Sealed Forever

I have been trying to think about what to say in this post for a couple of weeks now. It's so hard to post a few pictures and tell a story that goes so far beyond words of my feelings of the moment as it was happening.

December was a whirlwind of spiritual activity for John and me. First, John recieved the priesthood on November 23. Second, Eric was baptised by John on December 6. Third, John and I recieved our endowments on December 10 at the temple. And finally we were sealed together with our children on December 16.

Here is how beautiful the temple looked the night we were sealed together.


And here is my beautiful family after the ceremony, it was pretty dark but they came out OK.

And here is Elder Shumway with us, he is the missionary that baptised John last year and he was so instrumental in John's baptism that we were thrilled he could be there with us.


I hope that everyone I know understands how extremely grateful I am for all the support John and I have received during our growth in the church. It has been such a wonderful process to learn the gospel and as I begin to understand the plan our Lord has for us I feel like I could never say thank you enough to the people who helped my family to get to this point. I love you all very much.

Campout tradition

To start a new Christmas tradition, we rented a cabin at a campsite about 1 mile outside of Julian this year for the weekend. I am hoping we can go to the mountains every year after Christmas to get away from all the commercialism and spend time as a family. This time my parents brought their 5th-wheel trailer and had a site a little bit away from us.

Unfortunately, there was no way to know what the weather would be like when we made the reservations months ago and it turned out that it was really cold! Here are some shots of Eric and Katie (yes we took the scooters) and my parents all bundled up when we first got there. I think it was about 30 degrees with a good wind.



We spent our weekend going back a forth from the cabin to the trailer. Saturday morning we were able to spend about two hours going to the stores in Julian but it was so windy and still only about 30 degrees! Katie was a trooper but we knew she couldn't last too long.

My parents had a tiny TV that played VHS tapes (do they still sell those?) that the kids watched while we were in the camper. My dad is a big kid and loves to be with his grand kids. I love this picture of all of them on the bed watching a movie.


There wasn't as much snow as we had really wanted for the kids to play with, but there was enough of it on the sides of the roads from the plows for Eric to construct a snow man (sort of). He was happy with it anyway.

Me, my dad and Eric giving the snowman bunny ears.


All together it was a great weekend with extra time to be a family and forget about the toys for awhile.

Christmas day!

We had a great morning this year. Both the kids were really happy and we had our traditional cinnamon roll breakfast with a side of candy from our stockings. What a great way to start a day! Katie and Eric both got scooters from us and they were a big hit. Eric has been practicing on his non-stop since then.





Later in the day the Woods side came over to our house for lunch and gift exchange. Here is Katie's favorite gift from the Woods grandparents. Of course, what little girl wouldn't love all this princess stuff?


And later we went to my sisters house for the Robinson side exchange and dinner. We "lost" our camera and didn't get any pictures. :( It's so sad for me because my little 5 month old niece Briana was so cute all night!

We came home and collapsed together to watch a movie to close out the day. It was a great Christmas.

Christmas cookies

My two cute kiddos putting out the cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer. Katie had eaten most of the cookies Eric had set aside earlier in the day and was well on her way to eating all the carrots.


In this shot Eric is trying to look happy as he tries to block Katie from eating any more carrots, she really didn't grasp the concept that they were for Santa this year. Isn't Eric a great big brother?


And yes, Katie is wearing yet another bathing suit! She wants to put one on almost every day, sometimes I have to take her to the store with regular clothes on top of her suit. I think she believes that one time we might actually go swimming.

Eric too

Even though Katie is at the age when taking pictures of her is a daily activity (due to her mischief usually), I can't neglect my first born love in my blog. I finally got the pictures from Eric's birthday uploaded tonight. So here is a set for Eric.




His birthday present from us, the bike. And he's still learning how to ride at 8 years old without training wheels? I feel like I have failed him somewhere on that problem. I hope when it gets warmer he will be more in the mood to practice.

And here are a few shots I took at Nickel City for his birthday. We ended up having 8 guests, but I forgot about the camera after everyone scattered to play the games. Again, I failed at capturing the moment for him.

Girly fun!

In my previous post I mentioned something about removing all beauty products from anywhere within Katie's reach...OK fine! I missed one or two.

At least this time she wasn't doing anything that was hazardous to her health like the nail polish. Also, I wasn't even doing something else when she was up to her mischief, I was just not looking directly at her. It's amazing how in 30 seconds she grabbed my blush stick and used it to lipstick her face!

Here is the serious look that I made her pose with to get a good shot of the face...



And here is how she was really feeling when I saw her and told her how "pretty" she looked...




It's hard to tell but she is also wearing a pink princess crown and her Roxy bathing suit which added to the hilarity of the moment, since it was 60 degrees outside.


And, since I was posting some more Katie mischief pictures I found one of my favorite sets of when Katie was really into drawing with markers. She could spend a solid 30 minutes coloring with markers, it was so nice. Then it would inevitably end up like this...





Yes I know, we use crayons now. Katie just doesn't use them as much as the markers.

Nail Polish or Eye Shadow?

I have heard stories from other mom's who warned me that staying at home with young children isn't always so great. I think I had my first experience with that already.

Tuesday, my second day home with Katie, had one crisis after another. About 9:30am I was trying to do the dishes and Katie ran in screaming about ants in the bathroom downstairs. They were everywhere, the floor, sink, walls, toilet...why does the rain make them come inside every time?

I left kitchen duty to start to clean them up. As I was killing and cleaning them up and vacuuming the whole downstairs carpet (so they wouldn't find all the crumbs of food that my children leave everywhere) I realized I hadn't seen Katie for about 5 minutes. Normally she plays quietly with her dolls or puzzles and books so I wasn't too alarmed.

Then I went upstairs and found her. She had painted her face with a dark shade of nail polish from my bathroom. She had applied it to her eyelids like it was eyeshadow. Actually, it was ALL OVER her eyes. It was underneath, in her eyebrows, on her temples, and of course on her fingers and hands that had smeared everywhere on the towels and counter. Jeez! I was so mad I didn't even want to get out the camera, so you have to use your imagination.

It took me a few minutes to figure out how to clean her face without furthering the possibility of blinding her with nail polish remover. After a thorough and careful scrubbing with a towel and some diluted polish remover she was clean.

Needless to say, there is no more polish or other beauty product available within Katie's reach. I didn't think I had to childproof my home from my child who is almost three. Lesson learned.

Besides from my child nearly blinding herself on my SECOND day at home with her, the rewards are still outweighing the crisis's. We have had some long snuggle sessions while watching movies and staying inside from the rain. And way more laughs and kisses than I normally get to give her on any given week day in the past.

Elf Yourself (take two)

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

So tonight we were all gathered around the computer watching all the different dance styles and we had the best time! Every time Katie saw "herself" dancing on the screen she would burst with laughter and that would make the rest of us laugh even harder. It was great. So I decided to put Katie in the dance twice so we could hear her laugh more. :)

Craziness

Eric begged me to do one of these elf pictures after he found out that Jon Wetzger got Kim to make one for them. The website started freezing up before I could add John and Katie so we have a random elf dancing with us. Oh, the things I will do to entertain my children.

I lost the link to the website....doh! I will try again later tonight...

Eric's birthday

My baby boy just turned 8...I must be getting old, though I don't feel 8 years older.

We had a great time with 8 of Eric's friends at Nickel City. It is so much nicer to have his birthday celebration at another location other than our home. We played games for two hours and got enough tickets to have each child take home some fun prizes.

After, we went to CPK with his paternal grandparents and topped off the night with Baskin Robins. Then it was straight home to open presents! Geez, that boy is spoiled! He got so much awesome stuff he doesn't need Christmas presents for another two months at least.

The weekend was even more special with his baptism on Saturday followed by another fun evening of food and friends at the ward party. I don't have my pictures uploaded yet.

As I was putting ornaments on the tree tonight, I pulled out the "baby's first Christmas" ornament from right after Eric was born and it brings back all the memories of his wonderful baby days. Sigh.

Thanksgiving Turkey

I finally reached that milestone in my life where I think I can say that I have now done enough things to qualify me as an adult. I'm married, I have two children, I have my own home, I turned 30 this year and.....I cooked the turkey for the family Thanksgiving dinner!


I never knew such an important task was still on my list of things to do until I started freaking out about a week ago that I was going to serve a really bad turkey to my family. I swore it would either be really dry (like many of my moms in the past) or undercooked or anything horrible. It was a 23 lb turkey too, which seemed way too big for 8 people. So now that it's over and the turkey was great I feel very accomplished. My Food Network TV addiction is at least benefiting the people who have to eat the food I cook.


The only sad memory of the event is that I didn't take more pictures of my success. Thankfully my thoughtful husband John snapped this one picture while I was waiting for the temperature probe to be done. No Norman Rockwell moment for me! :(


At least you can see the color is pretty underneath the foil.

What's this?

The excitement I feel when the clouds roll in and dump buckets of water that form puddles in the lawn and create a river that flows in the streets always reminds me of the moment in the Nightmare Before Christmas when Jack discovers snow for the first time.

I know there are people that will laugh when they read this and think it's absurd to compare a 10 minute downpour to the excitement of snow. But I am a native San Diegan and besides the fact that I've only seen it snow once in my life, it only rains a handful of times a year here, and I think weather is awesome even though I never get to see it.

This is where the backyard slopes toward the concrete so it always floods here.

So, Thanksgiving morning I was distracted from all the house cleaning and prepping long enough to snap a few pictures of our precious rain. I think this is the first time Katie can remember it pouring so hard and she loved it. We opened the garage so she could see the rain and watch as the river in the street got bigger. In true SD fashion she had a tank top dress on with her blankie to stay warm. :)


Katie was so mad that we wouldn't let her run around in the driveway (with no shoes) and get drenched. John ended up holding her so she wouldn't run away. I wish the picture didn't cut off her feet so you could see that she didn't have shoes.



All this time Eric was inside coloring in some book and couldn't care less...maybe he's seen the rain a few dozen times and doesn't think it's cool anymore.

The best part was that the rain ended and the roads dried up enough before our family had to travel down to our house for dinner.