Christmas in Idaho and Utah

Our family had such a great Christmas vacation this year. We were so blessed to be able to find an affordable direct flight to Salt Lake City, and spent our ten days between Idaho Falls and Utah Valley. 

Zach has been long awaiting a white Christmas. He has been obsessed with Frosty and couldn't wait to get his hands on some snow to see if he could build a snowman that would come alive.

We arrived in Utah to find a light dusting of snow, but not quite enough to roll into any sort of ball. 

This is just outside of Missy's house. Classic!! Plenty of bare footprints in the snow!!

 We started off with a fancy dinner made mostly by Adam and decorated by Meadow. It was both lovely and delicious!

 I was so glad for my kids to get to play with their cousins. We have friends over every now and then, but it's pretty quiet at our house for the most part, so they love being in the middle of all those people!

 

 Zoey gets so excited to see other babies. This is Missy's baby, Michael Foster. He was a little surprised that she was so forward! 

 The gang.

 The spread.

 Teething Faith was chomping on the ice and loving it!

 Missy and Adam

 We usually stay at the Partridges since they have so much room and so hospitably invite us. Seriously, they  had brand new, gorgeous bedding and even leave mints on the pillows!

We trekked up to Idaho Falls, where it was snowing a bit. We got about 3 inches of powder, but we added some water to make our snowmen!

 Zoey with Grandma Nettie

 Roger sporting a regal-looking beard.

 So fun to plow the driveway in style!

 Snow angels

 Our tiny snowman family. Zach sang "Frosty" 3 times trying to kick these guys into action. He's so cute!

 Grandpa Mike truly adores his grandchildren, and they love their grandpa!

 She loves to stand on her tiptoes! I can't believe they don't cramp up! Future ballerina here! 

 Nana got some snuggle time in too!

 Great Grandma Winder

My sweet baby brother.

 Shopping with my Momma. She usually saves hers for December 23 or 24!

 Chillin' with Gramps and the cool bendy toy he gave Zach.

 Our annual Christmas pageant. Zach was the shepard, Joseph, the angel and a wiseman. No other boys present!

 And Papa got some loves from the kids as well!

 So happy!

 So---???

 Nana and Papa go to town for Christmas! It was such fun for everyone!! We were all spoiled rotten!

 I adore this leather journal Corey picked out for me. It's perfect! Probably my favorite gift of all!

I know I posted a million pictures, and there are more to come. Unfortunately, I am the only "photographer" in the family, and I know my parents love to see these photos and share them with my less-technology-savvy grandparents, so bear with me!!

 My mother-in-law's tree is to die for!

 MUNCHKIN!!!!!!

 Opening gifts at my parent's. Spoiled again!

 We traveled to Rupert to visit Grammy, who just adores these babies. 

 I was so glad we got to go to Temple Square to enjoy the lights and spirit there.

 Mike spoiled Mom and Missy with Sherpa coats. He worked hard to shop for everyone this year- so sweet!

 Handmade by Meadow

 The most amazing gift ever--a gorgeous quiet book made by Missy and Meadow. Seriously, these are SO much work!! I can't believe they did it, but I am praying it will be the magic bullet to keep Zach quiet during sacrament meeting!!! I will treasure it forever!

 This kid has the most adorable smile I have ever seen!!

 Ummm... CUTE!!

 Tiny Michael Foster

 She's always holding objects in her mouth lately. I love it!

 We all got to go to Cheesecake Factory while Mom volunteered to watch the kids. YAY!!

One last hug Goodbye. It's always hard to leave, but we will be back this summer for the Malan Reunion. It was an awesome Christmas, and luckily, no one in our family got too terribly ill or had too much disruption to their sleep cycle. We are pretty much on-schedule now. When we returned from our trip last summer, I never wanted to travel again due to the illness and lack of sleep that lingered with us for weeks! It must've just been their ages or the extensive trip to northern Idaho or something. This trip was much more enjoyable thanks to the direct flight and minimal driving. 

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas 2011!

We celebrated Christmas with our little family here in Coppell, Texas on the 18th and 19th of December before flying out to Utah. We are trying to establish our own Christmas traditions, and both this year and last, we read the New Testament account of Christ's birth and let Zach "act it out" with our ceramic Nativity figurines the night before we opened gifts. Once the kids are older and there are more of them, I hope we can actually act it out. 

I really tried this year to focus on the Savior the entire holiday season. I was getting sick of shopping and Santa pretty close to Thanksgiving this year, and Zach was obsessed with Rudolph and Frosty, which is fine for a three-year-old, but he is definitely capable of understanding the true reason we celebrate Christmas. We got some great books from the library and watched several church nativity videos that we all enjoyed throughout the month of December. Oh, and Elf. :) One of the library books had the exact words from Luke 2, and after reading it a few times, Zach had most of it memorized, which was beautiful. He recited it a few times over the holidays--readily at first, but I had to bribe him after the 3rd Christmas pageant!! 

 We put up a tree this year, even though we weren't home for 10 days of the month. We all loved it! I loved sitting in the glowing lights, and would often turn the lights on in the dark, early mornings while snuggling and reading with the kids.

 Zach was super-excited about Santa's delivery of the gifts on Christmas morning. We didn't place any under the tree until the night before we opened them, because we knew he and Zoey would tear into them.

 Zoey's reaction to her first doll--one that moves and makes baby sounds-- was PRICELESS!!! I didn't think a 10 month old would really care or get what was going on, but I decided it was time we give her a girl toy since she has only had Zach's trucks and tools to play with. She was honestly ECSTATIC and excited as could be, squealing and waving her hands like mad! It was seriously the highlight of our holiday!!

 She was almost equally excited about Zach's Toy Story tent. They both love that hideout, and now maybe we won't have to make tents with blankets all over the house!

 We also got Zach a Leapster 2 as part of his birthday gift from Nana. He is always wanting to be on our computers to play learning games on Starfall.com, Sesame Street, etc., so we wanted him to have something a little more versatile and age-appropriate to play on. He hasn't had much of a chance to learn how to use it yet, but I am hoping he will dig it!

Corey and I also exchanged gifts. He got me a nice white sweater and some chocolates that he thought I loved...:) (Ferrero Rocher sounds and looks like Almond Roca--an honest mistake we laughed about after I asked why he got them for me!!), and I got him an alarm clock/docking station for his iPhone and some computer stuff and some T-shirts. Everyone received more gifts on our vacation also. Too many!

We flew out to Salt Lake a few hours after opening  our gifts, which I will hopefully have time to post about before too long!

'Twas a very Merry Christmas for our little family!

Happy to Me! Getting Older...

The other night I was trying on a pair of jeans I had purchased, and asked Corey if they looked like they were worth $50. He looked sort of surprised, than said, "The only way you would buy $50 jeans was if there was $40 in the pocket!" I had to laugh as I showed him the $11.99 price tag. :) Long gone are the days of spending a small fortune on designer labels, not that I was ever a hard-core fashionista. I even had to call my baby brother that is a decade younger than me tonight to ask him if a certain label was still in style (not that I would really care-just wondering if they were worth a few extra bucks)!

I am starting to feel older. I don't mind, mostly. :) By no means am I embracing wrinkles or grey hair (just darkening a little, in my case) or investing in "Mom jeans." But I am pretty comfortable in my own skin. Corey said a guy at school was calling him "High-tops" as a tribute to Corey sporting his apparently-outdated Nikes that were once the cat's meow! Yep, we are both getting older, losing our grasp on the latest trends (and maybe a few hairs, too)! But with the advancing years comes a peace that we really have tried to live "in the world" while avoiding being too much "of the world." Family is what matters. Faith brings peace and joy. Those things are timeless.

So if I look kind of "last season" in my flare-leg pants that I can't say goodbye to (I can barely bring myself to buy those tight-ankled pants I used to wear in 7th grade! What's next--genie/Hammer pants?!!) and can't name any recent music artists, don't worry about it! I'm loving being a sort-of nerdy wife and mom, and I'll keep it up-- at least until my husband or kids start complaining that I embarrass them!!

 Celebrating at The Cheesecake Factory after Corey's finals were over.

 At my work Christmas party on my birthday. So much fun!! I feel like I'm starting to look OLD in this picture. ACK!!

Look at this little pumpkin!!! Can you believe those sparkling eyes?!! I can gaze at her for hours!

Miss Zoey at Nine Months

Can anyone see this smile and not smile right back?! She is already cheezing-it-up for the camera at 9 months! So, Miss Zoey has been out of the womb as long as she was in it now. She was SO, SO active in there-- I was worried that she would be a handful to keep up with, but the opposite has been true. She has been pretty laid back and as easy as babies come, as far as I can tell. 

 We finally decided to take down her swing that she spent a huge portion of her first few months in. I love her expression in this picture, like she was sad that we were packing away her old, dear friend! She put a lot of miles on that thing. We spent over $30 in batteries over those 5ish months she used it! I let her nap in it and fall asleep in it all the time until she was 4 or 5 months. I was too scared to do that with Zach because all the baby sleep books said that they'd never be able to fall asleep in their own beds, etc. PHOOEY! I regret so many things with Zach--I thought I was doing everything right according to the books, but it made us both pretty miserable those first few months. 

 Lately she's been waking up like this, with both legs on one side of her PJs. Sometimes she screams about it, sometimes not. I can imagine it would cramp up her little legs to have them both stuck in the same hole! Speaking of which, Zach has woken up crying a few times this month complaining that his feet hurt. I would rub them and sometimes get him some milk and/or Tylenol if he was up for long. We chalked it up to growing pains. The other night he awakened especially distraught. Corey took him potty and he limped all the way there and back and complained of foot pain. We were a little worried and gave him a dose of Tylenol. Reflecting on it later, we both realized his feet were most likely just numb from sleeping on them wrong. Glad it took (almost) two doctors to figure that one out!! Good thing Tylenol is so mild!

 Did I mention I adore ruffle bums?!

 After rolling around like a pro for 5-6 weeks, she finally got up on all fours. Within days (at 8.5 months old) she was crawling, and within a couple weeks she is now as fast as lightning-- and makes a beeline for the bathtub every chance she gets. It's just the right height for her to pull herself up to, and she loves it!

 Zoey's favorite place to roll or crawl has been under the coffee table. It's her own little hideout!

 She kind of looks like she just got her wisdom teeth out here, but she's actually just getting her bottom two in, and the top four are on their way. I wondered if she'd be a crazy teether like Zach, who got his first tooth in at 11 months, and they all erupted in the "wrong" order. He only barely got his last two a few months ago, about a year late!

 Zoey is finally sporting a more serious look after all her giant smiles!
So my sister, Missy, sent Zoey this DARLING hat. I cannot get over how sweet it is, and the fact that my sister crocheted it makes it all the more precious! 

 I had to have these boots for her last Christmas. I vacillated about it at first because they are size 3-6 months, and I knew she would be 9-12 months old during the winter months, but ended up having my sweet sister-in-law grab them. It turns out that Zoey's feet are exceptionally small--she is still wearing size 3-6 month in every brand--so she fits them during the right season after all!

 Ummmm....cute! Now I just need to get her some skinny jeans to wear them with! Too bad these don't stay on her feet for long. I would love to find more shoes that stay on baby feet. Robeez are good, but so expensive. 

 Missy made a hat for me too. LOVE!!!!!

 Zoey adores Zach, and has fun playing in "tents" with us/him. She's always chasing after him! Zach is so sweet with her (except when he gets curious and tries things like putting a pipe-cleaner into her mouth!), and has taken to calling her "Zoe-Zoe" most of the time. Corey and I sometimes call her that or "Zoe-bug," "Zoey-girl," "Sweet girl," and others. Sometimes Zach puts a few together and calls her "Zoe-Zoe-bug!"

 She's always sticking random stuff in her mouth! I have vacuumed more this month than I have in the last year, probably! I am seriously terrified of her finding something and choking to death, as we had some family friends years ago that had that tragedy happen. Paranoid, I know, but at least it's motivating me to keep the house cleaner!

 Um...cute bum!

I absolutely adore this baby girl. She is honestly the sweetest, most cheerful, smiley, and loving baby I can imagine! 

 Those brilliant blue eyes and sweet strawberry curls melt my heart!

 As soon as she could crawl, she was immediately pulling herself up to things--namely, the coffee table. She often stands on her tippie-toes, tiny dancer!

 Zoey's hair is officially long enough for pigtails! She is crying because she wants to be crawling and eating leaves and I am making her hold still for the photo. She is always on the go now! The pigtails made her look like too much of a big girl for me, so I am going to hold off for awhile, I think!

The last milestone for this month? She started saying "Mama!" 

She's been saying "Dada" for a few months now. I swear he's been bribing her with treats when I am not looking! She also started reaching for me about a month ago, which officially makes her a mama's girl, right? ;) Loving this precious Zoey-girl!!

The Big 3 for Zachary!

 Man, are we ever in love with this kid!! The past three years with him have been pure bliss. There have been more than a few sleepless nights, and this past year when he turned from being the perfect angel into being a normal 2 year old was a bit challenging. But honestly, we wouldn't trade him for anything in the world! 

We began Zach's third birthday celebration by making cupcakes together. I don't know that I've ever let him "lick the beaters" before--I don't make cake often. But, as you can see from the photograph, he didn't need any instruction on how to do it like a pro! 

 We made them the night before his birthday party, and I frosted them green, per his request, and placed tin foil over the cake pan overnight. In the mornings, I often put on a movie for him while I feed Zoey in my bed (she gets distracted from eating very easily). So after I finished feeding her, I marveled that Zach hadn't busted in like he usually does. When I got out to the living room, his hands and face appeared to be covered in marker or something. WRONG! It was the green frosting from his cupcakes! To my horror, I found the tin foil off the pan, which he had moved to the floor, and each of the cupcakes had been licked to the birthday boy's utter delight! A few of the unfrosted chocolate ones had been poked open, as if searching for a sugary center or something. 

I concluded that I just couldn't get mad. That was his birthday present from me!! He got to man-handle a whole batch of cupcakes, and eat one for both breakfast and lunch that day, just because it was his special day. I did, however, kindly explain that this was not okay, for future reference! 

 Thankfully, his party was scheduled late in the day so that I had plenty of time to bake and frost a new batch. I opted for yellow, blue, and white frosting this time--the green looked kind of sickly-- and I think they turned out much cuter. I then kind of massacred them by spelling out "Happy Birthday Zach" in multi-colored jelly beans on them. A real homemaker would have made sure the jelly beans were color-coordinated, right?! I'll learn! (The kids at the party were delighted with jelly beans, though, and didn't seem to mind the colors!)

 We had his party at "The Ark," which is a great indoor playground at a nearby Baptist church. Several churches around here have places like this to play, which is awesome during the long, hot summers! I kind of wish our church would do something like this! 

  

 He had a few of his friends from nursery and preschool come, and they all had a lot of fun eating cupcakes and whacking the pinata. A few random kids from the playplace just joined right in the fun too! 

 We gave Zach a wooden train set for his gift. He loves blocks and digs the doll house we bought Zoey, so we thought this would be a fun thing for him to build and play with. He loves it and kept saying saying, "Thank you Mom and Dad for getting me this cool chugga-chugga-choo-choo-train set!" for hours afterward! Zoey is unfortunately loving to pull herself up to the table and pull it down. Oh, well!

 As I hinted at previously, I am no Martha Stewart. I see the amount of time some moms put in to perfectly plan and decorate an immaculate party and corresponding cake with matching favors and everything. I seriously applaud them. Their kids adore it. But since he is 3 and will likely not remember any details of this party, I'll wait to get my Martha on until he will actually remember and appreciate it. Or maybe I'll never emulate Martha, and instead, I'll follow in the footsteps of my own awesome momma who did the best with what we had around the house and her own creativity. My birthday parties never had a theme, and the activities varied from having a fashion show with her old prom dresses and even her wedding dress to painting oyster shells with fingernail polish to twirling dance ribbons around in the backyard. Random, crazy stuff that the other moms may have scoffed at, but the kids were usually thrilled with! And I never once had a fancy store-bought cake or one with special decorations, but she always made a tasty one with love as the main ingredient. 

Anyways, I thought I'd use the leftover cupcake batter to throw together a little cake he could eat himself. Since his invitations and gift were train-related, I decided I could make a quick attempt at a train cake. I had delusions of grandeur--I considered making multiple cars and smoke stacks and a little red caboose, but the practical, sleep-loving part of me won out and used random kitchen items to fashion a little smokestack and wheels. When Corey saw it, he thought it was a cabin/trailer. Now that would have been a novel theme: Trailer Trash Third Birthday! Then, when I asked Zach what this cake was, he excitedly said, "It's a guy!" (I guess it kind of looks like a robot-guy...) Who cares?! He forked the frosting off and savored the sugary concoction, not really caring if was a trailer, a train, or a guy!

I could've done worse, right?!

He looks pretty satisfied to me!

And he knows just how grown up he is, too. He keeps commenting on how he is "big" now. At naptime, he now insists on three songs and books, rather than the usual two. Whatever it takes to get him to bed!! 

Here's to many more birthday celebrations with our angel baby boy!

Zach's Latest....

Zach is officially reading. Not like just c-a-t spells cat, but lots of things. We started with the "Sam and Dot" beginner-type books from the library (which he reads front to back), but his mind is constantly in motion. I'm afraid he is going to start stuttering because he is often saying the words with emphasis on the sounds, such as, "Let's go to the p-p-playground. Playground starts with p!" You can honestly see the wheels turning as he pronounces each word, and he's starting to be able to spell out words that he says.

The best is when he pronounces a word in his two-year-old speech patterns that is incorrect, and assigns it the wrong first letter. This happens when he pronounces "R" words with a "W," like "w-w-wed starts with w!" Sometimes he'll say, "R-r-wed!" too! The best was the other day when he thought "drink" started with a J because he still says, "J-j-jwink!" When we are driving, he picks out random words on signs and sounds them out. He pretty much sounded out "Office Max" when Corey took him there the other day. What 2 year old does this? Granted, he is only a month from being three (I wrote this a few weeks ago). But he began this mostly on his own about a month ago now. My mom says I was reading between 2 and 3, and not many people believe her. Not even me. What exactly does "read" mean, anyways? Recognizing/memorizing words? Being able to sound them out? Comprehending their meaning?

So here is living proof that at 2.9 years of age, Zach is reading beginner books of new words for comprehension. He reads full books and sentences that he hasn't ever seen before without help, and he understands what he is reading. He sounds out the letters, then the word, then usually repeats the sentence after he has figured out all the words so it is cohesive. It's freakin' me out!

This is the book I made him on the computer with the first words he learned.

He has known his alphabet and the letter sounds for over a year now. I knew reading was the next step, but had no idea how or when to introduce it. I absolutely didn't want to "force" it on him before he was ready, so I just decided to wait until I saw some signs. It began last month when we checked out a library book that had a character spelling the word "stop." Whenever we would read the book, he would say, "s-t-o-p. Stop." So when he was taking a bath, I used his foam letters that stick to the tiles to spell "stop." He said the letters and recognized the word right away. We tried it with a few more words and he seemed to be enjoying it and catching on quickly. A day or two later, I spelled those words I had taught him in the tub on some paper, and he immediately know them all: Mom, dad, stop, go, yes, and no. I quickly thought that if we had the verb "says," we could make a story out of the words, which we did. It took a few days to interest him enough in the story for him to read the whole thing, but he did read a page or two the first few days.

We make spelling fun with these tasty cookies. It's hard to save all the letters we need for words though!

We kept practicing the words he knew and adding to them until he knew about 20 after a couple of weeks. I didn't know if there was a certain method or group of words I should be teaching him to help him learn the best. Thus far, it seemed like he just looked at the word and memorized it. We got a book that came with a CD from the library, and it teaches reading phonetically in word families. The first story is about Sam and Mat, and includes words like "sat,", "on." and "sad." He has now mastered all four of the ten-page stories in the first book, and has moved to the second book, where the words and sentences are longer. (Update: A couple weeks later he has finished all three 45-page books.)

Another resource he loves, which we had previously used a little for alphabet learning, is Starfall.com. It has great reading games and short stories that Zach picked right up on. He even chose a game that seemed a bit harder, requiring him figure the beginning and end of four-letter words containing a long vowel sound, like seed and heel--none of which we'd studied yet--and he totally nailed it! (Update: He has now learned the long vowel sounds and silent e.)

It worries me a little to have him growing up so fast. I know I am going to have to be careful about what material is appropriate and good for him. There is so much trash available to day....And now he is wanting his own "gwumputer" to do more learning games (or am I just wanting my own computer back?!) He is asking to do starfall.com as I type this!

Anyhow, I just wanted to document this for someday when I tell my brilliant little boy that he began reading at the age of two, and he doesn't believe me!

And just in case anyone thinks all we do is work and study here instead of playing....he also likes:

Picnicking at the park

Playing in our "tent"

Dressing up like Buzz Lightyear

Using my double-sided tape dispenser to make a "train track!" Ugh!

Bouncing at the Pumpkin Patch

Swinging at the park

This boy has astounded us on every level since his birth. He is sweet, loving, energetic, and brilliant. He wears us out each day, but after he's gone to bed, I sincerely miss him and want to play some more!
 Zach, you are the best!!