The Best of 2009

Before I get into my top ten for 2009, I would like to apologize for being such a slacker during the holidays. Many of my wonderful friends and family members took the time to send Christmas cards and letters and I never responded back or made a Christmas card/letter a priority. I love getting updates from everyone and I had every intention of doing the same, but it just did not happen. Please don't cross me off your Christmas card list and hopefully next year I will do better. I thought I would post a 2009 top ten list to take the place of my update Christmas letter.

These are what I consider to be the highlights of 2009 for me and my family. Some of the things are big events, and some are a culmination of a month of events and some made the list because they helped me enjoy all the precious little moments in life.

10. Finally getting Beck potty trained. He still has some accidents when he gets so busy playing and just doesn't notice he needs to go, but he does pretty good.

9. Kate entering pre-school. She loves it and it has been much easier for me to run errands with only two kids instead of three. She has a lot of fun field trips that we wouldn't be able to do as a family without the pre-school organizing it and they had a fun Christmas program. Pre-school also highlighted one of Kate's hidden talents-singing. She really enjoys singing and does really well memorizing and keeping the tune of songs.

8. Eli's new job. He still works for the same company, but has gone from software engineer to management which has been his goal for a very long time. I am proud of all he accomplishes in his profession and am happy to support him in his next goal of getting an MBA.

7. Finally getting our basement finished. Okay it is not 100% complete since we are still working on the bathroom, but the playroom has been such an improvement. It is much easier to contain the toys in one central location instead of having them take up my entire living space and to have a little more peace and quiet.

4-6 I am having a hard time putting these in order because they were pretty similar. I really enjoyed halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. Each of the holidays were tons of small moments that made for a month of fun memories.

Halloween included going to the pumpkin patch, Mickey's trick-or-treat party, and halloween themed fireworks at Disneyland, in addition to the regular halloween activities.

Thanksgiving was another road trip to Denver and even though it was shorter in duration it was also jam packed with fun little activities and some much needed couple time.

Christmas is the best when you have little kids. Everything was great including nativity plays, visiting Santa, Christmas parties, making treats, eating treats and especially spending time with family. If I had to have my life be the same everyday like it was in the movie Groundhog Day I would want to relive October-December of 2009 over and over.

3. Family Vacation to San Diego and Disneyland. It was so fun and I am so excited for all the future vacations. This picture my husband took on his phone and I never saw it until now. I think this is Kate right before the big hill on Splash Mountain.

2. The birth of my nephew Roman. What a cutie. We waited a long time for his arrival and we are so happy he is here and healthy.

1. The birth of my third baby and second daughter. I love her so much and consider myself so lucky to be her mom. I am so happy that she is healthy and learning so much every day. I can't get enough of her and sometimes I don't even want to put her down to bed at night.

2009 was a wonderful year and I am looking forward to 2010. Hopefully I will be better at managing my time and hopefully there will be a little less of me in 2010 than there was in 2009. It is definitely time to lose that "baby" weight now that she is 9 months old. Time to develop some self-discipline.

Christmas

Christmas was great. I really enjoyed having my young kids and fed off their excitement. I think they all got what they wanted. Here is a picture of Kiera with all she wanted for Christmas. . . her 2 front teeth. She has been smiling to show off her teeth ever since she got them. The top two shouldn't be too much longer either.

I think she is my most active baby and she army crawls like a pro. She has also learned a new trick of pulling herself up on the bottom stair and can even get one knee up. This freaks me out because she is way too young to be climbing stairs. I am starting her on table food but she seems to be much happier with baby food or food she can find on the floor under the table. I think she may have some food allergies and I will probably have her tested soon. Beck recently had his yearly skin test and it was very positive again. The hive for his cashew was like two quarters sitting next to each other. Pretty shocking. He has never had a hive quite that big.

Still a month behind

I finally looked at my most recent pictures and realized it has already been almost a month since I had taken them at Thanksgiving. I almost thought about skipping this post since it has been a while since Thanksgiving, but I actually got pictures of Beck looking at the camera, with his eyes open and no tongue hanging out. That just doesn't happen, so I had to post them.

We decided to take a road trip this year for Thanksgiving and we stayed in a cabin in Breckenridge, Colorado. We loved being able to spend Thanksgiving with Dani who lives in the Denver area and attend the baptism of our nephew Riley.

The kids had a lot of fun!

They got to play in the snow. . .

play with cousins all day long in the hot tub, playing games, watching movies. . .

and they even got creative and made a gingerbread house from one of those kits.

It was very relaxing to me also to be able to spend so much time with Eli. He has been working a lot of late nights trying to complete a product that is due to be released this Friday. He has been helping me out a lot lately too with the kids so I can go to various church activities and meetings. So on the nights he came home early I had to head out the door. I don't think I realized how much I missed him until I actually had time with him and realized how much I like having him around. I loved being able to spend a full five days with him. I realized there are a lot of little things I like about him like how cute he is when he's rocking out to his music during an eleven hour drive or how safe I felt with him driving us such a long distance. I guess He is what I was most Thankful for this Thanksgiving. Okay, enough of the mushy stuff. I hope it wasn't too sickening for anyone.

It was also relaxing because I didn't have to cook or entertain guests. Eli and Dani did almost all of the cooking and the food was very good. I think Eli felt like it was the best Turkey he's done so far. Yet another reason for me to be thankful for Eli. He is not only willing to cook, but does a great job as well.

We loved the couple time we had when we went shopping at the outlets and went to lunch Thanks to Tom's generous and thoughtful parents. We enjoyed all the time we spent with the Lillywhites and Kate and Beck now have a third set of grandparents.

We are also so proud of Riley and we glad we could be there for his baptism. Here is a little family photo from the baptism. I look awful, but I must say I am well overdue for a haircut and we were in a rush that morning to get packed up and make it to the baptism with the 2 hour drive.

It was a great start to the holidays and I am looking forward to Christmas. Kate and Beck got to go see Santa and Eli's work and help mom decorate the tree. Hopefully we will get a chance to see the lights and participate in a few more traditional Christmas celebrations before it is all over. It definitely looks like Christmas with all the snow we got with this last storm. We were 20 minutes late for church because the plows had come by and we were trapped in our driveway with three feet of ice. After the last storm the snow was already getting close to reaching the mail box, but it is melting fast after the last few days of sunshine.

One year Ago Today

It was one year ago today that Beck broke his tibia & fibula. It makes me realize I have one more reason to be Thankful this year. It also make me realize how fast time goes and I need to be better at enjoying the moments and not getting caught up in my to do list or I will miss the most important things.

Fun Fall

I am not ready for Christmas, but can you tell how excited my kids are excited for Christmas already? This pictures was taken before Halloween even and they were playing Mr and Mrs Claus. I think Beck looks so big in this picture. He is starting to lose his baby face and look more like a little boy. He definitely wants to be refered to as a big boy since he now uses the big boy potty. He is starting to act like a big boy too and won't let me cuddle him as much unless he initiates it and it is on his terms.

Kiera is also getting so big. She can sit for a bit without falling over and if I had more time to work with her I am sure she would be sitting up by now. She is eating solid foods now and it is so funny to see the differences in her food tastes than my other children. She hates peas. I have to trick her to eat them by mixing them with squash. What kids would prefer squash over peas? That seems wierd to me. Her favorite besides cereal and fruit is carrots. She is such a content and happy baby. Luckily she can entertain herself for a bit if I need her too.

Besides the kids getting bigger and bigger everytime I blink, we had lots of fun in October and I hope that continues in November. Here are the halloween pictures finally. I think Beck was a pretty good sport for a two year old getting face make-up. He was funny because he would have an inch and I would volunteer to scratch it for him, but he wouldn't let me and he wouldn't scratch it either for fear of messing up his make-up.

Beck ran from door to door and he was difficult to keep up with for such a little guy. He did get tired out quick and needed daddy to carry him the rest of the way.

Kate loves her pre-school and was disappointed to miss so much in October with our vacation and then being sick right after and now she is missing a lot of November too with being sick again and then the Thanksgiving holiday too. Here she is with her teacher who also dressed up as a witch at the pre-school halloween party.

I had my birthday also in October which I was dreading this year. Eli bought this for me which was quite a surprise since we don't really do much for birthdays. I guess he figures he is off the hook now. We tried it out at Costco and I loved it, so I think he knew it would be the perfect gift for me.

Here are the pumpkin carving pictures. Eli made some toasted pumpkin seeds as he usually does. Beck loved them so much that whenever he would see more seeds he would eat them even the raw ones. Beck wanted a Bob the Blob pumpkin and I thought that was a cute idea. Kate drew her own idea and then daddy carved it for her.

We also made some halloween cut out sugar cookies. We had a little dough left over, so I joked with the kids that the blob of cookie dough was monster poop. Kate thought that was hillarious and wanted her picture taken with her favorite cookie.

Earlier in the month we went to the pumpkin patch. It was a beautiful day and the kids love riding the tractor and picking out their own pumpkins.

Sometimes I think I don't spend enough time with my kids or do enough fun things with them, but then I look back and these pictures and it helps me feel better about things because I can see how much we do together as a family and how much fun my kids are having. We also took advantage of the great weather last week and got outside almost everyday to ride bikes and go to the park (the later is probably the reason for the illness although I have been quite vigilant with the hanitizer and Beck calls it). Kate had quite a high fever and was hallucinating during the first night. I thought she was just dreaming when she said she kept seeing silly eyes, but then I felt how hot she was and I think her temp. was probably around 105. Surprisingly enough though it is just a cold and not the flu. I am sure everyone will be feeling better soon and we can get back to our fun fall activities.

Southern California

We finally took our first real family vacation. We spent a full week in Southern California and I had to break it up into a few blogs to make it a little easier to view. There are three blogs about our vacation, so when you are finished with this page click older posts to see the rest of San Diego and click older posts again to see Disneyland.


We decided to visit San Diego area and Disneyland both and try to make the most of our trip to Southern California. We decided to drive which was difficult with small children. We woke the kids up at about 4:30 am and instead of staying asleep like I thought they would they were too excited to sleep. They were giddy and just chatted non stop with each other for like an hour until they finally fell asleep. I couldn't help but enjoy the fact that they were so excited and that all our planning and efforts to make the trip happen would be worth it for them.

The first part of the trip went fairly fast and I really did not mind it, but the part from Mesquite to San Diego felt like it took forever.

We also past a big fire on the way that welcomed us to Southern California. Beck screamed like the whole last hour of the drive and Kiera took her turn on the way back.


We spent the first day visiting Balboa Park, La Jolla Beach and Torrey Pines Beaches and then the evening in Olde Town San Diego. This was probably the most fun for me since the rest of the trip was pushing kids around in strollers, bathroom breaks, snack breaks, waiting in line, bathroom break, waiting in line, snack break, walk, walk, etc.


I loved just relaxing on the beach and watching the kids play. I don't really feel like I needed more time at Disneyland or Sea World, but I could have spent more time at the beach, park and in Olde Town. The weather was beautiful the whole time we were out there and my kids didn't get sick until we got home which were two great blessings I was hoping for since we invested so much in this vacation.


I loved watching their little feet make prints all over the sand.


I am so glad we took time out to have this vacation eventhough they may not remember it all since they are so young.

San Diego

As part of our Southern California vacation, we decided to visit Sea World and the Wild Kingdom Animal Park.
Eli and I both enjoyed watching our kids make memories that we had made ourselves as children at Sea World. I loved watching their faces during the Orca and Sea Lion shows. Beck looks a little disgusted or something, but he was really facinated.

I think their favorite part was feeding the seals and sea lions. They also got to feed manta rays, but I don't think they liked that as much because they had to let them take the food right out of their hands. The also really enjoyed being able to touch the star fish in the tide pools.









For some reason after watching a Veggie Tales episode with Barbara Manatee Eli started calling our kids "Kateness Manatee" Until she would scream "I'm not a tee I'm a princess" and then he started calling Beck "Beckness Manatee". I had to stop and get a picture of them in front of the Manatee statue.

I am glad we decided to go to the Wild Animal Kingdom instead of the zoo.

They were freaked out when we first went to feed the Lorakeets and they all three or four landed on them and tried to drink the nectar from the cups and they both ended up dumping the food all over the ground. Then they cried because they did want to feed the birds, so daddy let them try again. We didn't see everything at the zoo, but we tried to see the more exciting animals like the gorillas, Cheetahs, elephants, Lions, and the little safari ride was nice and relaxing and I enjoyed seeing the animals in a more natural habitat.