Given Thanks

We had lots of fun/stress giving our thanks this year. We REALLY enjoyed spending quality time with so many family members in smaller numbers. Although that doesn't apply to our Woodward days. There, we enjoyed spending quality time with as many family members as could possible fit in one house. I think the official count for dinner on Thanksgiving was 71.

The stress part came from poor sleeping. Charlie didn't do so well with all the new bedtime environments. He was fantastic during the day, though, and really loved the space in everyone's homes walking in circuits and carrying a toy. Alec did about normal for his bedtime (which at that time was only slightly difficult) and was also great during the day. He actually answered questions from anyone! He even ate at the little kids table across the room from Chris and I all by himself and sat there, quietly eating during the entire Thanksgiving meal. I think he was a bit intimidated by the other big little kids.

On the drive to Utah the kids did remarkably well until the last 2 hours. But all in all, not a bad trip. (The drive home was a different story... it always seems to be that way).


At my brothers house. It was so fun to play with all our nephews and especially to see our newest nephew, Baby Brady. Charlie just stared at him and Alec liked to talk/play with him.


At Grandma Archibald's. She had such fun toys and as always, yummy food. Charlie loved the tent she had out and the basket of easter eggs and plastic rollers. Alec loved the wooden tops and cars and time with his Aunt and Uncles and Grandparents.


At Grandma Woodward's there is the annual rocket launching which happens after the annual Logan Temple trip (With over 50 people you can do a lot of work. It was very beautiful.) We let Alec skip his nap to watch the rockets go up. After being scared by all the noise of the first 5 rockets he asked to go to sleep! Cute kid.

one success!

Alec had a success in the potty! Maybe I'm celebrating too early, but after 2 days and many previous attempts I'll take it! We're trying to pantless method and its been fun seeing his cute little bottom running around. Wish us luck!

Cute Muscle Men

Here are two recent videos of our cute boys.

Charlie really likes to hide things recently, and also wonder where missing things are.

Showing off their muscles

so excited

Alec could hardly wait for our Thanksgiving trip.  We had a countdown chain and everything. The night before, I told Alec that in the early morning I would wake him up before the sun woke up and carry him to the car with his blanket and we'd drive for a long time. He immediately said, "carry me to the car right now!" I told him that we had to wait for daddy to get home and then he said, "Set the timer, you carry me to the car. Set the microwave timer." Eventually I left his room and he was quiet. I continued packing and cleaning and about a hour later Chris got home and Alec was still moving around. Chris went in and Alec asked over and over about the timer, "timer ring yet?" It was almost another hour before Alec finally went to sleep. Excited? I think so.  We're all excited to see family.  

wrong side of the bed

Pre-nap Alec was normal. Post-nap Alec was not. Oh goodness, I had to take so many deep breaths today and the fun still hasn't stopped. I guess I can be grateful that he at least took a nap? Where is the silver lining? While I'm at it...dinner is so difficult recently. Bed time is worse. I can either not care if he eats anything and then deal with complaints of no dessert or I can harp at him every minute. I can either give in to every little device to prolong the bedtime routine or I can deal with a screaming kid for hours. I don't see any happy mediums here. Ugh.. this isn't helping. I'll try to recap a cute story of how the morning started...

Alec has been waking up in the middle of the night (sometimes more than once!) and coming into our room, thinking its morning, and gets mad when we pick him up and put him back in his bed. But wait, this is supposed to be helping me calm down. * deep breath #87 * Ok. Alec eventually fell back asleep and slept in until 7:30! Charlie woke up before that and started making noise. I went in to get him out so Alec could keep sleeping and Charlie didn't want me to take him out of the crib. Instead, he kept pointing to his pacifier that had fallen out. So I gave him his pacifier, put my hands out and Charlie slinked away to lay back down. Confused, I sat in the rocking chair to see if this was going to be a peek-a-boo game and I eventually walked out of the room and returned to my bed. Later when Alec started moving around, so did Charlie. Apparently Charlie doesn't want to get up if Alec is still sleeping and as soon as Alec us up and out of the room, Charlie is chomping at the bit to join him. These two brothers are sure cute together.

sorry for no new pictures, I've not taken any recently.

little decisions

The other night, Chris had to stay late and arrived just barely in time to leave to go pick up the missionaries for dinner. Then directly after dinner he had to drive the missionaries home and go straight to school for more TA work. It was a long day, busy dinner prep/house cleaning and I felt fully justified to put on a movie for the boys to kill that long hour between dinner and bedtime.

Then. I remembered my sis-in-law's recent blog post about lessons learned through the recent, surprising and tragic death of her (and Chris' ) cousin. She said something about being present and playing with her kids. It got me thinking how precious my own children are, and how my time would be better spent in giving them attention and basking in their youthful energy and joy. So Alec, Charlie and I blasted country music (something we can't do with Chris home) and played an ABC cake-walk game with leftover Halloween candy. That evolved, of course, into a dance off. Not only did I burn all the Halloween candy calories with my crazy dancing but I spent an hour watching my boys smile. Something I don't do enough. Thanks, Jess, for the post. Thanks, Heavenly Father, for my wonderful, vivacious, sweet boys.

I know I will choose the movie another time ... I just hope I decide to chose the dance-off more often.

The unrelated picture for this post: We took the boys to the Stanford Golf Course practice greens on Halloween. Alec really takes his golf seriously and could've stayed for hours. Charlie liked taking the flags in and out

Reading to Charlie

Charlie loves us to read to him. He'll bring us a book and then squeeze onto our laps whether there is room or not. It's rare for him to be able to sit through the whole book. Usually he's squirming to get off after a page or two.