do so many things that I otherwise would've skipped over, and I had most my shopping done by Thanksgiving which made December so much less stressful.  I won't bore you with all the details but wanted to remember all the fun things we did leading up to Christmas.

The kids each wrote Santa a letter then we took it to the mall where they have a special mailbox for letters to Santa.  I was also pretty proud that with very little help from me, both girls signed their own name on their letter.

We visited Santa for our annual Santa picture.  Since the summer when they saw a Strawberry Shortcake episode with a candy cane on it, they've been telling me they want a candy cane for Christmas.  So when they sat on Santa's lap and he asked them what they wanted, they both said a candy cane, to which he pulled out candy canes for each of them right then.  They then asked for a trampoline and he said he would see what he could do.  As we were leaving Siena turned to me and said 'Mom, Santa forgot to give us a trampoline!'  It was so funny.  I think since he gave them their candy canes right then, she thought he would just pull out a trampoline as well.  No one cried sitting on Santa's lap, well Jaron did a little when the girls got up and he was by himself but didn't do too bad.

Jaron is obsessed with sugar, he eats way more then the girls ever did at this age.  If he sees his sisters eating candy, then he feels he gets to as well.  We had advent calendars and each day as soon as his eyes spotted his, he started begging for his chocolate 'peeeees' as he would say.  He's too cute to resist.

We made and decorated Gingerbread men.  The girls had been begging me to do this as well from the same Strawberry Shortcake show.  It was fun and they loved all the sprinkles and candy they got to eat.  We then took a few and delivered them to Jennifer's house with a little round of caroling 'Jingle Bells and Santa Claus is coming to town' which were the only 2 songs they knew at this point. 

We made our annual trip to Temple Square and this year we planned it on a not so busy night and actually got to see the Christus which we had never done before with the kids.  Last year the line was over an hour long.  They loved the manger scene as well.

We watched Small One, family tradition, and Aria was obsessed with Donkey's the rest of the month.  We have a little nativity scene at our house that I allow the kids to play with (as opposed to my nice one that they don't touch) and it was fun to see them play with them all, arrange them and talk about them throughout the month.  The first presents that showed up under the tree was also a huge hit.  They were really good about not opening them but I did catch Jaron carrying his around a few times and then he came over and said 'peees'  Funny boy.

With the warm weather we even made it to Gardner Village to see the Elves on display.  Brigitte, Holland and Tagg joined us and Bostyn and her mom from dance class.

Our Elf from the north pole, Sparky, showed up this year.  He stayed up high each day and all the kids, especially Jaron loved finding him each morning to see where he ended up.  You should've heard Jaron's squeals each morning when he spotted him, it was so funny.

We talked about the true meaning of Christmas a lot so the girls at least understood why we celebrate Christmas and they at least now know that Christmas is when we celebrate Jesus' birthday.

Even though we did a lot, there were also a lot of nights we just stayed home listening to Christmas music, doing little crafts and playing.  To me it was the perfect combination of enjoying and being together but not being overly busy.  Fun, fun month.

Fall Round up

I have got to catch up.  So here is my fall round up of things happening in our lives.  We had such a nice and warm fall season.  We went to the park several times and did lots of things outside when normally it would've been chilly, it was down right, nice, perfect weather. 

The girls have been begging to go on a train ride.  We pass the trax train a lot when we're driving places and they always point it out.  I've also been trying to teach them their letter sounds so one week we did the letter T and talked about trains and other T words.  So for our activity that week we went on a train ride.  The girls were soo excited.  They stood looking out the window the entire time.  They got a little concerned that our train wasn't on train tracks when they look down and saw the tracks for the train going the other way.  It was quite the fun adventure for them and they keep asking when they can go again.

We went to our favorite pumpkin patch with Whitney and her boys one day.  They loved it.  Their favorite part was the corn maize.  We got little pumpkins and sat on all the tractors.  It was a fun morning and it was nice cuz it was in the middle of the week and wasn't crowded at all.

We also went to Gardner Village for our annual Witch Fest.  The girls got to ride a pony again and we had fun looking at all the witches.

And of course we had to do our annual Snowbird tram ride for customer appreciation days.  We went up the first Saturday and they were already sold out.  We went up the following Saturday earlier and had a great ride up and back.  The girls thought the tram ride was pretty cool.  "Kind of like a train with the tracks on top"

I also signed the girls up for the first ever swim lessons.  I was worried Aria, or both of them would cry because they are not big fans of water (unlike their brother)  But they did great.  They had a great time and were very brave.  They learned to put their face in the water and by the end they were jumping off the side to their teacher.  Next set of lessons start next month.

First Dentist visit for Siena and Aria

The girls finally had their very first dentist visit right before Christmas (I'm so nice like that!) 

The did pretty good.  Well, Aria did amazing.  Aria used to be the nervous, scared one at things like this and in fact up until her 3rd birthday doctor visit, would scream at the doctors when she had to stand on the scale, have the doctor listen with her stethoscope, etc.  All of the sudden she snapped out of it and now it's Siena who's the nervous one.  Siena whined throughout the visit but luckily didn't get hysterical.  We got x-rays of both girls and the dentist thought their teeth looked great.  Aria jumped up into the dentist chair, put on sunglasses and her headphones and thought it was so fun she got to watch Frozen from a TV in the ceiling.

They were most happy they got balloon animals when we left and a certificate for a free ice cream at Artic Circle for having no cavities.

Thanksgiving 2014

All month leading up to Thanksgiving we talked to the girls about what it means to be thankful.  We made our Thankful turkey where we wrote on the feathers what we were thankful for.  We told the story of the first Thanksgiving and now they know what Pilgrims and Indians are and even what the Mayflower is.  It was fun teaching them all about it. 

We had Holland, Max and siblings over for a little Thanksgiving preschool morning.  We learned a song called '5 Fat Turkeys' which Jaron can even do the hand motions for.  We made turkey headbands, which my girls refused to wear except for one picture.  And we played the what we are thankful for game, which was quite entertaining with Four 3 year olds.

For Thanksgiving we went to my parents.  This is the only picture I took of the kids. They took early naps and woke up not happy.  Luckily they snapped out of it by the time we got to my parents.

After dinner Shane and I had our first ever Black Friday shopping experience...even though it was on Thursday.  And with the help of our personal shoppers (Jennifer, Kali, and Lori) we scored quite a few items and were out of the store 10 minutes after they opened.  The lady behind me in this picture was quite the serious black Friday shopper and only told me what she was in line for because I was behind her.  It was cracking me up.

We had a great Thanksgiving and I don't even need a holiday to realize what great blessings I've been given.  My cute little family makes my life complete and of course I am grateful we are all healthy and thriving.  What more could we ask for.

Jaron Update

Jaron is doing such cute and funny...and some annoying things lately.  I haven't really updated since he turned 1 so just a little update now that he's almost 16 months.

He officially started walking about 2 weeks after he turned 1.  He was taking steps here and there but really started walking most the time a couple weeks after his birthday.  He's now running and loves to run around with his sisters.

He loves to be outside, winter is going to be hard on him.  And he hates it when I take the girls and leave and he has to stay home with dad.  He runs to the door and finds his shoes and gives them to me to put on and it's so sad when I tell him he's not going.

He loves to blow kisses, fold his arms and show us where his hair and toes are.  I love when they lean little things like this.  He can sign All Done and More but those are really the only signs I've taught him, which is so different then the girls at this age.

He has 6 teeth and has since right after he turned 1.  So he hasn't had any new teeth now for a few months.

He is saying bye, hi, uh oh, a few animal sounds and yoyo's (which means those freeze dried yogurt snacks or any treat in general.)  He says please and cheese which sound the same so you have to know the context of it.  He is obsessed with candy corns and I have to totally hide them from him or he freaks out if I don't give him a piece of mine.

Jaron does not like to drink very much.  I try and try to give him more but he just refuses.  In the morning he'll drink maybe 3 oz of milk.  Then throughout the day he'll take 5-6 for lunch and dinner and then maybe before bed I can get him to drink 1-2 oz.  I give him milk and water for snacks and just takes a little here and there.  It's such a pain because then he has issues with pooping (I know TMI, sorry)  So it's kind of a pain but I can't force the kid to drink as much as I would like to.

At about 14 months Jaron started totally fighting his morning nap.  He would cry/talk for 45 mins and then sleep for 15-45 minutes.  I fought it for a while then just gave up and moved him to one nap and he's been totally fine taking just 1 nap.  Seems so early to give up his morning nap but he's happy and great.  For his afternoon nap he'll sometimes sleep 2 1/2 hours but that is the max.  This week it's been more like 1 1/2 - 2, with 2 hours being most common.  He's just never been a great napper.  But he still sleeps so great at night.  He goes right down and sleep 11 1/2 -12 hours.

We took his binky away.  I know the girls got a whole separate post about this but 3rd child syndrome here.  We went to his 15 month appt. and the doctor told me it's moving his top teeth forward.  That was all she needed to say.  We took it away the next night (I had to give him a night to recover from his shots, especially since he woke up that next morning and started limping to his high chair I guess cuz his leg was stiff.  It was the funniest and saddest little limp.)  Anyways, that next night we just put him down.  And then I left (Shane's much better at this then I am, I becomes paralyzed until I know he's asleep and don't get one thing done, I can't watch TV, I can't work, nothing.)  So I left and told him to text me when it's safe to come home.  He said Jaron talked, whined for a while then got pretty mad but that only lasted about 15 minutes and he went to sleep.  Naps were a lot harder since if he woke up he wouldn't go back to sleep but overall it took 2 days/nights and he's been fine ever since.  I still miss it...there are times I wish I could just stick it in to make him calm down faster and easier but I'm so happy it's gone and we're done with that transition.

His 15 month stats from his appt.
22 lbs 12 oz - 50%
32 inches - 75%
75% head

Jaron thinks he can do whatever his sisters do.  His latest obsession is sitting at our table and coloring...which is hard since we have a counter height table.  It makes me so nervous, especially since he'll climb up on top of the table to grab something when I'm not looking.  And now he thinks he's too big to sit in a high chair.  I've been fighting it all week and I'm not backing down on that one yet. He also has to feed himself.  He will let me feed him if he also has his own spoon and can feed himself at the same time.  He's actually pretty good at it, and can get the spoon in with food on it...except this picture when I just let him feed himself without me supervising.

Oh and yesterday we were outside playing and while I was down in our walkout basement area, Jaron decided to join us not by coming down the stairs but by scaling down the rock wall.  He had made it down one huge boulder and was hanging on with just his hands trying to find his footing and not scared one bit when Siena said 'Mom, look at Jaron.'  I wish I had a picture but there was no time to wait on that one.

Jaron and I took a parent/tot swim class last month.  He loves the water still and learned to blow bubbles, he jumps off the side of the pool to me and has no fear at all of the water.  It was so fun and he loved every minute of it.  It was fun doing some one on one time with him as well.

He's a busy boy and loves to make us laugh.  I'm constantly surprised at the things he does as he seems so different then the girls were at this age.  Although he is just as clingy as the girls were at this age as well.  We love our little boy!

Trick or Treat

Halloween was soo fun this year.  Seriously, the girls have never been so excited about something in their young life.  We had countdowns, we had practice dress-ups, practice hair do's (2 braids like Anna is the most requested hair do still from Aria) and talked and talked about how many more sleeps until Halloween.  I'm pretty sure they won't be this excited about Santa coming, but maybe they will be.  They talked and talked about how many treats they were going to get, they asked what mom and dad were dressing up as, and played with their pumpkin buckets for weeks leading up to Halloween.  Boy oh boy were they ready.

Shane and I are not big fans of dressing up but I did buy a witch hat and Halloween morning I walked into their room wearing it and they were so excited but weren't very happy that I had forgotten my broomstick.  Later Shane walked in while they were eating breakfast dressed as the 'Big snowman' from Frozen (aka threw some white sheets around himself...haha)

The girls got to wear their costumes to their dance class that week and were so excited to see their friends Holland and Bostyn dressed as witches and their teacher as Minnie Mouse.

2 nights before Halloween we carved our pumpkins.  Then the girls wouldn't let me put them back outside.  Every meal after that we had to turn off our lights and turn the pumpkin lights on.

We had to go with the Frozen theme this year.  Not original at all but with all the girl's current Frozen obsession and the fact that they both like different sisters (Siena likes Elsa and Aria likes Anna) we went with it.  Having Jaron be Olaf with the clincher.  The costumes turned out so cute.  I ordered the Elsa and Anna dresses from China and although I gave myself 2 months to get the, after 2 failed tries, the 3rd time, they finally showed up 7 days before Halloween.  Jaron's Olaf costume turned out soo cute.  Brigitte helped me make the body part out of a t-shirt and then Shane's sister crocheted the Olaf hat.  It took her soo much time but by the reaction we got on Halloween night it was well worth it. I was just happy he didn't pull it off and he really did wear that for a couple hours that night all around the neighborhood.

The girls had a blast trick or treating and it was so cute cuz after they would get their candy they would both say thank you and then Aria would yell so loud "Happy Halloween"  Everyone got a kick out of them, we even had people take pictures on their doorsteps.  The girls got a bunch of candy, not too much though.  I re-gifted some to other trick or treaters and then hid some from them so it wasn't out of control.  The girls almost had as much fun passing out candy to our trick or treaters then they did actually getting the candy.  They loved answering the door and if they say an Elsa or Anna that was a huge added bonus and they were yelling 'Mom, Elsa!!!'

The next morning they sat at the kitchen table organizing and playing with their candy for several hours.

Needless to say Halloween was a success.  They are already asking when it's Halloween again.  I keep telling them all the holidays we have to go through before it's Halloween again.  I've told them so many times this week that they almost have the order memorized.  They're pretty excited about Easter as well and already talking about Easter eggs, maybe they like candy more then they do actual presents.