::tree::

And we got it in and we got it all lit! It was intimidating to light, but not so hard once I got started.
What do you think? We think it's really fun.

And my favorite way to show a lighted tree!

And the little tree is hanging out in the pool table room. I have plans for it. I'll tell you about them later.

See the chile lights up on the window? Kris is excited about those, he's wanted some for a long time.
More later, as always!

::i see by your outfit that you are a jedi::

"I see by your outfit you are a jedi too....we see by our outfits that we are both jedis, if you get an outfit you can be a jedi too. Duh duh."

Anyway, here are our outfits.
These are pictures from the ward "trunk or treat" on saturday night.
We had loud star wars music and we used our big black car that reminds us all a bit of a spaceship.

Max is very serious with his obnoxious blaster as Luke the x-wing pilot. He still hasn't seen much of Star Wars, so don't grill him on any details. But we're working on that.


The whole family's theme was built around one thing. That Sandy had to be an ewok. I saw the costume online at some point and knew we had to do it.
And it was perfect. He was the most adorable ewok I've ever seen.



If you want to squish him and squeeze him that's ok. I don't know how you could want to do anything else!
He was a pretty good sport about his hood and only started pulling it off at the end of the night when he was pretty cranky. He's just a good sport generally--we're lucky. And he's adorable of course.

So that's us. We have some more halloween fun to report on tomorrow. But HAPPY HALLOWEEN tonight!

::family::

Today I'm in UT for a quick quick little visit.

I thought these pictures turned out great, besides the fact that Kris is missing. It happens a lot so we're resigned to it by now.

Silliness.

::in celebration::

In celebration of starting to move stuff into our new house tomorrow, here are a few pictures. This isn't an exhaustive tour--more like some highlights. The first ones are from when I first saw the house in November (3 days before the baby was born.)
The front

I can't wait to see the front with leaves on the trees!
Kitchen/dining area


Bookshelves in the kitchen? Yes please!
The bathroom by the kid rooms

The master with it's built in cabinets

View of backyard from the big deck

Those of you that live in places that actually have grass may be unimpressed by this, but let me tell you, out here this is a GREAT yard. And it might just get astroturfed at some point. Just wait and see.
A view of the living room from one angle

Looking from the interior courtyard towards the kitchen/dining room windows


And now a few from the other day. The owner was sort of almost moved out. It was nice to see the place without all her furniture and stuff. We could see better how we'll be able to make it our own!
Living room again, but from a different angle and much less furniture.

Carpet!

Sandy rolled over when we put him down on the carpet. He really liked it. I think it's going to be a wonderful place for him to learn to crawl.
And finally (for now) the front little yard/courtyard/whatever on our way out.

We love the indoor/outdoor living this house is going to enable us to do.
Now who wants to come and visit????

::freezing::

Luckily for us it's not freezing anymore right now--well, at least not the way it was.
The week of my birthday had some crazy weather. My birthday was nice and temperate, but the next day a storm blew in. My parents were flying out that afternoon, and it was truly questionable whether they were going to make it out or not. Lucky for me since Kris was flying out to see his parents that weekend they drove our car down there and parked it in long term parking. It was very nice that I didn't have to drive down and back with the boys, since it was terrible driving conditions and seemed very unsafe.
Max had a two hour delay for school and it was so darn cold I decided to just keep him home so I didn't have to take the baby out in the freezing.

Anyway, they made it luckily--though I think there was some white-knuckle driving in there.
That night it got freezing freezing cold, like well below zero, which is unusual for out here. School was cancelled the next day and we discovered that our pilot light had gone out. We have radiant floor heating and it takes a long time to cool down and a long time to warm up. By the time we realized the furnace wasn't running it was way cold in the house and it took forever and a day to warm up.
We spent a lot of time in the living room by the fire and we dressed Sand really warmly.


Max got out every toy he owned in an effort to entertain himself. He did well, but we were getting pretty tired of the still cold house by the end of the day. We braved the snow that night to go and grab a couple of burgers at a new place with FRY SAUCE!

The next day there was another two hour school delay. I ran into work after I dropped Max off and I got a automated phone call from the school district saying that all the students were warm and safe, but there was a statewide gas shortage and that they were going to close up school as soon as all classes were over. Turned out there was a true shortage and several cities in the state were completely without gas and some without power for days that week! Luckily we were fine. We did close the office friday though, in order to contribute to saving gas for cold homes. School was cancelled too.

It was just a crazy winter week. Kind of fun to have such crazy stuff going on, and lucky that we were warm, but I did feel bad for all the cold people without working heaters. Things like that make us grateful for what we have, and inspire us to make sure we have enough wood to stay warm if we happen to be left with only our fireplace for heat!

Can't wait for spring!

::word::

So some people have been coming up with a word for the upcoming year. A word to define, or sometimes direct the year by. This is tough for me. I have a hard time distilling everything down to that one particular important word. But I try anyway, because it makes me think.

And the fact that it's taken me like four weeks to finally think this out and write it down is just evidence that I need this word to apply pretty terrible.

The word for me this year will be SIMPLE. Yes, as in like "keep it simple, stupid." Except for the stupid part since I really hate when people call themselves stupid.

The reason why? Well, I'm way in over my head right now. I have way way more to do than I can ever possibly get done to my satisfaction. And most if not 99% of what I'm doing is good and important and a large amount of it I enjoy. So where can I cut some of it out? I can't. So what I have to do is just keep everything as simple as I can, and not require too much of myself at any given time.
Like......making dinner. It's so hard for me. It's a tough time of day, I'm not a very good cook and I can never think of what to make that actually sounds good and is healthy. So I've got to keep it simple. I've got to find some easy things that sound decent and figure out how to do them well and quickly. OK, so that's not a simple task, but once I get it figured out it should simplify things.

Here's a good example of something I already did. I really wanted to make delicious sugar cookies at Christmastime. I usually do it and they're delicious and fun and so festive. I made the dough, twenty times in my mind. I never got it done. And instead of beating myself up because I didn't get something fun done I just decided I'd make "winter" cookies instead and put it off until after Christmas. And we did it. Later when the pressure wasn't quite as intense. They tasted just as good.

So it won't be particularly simple to simplify things, but after the initial work I think it will benefit us all. And then I can keep doing all the good stuff I'm doing. And hopefully I won't go crazy.

So there you go.

::new year & lookalikes::

Here we are at 1-1-11. I think this will be a great year for us, we're looking forward to it.
And just to celebrate New Years day, here's another set of cute little lookalikes for you.


That makes me smile.
We're going to hang out together for the rest of the day, watching football, playing games and making cookies. Hopefully there won't be a lot of crying from the small guy. He's had a lot of yucky gas lately and he's been sad. But hopefully we'll have him all figured out soon.
Happy New Year everybody!