Advent Calendar

This is our advent calendar this year. Rather than a piece of candy or toy, each day has a piece of paper with a Christmas activity for the day on it. We've only done two days, but so far it's been a huge hit with Brynn and Mason. Here are some of the things we will be doing as we count down the days to Christmas.
Festival of Trees
Building a snowman (will be moved to whatever day we wake up to find snow)

Write a letter to Santa and mail it
Make Gingerbread Houses
Drink Hot Chocolate
Buy a gift for someone else
See Santa and his Reindeer
Act out the Nativity
Learn a new Christmas Song
Go Sledding (once again revolves around snow)

Make a Reindeer Puppet
Go to library and check out Christmas books
Sleep over at Grandpa's house (Grandpa's Sleepover)
Temple Square lights
Make sugar cookies
Watch a Chirstmas movie
Wrap Presents
Drive around and look at lights (probably Thanksgiving Point & Spanish Fork light shows)
and of course the 24th reads: Put out cookies and milk for Santa.

I wanted to share this idea with all my friends who love doing activities with their kids like I do. I meant to post this before December started, but as you can see it's 2am on December 3 and this is the first chance I've had. To say I have been burnig my candle at both ends would be an understatement, but that's Christmas time for you.

I still don't think it would be too late to start, so start yours today.

I hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas Season as much as we are.

Shocking

Today was Brynn's first day in nursery. She is only 17 months, but the nursery leader told me I could start bringing her now so she would have Mason there to help her before he advances to Sunbeams in January. There is absolutely nothing in Brynn's past that would indicate this was going to be easy. Mason took her hand and walked her from the chapel to nursery. The door opened and she ran in never looking back. Scott and I couldn't believe this was happening and went to our classes just waiting for a leader to show up with Brynn. Sure enough, as I was conducting in Primary, I heard a familiar cry at the back of the room. I knew it had been too good to be true. Then the leader told me Brynn was doing great, but she was poopy and when she took her out she got really upset. I changed her diaper and barely had her tights pulled up before she was running back to nursery. I peeked in on her a couple times and watched as my baby sat at the table rolling out her playdoh with a rolling pin, a huge smile on her face. I finally understood, she is just so happy to be a big kid.

Treasures

You know the saying, one man's junk is another man's treasure? We are living proof of this statement at our house. Every time Mason goes to Grandma Nancy's house he comes home with many treasures he has unburied there. Every one of these "toys" has come from my Mom's house in the last week and they are Mason's favorite things to play with. He has a bag that he carries all his treasures around in and plays with them all day. I could never take a little lock, a piece of cheese, awrench, and a few random tiny animals and come up with the stories Mason does as he plays. Scott and I have decided we are going to be on the lookout for any small, random trinkets from now until Christmas and we are going to fill his stalking with them. I am willing to bet he'll be more excited about them than any of this other presents.

A Real Man.

What is it with guys and trucks? I don't get it. Since the time Scott and I were dating he has talked about one day owning a truck. Being the realistic man he is, he never expected it to be anytime in the near future, that is, until our neighbor offered to sell Scott his truck for a great deal. It might seem crazy since we have only had our Subaru for 5 months, but Scott posted it on KSL to see what he could sell it for and got several offers for the same amount our neighbor was asking for his truck (making quite a profit on what we bought it for). I really like our Subaru, but since it wasn't going to affect our bank account and it would increase Scott's happiness I gave him the go ahead and he bought his first truck. Mason was very sad when we told him we were selling Daddy's blue car, but all it took was one look at Daddy's black truck for the testosterone in his little body to kick in and tell him that trucks are way cooler than cars. Adios to cars, we're a big, black, car family now.

Home Sweet Home

Three years ago, this month, we moved into our house. We have a big Maple tree in our front yard and one of my first memories in our house was raking the massive amounts of leaves that covered our yard. After 3 years of living in a basement apartment we were so excited to actually have a yard we didn't mind the seemingly endless job of raking these leaves (now we sometimes do mind). Mason was 6 months old and we would sit him on a blanket while we raked, only to look over and find he had crawled to the nearest pile and was helping himself to a delicious snack of leaves. Every year when the leaves turn yellow and start to fall I love to think back to what our life was like at this exact time the previous year. This is what I thought about:

2007:
Mason was still a baby, if you can call a 20 pound 6-month-old a baby, I was in my last semester of the nursing program, Scott had decided to stay at Nu Skin after graduation, we had just bought a house and were in the process of completely remodeling it, and we felt so incredibly blessed in life.

2008:
Mason was 18 months old and the most adorable boy ever! I had just found out I was pregnant with Brynn and was starting to feel pretty sick. Scott was busy being Scott (by that I mean an awesome husband, father, and provider for our family).

2009:

Mason was 2 1/2 and Brynn was 4 months old. We were still adjusting to life with 2 children and Scott was madly studying for the GMAT and applying to Business Schools (for the record he did awesome on the GMAT, was accepted to schools, but then we decided this wasn't the right thing for us right now). We were completely robbed of a fall, it went straight from summer to rainy, cold, lousy winter. When I think back on last year I remember it being a very busy and stressful time, but I still remember being so grateful for all the blessings that were keeping us busy.

2010:
And that brings us to present day. Even when looking back at how happy I was and how wonderful life was in past years nothing even comes close to the joy I feel right now in my life. I am blessed with 2 perfect (for me) and wonderful kiddos. I am married to my best friend. Scott and I both have jobs we enjoy and that provide security and stability for us at this very unstable time in the world. And this is the first year the kids were actually a little bit helpful raking the leaves :)

Here It Comes

The temperatures have dropped and we had our first snow. I guess there is no more pretending winter is never coming. So far the kids seem to like what winter has to offer. When Mason woke up and saw the snow last week I couldn't get him to wait long enough to change out of his jammas before he had his boots on and was headed out the door. Brynn was right behind him in her make-shift winter gear, since part of my denial included not buying her a coat or boots yet. She lasted surprisingly long considering she refused to wear gloves. Even when her hands were bright red and freezing she still wasn't ready to call it quits so she ran in the house and returned with her blanky to hold and keep her hands warm. Pretty good problem solving for a 16-month-old if you ask me.

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but after the great summer and fall we've had I'm excited for the fun times winter is bound to bring.

Cornbellys 2010

Cornbellys has definitely become a favorite Fall tradition for our family. My kids absoluately love it there. Both times we went, we stayed for over 5 hours and had to drag both kids out kicking and screaming when it was dark, cold, and way past their bedtime.

Mason's favorite stops seemed to be the places he could travel to an imaginary place, no surprise there.

Brynn on the other hand preferred anything that involved climbing, jumping, sliding... basically anything where she could just go, go, go.

Outtings are getting so much easier with these two. I feel like I can give them both the freedom they want because they are really good about staying close and obeying instructions, especially Mason. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love having a 1 and 3 year old. So fun! Mason spent a lot of time being the conductor of the train. Luckily the duckies were right next to the train and Brynn was happy spending a lot of time there.

Brynn saw these tractor rides from afar and got so excited. I planned on riding with her, but she would have none of that. She loved this thing. And I had to take this picture because her little head barely poked out as they drove around. This is a hideous picture, but Brynn was absolutely in love with this slide. She couldn't go down it by herself because she isn't heavy enough and would just get stuck, so I would pull her down with me (there was no way she would let me put her on my lap). Well, if you've ever been on one of these slides you know it is Bumpy! We went down this thing probably 25 times and I am not exaggerating at all. My butt was bruised for a week. But it was so worth it to hear her belly laughs every time.

Mason, king of the haystack.

Brynnie dancing on the bales of hay.

This was the first year we actually ventured into the kids cornmaze. Mason LOVED it! It was a little too far past Brynn's bedtime for her to appreciate it, but she was a trooper. Love these boys. And love this baby girl.Mason had so much fun playing with his buddies Payton and Brooklyn Bell who we have missed horribly since they moved to Idaho in August.

I realized how much I have missed our playgroup for the last 2 months since Karli moved and it kind of fell apart. After our playgroup reunion, the rest of us have a new resolve to keep the playgroup going.

I really do love all these girls. Until next year.