We're a week behind on wearing our Christmas clothes to church. We were traveling last Sunday, so they wore their new duds yesterday. We enjoyed going to church with Nate's sister, Becky and her family. Harrison and Jonluke are 6 weeks apart, so they we very excited to go to primary together.
Thanks to my mom for providing the outfits. She even made that darling little plaid pleated skirt. I love how preppy it is. 
For those who remember the fiasco with the boots in our family pictures, I'm happy to report that Elizabeth now loves her "pretty boots." She agreed to wear them to church one week when it was really snowy and Daddy made a big deal about how pretty her boots were. Then she got all sorts of attention for them at church. She wanted to wear them every day that week and has loved them ever since. Should I be disturbed that my less than 2 year old is already enjoying getting attention for cute shoes? She really is a girl. And both of her parents care about that kind of thing, so I guess it's inevitable. I actually love that she loves all things pretty. 
If you read my last post, you recognize that those are two of my special Christmas dishes, and that I only get one place setting of each pattern, so that's it. And it's discontinued. I didn't get angry though, just sad. It really was an accident and Harrison apologized several times throughout the day, and it was so sincere and sweet. Elizabeth is kind of fixated on broken things, so she keeps pointing to the hutch where the dishes are and saying, "Boten, Sesan" (broken, Harrison). Today, she threw a plate on the floor and it broke. After sending her to time out, I took her over to the trash can to show her the broken pieces and tell her how naughty that was and the first thing she did was point to the hutch and remind me that "Sesan boten." Don't try to shift the blame Little Miss, his was an accident. 
Once we got home I got him smiling. Notice that my left eye looks smaller than my right.
Well, I have been sick since last week. Tuesday morning I woke up with an ear ache and a sty in my eye. I went to the Dr. and sure enough I had an ear infection. She gave me antibiotics for that, but said there wasn't much I could do about the sty. I've had them before and usually they pass quickly and aren't that big of a deal. 
Friday it was still pretty bad. It's now Sunday and it's looking better, but still not gone. I keep thinking I'm so grateful that I don't have any permanent facial deformities. I don't like feeling self-conscious and ugly. And of course, this was our ultra-busy, typical December week. So a lot of people were exposed to the hideousness. 
I actually really get a kick out of making stuff like this. I must admit, I was surprised and disappointed that his teachers didn't say ONE WORD about the darling cookies. I guess it was silly to expect lavish praise. . .
Harrison got lectured the whole way home and was feeling really bad. I later found him with the camera. He had taken this picture (a blurry close up of his PJs).
When asked what he was doing he said something about checking to see if his heart was two sizes too small. That made my heart feel two sizes too small (at that point I was surprised it could get any smaller, but I guess mother guilt can do that). 
Yesterday Elizabeth was admiring my pigtails (it's the only other option I have if I don't actually do my hair) and it dawned on me that her hair was finally long enough for real pigtails. She was being pretty cute posing for the camera. 
Harrison came home very excited that they had made gingerbread "houses" at school. If I had known a one dimensional graham cracker with the corners cut off to make it look like a roof was enough to make him happy, we would have been doing gingerbread "houses" years ago!
Here are some pics of the decorations. Notice the $20, 6 foot 
I have no shame about putting it up on this table to make it look more substantial. 
We hate how ugly our Craig's List couch is, so I decided to cover it up with the darling Christmas quilt my mom made me. 
Then the usual black and white curtains just didn't match the rest of the Christmas decor. So I 
Here are a few pictures from T-Day. We had our friend Tiffany and her darling daughters over, plus another sweet family from the ward and our neighbor Dave (whose daughters are in our ward, he goes to another ward). 
The kids mostly ran around like crazy the whole time. 
Notice the Spiderman "wallet" that Harrison is holding in every picture. He got it at Chuck E. Cheese's on Weds. and hasn't put it down since. He sleeps with it every night. I guess is was worth the 300 tickets it cost. Seriously, 300? That seemed high to me (listen to me talking like an expert on Chuck E. Cheese prizes). 
I am sad to report that after countless bowling dates with Nate in high school and an entire semester of a bowling class at BYU, I only beat my 4 year old by about 12 points. I did get 2 strikes and was happy to find out that our old tradition of getting a kiss for every strike was still in effect. (PDA is hard to come by from Nathan). Unfortunately, the kisses were not nearly as thrilling as when I was a teenager, but hey, it was still fun!
and was grateful when I realized I could use my hands as breaks to slow down. 
Andrew was carefree as usual. 
This was a much bigger hill than what Harrison was used to, so Nate held on to him most of the way down.
He is showing so much improvement each time he does it and seems to like it more and more as well. 
I have also spent a fair amount of time playing nurse to each of my family members the last few days. 
It looked pretty bad, but it wasn't bleeding much, and after the initial crying, she was totally fine. 
So I took my usual route of avoiding the ER like the plague. We peroxided it and super glued it up ourselves. She was SO cooperative and she's seemed fine since. Even if it leaves an ugly scar, it won't matter, because it's in her hair. 
It seriously looks like a pre-schooler or extremely intoxicated individual stitched this thing up. It makes me so upset every time I look at it. In hindsight, I realize that we totally rushed into this surgery without really thinking it through. It probably didn't even need to be done. He is missing out on most of his usual activities because he is supposed to take it easy, it's going to cost who knows how much, he's going to have a worse scar, and I have clean the nasty thing out and redress it every night. Here is all the equipment used in the nightly ritual. 
Notice how happy we look. That's because we had just barely started running!
Here's a not very cute action shot!
I was worried that I would hold Jenni back because she pushes herself much more than I do. So we had said we wanted to do it in under 33 minutes. My fastest I'd done it on the treadmill was 32.24 and hers was 29 something, but her fastest in a race was 32.30. So we were shooting for around there. I am happy to say we did it in 31.06!!! We said we'd love to do one under 30 next time. We'll see about that! 
So now that I've got that out of the way, I need to conquer another first today. . .my first turkey! Somehow I've gotten out of making the turkey every one of my 29 years. Even the one other year I hosted. So today's the day. After talking to lots of people and doing research on-line I decided to try brining it in vegetable stock, apple juice, garlic, water, salt, brown sugar and a few other herbs and spices. Hopefully it will be as successful as the 5K. And hopefully I'll make it through the holiday without throwing up like I have the past two years. No, these were not bulimia induced episodes, although the thought crosses my mind each year. One was pregnancy related and one was stomach flu. On that appetizing note, I'm going to go start cooking! I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am so thankful for all of my friends and family that I get to keep in touch with through this blog! (And a number of other things, but that's another post!) 
