Aren't we clever?!

So every year we get chocolate advent calenders for the kids. You know, the kind where you open a little door each day and get a cute little Christmas item-shaped piece of chocolate? So while I was at Trader Joe's the other day I picked up 3 of them (the chocolate has milk in it, so of course Brennan can't eat it). Later Dave mentioned that Brennan would feel really left out and that we should get him some candy to eat at the same time the kids eat their calendar chocolate. He then had the idea that we could buy another calendar, eat all the chocolate ourselves, then fill the spaces with Brennan's alternate candy. Then I took the idea one step further and decided to melt our dairy-free semisweet chocolate chips and pour it into the molds right in the calendar! So we bought another calendar last night on our date and fixed it all up as soon as we got home. The whole process only took a few minutes. Then I put it in the freezer to harden the chocolate and closed all the doors, so it looks just like the other 3. Why do I get so excited about Brennan eating yummy food just like every one else? There's so much he misses out on that I love it when he can take part in our traditions with us.

Not so happy anniversary

Yesterday was our 10th anniversary and Brennan's birthday. It's a good thing we already celebrated both, because Dave had the stomach flu. It was weird because he never gets sick. In fact I don't think he had thrown up since we had kids. He was up all night, and although he felt a little better during the day, he was still pretty sore and worn out. He said he wasn't sure how much the muscle aches were from vomiting and how much were from playing football. Needless to say, we didn't go out on a date as we had planned. But he's feeling much better today, so we will go out tonight instead. Brennan finished up the rest of his cake and opened his last present after dinner. He was SO excited to get doggie jammies. He ran around barking all evening.

Thanksgiving and Brennan's B-day

Our holiday began on Wednesday. It started out raining, which is a big deal around here. It was a lovely cozy morning of baking pies, sweet potato souffle and birthday cake. Dallin and Brennan were excited to help. Isn't my cherry pie beautiful? Then Dave and the boys all got home early (working for a specialist sure has its advantages over urgent care - I don't remember the last time Dave got off early the day before Thanksgiving or the day after). We went to see Madagascar II, but it was sold out. To say that we were disappointed would be an understatement. So we went home and rode bikes (it had stopped raining by then), fed the missionaries (I cheated and bought pizzas), then dropped Brennan off at Kristen's house so he could go to bed there and took the other 3 to see the movie. It was really fun - maybe even better than the first one. And we practically had the place to ourself.

Thursday morning Dave went to church for the turkey bowl (flag football), and had a blast. He said there was just enough mud to make it exciting. Then we had Thanksgiving dinner with my parents, grandpa, uncle Michael, Ben and of course Kristen's family. My dad had to go to work at 2:30, so we ate around 12:30. Poor grandpa had to get up in the middle of the night to join us. I think he got up around 11:30.

All the food was super yummy and I was good at not stuffing myself silly. It was a nice day (we were grateful it wasn't raining), and the kids played at the park while the adults visited and napped.

Then we had Brennan's birthday celebration. I found the recipe for his cake in a South Beach Diet cookbook of all places. It was a flourless chocolate cake, which I figured would work out wellsince I wouldn't have to substitute it (flour substitutes get weird). Instead it called for finely-ground almonds. I did have to substitute with soy milk, vegan margarine, soy yogurt and egg substitute, but the thing actually turned out quite good. It was very rich and fudgey, and Kristen said it was like a truffle cake. I iced it with chocolate icing (vegan margarine and soy milk) and melted chocolate chips to write the words.

He blew it out all by himself on his first try (we practiced beforehand). Yum! Brennan ate his cake with chocolate soy ice cream while the rest of us ate our pies.Yay - bath toys! Happy Birthday Brennan!

Highs and Lows

We play a game at dinner called Highs and Lows, which we got from the video Junior's Giants. We go around the table and each person tells their high for the day, or the best thing that happened, then their low, or the worse thing that happened. Our kids love it, and it's a great way to find out about each other's day. Often the high is something so simple, like Dave will say his high is coming home or one of the kids will say their high is eating a cookie. There have been days where one of our children has one meltdown after another, and yet at dinner they will say they didn't have any lows. I almost want to suggest one for them, but if they have forgotten all those lows, I figure that's a good thing. We include our guests in the game, and this is especially interesting. For instance one time we had the missionaries over and one of the elders said his high was the meal I had prepared and the low was that he had to go to the bathroom really bad before they came to our house. When we had those 2 little kids staying with us, the 6 year old girl said her high was that she was all alone at school and a girl came up to her and asked to play with her. Her low was that she had been all alone because her best friend said she didn't want to be her friend anymore. I don't think we'd ever had a high or a low like that in our family before. We always ask Brennan about his high and low, because of course he wants to be included, and he just jabbers away. Then a few days ago he pointed up to the ceiling for high and down to the floor for low. See? He knows what's going on.

Our weekend

Yesterday was the primary program at church. This is always one of my favorite Sundays of the year. After we take the sacrament, the primary children in the ward (ages 3-12) go up on the stand and present talks and songs to tell us what they've been learning all year. Our boys worked hard to memorize their lines, and they all did a great job. It was so dang cute to see Dallin get up there with total confidence and say loud and clear, "I am a child of God. I feel his wuv (love) when I think about Jesus." Spencer also played We Thank Thee O God For A Prophet on the piano during the prelude. He was nervous and didn't play it as well as the hundreds of times he practiced it at home (he had it memorized), but it was a good experience for him, since it was the first time he's played in front of people.
Saturday morning was the cub scout pack meeting. They did a service project to clean up the leaves in the field behind the church. All the kids had a great time (while I sat and visited with Kristen - I love having them in our ward because it makes church activities more fun).

Those kids didn't stop working for almost 2 hours. And then we had grilled hot dogs for lunch.


Here's Dallin being the "I like to move it move it" guy from Madagascar.

One piece of sad news - a little 7 year old girl at church was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Dave is her mom's home teacher, so he went down to the hospital to give her a blessing yesterday morning. Before he left I suggested he offer to have her 2 other little kids stay with us, since they can walk to school from our house. She agreed, and Dave picked them up from their grandpa's house after church yesterday. They are the sweetest little kids, and we are thoroughly enjoying having them here. She has a 7 year old boy (they're twins) and a 6 year old girl. They're supposed to come home from the hospital sometime today.

The movie we've all been waiting for

My wonderful husband took me to see Twilight last night. I bought the tickets in the morning, which is good because both theaters were sold out by that evening. It started out a bit doubtful (lots of narrating, which I think is a cheating way of telling a story in a movie) and cheesy acting, but I liked it more and more as it went on.The casting in this movie was awesome. All the Cullens were great (except Jasper - we couldn't help but laugh whenever we saw him. I know he was supposed to be in pain, but he just looked constipated). I also really liked her high school friends Jessica and Angela. Mike could have been better-looking and Eric didn't look or act anything like I imagined, but he sure was fun. One of my favorite supporting actors in the movie was Bella's dad. He was cute and had a few really funny lines.
Although neither of the 2 main characters were quite how I imagined them as I read the book, I still really liked them both, and they worked great together. Edward started out on the scary/moody side, but as they got together he cheered up and got much less frightening.
Okay, so he's still a vampire and wants to drink Bella's blood, but Oh! how that makes him more appealing. Don't ask me why, it just does. I LOVED the vampire aspect of the movie - seeing it on the screen was so much more vivid than the book - especially when she's researching vampires online. That part was just awesome. And Dave actually enjoyed the movie too. He liked the action and the cinematography. It was a great date movie. I can't wait to see how they do the 2nd book with the wolves and Italian vampires. They better hurry up, too, because of course Edward has to stay 17.

Random Updates

having a picnic lunch at the park

Dallin has dicovered Mousse and wants to use it everyday

1. I didn't get my coconut fix in Hawaii, so I made coconut cookies this week. They were scrumptious. I might need to make them again.
2. I'm excited to see Twilight tonight!
3. Dallin is much calmer today after preschool (2 days off wears us out).
4. Can you believe Brennan turns 2 next week?! I think we're going to celebrate his birthday on Thanksgiving, since we'll all be together. He can't eat pie anyway, so I'll make him a special cake.
5. Spencer is struggling with his 7X's. I don't blame him; sometimes I forget 7x8 myself.
6. Dave's still doing training for his new job, but so far he likes it. I like having him leave later and come home earlier. We even got to have family home evening on Monday this week.
7. I've done some Christmas shopping and come up with more ideas. I feel so on top of things when I start before Thanksgiving. The best year was when I had Brennan and had it all done before he was born.
8. I am loving this fall weather. It's been in the 70's, breezy and pretty. Everywhere I go I feel overwhelmed by the beauty. We even went to 3 different parks this week.
9. Tyler is reading better and better every day. It's like it has just clicked for him, which is really exciting.
10. I ordered cute dark brown truffle boxes with the intention of making truffles this year. Wish me luck.

The Santa talk

I took Spencer to a doctor's appointment this week, and since Brennan was the only other person in the van with us, I decided it was a good time to talk to him about Santa. I was not looking forward to this because it felt like saying goodbye to a piece of his childhood, but I knew it was time. It went really well - he had obviously been thinking about it quite a bit. He amazed me with his deep observations:

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1. If all men are created in the image of God, how can there be elves?

2. It's not cold everywhere on Earth for Christmas because it's summer south of the equator, so Santa would get too hot in all his fur clothes.

3. There isn't actually any land on the north pole - just water, so how can Santa live there?

4. It isn't good to just eat cookies and milk, so Santa must be really unhealthy.

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Even though he had come to the conclusion on his own, he still wondered about all those times he heard reindeer on the roof (we never did that, so I'm not sure either) or who ate the reindeer food we put outside (rabbits? who knows), and those were the evidences that kept him believing. He didn't seem to be disappointed, and in fact he's really excited to be a part of the magic this year. As a tradition in my family, the person who learns about Santa gets to be Santa that year and put all the toys out after everyone goes to bed. But still, I'm a little sad to see his Santa years come to an end.

Last post about Hawaii

This will be my last post about Hawaii. It seems so long ago now, but I've enjoyed reliving it through my blog. Here's a little Hawaiian boy skim-boarding like I've never seen it done before. He was really good. He would run, jump on his board, go into the wave at an angle, reach down into the water and turn around 180 degrees, then ride the wave in. It was quite entertaining.
I loved the trees in Hawaii! They had such funky trunks and branches. This one was at our hotel. The next few were at the Botanical Gardens, which we really enjoyed.

This was one of our favorite trees there. It had super sharp spikes and goofy-looking fruit at the top: I guess it doesn't want to share with anyone.

These hangy-down things were everywhere.

Check out that cool spider. We'd never seen anything like it.

A fun bamboo bridge at the botanical gardens.

After we left the botanical gardens we continued down the coast to Spouting Horn - a blowhole that formed in a small lava shelf where water and air are thrust through with each wave. It also made a fun loud roar with each spout.

Then we enjoyed another beautiful sunset on the southwest side of the island.

Finding treasures at Glass Beach - an interesting place near a dump where lots of glass bottles were thrown years ago - now turned to sea glass.

And now the sand is made up of glass. Isn't it beautiful?

These birds were everywhere. We thought they were so pretty. Weird not to see any seagulls at the beach - just these red-headed birds and of course lots of chickens.
Our last walk on the beach in Hawaii.

We are still amazed that it didn't rain on us. So many people I have talked to have said it rained their whole week in Kauai. I think this is the cloudiest it ever got - the day we left. It was an unforgetable week. Happy 10th anniversary Dave! And thank-you, mom, dad, Kristen and Nathan, for making it possible by watching our munchkins while we were gone.

The little hike that turned into 8 miles

We like hiking with our kids. It's free entertainment, great exercise, and a good way to enjoy the beautiful earth. So we thought it would be fun to hike in Kauai. We packed hiking boots, a water bottle and sandwiches for lunch. According to the guidebook, there was a lookout about a mile in, so that sounded like a good distance to us. The beginning of the hike was at the top of Waimea Canyon road, so we stopped and gawked at the canyon on the way up.

At the end of the road was another lookout, but this one showed the Kalalau Valley, the largest valley on Na Pali (the same one we entered in the helicopter).

Setting out on our hike.
We enjoyed views of the coast on one side and mountains on the other.
Luckily it hadn't rained in a few days. This path must get treacherous when it's all muddy. It was still quite slippery and hilly - good thing we had hiking shoes.At the bottom of that first hill we got into the jungle part of the hike. The great thing about this hike was that it wasn't only beautiful but constantly changing. There was so much to see.
When we hike as a family, we usually do 1-2 miles, since the kids are pretty tired by that point. But with just the two of us, we didn't know when to stop. So we just kept going. And the constantly-changing views kept pulling us in.
Much of the path had wooden boards covered with wires, because of all the mud.
The path was pretty hilly, and there were lots of wooden steps up and down all along the path. We were grateful for a place to stop and rest.

At the top was the Alaka'i Swamp. I half-expected crocodiles to poke their heads up out of the puddles on either side of the boards. Unfortunately we didn't see any interesting wildlife. A Hawaiian queen once attempted to build a road through to the other side, but it was too difficult and the machines got stuck. Apparently they're still there somewhere. At the end of the hike was a lookout where we were supposed to see Hanalei Bay, but it was too foggy.
The steps were much easier on the way there. Coming back, our legs got pretty dang tired. Whose idea was it to hike the whole 8 miles again?

At least they made good resting spots.

I just loved this part of the hike - it was almost like rock climbing, looking for foot and handholds and grabbing onto tree roots for balance.

The last ascent of the hike! I can just imagine a river of water flowing down this thing. Luckily we didn't see that. We had fun, but we were sure sore the next morning!