Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Winter/Christmas activities

I love Christmas-time and want Tracen to grow up loving it as well.   Here are  some pictures from a few of the activities we have been enjoying:


Tracen has no winter boots so we decided to bring the snow inside the house to play with.



He mostly likes eating it, but we did make a few little snowman (which are much more fun to knock over than build)

And then Tracen enjoyed his first cup of hot chocolate.  He loves it and we have enjoyed it a few more times since.


We have a little cookie decorator on our hands, he ended up putting frosting on most of the cookies and didn't let me do any.  Once he got the hang of it, I wasn't allowed anywhere near his hands or the cookies, he could have done it for hours.

For FHE a couple of weeks ago we watched a Nativity Mormon Message, Tracen wanted to watch it twice, so we did, and he made sure that all his trucks were watching too.
Then we set up our Nativity up in a window sill that Tracen can't reach and talked about each piece.  The next morning I found Tracen had brought a stool up the stairs to the window and was trying to grab the sheep and baby Jesus.  I dug out an old nativity set and he has loved it.  I guess we need one of those Little People ones.

Not pictured: Making and decorating sugar cookies, painting ceramic ornaments, making a Christmas Tree and snowman with paper, playing outside in the snow, picking out Christmas presents

Friday, December 13, 2013

Vernal: Dinosaur Museum

Last Saturday we wanted to get out of the house but didn't know where to go - Luke came up with the idea of checking out the dinosaur museum.  It was freezing outside (think -25 celcius) and while we were there we were the only ones in the museum, and although it wasn't close to the level of Drumheller, I don't think we could ever find ourselves as the only patrons there.  

Tracen loved being able to run around and see trains and dinosaurs. 




He only tried a couple of times to crawl under the caution tape.



Thursday, December 12, 2013

Putting up the Christmas tree

 I have to admit that we put up our Christmas tree before November 28th (American Thanksgiving) because we just needed some decoration in our home, we still have nothing on the walls and minimal furniture. 
 Tracen was excited and very willing to help but then got distracted by this cardboard tube.

We don't have many ornaments, and after one incident with broken ornament glass, the breakable ornaments got moved from Tracen's reach.  To help fill the space Tracen and I painted some pinecones with sparkly paint.

 We have no tree topper, but we love our simple tree.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Plumbing problems

Life with a 2 year old seems to be just what is indicated by "terrible twos" (and also with having a little boy perhaps?).  It sure keeps us on our toes and as nice as those quiet moments are during the day, they usually mean trouble.  There has been a lot of closet exploring and way too much of toilet playing. 

It usually happens when we think he is napping, and have since changed around the door knob on his room so that we can ensure he is stuck in there during sleeping hours (I promise that we always go and unlock his door after he is confirmed to be asleep).  
Day 1: A whole roll of toilet paper (taken off the roll) and in the toilet, you can't really see but on the left is another roll of toilet paper that was drenched.
 
And Day 2 (the next day): I caught him mid unrolling, and when we were going to take off his toilet drenched clothes he kept pointing to the toilet saying "TEEE, TEEE" and I had no idea what that meant.  As I went to try to flush down a portion of the toilet paper the toilet began to flood, and I realized that "Tee" meant "teeth" or rather his tooth brush that he shoved down the toilet (he *luckily* doesn't know how to flush the toilet yet).  
There was a Day 3, but no picture, and hopefully there won't be anymore.  The only problem is that potty training is on the top of our to-do list, are we sending mixed messages with saying the toilet is gross and yucky, but we want you to use it too??

He sure is a lot of fun though, and his talking is coming along which makes for laughs and better communication.  He loves oranges, apples and bananas and taking a stool into the pantry to see what he can reach. 

He spent a good 15 minutes the other day looking at the flyers and pointing out all the cars and characters he knows. 

I am excited for Christmas with him this year and hope that we have no more toilet incidents.




Wednesday, December 4, 2013

My first American Thanksgiving

Although I went to American universities, this year was my first real American Thanksgiving (I did spend one other Thanksgiving in the US with my family in Hawaii but I don't remember having turkey).  Since we missed Canadian Thanksgiving (we were in a hotel in Roosevelt Utah) and we have so much to be thankful for, we decided to celebrate it traditionally.  We were so grateful that the Gathers made the drive out here (and the weather cooperated to make it possible) and I really loved being able to spend time with family.  I seem to be in a bad habit of not taking pictures - it is sad. 

Anyways- we had TONS of food, and I found out that my oven doesn't cook evenly (one side of the bird didn't cook, the other side did...) and we even checked out Walmart for some shopping. 
These are the few shots I managed to get:
 I found this gem on my phone.



Tracen was thrilled to have Blade here, he couldn't wait for "Blade and Blade's cars" that Blade was nice enough to give to Tracen.  We just got the Gathers Christmas card, and Tracen loves to point out who Blade is. 

The men enjoying some football, Chay was passed out on the other couch.

This picture makes me laugh because Nicole wanted to move from the table so bad, but due to an abundance of food, she couldn't.  

We were pleasantly surprised at just how polite the people were when we went to Wal-mart, Chay said that someone even asked him if they wanted to trade spots with him so he could see better, and although it was busy, not as busy as the stores in the "big city".  

Nicole, Chay and I checked out K-mart (I don't know why I go to that store, I always leave disappointed) and Luke pulled out his old super nintendo and although Blade was weary, he enjoyed playing it. 


This year has been good to us, graduation, a good job for Luke, a house that we own, a new baby on the way and so many great memories!