Our little Family & a BIG Christmas

Our first Christmas away from family turned out to be really good. Although we missed family gatherings and opening presents with a large group we had a great time wtih Caleb. He got the hang of ripping paper and realized that there was a toy inside. It still took him most of the day to get them all open.
Caleb rarely sleeps past 7:30am but of course on Christmas morning he slept in. Paul was up and waiting by 7:00. Paul had our cinnemon rolls in the oven and cooking when Caleb finally woke up.
We didn't anticipate having so many presents! Our families were VERY genereous despite the fact they had to send presents across the country. I had used toys I'd gathered and wrapped for Caleb becuase I didn't think he'd have much to open, but he did.
Paul got me a sewing machine! I also got new clothes, 17 Miracles movie (so good!), boots, scarves, decorations, sequence game...
I got Paul a new peacoat and I made he and Caleb matching aprons. Paul also got Harry Potter movies, toothbrush heads...
And Caleb got a kitchen, plastic food, toys, books, new clothes, a musical Elmo and more. Spoiled.
And Santa brought us a Wii!! We weren't expecting that but I guess becuase Paul has been doing so well in school Santa thought we deserved a Wii.







New, homemade aprons!


He was SO excited!!


One of our packages came with these, so we enjoyed popping them. Caleb thought it was so fun to JUMP on them or hammer them.


I wouldn't normally put a picture of myself up but Paul insisted. This is a new outfit I got from my mom and boots from Paul. They're warm!

Tight Budget Decor

As you all know we moved here to New Hampshire with what could fit in our car, that meant ONLY essentials. So all my wall hangings, holiday decorations, and pictures were left in Utah.
This Christmas season pruchasing new decor is not an option so I whipped out my pathetic crafty self and did what I could.




(don't mind the fact that there are no ornaments on the lower half of the tree, we have a toddler/tornado running around) He is often rearranging the ones he can reach as well.





Here's what I came up with, and almost FREE. I did pruchase lights and a few ornaments for the tree. And the rest was history.
I made a few stars out of tree branches and floss, then hung them in the doorway between our two living rooms. The garland I made from the extra branches cut off of our Christmas tree. The wreath came from the same branches (give me a break it was my first wreath). Another star above our mantel with more tree garland and a few candales I picked up on black friday. Our family went on a great walk through the park to gather pine cones I used in the garland. Pomegranants are from the store, and will be used later for eating yum!
Overall, our house smells greatly of fresh pine, we have decorations up to help with the Christmas spirit, and I spent little money on them. Happy Holidays!

P.S. I don't have anyone else to brag about my seldom craftiness thus I blog about it.

And just to make this post a little more interesting. Here are my favorite two boys!

November Fest

Wow! Time flies and I haven't blogged about so much! Here is our November in a nutshell.


CANADA:

Paul had all of Thanksgiving week off. We took a 2 day vacation to Montreal, Canada. And it was COLD!! We had fun but unfortunately we didn't stay long enough. One place we went to was the Biodome de Montreal. Caleb enjoyed the fish, porcupines, birds, and alligators. It was neat because it had different environments from around the world: the Amazon, Canada, Arctic Ocean, and then a child's hands on area.





Tip #1: Make sure your GPS knows Canadian roads. Ours didn't. And we didn't think about how Canadians speak French, not English so we didn't know if we asked for directions if they could tell us in English. It was amazing that we even found our hotel. We stopped at a Metro station that had a million maps of a million roads and we happened to see the street we needed on the very edge of one of the maps.

Tip #2: Practice driving beforehand. Driving was nuts! In Canada their stop lights are only on the sides of the road (not hanging over the road like the U.S.) so Paul ran at least 2 red lights. Oops! Plus all the signs are in French. We got the hang of it, but it was pretty scary at first.

Tip #3: Must eat crepes. We had these gigantic crepes for breakfast. They were full of fruit and custard. So good!


Tip #4: Don't ever NOT wear your coat in Canada. We had this stupid idea to not wear our coats from our car to the entrance at the Biodome and I would never suggest doing that.





We also did some shopping in an underground shopping center. It was neat to think about being in this underground mall. I guess they ran out of room above ground. But this shopping center was blocks and blocks of stores just sitting underground. Cool!

LIVE NATIVITY:

In Sharon, VT (the birth place of Joseph Smith) they had a live nativity program after thanksgiving. We invited our Landlords (the Walkers) but they weren't able to come, we'll keep working our missionary magic on them ;)
we stayed warm, pet the animals after the program and enjoyed some family time together thinking about how thankful we are for the great prophet Joseph Smith and his family.






They had a room with an older Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert playing. Caleb watched for at least 20 minutes without moving. It was incredible. The kid loves T.V. and he loves music. Great combo.

RANDOM:
Poor little Caleb is stuck sleeping in a Pack 'n Play. It's getting a bit small for him and I can't imagine that it's comfortable with the hard bottom it has. A few days ago I went in his room after he'd been asleep for a couple hours (We always check on him before going to bed). He usually plays in bed for about 20 minutes before falling asleep and this is how I found him.

Can you see the bottom of the Pack 'n Play is folded in half (it's the part with the green blanket on it), he's not even sleeping on the mattress part. He's sleeping on the hard poles and half of his back is arched upward. Poor kid! Time for a 'big' bed?

I love being a mom!

Yucky!

We got these Llama Llama books from the library. Caleb LOVES them! This one is called "Llama Llama Home with Mama" I suggest you look them up at your library. They are so great. I've read the same ones over and over for Caleb and I still like them.



I love how he thinks saying "yucky" is SOOO funny! He giggles every time we read the book. And he quickly learned the word "achoo" while we had this book.

Excuse his hand down his diaper...no comment.

Back off!

Today I witnessed, for the first time, Caleb being picked on.
Ouch!
I didn't know I'd could be offended/hurt by a 3 year old, but I was. Caleb was just minding is own business playing near 2 active three year old kids when they began telling Caleb "get away! We don't want you here, go away!" Caleb didn't even know what was going on, he kept staring at them while they got in his face. He did however know by the way they were yelling that they must not have been saying nice things.
I wanted to yell back at the kids to "go away!" but because they are my friend's children I held my tongue.
Poor Caleb just walked nervously away and came to get comfort from me. I felt so bad for him! It hurt me much more than it hurt him...what am I going to do when he gets older and actually understands what the kids are saying??

And counting

Caleb can say (attempt) 56 words! And today I heard 3 more new ones, 56+3=59 (yes I really had to do that math).
Although Paul and I are the only ones who can understand them, he attempts at saying them. It's great to be able to communicate a little now. Whining is getting on my nerves!
I'll just list a few of the words he can say:
shake, bird, bubbles, uh oh!, Oh No!, night night, apple, outside, balloon, remote (we really don't watch that much T.V.), dark, moon, star...and Paul swears Caleb said Yellow today as they read a book with a sun in it, I have yet to hear that one.
Just wanted to brag, thanks for reading. :)

They say it's an "early" winter

Saturday we got at least a foot of snow maybe even 1 1/2 feet. I was expecting a long winter here in New Hampshire, but I wasn't looking forward to it. Everyone tells me this is an "early" winter though. And that they often don't see snow until Christmas or later but that it does get bitter cold with or without snow.
Well welcome snow, luckily it hasn't been too cold. We can still have playgroup at the park and go for walks to the library in the evening with Paul. But my guess is it won't last much longer.
On Sunday we only had sacrament meeting, the rest of church was cancelled. Just becuase we have a little snow?! Come on! This is New England we're talking about, we're in the most Northern East part of the U.S. of course we're going to have snow. shouldn't these people just deal with it and have church like normal??
These were my first thoughts. Until later Sunday evening we had dinner with the Stake President and his family. He then explained that some people had to travel 45 minutes to church and to get there by 9:00 am is more difficult. If those members can't make it to church (also due to power outage) then we don't have enough people to carry out primary, relief society, young mens/womens and other duties.
Oh yeah, duh Amelia. I'm not in Utah anymore. Church isn't a block away for everyone in the ward. I'm learning everyday.
With cancelled church. We played in the snow!





Caleb giggled and giggled every time Paul threw a snowball, especially if he threw it at mommy...not funny to me.

Sesame Street

Happy Haloween...two days ago.





Whinnie the Pooh and Elmo are friends.

Fresh Apple Cider

Have you ever tasted non pasturized FRESH apple cider? Well I have and it is GOOD! On Saturday Paul, myself and Caleb went for a drive to an apple orchard. Typically you can pick your own apples but unfortunately the season was over for that. But we enjoyed some freshly baked apple cider donuts, fresh (i mean fresh!) apple cider, and we picked a couple of pumpkins from the pumpkin patch.
I thought for sure Caleb would be excited to pick a pumpkin because he's just recently learned what a pumpkin is and he even tries saying it, "nkin" as he calls them. (He hasn't gotten two syllables yet). But, as you can see, he was more interested in the dozens of cars, wagons, bikes and playgrounds they had at the apple orchard.







The pumking picking was fun. And we also did some bird watching, but no birds.






And a quick look at what the rest of Saturday was like...


...football

Boston Birthday

Amelia turned 23 a few days ago and to celebrate we thought we would take a trip down to Boston. By the time we got down there it was pouring rain so we didnt get to do very much. We went to this outdoor mall called faneuil market and did some shopping but because of the rain we werent able to explore the city like we had planned, but we'll be here awhile so I'm sure we'll get to one day.
It has been so great to be back with Amelia, two months is way too long to be separated from her. Happy Birthday dear, I love you!


Amelia tried lobster for the first time

This was a really cool bridge we drove under

Caleb kept growling at the lobster, but he chowed down on our calamari


He thought it was fun to blow air into my mouth

Distraction

Paul refuses to study near me, he says I'm too "distracting". So here I am on the comfortable couch while he studies at the kitchen table. I'm band from making any noise and I've been repremanded twice already. Sheesh! This guy has lived by himself for too long! He's amazed at all the laundry we have in just 3 days, the dishes stacked up 3 times faster and the floor is covered in dried oatmeal, banana and toys. He's forgotten what it's like to live with a toddler and wife.

New Hampshire is beautiful! It's so great to be back with Paul and I now see how much Caleb missed his dad. Caleb will play with Paul every second he can, push is trucks around with dad, play basketball and giggle, sometimes just lay on dad's stomach and squeeze his neck. It's adorable to watch these two try to make up for lost time.

I left my camera cord in Utah, so there won't be pictures for a while..or until I take some with our other camera.

Alone

This is what happens when Amelia is not around. I have never tried to grow facial hair before so I thought that since Amelia isn't here with me yet now was the time. Its been four weeks since I shaved, and I'm pretty proud of myself. My sideburns dont grow very well as you see but my goat is good at least. I still have some catching up to do to be even with sam and jason, but i'm atleast on my way.

School has been crazy busy so far, I have five exams in five days and than I get a one day break before two more exams. I have been doing really good on all my tests so far, lets pray I can keep it up. The house is really lonely without Amelia and Caleb, I can not wait to be with them again. These past 7 weeks have been extremely hard for me, I would not recommend being seperated for that long. I am so greatful for the knowledge of eternal families, it has helped me to get through this ordeal. I used to complain when caleb would wake up early but now I long for those moments, I would give anything just to have him here with me. Its interesting how things change when you become a parent. I honestly could care less if I have things as long as my child is happy and being taken care of. It has given me greater prespective on how our Father in Heaven must feel with us. He does everything He can to provide for us and take of us. I am just so thankful for the gospel and the eternal truths that it brings to our lives, I would be lost without it. I have never truly been alone out here, He has always been with me, and I know HE always will as long as we follow His commandments.