Eliza is Two!

I have a two year old!!!  My family taught Eliza how to use her fingers to say I'm two at her birthday party.  She caught right on, so whenever you ask her how old she is, she puts up those two cute fingers and says "I two".  I just love my cute little Eliza and her fabulous smiles. 

We brought up Eliza's present on her birthday and she happily said, "oh my bike, my bike present, thank you for my bike present"!  She was so excited.  It is a push bike that we bought her and hopefully she will be as easy to teach riding the bike as Hailey was. 

Happy Chinese New Year

The first and second grade classes at Ben's school celebrated Chinese New Year with a Chinese assembly.  I took Hailey and Eliza with me.  We all enjoyed hearing the kids recite a story and sing Chinese songs.  After the kids were done preforming a Chinese Dragon came through the crowd and the kids loved that.  The assembly was about an hour and the students did about 15-20 minutes of it.  After they were done the principal got up and talked for the rest of the time about a trip she had made to China the previous year and showed her pictures.  Some of it was interesting, but as a parent I would have rather seen more of the kids! 

Ben loves learnning Chinese and is doing amazing.  He can count to any number, he knows lots of different songs, he know how to read and draw a lot of Chinese symbols.  I am so glad he is in this program it is such a great opportunity.  It is so crazy to think he will be fluent in Chinese by the time he is done with High School.  He still tells everyone he is going to China on his mission, and I hope he does!  What is even crazier is that Hailey will be learning Chinese in 2 years, I'll have 2 little Chinese talkers in my house!

Eliza's Family Birthday Party

Here is Hailey reading our 2010 blog book.  This is the reason I keep blogging!  My kids love reading stories about them, and I forget so quickly things we have done. 

Happy January/February Birthdays!  We had a combined Birthday party at our house for Nathan, Bri, and Eliza.  We played some silly games with the kids and had a great dinner and fabulous desserts.  Eliza loved her clothes that she got from my family.  After she put on her new swimsuit she was strutting all over the place.  Her other favorite outfit is her "rainbow bug" outfit.  She always requests to wear her rainbow bug pants and shirt. 

Dresser Refinished

This is a project that started last summer.  While Mike was gone at scout camp, I went shopping with my mom and sister.  We found this awesome dresser at the DI.  I have never refinished or painted or done anything to any furniture before.  I actually really like the dresser before and thought it had a lot of character.  I had no idea how to even start, so of course I googled it and got some ideas.  A couple of the drawers were broken on the inside, and originally I was just going to leave them broken.  But, I got motivated and fixed them all by myself!  We sanded it down and found some fun turquoise and green paint.  We mixed those together, and went crazy on the dresser.  I had my kids help and paint crazy turquoise all over.  Then I covered it with the turquoise/green mixture.  I was planning on doing a couple of solid layers of paint and then sanding some off for an antique look.  But, when we got done I liked that the wood had absorbed a lot of the paint, and I didn't end up sanding it at all.  We use this dresser every day, it holds our wii remotes and other great stuff.

My next project was my picture frames.  I saw a similar setup on pinterest and really liked it, so I thought I would change it up a little.  I got these frames and painted them all.  It was a bit tricky hanging them all so they were touching.  After a few tries, we ended up duct taping the backs of them all together and then hanging them on the wall.  I am so not a crafty or decorating person, so I was very proud of the outcome!

Pizza Fun with Friends

This is what happens when I'm at work!  Mike had over Ben and Hailey's friends Ty and Ava.  They had a great time playing and eating pizza and shakes.  We love living in Daybreak, their are so many good friends around to play with our kids!

Just an update on my crazy health of 2011.  I am normally a very healthy person, I only remember taking antibiotics twice in my life.  Working as a pharmacist part time for the last 8 years, I think I am immune to most things.

In June, right before we were supposed to go to Lake Powell I got sick.  It was different than I had ever felt.  I was dizzy, nauseous, and extremely fatigued.  I figured I had something weird and waited a few weeks for it to go away.  When I wasn't getting any better I went to my Dr. July 5th.  He ran all my blood tests and didn't find anything, so he said it might be an inner ear problem, and if it didn't go away I should see a specialist.  By the time I got my blood test results I was starting to improve so I decided not to pursue it, but I was sick for about 6 weeks.  I was healthy through the last of August and the first half of September, then all my symptoms started coming back.  I am not good at going to the Dr. and I figured it was another ear infection, so I waited it out a couple of weeks before finding another Dr. and making an appointment.  I went to see the new Dr. on November 8th, she was great and really thorough.  She told me she wanted to do a strep test, this one threw me off guard.  I asked her why, because my throat wasn't hurting at all.  She had seen a few cases and had been talking with some of the members of the national CDC.  Apparently a crazy strain of strep started going through the Salt Lake Valley, it was the only place they had seen it.  It caused my exact symptoms; nausea, dizziness, fatigue.  We did a strep test, and it was positive.  I was really happy to have something wrong with me that could be actually treated.  So I started a two week course of antibiotics.  I wish that was the end of the story but shortly after I ended the antibiotics all my symptoms came back again.  So, into the Dr. again on November 28th, and yep I was strep positive again.  I was lucky and got a antibiotic resistant strain.  So, it was on to the crazy antibiotics, fluoroquinolones.  I did a two week course of those, which was not fun.  But, luckily my strep was finally gone, and I was actually able to enjoy Christmas and all it's fun! 
I was joking around with Mike that I have not been healthy for more than three weeks at a time since June, and was so glad that I was finally better.  Well, I spoke too soon!  The beginning of January I got sick yet again.  This time it was a little bit different.  I had the dizziness and fatigue, but no nauseousness.  By this time I am just so sick of being sick and going to the Dr.'s.  So I waited until January 26th and then went to see the Dr.  This time luckily it wasn't strep again, but a sinus infection.  The unfortunate thing is that I probably permanently altered my equilibrium with all the strep infections.  So, now when I get sick with anything having to do with my sinus' I am dizzy.  So another two week course of antibiotics for my sinus infection.  Today is March 7th, and I am unfortunately going through another round of sinus infection.  I told Mike a few weeks ago that it was about time for me to get sick again, and three days later I did.  This latest fun started February 25th and I will hopefully be feeling better soon.  All of these illness' really make me appreciate my health.  I am glad though that it's me that has been sick and not one of my cute kiddos.  Here's to hoping that Spring will bring on better health!
On a random note.  Eliza has now moved on and now likes not only Curious George, but also Go Diego Go, Little Einsteins, and Dora.  It's silly, but she requests me to sing those songs, especially rocket when I'm putting her to bed.  She loves patting and clapping along with Little Einsteins!  She talks like crazy and will say anything now.  Ben and Hailey are always quizzing her on words and getting her to say new words.

Christmas Day

Christmas Day was on Sunday this year, which I really love.  It is such a great opportunity to remind us and teach our kids about the true meaning of Christmas.  Church was just sacrament meeting, so we decided to go to my parent's ward and spend that time with family (also our church is at 1pm, so theirs at 10am was much better).  Their ward did an amazing job, with a mostly musical sacrament meeting.  The spirit was so strong and it was such a good way to spend celebrating Christmas with family. 

As you can see our kids were very spoiled and excited about their presents from Santa.  They must have been good kids!  This year we had our Elf on the Shelf, Elfie, watching over their every move since Thanksgiving.  It was always the fun thing of the morning to find Elfie.  Sometimes I couldn't even find Elfie, but somehow one of my kids would find it within 15 minutes.  Eliza loved Elfie and was always so excited when she found him.  Elfie left Ben, Hailey, and Eliza a note on Christmas Eve saying that they had tried really hard to be good kids, so he would tell Santa to leave them some good presents.

Hailey got a dollhouse bigger than her, and she was so excited.  When she first came down and saw it, she said "wow, is that for me?"  Ben got a helicopter and a wii game, which he was very excited about.  Eliza got a ice cream play-doh set, she loves anything play-doh!  Mike opened up his stocking and he only had one thing in it.  Hailey said, "daddy you must have been well..um..this year." (The cute little thing didn't want to tell her daddy he had been bad.)

We were making a french toast breakfast when we heard the doorbell ring.  Mike and the kids went to go see who it was.  On the porch their was a box that said lift carefully.  Mike carefully picked up the fancy green box and brought it inside.  We carefully opened it and their was a small fish bowl with a beta fish in it!  There were hand warmers all around it and a note.  The note said; "Merry Fishmas, here is your beta fish.  Feed it twice a week, change it's water- it likes bottled water, keep it out of the sun so it doesn't get a sunburn, and give it a name."  It didn't have a name on it so we have no clue who gave it to us.  The note was written by a kid, so it could be either one of Ben's friends or one of Mike's scouts.  The kids were really excited, I was just excited that it wasn't a puppy.  We happily welcomed Bluie Davey Jones Wootton to our family, what a funny Christmas surprise.  A little while later Eliza was playing with her Barbie house, and Ben (in all seriousness) cried out "don't let Bluei see the toilet!!!".  Later when the toilet went missing we asked if anyone had seen it.  Ben had taken it back upstairs to Hailey's room.   He carefully explained to Hailey and Eliza the rules about fish and toilets: "please don't show the fish the fake toilet or he could fake die for the day." 

Ben is obviously still traumatized by his fish dying when he was three.  We got 3 goldfish when Ben was two, the first 2 died fairly soon after we got them.  But, Davey Jones lived for at least a year.  My kids didn't care at all about the fish, but when they had friends over their friends thought he was cool.  Some of his friends dumped in a bunch of food, and who else knows what happened.  But, old Davey Jones died.  Mike thought it would be a good learning experience and had Ben help him flush Davey down the toilet.  Ben still talks about his favorite fish that died and got flushed down the toilet.  The funniest thing after that was that Ben told multiple people that his fish died and went to heaven in the toilet.  It took us a while to explain that the toilet wasn't heaven for fishes!

We headed over to my parents house for dinner and decided to do a pajama dinner.  Dinner was excellent and the kids loved sitting at their table.  We had our traditional fight for the nut.  Our family has been spoiled the last few years.  Mike and Ben got the nut the last three years.  We make a huge bowl of rice pudding and put one shaved almond inside.  Whoever gets the nut is the winner of a darling bear and good luck for a year.  This is a tradition that my Mormor did when she lived with her family in Norway and has been done since.  When Mormor was little they would get a marsipan pig- a bear is a much better prize in my opinion.  I have been trying to get the nut my whole life and I still have never won, but even worse is my dad who has also never had the nut.  I was hopeful this year, but Aly was the nut finder.  We performed our traditional Christmas nativity with the kids doing a great job.  Hailey was Mary and Isabelle was baby Jesus.  You can see in this picture how serious Hailey is taking her job as Mary.  We got even more spoiled by my family.  We got zoo memberships for the year, which I am so excited about!  It was such a wonderful Christmas, I love seeing how excited our kids are about all of it!

Christmas Eve with the Wootton's

Eliza and her gaga, I'm not sure if we'll ever get rid of this thing!

Cute cousins Hailey and Brinley

Opening presents, and Eliza showing everyone her belly button.

The annual Wootton family Christmas Eve Party!  We had great food as usual, and then headed downstairs for some fun and games.  Christmas bingo is the big game with fabulous prizes!  Our kids are bingo pros, and love playing Christmas bingo because they know all about the great prize bucket.  It was a great night to be with family, and let the kids play with all their cousins (Mike's parents are up to 22 grandchildren!) Mike's sister Nikki was even there from Arizona.  Our kids got spoiled by the grandparents and had a lot of fun.  The kids were surprised by a visit from Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus.  I knew Ben and Hailey would be excited, but thought Eliza would go nowhere near him.  Eliza was sitting on my lap and I said, look it's Santa, do you want to go see him?  She jumped out of my lap, ran over to Santa, and gave him a big hug.  That was a surprise from my mama's girl, who hardly goes to anyone.  I guess she figured out early that Santa is okay because he brings lots of presents.  I can't believe it's not even Christmas Day, our kids have been so spoiled with presents up to this point.  I don't know why I ever buy them anything!  (Probably because they are so cute!)

Christmas at Bestemor's

The Christmas fun continues and it's still a week until Christmas!  We used to combine with my Aunts and Uncles for Christmas Eve at Mormor's, before we all got married and had kids.  There are too many of us now to even fit in my Mormor's house.  So, our side of the family gets together with Mormor the week before Christmas.  We had a fabulous dinner, and the kids had a great time at their kids table.  Eliza thought all of Mormor's trolls were very interesting, and kept checking them out.  Mormor spoiled all of us with fun gifts, the kids were all so excited for theirs!  I'm so happy that my kids get to spend time with Mormor and learn and live all our fun family traditions.  

Mud Room Makeover

Presenting our winter project!!!  Last winter Mike built our tree fort in our playroom.  This year I wanted a mud-room makeover.  As you can see from our picture above, we had hooks for our coats but everything else was madness.  I did a some pinterest research and we came up with a plan that would solve all our mud-room problems.  Mike built shelves above and below our coat racks.  We really liked the lower coat racks so the kids could reach them, so we kept those, just moved them to the middle.  The shelves above have baskets for anything and everything.  The kids each have their own basket on the bottom for whatever they want, mostly hats and gloves.  The middle is all for shoes!  One of my favorite things is my calendar.  With three busy kids and a busy husband it is so nice to have everybody's schedule in one place!  I can honestly say that this has kept our mud room so nice!  If shoes or jackets ever get astray, it is a quick cleanup that my kids can do on their own!  Yeah for winter projects!

Norwegian Christmas Party - Dancing Around the Christmas Tree

Great Grandchildren and their Bestemor

My mom has amazing sewing skills!  When we were growing up we had similar traditional Norwegian outfits.  My mom decided to make Norwegian 'bunads' for all of her granddaughters.  The girls love their Norwegian princess dresses!  They were able to show them off at my kids first official dancing around the Christmas tree Norwegian party.  My mom's cousin Eddy moved into a new house, so he invited the whole family over for a Christmas party.

We had some great food and then came the dancing around the Christmas tree!  When I was younger I remember going in Mormor's basement and dancing around the Christmas tree singing Norwegian songs.  We would light real candles on the Christmas tree like Mormor used to do when she was little in Norway.  We were always waiting for the tree to go up in flames, but luckily that never happened.  I tried to take pictures of the dancing around the Christmas tree but our group was so large it was a bit tricky.  My mom's other cousin flew in from Seattle just for this party.  Everyone had a great time, and it's such a fun tradition to pass onto my kids.

Jr. Jazz

It's Jr. Jazz time again!  Look at those crazy good dribbling skills!  I love how they line up before the game starts, so they know who they are supposed to be guarding.  Ben is using some good intimidation skills.  Ben was on a good team with a great coach.  They are trying to teach them passing skills this year.  Ben was really good at this, maybe too good.  He rarely took the chance to shoot baskets himself, but would often end up with lots of assists at the end of the game.

The last game of the season was the best!  Ben is a really good shot, but had yet to make a shot during the season.  So, it was the last minute of the last game of the season.  Ben's team was at their basket and their was lots of craziness as always!  A couple of the kids tried to make a basket but they didn't go down.  Mike yelled at Ben to grab a rebound, and he got in their and grabbed it.  Mike yelled, shoot it!  Ben grabbed the ball and dribbled and ran as fast as he could to the other end of the court.  He went up for the shot and made it!!!  The crowd went wild!!!  One of Ben's teamates came up to him and wispered in his ear.  Ben said, oh man!  His last shot of the game was in the wrong hoop.  Oh well, he was still very excited to make a shot.  (He actually made it harder on himself having to dribble down the whole court and not get the ball stolen in the process.)  Ben has played lots of different sports, but he always says that basketball is his favorite!

Ward Christmas Party

It's country Christmas time!  Our ward Christmas Party was a great time for all.  Our ward is very large so to plan a Christmas party for all was quite the undertaking.  The whole gym was full of tables, and everything was set up country style.  We had a great dinner of bbq sandwiches, and mac and cheese for the kids.  They had this great Toy Story jail set up for the kids to pose and play in.  Then it was time for the dancing!  Our Relief Society president asked months before if anyone knew of a country dance caller.  Oh yeah, we know of the best!  Glen Sherwood lived in our Riverton ward, and we had seen his amazing skills.  I contacted the Sherwood's and he agreed to come with Peggy and do the country dance calling for our ward party.  Ben was really into it, and tried to listen along and do all the steps right.  Hailey loved dancing with her dad!  I also got a chance to dance with all my cute kiddos.  It was such a fun night!

Beauty and the Beast

So my princess Hailey was acting a little too much like a spoiled princess.  She was complaining every time she got dressed, did her hair, cleaned her room, or took a batch.  Some of the problem was the transition from summer to fall.  She is my summer girl, and when cold weather hit she did not want to wear anything but dresses or shorts.  That's how it started, and somehow she started having fits about everything else in her life.  I lost my sweet Hailey and had this tantrum throwing crazy girl.  Mike and I talked about what we should do and I came up with the Beauty and the Beast solution.  Hailey loves anything princess, and Beauty and the Beast is definitely on her list of favorites.  I saw that Bingham High School was doing a production of Beauty and the Beast and I thought it would be a great thing for Hailey to work towards. 

I made up a chart and Hailey had to check off a certain number of things every week for 1 month in order to be able to go to Beauty and the Beast.  She had to get dressed, let me do her hair, clean her room, and take bath's without whining or throwing a fit.  I made it so if she did all these things during the day, she got a check mark.  She had to get check marks 6 out of every 7 days a week.  The first week was the hardest, and I had huge doubts that she would ever make it the month.  Ben decided he wanted to go also, so we made him a similar chart, but switched up some of the activities.  I think including Ben really motivated Hailey.  He easily got his checks every day, so Hailey quickly saw that Ben would be going and she might not be.  I was determined to not let her go if she slipped up at all just to prove a point, but she surprised me.  From the 2nd to 4th week, she did amazing.  I had my Hailey back and no more tiny-whiny.  There were times when I'd ask her to do something, and I could tell she was going to go into whine mode.  I just had to remind her of her check-marks and she'd snap right out of it.  It was down to the last day, but she made it with enough checks and we got to go to the play.  Mike stayed home to watch Eliza.  Me, Aly, my mom, Ben and Hailey were able to go.  It was so much fun, what an amazing production!  Ben and Hailey were so impressed that the Beast was a teen aged football player, and they thought it was great that all the kids were in high school.  Even better than Beauty and the Beast was the fact that this seemed to snap Hailey out of her crazy stage and she had done amazingly better ever since!

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we headed over to Blake and Nicole's brand new house! I love their house it is so fabulous.  I was very impressed that they already had drapes and pictures up on the wall!  My Grandpa Marsh joined us, and gave all the kids books, which they thought was great.  I made one of the turkey's and luckily it turned out well.  All the food was amazing and it is always great spending time with family.  Hailey wore her 2 favorite dresses today.  I bought her a new purplicious dress which she loves, and her rainbow dress which she would wear every day if I let her.  Earlier that day we headed over to the Wootton's for our annual Thanksgiving breakfast.  Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures there.  The food was great, and it is really fun as our kids get older and love playing with their cousins.  We have so much to be thankful for! 

Eliza says the cutest things.  One of my favorites is mongey, she loves mongey's!  I always ask her something she doesn't know because she says, "I 'on't know" so cute!  Eliza also says "okay da mommy" all the time, too cute!  Eliza loves the song Old MacDonald.  For a couple of weeks, every time she cried she would say eieiooooo while crying, it's hard to not laugh at our funny little one!

Halloween Fun

The Thursday before Halloween, Hailey's preschool class did an adorable play that we were able to come and see.  The kids were all so excited to be able to dress up in their costumes.  Eliza was very entertained by the cute preschool kids.

Me, Hailey and Eliza headed over to Ben's school Halloween morning to see the school's parade.  It is so fun seeing my own son doing things that I remember when I was in elementary school.  Ben loves Scooby Doo, so that was his chosen costume for this year.  It worked out great for me because it was a costume that my mom already had, that we borrowed.  Later that day, my mom watched the girls and I was able to go help with Ben's Halloween party for his class.  He is so cute, and was so excited when I came into his class.  I thought Ben would change out of his costume after the parade, but his teachers said it was up to him.  So, he ended up wearing his costume all day.  The class party was a lot of fun!  I was in charge of helping make candy spiders, which was a lot of fun.  All the kids would ask who's mom I was.  After I told them Ben, they would say..oh Ben is so great or I like Ben a lot.

We decided to trick-or-treat our own neighborhood this year.  I stayed home to pass out candy and Mike took the kids.  It was amazing weather!  I started out by waiting for the knocks or doorbell rings, but they were one after another.  So, I just sat on my porch handing out candy (in my awesome king-kong lady outfit).  It was a lot of fun to see all our cute neighbor children.  Mike and the kids did great and eventually met up with some of Ben's friends and made their way around the neighborhood in a huge mob.  They eventually ended up at the Henderson's for hot chocolate and donuts. Ben and Hailey could barely lift their bags by the time they got home.  Such a fun Halloween!  We are so blessed to live in such a great neighborhood.