Happy December!

What a way to welcome December. Look what we got delivered personally to our house tonight?? Thank you Melissa and kiddos for such a fun treat. Did I mention how HAPPY we are to have back in Cali?

Some Vaca Faves

My dad took me and the kids to feed the ducks after breakfast at Dees. It is so beautiful in Utah. I cannot visit without a longing to come back. I think it's just because it's home.




Later that night we went to Temple Square with my dad. It was great to take the kids to look at the lights. It was so cold, but worth it! Little Isaac fell asleep on the walk over there from Gateway and missed the whole thing. He was not going to wake up!


Visiting Clark Planetarium


The boys were so happy to get to Aunt Lisa's and have a friend to play with. They loved playing with Parker and all the kids stayed up until midnight! We loved visiting Lisa and her family. I want to live there and have a farm!

Turkey... take 2

After our turkey dinner, we came back to Grandma Williams' for another round of turkey- desert turkeys. The kids had fun putting these together, but Eric and my dad had the most fun. They were very proud of their turkeys

A Meredith Family Thanksgiving

I am so happy that we decided to go to Utah for Thanksgiving. It was fun to be around so much family and see all the little kids running around together. Our family is so large that we have to hold it in a public place. This year it was at the institute building at SLCC. I have many memories of Thanksgiving at churches growing up. The day was filled with basketball for the bigger boys, an argument or actual fight resulting from the basketball game, FOOD, some killer games of hide n go seek, and playing scrabble with Dustin in the coat room. This year was much the same. There was basketball, and lots of good food, and lots of kids. It was a great day!

Amber, Megan, Missy
Jackie, Me, Cami



Halle, Paige, Matt & Carla
I am so happy that we decided to go to Utah for Thanksgiving. It was fun to be around so much family and see all the little kids running around together. Our family is so large that we have to hold it in a public place. This year it was at the institute biulding at SLCC. I have many memories of Thanksgiving at churches growing up. The day was filled with basketball for the bigger boys, an argument or actual fight resulting from the basketball game, FOOD, some killer games of hide n go seek, and playing scrabble with dustin in the coat room. This year was much the same. There was basketball, and lots of good food, and lots of kids. It was a great day!

Another Birthday Boy!!

(no candles at Applebees... blowing out his cherry stem)

Isaac had his 3rd Birthday while we were in Utah for the Thanksgiving Holiday. We gave him his present... the Imaginext Batcave, and headed off to the Planetarium and to see some other fun stuff in down town Salt Lake. We had dinner at Applebees and the waiters sang him a Birthday song.

Isaac is the wild card in our family! He has such a crazy personality and has been very different from the first two. He is so much fun though! He is not too social and loves to play alone in his room with toys. He LOVES to play with his siblings and prefers playing with them to anyone else. He loves watching movies and then "being" the characters from the shows.

Favorites

Color: Blue

Time of Day: Morning... he wakes up so happy!

Food: Yogurt

Friend: Gavin

Movie: right now, Hurcules, pronounced "Turkules"

Place to Go: Park or Chuck E. Cheese

Church Song: Once There Was a Snowman

Clothing Item: "Comfy" pants

Cereal: Special K with Red Berries

Gavin's Disney Birthday

For Gavin's birthday trip to the Kingdom, it was just going to be the two of us because Eric was working. We dropped Isaac off at my mom's and Halle at school and headed out. When we got there I rolled up to the parking booth to pay my arm and a leg of $14 parking. I had a ten and two ones and figured I could scrounge up the rest in my change saver in my car. Well, the attendent became impatient with my scrounging so I decided to suck it up and pull out my debit card... that WASN'T THERE!! I carry NO credit cards becuase I always have the Debit card! I told her I was just short and was already panicking inside my head about the ENTIRE day let alone the parking. AND my gas light had come on right off the freeway so I was gonna need gas to get home. She said I had to "Work out my issues" and then come back... I was holding up the line. She put a bright pink "EXIT" sign on my car and said they would show me out. I pulled forward and the other aprking attendents waved me at each station only I ended up in a parking space. Maybe they didn't see it? I didn't know, but decided to stay so I could, in fact, "work out my issues."


Long story short, Eric was able to leave work and rescue us with some money and paid parking! Gavin decided on his day to not go on anything scary (this includes Pirates, people! yikes) and that he wanted to leave early so he could play with his new Star Wars ship that he bought with his gift card. We rode the Buzz Lightyear ride, Star Tours, Monsters, Inc, and some rides in the Bugs Life world. He picked out a special birthday cupcake and loved his special day with just Mom and Dad, but admitted that is was more fun to be there with Halle and Isaac. aww.....


Gavin loved all the Christmas decorations. It really is beautiful at Christmastime!


At the Plaza Inn where we must eat Chicken Pesto-Alfredo Pasta with his ship.

In the Beast's Library finding out which character he is most like

...... FLICK!!

I saw this on a blog today and it made me smile:

Gavin is FIVE

I am a couple days behind... but Gavin had a Birthday!!!

I can't believe how time is flying. Sometimes I really freak out when I realize that my Mama to Babies days are coming to an end.

So, Gavin... who started out my huge, CHUBBA BUBBA is probably now my smallest built kid. He still has the same calm and good-natured personality that he had even as a baby. He is very thoughtful and is the kid most likely in the house to give up something of his to make someone else happy. He is such a sweet boy and I love him so much!

All about Gavin

Favorite Thing To Do: Play Toys

Favorite Color: Red

Favorite Food: Chicken Nuggetts

Favorite Drink: Water

Favorite TV Show: Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Favorite Friend: Ian and Ethan

Favorite Place to Go: Disneyland!!

Favorite Church Song: How Firm a Foundation

Sunday Is a Special Day...

Multiple times during the week in the morning, my boys will ask, "Is it church day today?" They like church, especially singing time and seeing their friends, but they despise wearing the dressier clothes. The MINUTE we get home, those things are comin' off. Here is Isaac about 10 secinds in the door headed upstairs to get his comfies on...

Pizza Making at CPK

We love CPK. My HMWOF Mommy Group set up a tour at CPK for us one morning. They let the kids see all the "behind-the-scenes" stuff and then they let them make their own pizzas!! It was so much fun and they were so nice and great with the kids. It started at 9am and we were done by 10:30- so it was all before regular bisiness hours. We have always enjoyed eating there {try the Tricolore next time} and now we have even more to reason to love them.

Spreading the sauce- making sure to leave a "crust" as instructed.

Mmmmm... cheese.

Enjoying a delicious lunch.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand...

My boys are so silly! We went to walk around the mall a little bit after our CPK tour and Isaac was admiring the manequins. Gavin said" Isaac, is that your girlfriend??" To which Isaac replied, "Yes!" Then Isaac walked up to one and held her hand and just stood there with a goofy look on his face. Then he proceeded down the line of gilrls and held each of their hands.

Halloween House

I love decorating for the Holidays! It something the kids love and I think they will always remember this tradition of decorating for each holiday and season. They are elated when we get out the bins! We made some special Halloween stuff this year and had a lot of fun doing it.

I wanted to make a Halloween advent calendar so I saw an idea similair to this on a craft blog sometime and wanted to make one. eric framed the sheet metal and I painted and embellished craft boxes to each hold a small treat/toy. Each day the kids took turns opening the boxes. I still need to add numbers on the boxes... I was having a hard time finding the right stickers at the store. I need to try retaking the pics as well; they came out pretty poorly.

Messy Palaydate

We had a messy play date at a very brave friends house the other day!

Objective: to bring all kind of interesting "messy" items and let the kids go wild

Ingredients included~to name a few~ oatmeal, flour, noodles, finger paint, corn meal, jello, pudding, whip cream, etc.

It gets pretty gross. Each kid perfectly presented their personality in how they played.

Halle dove right in. She enjoyed smearing things all over and was able to test out much of her constant curiosity.

Gavin enjoyed homself, but doesn't like things in his hair or all over his body and clothes. He walked arounf but never fully let loose and embraces the mess.

And then there's my Isaac. Who wouldn't be caught dead in something so utterly rediculous!

Apple Picking

This was one of our great many adventures! We left in the morning to go to Oak Glenn to do some apple picking with our Meetup friends. We decided to try out Snowline this year becuase I had heard they had apple cider donuts and that just sounded fabulous! (Read: they are and you have to go get some!!)

While waiting in the parking lot a bee stung me in the armpit! It hurt!! We went inside to learn that they don't have a u-pick program there and so there will be no apple picking on this apple picking trip. So we comforted ourselves with fresh cider and cider donuts. Yum! I also discovered an apple type that I love: Honey Crisp.

We thought maybe Riley's Farm was allowing apple picking so we traveled down the road a ways to check it out. We found out that they had pear picking so we decided this would do. We treked up the hill to the pear trees. There were lots of them, but all the lower fruit had been picked and the fallen fruit was swarming with bees... millions of them. The kids were scared because my earlier stinging incident and too scared to get near the trees. Ironically no one was stung where there were thousands of bees.

the little boys trying to knock the fruit down with sticks!

Jenny and I were determined to pick fruit though. We tried hauling a bale of hay to stand on (not very effective and very heavy) and then we found an old farm chair (rickety and the fruit fell and hit Jenny in the face while she was holding the chair for me). Then Jenny spotted the pickers!! And then we were able to fill out bag with fruit! The pears were small but very tasty! We made a pear crisp the next week and it was delicious!!

Thanks for sharing our adventure with us Jenny and Brody!!