Family Pictures

In preparation for a big week (yup, you will find out about that later, but I'm not telling yet!) we took some family pictures yesterday. It about killed my little post op body, but I think that they turned out pretty good. It was totally last minute, but I really appreciated my family for indulging me on this one. Thanks to Aunt Manda for being our photographer!

2011

Wow, it has already been a long year. First of all, I actually celebrated New Year's Eve this year with my honey, but without kids. That's the first time in a long time.

Then I tried to catch up on some blogging...Tom thought it was ridiculous, but I thought it was quite efficient. I had pictures on two different computers, so I had to have them both up anyway. I figured--hey, might as well not waste time. While photos uploaded on one computer I would type on the other.

Then I had to deal with these little beasties. They have taken to all sleeping in the same twin bed. HELLO! I don't understand it, but they actually sleep better this way.

Then there was this...surgery...lots of surgery for my family in the last couple of months. I think that our New Year's resolution should have been to avoid hospitals! I don't have the emotional strength right now to blog about the surgery, but maybe someday. I should have a journal that isn't public for things like this.

Christmas Day

So there were too many stories and pictures to make just one Christmas post this year. This was the "Petermill" (too many "Peterson" families, so we throw maiden names in to differentiate) family loot. Santa left quite a haul this year.

We had a bit of a rough morning as Santa couldn't locate some of the gifts, and then Mom and Dad found out that the camera batteries were dead. Strangely enough, Mommy found a surprise in her stocking that helped out. After acting like a child and having a minor temper tantrum, Daddy forced Mommy to look in my stocking where I found my new iPod Touch. Great, thanks...(I was still too mad to be truly grateful--I wasn't going to have any pictures of my kids on Christmas morning) then finally Daddy said "I think that is the one with a camera in it. DUH! I got some pics and some video of the morning after all. The pictures got better and better as I figured out the details of the camera. Plus, Santa got me some pretty great stuff that I wasn't expecting!

I found out that Santa totally failed by not bringing "Pillow Pets," but here are some of the favorites anyway:

The kids each got a movie, which they loved!

The Peterson boys got a big Ferrari, and they loved it...so did the girls!

The girls (T and Liz) got a real porcelain tea set, which they thoroughly enjoyed...so did the little boys!

By far the Christmas morning favorite was the trains. Owen got several mini train sets, which Graham loved too, so they fought. Then Graham got some trains too, so naturally they fought over those. They couldn't just be happy with what they got, or share both. Rascals! This is a terrible picture, but it is just how the morning looked!

We tried the pre-church family photo again. It worked a lot better without the bead in the nose!

CHRISTMAS!!

Christmas is wonderful, can I just say that? This year we celebrated with the Petersons, which includes several traditions. First of all--Grampy pancakes. Its a rule--whenever Grampy is around in the morning he HAS to make Grampy pancakes. He is amazing with pancake batter!

Then there is the traditional "see how many grandbabies you can fit in the tub." In this case, it was only four, but then there was the fabulous addition of a fully clothed Grammy joining them after a very persuasive Liz told Grammy that she got her clothes wet and soapy in the washer, so why not in the tub?

Then there was the preparation for the traditional meal. The Peterson family Christmas Eve tradition is to make a ridiculous amount of food, then gorge for several days. Ok, so not really, but the tradition is that each person requests 1-3 food/drink/dessert items and then ALL of them are prepared for Christmas Eve dinner. The kids loved being in on the fun!

After the feast we had a presentation of the nativity story. I was fortunate to be assigned the role of "audience member." Here's how the rest of the cast went: Narrator-Jon, Mary-Tori, Joseph-Grampy, Wise Men-Sam, Tom and Owen, shepherds-Grammy and Susie, Inn Keeper-Graham, and Angel-Lizzie. All costumes provided by Grandma and Grandpa Great. They were pretty awesome too!

Finally we got to put jammies on,

and then the last tradition--the "fountain." Usually its only on Mom's head, but this time we made an exception.

And to those more mature Petersons reading this--don't forget to drop by Fanny Funnel's!

Pre-Christmas

Christmas is always crazy, and this year was no exception. Along with the normal family preparations, and the preparations for the travel, we had the preschool, first grade, and primary preparations. Here was my December...

I did another 10 for 10 card party. I love doing them, and I love having time to sit and chat, but I can't say that they are totally stress free. I seem to be completely unable to function without procrastinating. I always wait until the last moment to do anything. This was no exception. I received a large quantity of new supplies and wanted to try a bunch of them out. There was a lot of fun stuff, but I probably should have slowed the pace a bit. Here are a few of the cards we did this year:

Next up were the school Christmas parties. I had wonderful parents that did the parties for the preschool, so I just had to attend. After those were finished I was in charge of the "winter party" for T's first grade class. I was a little stressed when I found out that I was actually going to end up as the orchestrator for ALL of the first grade classes. The hardest part about planning parties for public schools is the fact that they are not holiday parties at all. This one had to be a winter party...no reindeer, no Santa, no elves, not even a wreath or some holly. So, what did we do? We ended up making marshmallow igloos and snowmen. The igloos were not edible, but the snowmen were, and the kids LOVED it. I ended up with more help than I anticipated from the other moms, which was a huge relief. The best part? T was THRILLED to have me in her class. There will come a day when my little angel will be embarrassed to have her mother at things like that, so I was really enjoying listening to her tell people that "it was

her mom's idea" or that "her mom was in charge." She had fun, so it was all worth it.

The Sunday before Christmas is always fun because the kids get to wear their new clothes! This year we had added excitement because the girls' dresses were being made just for them (no, NOT by me!!). They turned out gorgeous! The wonderful seamstress, Jacqui, also made a little bow tie for my little man. Let's be honest. They looked great!

That Sunday I had meetings before church, so I got the girls' hair etc. done so that Daddy could just put on clothes and come. When they met me at the church they looked great! YAY Daddy! After only a couple of quick pictures in the foyer, Owen started freaking out. He kept saying that there was something in his nose and it hurt. Well, duh! His finger is always up his nose, so maybe he should stop picking his nose and it would stop hurting. That's what his extremely sympathetic mother said. Then he screamed, "THERE'S A BEAD IN MY NOSE!" What?!? Sure enough, he had stuck a bead up his nose. The priceless picture below is so perfectly my kids. T making a weird face, Liz messing with her mouth, and O screaming about something up his nose.

Thank heavens for our wonderful friends/medics, the Perrys who were able to use the chapel as a clinic that afternoon and fish out the offending bead.

That night we went over to Nana and Papa's house for dinner. Then we got to have a mini Christmas celebration since we were going to be out of town.

Just a couple of days before we left we had a surprise visitor. Santa himself stopped by (he had been delivering gifts to people in the ward, and had some extra time). The kids were amazed! The real Santa is so tall, and so happy! After he left they spent a lot of time debating about whether this was the real Santa or just a helper....I am pretty sure he had them convinced!

The Drive...yup--it gets its own post!

The drive to St. George to celebrate Christmas gets its very own post. Why? It was THAT eventful! We had been watching the weather for days. Everything was fine. The winter has been so mild in Colorado that there really wasn't any need for concern. Just to be extra safe, Tom took extra time off work so that our travel plans would be flexible. We figured that way we could leave early if a storm was coming...which it did. Luckily for us, the people that we were caravaning with were also flexible. We ended up leaving on Tuesday afternoon instead of early Wednesday morning to avoid the need to drive in the dark or in the snow. The plan was to leave between 3 and 4 in the afternoon and stay the night in Grand Junction (about a 4 hour drive). We left at around 3:50 and made it about an hour in safety and calm. Then Tori started to complain of a stomachache. We were in my Dad's car, so she was sitting in the middle. We figured it was just a little motion sickness and told her to close her eyes and try to rest. It wasn't....we were emptying every plastic bag in the car to try to...well...ya know. Then we hear on the radio that the tunnel is closed and there is a haz mat spill inside. "Explosive material" was in the tunnel and all traffic was diverted over Loveland Pass. Little did I know that Loveland Pass was treacherous, slow, and a single lane in each direction. As we were waiting in the painfully slow traffic approaching the pass, the car we were caravaning with got a flat tire...it took us just over an hour to fix it. Thank heaven's it was before we got to the pass! Tori had a minute to take care of her extra business outside the car too...yay! We made the 20 mile journey over the pass in about 2 hours. We are finally going a blistering 45 mph when we hit some lovely black ice (since it is now snowing, and about 10:00 PM). I threw the car into 4 wheel drive, and on we continued. Until the car just in front of the far we were caravaning with flipped...yup flipped. We got there in time to watch the two teenage boys climb out safely. Next was what I like to call "the mist of darkness" which was a fog so thick we couldn't see two lengths ahead of us, at 11:30 at night, on an icy road. SO FUN! We made it to the hotel parking lot shortly after midnight, and just in time for Liz to get sick. AAAAAAAAA! Lovely. We started out again early the next morning and came upon a boulder that had fallen in the road about 5-10 minutes before we got there. CAN THIS ACTUALLY BE HAPPENING? We made it the rest of the way with monsoon like rains as our only obstacle. The drive back was completely uneventful.