Snowshoeing

We went up the canyon for a little snowshoeing this winter. In reality the snow was pretty packed and the snowshoes probably weren't necessary but we left them on anyway, it is all about the experience, right? We had some technical difficulties as we tried to pull Oliver in the sled (hiking with him can be somewhat torturous as he has to stop and examine absolutely everything). It took us a while to convince him to ride in the sled in the first place because there were so many other things to check out and even then it only worked really well on flat or uphill terrain. As soon as we hit a downhill section he and his sled would overtake us. In the end we spent most of the time towing he and Ruby up the hill and then letting them sled back down. It was fun though and so great to get out above the nasty inversion. I never realized how nasty Utah can be in the winter, it really makes me miss Colorado.

Double Trouble

It seems to me that second children learn a lot of naughty tricks, i.e. tantrums, getting into things, making messes, a lot sooner than their older counterparts did. Obviously this has to do with the fact that they have such great teachers - their older brothers or sisters. Ruby has definitely become Oliver's little shadow. If he does it, she must do it too. My favorite was when I saw her suffer through a sour grapefruit that she clearly did not enjoy but insisted on eating because her brother did. On the downside, she has learned (much earlier than Oliver ever did) how to move the chairs around in the kitchen to access whatever she wants on the counter. She has taken several spills onto the hard tile and yet remains undeterred. As a result, I am never lonely in my kitchen I ALWAYS have a helper on each side.

Here they are helping with the bread. Oliver used to be the number one dough snitcher at our house but Ruby has recently surpassed him. I think she could down a whole loaf of dough if I let her. Yuck!


For the record: yes, my kids are still in their pajamas at 10:00 a.m., but you see the mess they are in, why get them all dressed up for that? And that is not blood that is all over Ruby, it is blueberry juice. My kids most favorite treat are frozen blueberries. I buy the huge bag from Costco and they down it all in about a week. Oliver is forever asking for "cold frozen blueberries" as opposed to "warm frozen blueberries" I suppose, so I am glad he remembers to clarify!

Snow, snow, snow

Ollie got a new sled for Christmas, of course being as we are still in "Santa" mode at our house, he calls it his sleigh. We went to the park the other day to test it out. Oliver absolutely loved it and I loved that he was willing to drag it back up the hill himself instead of me going down after it every time. Unfortunately we picked a pretty cold day so Ruby and I wimped out long before he did. I managed to get him home, but not inside. He spent the next two hours on his belly building a road for his car in the backyard. He discovered that a backyard full of snow is as good as a giant sandbox and made me haul out all of his tractors and dump trucks for the adventure.

Adventures in Sunbeams

I have been counting down to the day that we would switch to 9:00 a.m. church for quite some time now. I thought it would be the end of all my Sunday drama. Unfortunately, I overlooked the fact that a new year also meant a new class and new teachers for Oliver as he would be leaving behind the nursery forever. When I explained to him what would be happening he insisted that he was not grown up yet, he was still little and as such belonged in the nursery. So, I went and sat with him on the front row of Primary to see if I could convince him to stay. (This was quite a switch for us because he was usually running down the hall to nursery before the closing prayer was over in Sacrament meeting). He wasn't doing too well with the switch until his new teachers showed up, it was a husband and wife team and she happens to be drop-dead gorgeous. Once he got a look at her he leaned over to me and whispered that "the mommy teacher is really cool". He immediately dismissed me to go to my own class. The last thing I caught was her husband smiling and Ollie and Oliver giving him the evil eye.

I thought that his teacher's good looks had solved our problem, but no such luck. After we put him to bed Sunday night he came back out of his room to inform us that he didn't need any new teachers because he already knew everything that his teachers told him. My attempts at teaching him some humility fell on deaf ears so we finally convinced him that he needed to go to class to help the other kids who didn't know as much as him.

Once again I thought the problem was solved, but apparently he was still perturbed and decided to take the matter to a higher source. The next day at dinner Ollie was saying the prayer, and I quote "thank you for my new teachers, but I don't need any teachers because I already know everything that they told me." It was one of those "Amens" in which much discipline is required to keep a straight face.

Santa

Oliver definitely caught on to "Santa" this year, which made is so much more fun for Sam and I. Oliver didn't just write a letter to Santa and sit on Santa's lap, he was Santa. My mom gave him a Santa hat, which he insisted on wearing everywhere. He spent almost the whole of December delivering presents all around the house. He and Ruby never tried to open a single one, but all the "delivering" left the wrapping pretty beat up by Christmas morning. When merely delivering presents wasn't enough for our Santa he would sit on the edge of his blanket and command his reindeer (me) to pull him around on his sleigh.

We also listened to a lot of Christmas music and Ollie liked to combine all the different lyrics into his own version of a Christmas song. His favorite is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, of which he can sing the entire thing - except he changed "yipee to woohoo!" From the beginning, when we explained the whole "Santa" thing to him and had him write a letter Oliver only asked for two things: a concrete mixing truck and a front-end loader. He never wavered once from then on, that was all he wanted and luckily Santa came through for him. We have been mixing concrete and building roads ever since.

Christmas Eve

We spend Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa Cornwell's house. This year was exciting because Oliver actually participated in the Nativity. He got to be a shepherd and did pretty good other than the fact that he kept asking (in a rather loud voice) where the sheep were. The yummy food and festivities ended off, as usual, with pajamas for all the grandkids. It was a great evening.

Christmas Tradition

We are so blessed to live by family. We love it, but at the same time it means our holidays are pretty much planned for us. So, this year we decided to start our own Peay Family Christmas Eve Tradition. We took advantage of the fact that we didn't have to cook a Christmas Eve dinner or clean our house for guests and spent the day together just having fun. We woke up and went out to breakfast and then took the kiddos bowling. We had so much fun and are so glad that we did it. After our activities Sam went out to do his Christmas shopping while the rest of us took a nice long nap. It was a great day. Yahoo to new traditions!

A Classic

Every kid needs a picture of themselves crying on Santa's lap. I have to say that Ruby really outdid herself, I have never seen her loose it quite to that degree. I was actually surprised, she is usually so easy going and will go to anyone. I guess that just doesn't apply to Santa. Ollie was pretty nervous about it himself but wanted to make sure that I told Santa exactly what he wanted so there wouldn't be any mistake.

Decked

Isn't it funny how your opinions change as you grow older, or perhaps they just mold around the phase of life that you are in. Either way, I have definitely had a change of heart in regards to Christmas trees. Growing up we had a family tradition of chopping down our own Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. The hunt was always fun, but the trees were never much to speak of. We called them corner trees, because usually only one side was worth showing off while the others needed to be hidden against a wall. I always begged my parents to get one of the full, bushy trees from the local tree lot instead. As if the sparse, leaning tree wasn't bad enough my mother insisted on mismatched decorations that we had made in preschool and primary throughout the years. I felt that the result was somewhat hideous and couldn't wait to decorate my own matchy-matchy tree.

Fast-forward fifteen years. Our first Christmas in our very own house. We decided that we wanted a real tree this year and after scouting it out I made Sam drive past all the nearby lots to a tree lot I had seen in American Fork that sold the kind of trees that look like you chopped them down yourself; sparse and kind of un-even. I loved it! We put on the lights and let the kids help with the rest. Because they got ripped off and thrown around so much we used only the cheap-o plastic balls from Walmart and after a few days the bottom three feet of the tree was completely empty void of ornaments. To top it all off, we got to add our very first homemade ornament to the tree, a popsicle-stick reindeer that Ollie made in preschool. I thought our tree was perfect. When I visited my mom's house and saw that she had a fluffly, perfect Christmas lot tree covered in matching ornaments and ribbons, I felt so bad for her.

Christmas Light Redemption

After our horrible, terrible, no good, very bad experience visiting Temple Square to see the lights last year (check out last year's blog post for details) I was not even going to attempt it this year. But, our friends were headed up there and we couldn't resist the invitation to accompany them. I am so glad we did because we had a great time. We started the night out at the Children's Museum in the Gateway while we waited for the dads to get off work, then we grabbed a bite to eat at the food court and caught the Trax to Temple Square. The little girls were pretty worn out, as you can see from the pictures. But the lights were beautiful and it wasn't too crowded, thank goodness. After the lights the moms and little girls headed home to bed while the dads took the bigger kids to the Jazz game. I don't think that Ollie cared much for the basketball, but he thought it was cool that he could yell as loud as he wanted. And he like the bear.