Ten ways to loose all your Christmas spirit in one outing...

1. Choose to see the lights on Temple Square during the last family home evening before Christmas (not an original idea!)
2. Ride the Trax downtown on the same evening as a sold out concert/sing-along at the Energy Solutions Arena.
3. Bounce a screaming baby for an hour and a half in a loud, tightly packed train car while your toddler climbs all over you and everyone else.
4. Have your baby go poo and explode out of her diaper in all directions while riding the aforementioned, over-packed train.
5. Miss your stop and end up having to walk back four blocks to your destination.
6. Receive lots of dirty looks as you cut ahead of all the ladies waiting in line outside the bathroom so you can get to the changing table to clean your still disgruntled baby. (For an even better evening be sure to forget a change of clothes so that your little girl has to remain in her yellowed clothes for the remainder of the night.)
7. Don't bring a stroller and have your toddler continually escape you, running through people's legs and across the fenced-off lawn.
8. Get everyone together and smiling for a picture then have your camera batteries die right as you snap the picture.
9. Instead of enjoying the lights, be sure that your son becomes fixated on the one light he finds that does not work.
10. Make sure your toddler cries about having to get back on the train because the horrific memory of the train ride downtown is still fresh on his mind.

On our way home, after about the six or seventh stop, enough people got off the train that we could actually sit down. As I sat there I thought and laughed about our horrible night. Really, I don't think that things could have gotten any worse. All we wanted was a fun, family activity for Christmas, but it more closely resembled a nightmare.

Our experience tonight helped me to remember that Christmas is not about the lights or the presents, or the yummy treats. It is about celebrating the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. I would just like to testify here that I know he lives and I love Him.

Merry CHRISTmas.

Our little Linus

They say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and I am a believer. When I was little I was attached to a silky pink blanket; I dragged it everywhere with me until the fated day that my mom accidentally melted it in the dryer. I was crushed until I discovered that rubbing my mom's slip between my fingers provided the same sensory satisfaction. It was not uncommon for me to stick my hand up my mother's skirt at church to get a feel of her slip. On weekdays, her slip became my favorite companion as I ventured out to play.

I am now getting my comeuppance as Oliver is hopelessly attached to his blue blanket. He won't go to sleep without it and it is the ultimate comfort when he falls down or gets and "ouchy." Sometimes (as you can see from the picture) it even doubles as a scarf (I figure that is better than letting him drag it around on the ground).

I have never made the mistake of melting it in the dryer, but I did notice a while back that it was beginning to wear a bit thin. Terrified of what might happen when the blanket turned to shreds I began searching for a replacement. I searched all of the stores and scoured the Internet in search of the exact same blanket, but was not successful. I bought him a blanket made from the same kind of material, but he turned up his nose at it. I had pretty much given up when I happened upon the exact same blanket still in its brand new packaging at a garage sale over the summer. I happily paid the one dollar they were asking (without ever mentioning that I would have happily paid fifty.) I decided to hold off making the switch until it became absolutely necessary. I suppose that in Ollie's case my slips and underwear were never in any real danger, but it sure is a comfort to know that I have a backup! In my mind, that blanket remains my best garage sale purchase ever (and I have done a whole lot of garage-saling during our sojourn in graduate school.)

He did it!!

Sam graduated with his Masters degree from the Colorado School of Mines on Friday. We are so proud of him, he has worked long and hard to get to this point. I am so grateful for a husband who has been willing to sacrifice so much and work so hard to become a better provider for our family. He is the BEST!!

Ruby and I were able to attend the graduation while Oliver stayed in Utah with Grandma and Grandpa Ross. The graduation was by far the best I have ever attended, the speaker was quick and funny (just as all graduation speakers should be). And the procession was flawless and totally professional - no flip-flops or decorated graduation caps here (the last graduation we attended was at the University of Hawaii).

Sam was totally elated and informed me that we can now all begin calling him "Master Sam", yeah right. For me it was somewhat bittersweet. I am very excited to move on to our next adventure, but at the same time I have really enjoyed the past five years (a.k.a. our entire marriage) that we have spent in school. We have gotten to know some incredible people and learned a lot about ourselves and our place in the world. So, while we say goodbye to formal education for now, I hope that we will keep on learning and growing (maybe I should have spoken at the graduation, tee, hee).

Way to go Sammy!!!

Why I hate laundry...

I have decided that when you procrastinate blogging it becomes a lot like laundry; overwhelming. I am sure you all know that good feeling that comes when you remember to do a load every day or so and your laundry basket never spills over onto the floor and you don't have to punch down the clothes to fool everyone into thinking you've really got it all together. And I am quite certain that you can also relate to the massive pile of folding that accumulates when you put off doing laundry until there is nothing left to wear and you are forced to make yourself a slave to the 60 minute cycle on your dryer for an entire day. I really hate folding the clothes at the end of a day like that. The pile seems absolutely insurmountable.

At the moment I am feeling the same way about my blog, I have put it off so long that the list of things I need to blog about has become impossibly long. But, as with laundry, there is nothing to do but settle in and get to it. So here it goes. (I should mention that one of my greatest laundry sins is overloading the washer, it is a fault that may have spilled over into this post so I apologize in advance).
We have had a couple of snowstorms this year and every time we do Oliver insists on going outside to build a "snowman tall, tall tall." Actually, I build the snowman whilst he plants himself face down on the lawn and licks up the snow, he can't seem to get enough of it. When it warmed up again and his snowman got "small, small, small" rather than let it go to waste he came and asked for a spoon so he could go out and eat it. (He does avoid the dirty, yellow stuff - so I guess that is good). Sam took a break from his studies a few weeks ago to go pheasant hunting with his Dad in South Dakota. He had a great time on his well deserved break. He has put in a lot of hard work at school and we are now counting down the days to graduation, there are only six days, two finals, and one massive project lying between him and freedom from formal education. We have had a great time at Mines and are glad we chose to go there. The nation-wide rankings for Operations Research programs came out last week and Sam's program was ranked number one in the country. Go Mines!! I guess that is what you get at a school full of nerds. Seriously it is geekdom over there. On one of our first weeks in Golden we attended the combined Mines' married/singles ward and all I can say is that it made me very glad to be already married. I'm not the first one to say that, the girl:guy ratio at Mines is 1:5 and as far as dating is concerned the saying goes, "the odds are good, but the good are odd" and I'd have to say I agree.

Oliver learned how to use the camera, I just downloaded about a hundred pictures of the carpet and various house plants, all I can say is thank goodness for digital cameras. Ollie seems growing by leaps and bounds these days. He is such a good talker now and will recount things that happened weeks and weeks ago - he never seems to forget anything. He notices everything and I am constantly amazed at what he picks up on. I have been thinking for the past few weeks that I should start to teach him his alphabet - I neglected to do anything about it however, so he seems to have taken things into his own hands. The other day we were video chatting with Sam and I showed him how to type a letter and send it to his daddy. He got so excited and started typing letters and naming them as he went along. I know he likes to sing the ABC song, but I didn't know he could recognize any of the printed letters, I guess I owe Sesame Street for that one.

When we were in Colorado Springs I saw the cutest knit hats called "gnome domes." I told my super-talented sister-in-law about them and this is what she came up with. Aren't they adorable? Thanks again Caci.

Ollie isn't the only one who is growing up. Our little Ruby isn't quite so little anymore either. She smiles and talks and has started grabbing onto things as well. Her cheeks seem to get chubbier every day and she now has a permanent double chin (a feature that she seems to be pulling off a lot better than her equally chubby mother).

This year I decided to learn how to dip chocolates. I would have to say that I am not very good yet. I did however dip a couple perfect looking caramels. I was so proud of this one that I had to take a picture. Just look at it, no feet and the swirl is so pretty!! I was still revelling in the beauty of my one good chocolate when my parents came home with a tin of chocolates dipped by my aunt - every single one of hers was pretty, so I guess I have a ways to go. My one consolation this year has been the fact that chocolates taste good no matter what they look like. May be I will have to ask Aunt Pam for lessons next year.

I took Oliver to see Santa this year, the following is the conversation that transpired:

Santa: Would you like to come sit on Santa's lap?

Ollie: Nope

Santa: Can your mom sit next to me and you can sit on her lap?

Ollie: Nope

Santa: Can you tell me what you would like for Christmas?

Ollie: A candy cane

Santa: Are you sure that is all you want, may be you should come sit next to me and we could talk about that.

Ollie: Nope

Santa: Well is there anything that I can bring for your little sister?

Ollie: A pine cone.

The end. (as you can see Oliver only got close enough to grab hold of the candy cane)

I would just like to announce here that my children are now friends, that is right - they actually seem to like each other. Oliver is so gentle with Ruby, he is always concerned about her and if he is not around when she goes down for a nap he likes to tip-toe into her room to say good night. Sometimes he even climbs into her bed and plays there quietly while she sleeps. The other day we were driving and Oliver wriggled out of the top part of his car seat and leaned over and took hold of Ruby's car seat with both hands shouting, "Hold on Ruby, hold on, the cars are coming." I guess that means he is even willing to sacrifice himself for her. Thanks Ollie.

Of course, Christmas would not be Christmas if we didn't get to make gingerbread houses at Grandma and Grandpa Cornwells' house. I spread frosting all over Oliver's so he could stick candy where ever he wanted, thus he dubbed it "the white house." I am pretty sure he was more into the train under the tree than the candy though.

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Whew, I did it. And the best part is, there are no piles to put away, so I guess blogging isn't as bad a laundry after all.

Helping Hands

Oliver loves to help. If he ever gets his hands on a screwdriver he will spend hours "fixing things". Here he is helping Grandpa with the power washer. He also loves to stir and pour. Yesterday I was making a pasta salad and I let him stir it while I turned around and chopped olives, when I looked back over at him he had poured the entire bottle of Salad Supreme spice into the salad and stirred it in. It was a bit potent. His favorite way to help lately is in bossing the dogs and animals around. If he ever hears anyone say anything to the dogs he will come running from wherever he is shouting the same command. He loves to yell at them to "sit" or "get down" even if they are all the way across the yard.

In case you were wondering, Ruby is also a big help. Here she is holding all of the laundry in the basket for me. What would I do without her?

Our little gem...

I felt so bad about not taking any pictures of Ruby lately that I decided to post these simply for the sake of posting something (I have no cute story or anicdote to accompany it). I will say though that we are madly in love with our little Ruby, she really is such a gem (no pun intended). She smiles and coos and keeps us all begging for more.

Whew!

I had to begin this post with this picture of Sam because it pretty much sums up how we all have felt about this past week. Our week included packing all of our belongings into boxes and moving them to a storage unit (with the help of a U-haul truck and a couple faithful Elder Quorum members, thanks again!) Cleaning our rental house and then driving to Utah through a horrible snow storm that turned our nine hour drive into fifteen. Once here we quickly unpacked, bought a pumpkin, celebrated Halloween, then began cooking and cleaning like crazy to get ready for everyone who came on Sunday for Ruby's baby blessing. I just have to add a special thanks here to my mom, without whose help we would not have survived. She flew to Colorado Springs to help with the packing and cleaning then flew home with Ollie so that I would only have to take Ruby in the car with me. Once here she worked tirelessly to get everything ready for the blessing so that it would be a wonderful day for all of us (which it definitely was). And, she even had the energy to chase Oliver through the corn maze at the pumpkin patch. Thanks again mom, you're amazing!

Before coming to Utah we got to celebrate our first real snowstorm of the year in Colorado Springs. Oliver was fascinated with making tracks in the stow and spent a good hour just walking back and forth across the backyard.

Oliver is currently obsessed with machinery, i.e. garbage trucks, tractors, trains, etc. So, you can imagine his delight when he discovered a whole row of tractors at the pumpkin patch we visited.

They also had a corn maze, but Ollie was more concerned with chasing the chickens into the maze than finding a way through himself.

Out of all the pumpkins, Oliver set his heart on what he dubbed the "white baby pumpkin" I'm not sure whether it was a pumpkin or a squash because it was misshapen and slightly rotted, but we took it home with us anyway

And here is our little monkey. If you ask him what he is he will tell you he is a "monkey jumping on the bed." He had me put the costume on him a few times leading up to Halloween so he could jump on my bed while I sang the song. He didn't care too much about the candy on Halloween, but as you can tell he thought the pumpkins were fascinating. He made us relight them every night until finally the pumpkins got mushy and had to be thrown out.

For the record, Ruby was dressed up as an adorable little pumpkin. Unfortunately, we forgot to take any pictures. We also forgot to bring our camera out for the blessing so you will just have to take my word for it that she looked cute (despite the fact that her cute hair bow and the panties to her dress both got lost somewhere in the move). It was wonderful to have so much family here to support us and Sam did a beautiful job on the blessing. All in all it was a great week, but I am sure glad its over!

Gone Fishing. . . . .

Sometimes life feels like a game of Go Fish. You hold a certain set of cards and then spend all your time looking for the right match. Well, right now we are looking for just the right match. Sam has been offered a good position in Colorado Springs with the company he interned with over the summer. We knew that they would be making an offer and that is why we decided to move to the Springs back in May. Now however Sam is thinking he would like to begin his career elsewhere and has been interviewing and sending in resumes to companies from Utah to Timbuktu. We are currently waiting to see if we receive any additional job offers. In the meantime the lease on our house ran out and we didn't want to get stuck in another lease if we aren't really going to be staying. The solution: we packed all of our belongings into a storage unit and I brought the kids out to stay with my parents while Sam stays with some friends for the remaining weeks of school. While it is not the ideal situation, we figured that it would give us the most options whilst we play yet another round of Go Fish.

Perspective

I prefer my house to be cleaner than it currently is.

I'd much rather look for something to wear in my drawer than dig through the laundry hamper or the pile of unfolded clothes like I did this morning.

I'd like to make a yummy dinner instead of warming up leftovers as I am planning to do tonight.

Somedays I just have to look the other way and remember that I am not sealed to this house for all eternity, but I am sealed to my kids forever. And so, I am going to stop perusing blogs and go start dinner so that when my toddler wakes up from his nap I will have plenty of time to play trains and read books - even if it is the same book over and over and over again.

Because I am a mom first and foremost.

Moldy

I am beginning to think (much to my surprise) that we may be a mold family. Not that we are stinky and rotting - although that may be true as well, but that we are going to be one of those families whose kids look like they all popped out of the same mold. I figured that since Sam and I look so different our children would as well. However, that has not been the case - it is hard to tell from these pictures, because Ollie is so much older here than Ruby, but they both have the same eyes, nose and face shape, not to mention hair color. Of course, Ruby is still changing a lot so I may have a different opinion next week, but for the moment I have to say "Hooray for molds!"

Another Day

So, I don't have much to report. Our lives have not changed significantly since the last time I posted. We just keep busy chasing after Ollie, feeding Ruby, and enjoying one another's company.
Ruby changes everyday. She looks more and more like herself everyday - I know that sounds funny, but it is true. She is loosing the newborn look and getting decidedly cuter.


In between conference sessions on Sunday Sam and Oliver raked up a big pile of leaves to jump in. Ollie thought it was so much fun that he spent most of the day Monday working on those same leaves, when he decided that there were not enough on the ground he got up on his picnic table and started picking more.
I probably won't show this picture to Sam - and I think I'm safe because he rarely reads our blog. He wouldn't like to see Ollie in a pink bow, but Oliver insisted on wearing it this morning when I was putting one on Ruby. We must be experiencing an overload of feminine hormones at our house because it seems they are rubbing off on Ollie. When we asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween he was insistent on being a butterfly. Fortunately, when we took him shopping for a costume Sam intentionally stood in front of the butterfly costume and Oliver decided to be a monkey instead. Then a couple of days ago we were watching football at a friends house and Ollie put on their little girls tutu and began dancing around the living room - he insisted on wearing the purple tutu for the duration of the game. Poor Ollie, he has to spend all day everyday with a bunch of girls - maybe if Sam does decide to read this he will start spending less time at the library and more time at home doing manly things.

Double Take

Seeing as I have now been a mom of two for three whole weeks I feel qualified to give my expert opinion on the raising of two children. Simply put, it is awesome!! I have been happily surprised at how smoothly we have made the transition from a family of three to a family of four (thus far:). Of course, we have had our rough spots. I have had the opportunity on more than one occasion to chase Oliver at a dead sprint through stores and parking lots while lugging along a car seat and baby. There have been a couple of days in which a shower was simply not an option and I did experience one horrific grocery shopping trip with a sobbing toddler and a screaming infant. I am proud to admit though that we are all still happy and still sane. I am constantly busy, but I love it - there is no down time and certainly no time for boredom.
Having two children has required some attitude adjustment on my part. I have found that I am much less tolerant of things that are messy as I have less time for cleaning. I am also much more lenient in regards to cooking and laundry. This morning Oliver asked for Doritos and Froot Loops for breakfast and I didn't even hesitate before giving it to him. (As you can tell from the picture, he is thoroughly enjoying his new dietetic freedoms).


I have also picked up some new baby-skills that I never acquired with my first child. I remember being so proud of myself for managing to cook entire meals with just one arm while toting Oliver around as a baby. Well, that skill is nothing compared to my new found ability to cook, clean and chase after a busy toddler while not just holding onto Ruby, but nursing her as well. Now, that is talent! (Sorry if that was more than you wanted to know, but my life pretty much consists of diapers, nursing and sporadic sessions of Ring-Around-The-Rosies, so that is what you get!)

Baby Update

I have been rather remiss in my photo-taking responsibilities with Ruby. There just seems to be a lot more to concentrate on with two kids and the camera never seems to be around at the right time. However, here are some shots of our newest addition. She is now one and half weeks old and is such an angel. Although it is still early, we are guessing that she will look quite a bit like her brother. Their hair is the exact same color and although I have only detected one cowlick on Ruby, she seems to have the same natural-forming mohawk as Ollie as well. The only difference is that Ruby's hair flips out all over her head.

We have also been blessed once again with a good sleeper and eater. We never had to go through that horrible night/day mix up and she regularly sleeps 4-5 hours between nighttime feedings and goes right back to sleep when she is done. Yahoo!! Also, rather than lose weight, she put on a whole ounce before her first doctors appointment. She does have a set of lungs, but at this point she only exercises them when she is hungry or getting changed (she is just really modest and hates to have her clothes off).

We love our little Ruby and are so glad that she is a part of our family!