Festival of Lights

Last night we rode the train downtown and took the boys to the church history museum and then saw the lights on Temple Square. Nathan thought it was the best Festival of Lights ever. Matthew was thrilled about the train ride. Both Daniel and Nathan were more interested in the museum than we thought they would be. Kev and I discovered that we need to go back to the museum when we can devote more time to it and found a print of some art work that we want to hang in our future (hopefully not too far in the future!) home. It wasn't too cold and there weren't an overwhelming number of people. In short, we had a great time.

A New Low In Basement Dwelling

In all the years I've spent living in a basement, which are many (in addition to spending the bulk of my childhood years in a basement bedroom, I've lived in a basement for a total of nine years since I graduated from high school), I've come across a variety of creepy crawly things. The basement where I grew up was mouse central. The basement apartment I lived in during college was a silver fish haven. The basement of my in-laws house is spider infected. And where we are now has a regular influx of crickets in the spring and summer. But this morning brought a creepy crawly that is all new to me, seasoned basement dweller that I am. Nathan came and told me there was a big bug in the kitchen but didn't know what it was. I walked in and discovered a big old slug sliming its way across the floor. The thing was at least four inches long. And it's the middle of winter! Snow and everything!

I'm so excited to be looking for a home where I get to live above ground.

Brothers Don't Shake Hands! Brothers Gotta Hug!

Last night Nathan woke me up in the middle of the night. He said he was having a nightmare. When I asked him what he was dreaming about, he told me he dreamed that Matthew was dead. It freaked him out enough that he woke me up, which he hasn't done for quite some time. Matthew had been Nathan's baby since day one, so having something happen to him must be a terrible thought for Nathan.

This event reminded me of a time when Daniel had the same trouble. Daniel was two when Nathan was born. At first, he didn't want anything to do with Nathan. I took a whole week before he even touched him. During that time period, Daniel would have terrible nightmares. He would wake up afraid and silently creep into my room. I woke up more than once with him standing quietly by my head. When Nathan was about three months old, I was startled awake one night by Daniel shrieking at the top of his lungs, an unusual occurrence for him. It took me awhile to get him calmed down, but when I did I asked him what he was dreaming about. All he would say was, "I wost Naffan." (I lost Nathan.)

In spite of all the fighting that happens, all the arguing and bickering that make up the soundtrack of my life, my boys have a bond. They love each other and the thought of losing each other scares them more than just about anything. They may not want to admit it, but having brothers is a pretty cool thing.

Esther Is The Undisputed Queen Of Christmas

Seriously, I've given some good gifts in my lifetime, but every time Esther has me for Christmas I end up crying. At least last time I was pregnant with Nathan and could blame it one the hormones. This year she did it again, and what's more, she was planning on it. My gift came in three parts. I opened #1 and found this:

I knew at that point that there was no way I wasn't going to need #1. The only member of my family who is a bigger bawl baby than me is Rachael. So prepared for the flood, I then proceeded to #2.

I pushed the button and heard this:

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

During which I opened up #3 and saw this:

Then I proceeded to make good use of #1. You see, Esther and Patti are going to New York next summer. They have been planning for months. And although I knew it would be an incredibly fun trip, I never really considered going due to the fact that saving up for a downpayment on a house is just a bit more important. So my wicked awesome sister (and my parents) are sending me to New York. And it made me cry. Apparently everyone in my family except for me and my boys (who aren't all that great at keeping secrets) knew about this. Even my mother-in-law was in on the secret. Her Christmas gift to me was spending money for the trip. My family is the greatest.

And as for Esther, undisputed queen.

Undisputed.

25 things That Make The Holiday Season With Young Children Exciting And New

1. With a toddler in the house, you get to redecorate the tree every day.
2. Your kindergartener finally understands humor and every sarcastic remark you've made for the past five years comes back to bite you in the butt. ("My present for you is . . . an eyeball!")
3. While watching your children happily wrap the presents they have picked out for others, you realize that using excessive amounts of tape is indeed a genetic flaw. (My paternal grandmother used tape in the style of paper mache.)
4. You can watch the old claymation versions of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" every day and blame it on your children.
5. Green girl hair. (On the day of the gift shop at school, Nathan came home wearing green girl hair. I think he was shopping for me in the girl section and got distracted.)


6. Your non-blinking Christmas tree lights are easily converted into blinking ones simply by placing your toddler in the same room as the power switch.
7. Attempting to do all your holiday baking without any eggs or milk leads to some interesting (and mostly edible) results.
8. A really good accapella version makes "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!" your eight-year-old's favorite Christmas song.
9. The $1 pie server that was broken when you received it two years ago is still in the drawer because you don't dare throw it away in case someone asks you about it.
10. Your one-year-old spends the entire month of December carrying around the baby Jesus ("Baby, are you? There he is!" -kiss, kiss-) from the Little People Nativity set, thereby giving you a daily (and often needed) reminder of what it's all about.
11. Although your shopping has been done for weeks, your child's confession to Santa three days before Christmas forces you to brave the Walmart even though you swore that you would not do so until at least mid January.
12. Your five-year-old explains the need to do his jobs with the following logic: "It's Christmas Eve! We do our jobs so Santa won't trip!"
13. Your eight-year-old follows up with, "Wait a minute! I'll do more jobs! It will be a Christmas present for Mom and Dad!"
14. Due to an overwhelming fear that the pretty colors on the paper will bring out your toddler's inner Tasmanian Devil, Christmas Eve becomes an all night wrapping marathon.
15. Eating cookies and carrots at 1:30 a.m. in order to keep the magic alive.
16. YOU are far too excited to sleep and lie awake in bed long after your little ones are fast asleep.
17. Your super sleepy toddler, who has no idea what is going on, comes wide awake as soon as he catches sight of his new "bite" (bike).
18. Your one-year-old snakes everyone's Christmas candy and hoards it in the bucket of his new bike.


19. Fruit snacks and candy for breakfast.
20. Spider-fish.


21. A five-year-old trying to open presents while wearing Spiderman gloves.


22. A huge tub full of plastic balls. (This was a gift to Matthew from the Undisputed Queen of Christmas.)


23. Enough new family friendly movies that you're hoping to get through the next year without any one movie being shown more than once a day.
24. Mom and Dad crashing for a nap while the kids play with seemingly endless amounts of energy.
25. Watching your children learn the magic of giving.

I hope all of you enjoyed your chaos as much as we enjoyed ours! Merry Christmas!

Unruly Nativity

On every Christmas Eve of my childhood, my siblings and I acted out the story of the Nativity while my dad read it from the Bible. Now that we are grown, our children have continued the tradition.

The musical track (complete with fan club).

The Narrator ("And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger . . . and it was crowded!")

Mary and Joseph (although the real ones weren't siblings).

Shepherds (See the monkeys? Who knew Israeli wildlife was so diverse?)

The angel looks more scared than the shepherds do.

The Wise Acres . . . I mean Men!

Ho, Ho, Ho!

Last night, due to some unexpected vomit from her kindergartener, a friend of mine offered us a family ticket for the Festival of Lights at Wheeler Farm. So we quickly changed our FHE plans and bundled everyone up to see the lights and Santa! We started off the evening with a hay ride, viewing the lights all around the farm. Matthew doesn't remember his last hay ride (he was only four months old) and absolutely loved it. His running commentary of, "Whee! Lights!" was highly entertaining. When the ride was over he was not ready to be done, as evidenced by his exclamation of, "NO WAY!!! WHEE!!"

Next on the agenda was a visit with Santa. Before we left home, Daniel and Nathan had both written a letter for Santa. But neither of them asked him for anything. Nathan wished Santa a merry Christmas and Daniel wrote him a poem about how busy this time of year is for him. I am so pleased that my kids are starting to understand that Christmas isn't just about getting stuff. Anyway, when we walked in Daniel was calm and collected, Nathan was so excited he couldn't stand still, and Matthew was super friendly and hollered, "Hi, Santa!" The big boys talked to Santa, told him what they want for Christmas (only one surprise for us), and Matthew got shy once we walked right up to Santa. But when we were done he happily said, "Bye, Santa!" and proceeded to get his candy cane open on his own and eat the entire thing. ("NummEEE!!")



After we spoke with Santa, we headed back into the cold and had some hot chocolate at what Nathan refers to as the "cool food court."

Although it was dark and somewhat hard to see, the boys really wanted to see the animals, so we wandered around and saw the chickens, the pigs (Matthew was standing just a few inches away from the fence when one oinked and it scared him), and a cow (Matthew wouldn't go anywhere near the big old beast).

We enjoyed ourselves enough that we think we will probably go again next year!

Kaboom!

Matthew is in the midst of a language explosion. He learns new words every day and will attempt to say just about anything. Many of his new words are helpful. Things like up, done, snack, milk, book, waffle, apple (his hollerings of "Appo!" made everyone within three aisles of the produce section smile) and blankie (my-ie) have helped decrease the bouts of shrieking that occur when we can't figure out what he wants. In addition to Mama, Daddy, Daniel (Danno) and Nathan (Nannan), he also identifies poppa, grandma, Jacob (Dudub), Drew (Dew), big boys (bee boy), Elmo (Meemo) and Thomas (Momas). Other new words make him more adept at conversing with others. Things like hi, see ya, night night, bye and where are you (Are you?) make him pleasant to have a conversation with. And then there are the words that are just funny.

Matthew: "Butt paste . . . butt paste . . . . Butt paste, are you?"
Me: "Do you have butt paste on your bum?"
Matthew: "No way!"

Kev: "Daddy's a wuss."
Matthew: "Wuss!"

Seriously, we didn't teach him either of those on purpose. Although I am proud that he has picked up on the superior quality of the Boudreaux's.
In closing, I will do as Matthew does as wish you all a very merry "Missmas"!

Sing, Blow Out Candles, Repeat

The Sunday after his birthday was the day we celebrated Daniel's birthday with my family. He requested a solar system cake, so I found an idea online and attempted to recreate it. It turned out reasonably well, although I ran out of patience when tinting the marshmallow fondant and as a result, most of the colors turned out paler than in our model. But Daniel was pleased and that's pretty much all that matters.

One of the fun things about Sunday celebrations with my family is that one of Daniel's favorite cousins has his birthday the day before Daniel's. So Daniel and Devon always get to celebrate together!

The following Saturday was Daniel's party with his friends. Due to unfriendly weather conditions, we ended up with only five rugrats instead of nine, but we had fun anyway. Everyone got to make a toilet paper rocket, we played space games, and ate space shuttle cake. And when we were done, the kids were all wired up and I was ready for a nap. Isn't that one of the most ironic things about motherhood? The children are never tired at the same times as the mothers!

Eight Is Great!

Because his birthday is very early in the month, stake baptism day rolled around just three days after Daniel's birthday. He decided months ago that he would be baptized in December. We told him that he could wait until January, but he was determined to do it in December. He would be eight, after all, so why wait? Being baptized was his number one priority. He even postponed his birthday party for a week because his baptism day was on the Saturday just after his birthday.

We're so very proud of the choice he has made.

What The . . .?!

Kev and I looked at a bunch of houses this morning and we saw the best house ever. The main floor was nice, a fairly decent floor plan with a gas fireplace and a good place for the piano. There was a big bar in the kitchen (although it was carpeted in the dining area) and a nice open living space. The master bedroom had a big mural of a lighthouse on one wall and rustic boathouse stuff all over. The bathroom was rustic as well, which seems silly to me. I mean, if I want my bathroom to look like an outhouse, I'll just dig myself a pit in the backyard and put up a shed! But seriously, take down the stupid stuff and get a little paint and the room is fine. The other two bedrooms were adequate and unremarkable. But enough about the main floor. The basement is where all the fun is. Kev warned me before I came down the stairs, and yet I was still not prepared to see this:





There was laughter. Copious amounts of laughter. And Matthew got to swing . . . inside . . . in the middle of a snowstorm.

Has It Really Been Eight Years?

Yesterday was Daniel's birthday. As of 11:03 p.m., he is officially eight years old. He was very excited.


And what do you get for an eight-year-old who loves Legos and loves dinosaurs? A Lego dinosaur, of course!


Nathan gave him several other Lego sets and then proceeded to shower (or drown) Daniel with his version of brotherly love.


Daniel immediately set to work building his dino, and Matthew tried really hard not to touch.

Daniel was up before 6:00 this morning working on his dinosaur. When I got up at 6:30, he was in the kitchen building and singing Harry Connick Jr.'s "It Must Have Been Old Santa Claus." I was so proud. That kid has good taste in music! (Of course, he also sings Weird Al Yankovic's "Another One Rides the Bus" on the regular basis, so I should probably amend my previous statement and say that he has our taste in music: everything from the sublime to the silly has a place in our home.)

What Matthew Was Doing While I Was Typing The Last Post

Did you know that dry erase marker wipes right off of tile but not off of skin?

Apparently five minutes is a very long time for a one year old. And the marker part happened in the last one minute of that five minute period. And yes. When I sat down at the computer he was, in fact, wearing pants.

Gobble, gobble!

Gobble, Gobble Baby!

One of Matthew's favorite pastimes is kicking of his shoes. This is the way (to my perpetual irritation) that he passes the time while we are shopping. I usually notice, but have on occasion had to go back down a few aisles to find his missing footwear. Today I was not as alert as usual and missed the kicking off of one shoe. As I was leaving Office Depot (our fourth stop of the morning), I realized that his shoe was gone. So I went back into the store and walked all the aisles hoping to find it. I didn't, of course. So I headed back out to the car to see if he kicked it off in the car without me noticing. No dice. So it was back into the store to stand in line and leave my phone number with the manager in case a toddler sized Elmo shoe showed up somewhere. After that, knowing that I would need to revisit the three other stores I had already been to, I took a minute to change a very unsavory diaper so that I wouldn't have to wash the car seat cover when we got home. While I was up to my elbows in poop (not literally, but it kind of felt like it), the Office Depot manager came running out of the store holding the lost shoe. While losing your child's shoe is not necessarily something to be embarrassed about, it would have been nice to get it back in a situation that allowed us all a bit more dignity. Seriously, I'm sure it did not make the managers day to see that diaper business. He seemed a bit embarrassed and high tailed it back into the store before I could even say thank you. But I was very grateful that he came to catch me rather than just leaving a message for me to come back and get it.

So here's to my youngest child: Gobble, gobble baby! You are an enormous turkey!