It's Great to Be 8

 Jack thought he was the luckiest kid alive and I think he might have been.  Cousin Tate flew out from Colorado for Jack's baptism so we also had a bowling party on his birthday.  The kids loved it.  They made bowling shirts, ate candy, and acted like a bunch of boys.  It was great.

What a good pal.  

My mom and Paige flew out for the baptism, my viola recital, and just to be here.  I'm pretty sure I was the luckiest girl in the world.

Oh How We Love Chicago!

We bought a year pass to the Art Institute of Chicago.  Why?  Because Christian and I "are obsessed" (as Jack would say) with the art there and amazingly, the kids really enjoy it.  We go to the museum pretty much every time we go to Chicago.  This Seurat painting is one of their favorites (Charles likes the monkey) because they can see the pointillism up close, plus it's just an astounding painting.  They actually have a fantastic kids' room that is free to use - you don't need to pay admission, so for those who need a place for their kids to take shoes off and build with blocks or do giant puzzles or read books, this is the place!    

The Lions outside all decorated for Christmas.

So warm in November that Winfield took off his fleece!

Every year we head down a day or two before Thanksgiving to see the Macy's windows (love the trumpets, but the windows are totally lame, in my opinion.  They could learn a lot from ZCMI - remember those windows?!)  Mostly we go for the Christkindlemarket where the kids pick out our ornament for that year at one of the German booths.  It's a great tradition and each year is a little different, but it's always wonderful.  We feel so lucky to live so close to such a vibrant city.

The Cello Recital

Winfield started cello lessons and it may just be the most stressful 30 minutes of my week.  He is very musical and very artistic and very, very creative, but he's also 5 and has his lesson at 4:45 pm.  That makes for one distracted kid and I spend most of the lesson biting something, mostly my tongue, but also my knuckles or pencil.  Here's what happens: his fabulous, patient teacher gets his feet set, then his bow hand just right, then puts it on the string, then his feet scoot up under his chair and while she's fixing his feet his bow slides down to his knee and then he slumps over and then he asks her why her file cabinet is red, not blue.  However, he is learning and I am learning and if this boy never plays a full song it will be okay because the two of us are learning patience and endurance.  So, enjoy his first recital and enjoy a nice, long chuckle.

Taos

For no other reason than we heard it was a great place, Christian and I took a long weekend trip alone to Taos, NM and we were blown away by everything from the culture and food to the scenery.  This is a photo of Taos Pueblo, oldest continuously inhabited structure in the US.  Some of the homes don't use electricity and they haven't changed the way they lived thousands of years ago.  It was incredible.

The doors were painted to look like the sky.

We rented a jeep and cruised all over NM.  Christian loved it.

Isn't Christian cute?  We had so much fun alone.  We love our kids, but it was just so wonderful to have time alone!!

We decided last-minute to take a "difficult" hike.  It didn't look too bad and there were some older women hiking up as we were hiking down, so we figured it couldn't be that bad.  It was brutal!  The payoff was the view of the Rio Grande and the Red River meeting (I hope I'm remembering those rivers correctly...) but we were both sore for two days.  

We were surprised by Santa Fe - it's a fabulous city with so much culture and great shopping and Frito Pies.  Yep, chili in a frito bag with toppings - delicious.  In fact, every single meal we had the entire weekend was amazing.  I think I might even go back to NM just for the food.

Juicy Baby

 One of my friends at the elementary school owns a children's boutique - you know, the kind that sells gorgeous, high-end stuff and you can only afford to buy socks?  She needed a baby girl to be the model for the ad they planned to run in the Nutcracker playbill and Milwaukee Magazine for their new line of Juicy Couture Baby.  When she offered to give me the clothes that Georgia wore in the photo shoot what could I say?  OF COURSE I agreed to it!  Her outfit she's wearing is well over $100 and that doesn't count those fabulous high-top shoes.  The photo shoot was actually in their store and let me tell you, it was full of fantastic things for an 18-month old to pull apart.  As you can see from the ad above, she had a tough time cooperating until they gave her one of the lolly pops from off the lolly pop tree.  I was dying because I know how cute she is and she just would not hold still long enough for the camera to catch her.  Well, we don't usually do designer, but I think we have some pretty cute photo shots of our little girl...

This was Thanksgiving day.  She pulled down the left-over pizza we had for lunch and went to town.

Oh the fingers!  If only we could break the habit (except in church; I'll take that handy pacifier any Sunday - pun intended).

This is what Georgia looks like after eating a lolly pop in my house, Juicy Couture or not!

The Pumpkin Tree

The Pumpkin tree is a Mitchell tradition.  When I say Mitchell I mean my in-laws.  This pumpkin tree is our very first in 10 years of marriage, but it's going to be the first of many because we had a ball.  It all started with Christian's sister around age 4 asking her dad if she could see the tree where all of the pumpkins grew.  Nothing stops Mark Mitchell once the creative juices start flowing and so the pumpkin tree was born.  They did it for about 5 years and were even on the news.  One year they had about 40 pumpkins on one tree and people would drive from all over the salt lake valley to see their tree.  It took about an hour to light them all, but they always made it into a neighborhood party with witches brew and games.  Our first party was so much fun!  Since this is our first Halloween in our new neighborhood it was also humorous to hear and see the reaction to the tree.  People stopped to take pictures and we found out later that some neighbors that we hadn't met only knew us as "the pumpkin tree family".  

The kids on Halloween: Winfield the power ranger, Jack Jedi, Georgia the cat, and Charles the bee (again).

First Photo Shoot

We have never had a professional family photo taken until the fall and although Georgia was not exactly cooperative, I was happy with the pictures.  Here are just a few fun ones.

The Apple Press - Old School

We have a good friend, Robbie, who grew up on a farm and likes to sort of live off the land as much as possible.  For him, that means buying apples cheap, making his own apple press, and freezing gallons and gallons of apple cider to last the whole winter.  We thought that sounded awesome so we set it up in our garage, invited a few families, and went to town.  It was a blast, minus the part where all of the kids threw up the next day and we weren't sure if it was the cider or the flu.  Yeah, that was kind of awful.  Turns out, it wasn't the cider.

So sad to see the Rackham family go, but it was that very night when Scott got the call from BYU that he got "the job" and off they went.  Our loss.

As always, it was wonderful to have Marriotts visit.  I just wish we hadn't sent them off on their road trip home with vomiting children.  They haven't been back since.  Hmmm.

The Lake Trip - Year 2

 We went up north with three other families in our ward to a lake house and had the most glorious time.  The cabin was enormous and the property it was on was equally large.  We all vowed to go back next time and wondered the whole time how we could convince our families that coming to the middle of Wisconsin for a week would actually be worth it.

Catching frogs.  I love that my boys are experiencing a "real" childhood, complete with frogs!

With daddy.  Yeah, I haven't quite gotten pig tails figured out for her yet.

Winfield, Jack and Brooklyn - judging from Winfield's hair, I think they got some speed on the tube.

We took turns going out on the power boat and staying on the beach with some of the kids.  When we came back from one outing we found Christian in the rowboat with 7 kids.  They all looked pretty pleased, and so did Christian!

Heather - queen of treats. 

 Mortons brought kid skis that are tethered together so Jack had a great experience skiing.  You can see Jake's head, left behind in the lake.  We'd just leave him there after he helped the kids get up on the skis. He was a good sport.

Some of the crew.  

One happy skier!

Georgia in her adorable "Gammy" dress.  It's one of my favorites.