Oh Christmas Tree

Today was a nostalgia inducing day for me. Every year as a kid my family would pile into the car, rain or shine, and make the trek to a U-Cut Christmas Tree farm, march through the mud until we found the perfect tree and then take turns posing with the saw to cut down the tree. I love that this is a tradition that Scott agrees we should carry on with our own little family. We did this for several years before we had Adam, and it was always fun, but anything with a three year old is much more fun!! We didn't get a tree last year because we didn't spend Christmas at home, but we took Adam out the year before to cut down a tree. He was just over a year old and had just figured out how to walk. This year was much different!
We headed out this morning with our good friends The Markowski's to a tree farm in Carnation. It was muddy, since it had been raining, but of course, if you waited for stuff to dry out around here, you'd never do anything! The kids had great fun seeing who could get the most mud caked on their shoes. I'm pretty sure our friend's 6 year old Abby won that one! We walked from one end of the farm to the other and them back again, but I think we did find the perfect tree.


Here is the picture of Adam helping daddy cut down the tree. Yes, Scott is laying in the mud. He's such a great mountain man! (I won't tell anyone that Ryan kneeled down on a piece of plastic to cut their tree down!)
The cutting of the Christmas tree always signals the start of the Christmas season for me. (Even though I have been listening to Christmas music for at least a month!!) What a wonderful time of year. I love the trees, the lights, the cookies, everything that this particular holiday season includes. Everything works together to remind us all of the real reason for the celebration...that one bright star in the sky that signified the birth of a little baby boy who became the Savior of the World.

Santa....baby??

Last year, I was at the Mall in the afternoon of Black Friday, and realized there was no one in line to see Santa. So, Adam got his picture with Santa that day. We planned for it this year and have been talking about going to see Santa. Unfortunately, all that talking didn't help. As you can see by the picture, Adam wasn't too excited to be left on Santa's lap.

I just adore this cute Santa at Alderwood Mall. We have pictures of Adam with him for the past three Christmases now, and he doesn't ever change. It's fun to see how much Adam has grown, but Santa always looks the same. Now, if Adam would only sit on his lap and smile. I guess there's always next year!

Have you ever Wii'd?

We had such fun this afternoon playing the Wii. We started out with Wii Fit, trying out the hula hoop and getting those hips to swing! It was so funny! We graduated to the soccor game where you have to shift your weight to hit the ball with your head. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. We ended with bowling. What fun Wii had!!

Mom bobbing back and forth to hit the ball. She had a hard time figuring out all she had to do was shfit back and forth.

Aunt Nadine swinging those hips!

Great Grandma conjuring up those youthful hula hoop days!

Thanksgiving day attire...

Football is a very important part of Thanksgiving at our house.

Can you guess which team we cheered for?

Thanksgiving

We've been so lucky this week to be able to spend some time with my mom's mom or great grandma Couch. For some reason Adam has chosen to call her "Big Grandma", we're not sure why, but it sure is cute. She drove up from Idaho Falls with her sister Aunt Nadine and Nadine's husband Uncle Bart. We've had fun spending time with them over the past couple of days.

We spent Thanksgiving day in Kirkland at my parents home. Adam spent some time outside playing soccor and frisbee, and we had some great Thanksgiving food! Adam even cuddled up on a chair with big Grandma to watch part of a movie.

Thanksgiving is such a great time of year. It's always nice to be reminded of all the blessings we have. We are so richly blessed! Adam loves to say his prayers at night before going to bed. I think he's finally gotten the thanking part down. Some nights he names every person he knows - he says "thank you for Grandma, thank you for Grandpa, thank you for Wyatt, thank you for Xander", etc. Some nights it goes on and on. It's such a good reminder to be thankful for all the great people in our lives. So, in case we haven't told you lately - we are thankful for all of our great friends and such a wonderful family. You've each had a great influence in our lives! Thanks for being you and for being there for us!

I guess I'm it!

So, even though this blog is only a few weeks old, I've been tagged by three different people with the exact same tag. I decided it would be ok to just answer the tag once (mostly because I'll be lucky to come up with 7 things - so there's no way I'm coming up with 21!)

I have no idea how to link to another persons blog, but I have all three of my taggers blogs listed in my blog list over there at the left. It was Sarah (stats on the Ragatz), Heidi (the Markowski family), and Heidi (Russell, Heidi, Brielle and Hyrum) Sorry about no links - I guess I need blogging lessons!

Random/Weird #1. I had to have stitches at the ripe old age of 2 years old. I guess that's not very weird or random, but the place the stitches were placed is - they were in my tongue. Apparently I was playing in the bathroom with my older sister when I fell and somehow almost cut my tongue off. There's even a little scar...

Random/Weird #2. I have two very random and weird diseases.... PCOS and chrohn's disease.

Random/Weird #3. I LOVE Christmas music. I could listen to it all year round, and sometimes I do. I'm not sure what it is, but any kind of Christmas music will do. Although my most favorites are "The Forgotten Carols" by Michael McLean and "Christmastime" by Hilary Weeks. I also love to sing and play Christmas music!

Random/Weird #4. I randomly teach piano lessons. It's been really fun to do, but I always just have random students. At one time I was teaching over 10 kids, but right now I'm down to 1.

Random/Weird #5. I spent close to two months in the hospital at the age of 23. It started with a seeping appendix and concluded with an exploratory surgery after which I was diagnosed with Chrohn's.

Random/Weird #6. I didn't want to date Scott when he called to ask me out for our first date. (I found out later I was his last choice for asking out, because everyone else was out of town). It's a long story and it differs depending on if you ask me or Scott, but I guess it all turned out the way it was supposed too!! It's hard to believe that phone call happened almost 15 years ago!

Random/Weird #7. I love to read blogs. I could spend hours surfing around the internet hopping from one blog to the next reading about the lifes of people I know and even the people I don't know. (It's probably a good thing I don't have hours to spend!!) Not sure what it is, but I think blogging is very neat!

I now tag...Jody, Laura, mom Wallis and anyone else who feels like being tagged (once again, sorry no links)

Worken or Playen???? Saturday November 15

Well Mom had some plans Saturday morning so Adam and dad decided to go help Grandpa and Grandma rake up some of the many leaves they had in their front yard. I can't decide if Adam was worken or playen? As you can see he and Grandma got into a leaf fight! I think Adam won! However it just so happens that the place Grandma and Adam decided to have the leaf fight was also the same spot some bees decided to make a hive! They had built the hive in the ground right about the same place Adam was standing just under the canoe. Luckily they didn't get too mad, a bunch came out but I think they just wanted to see the leaf fight. However during the fight one bee decided to get a closer look and ended up inside Grandma's sweat shirt. He must have gotten scared because he stung her on the arm (so I guess Grandma did lose). So with the bees out we decided to call it an ealry day. We did get about half of the yard done which filled up one yard waste container and 11 large bags of leaves. So I'm not sure if it was work or play but it doesn't matter cause we had fun!

"I scared"

Yesterday we had one of those moments... you know, when you think your doing something that your 3-year old will just love, and it totally backfires! In all reality, we really had two of those moments! Apparently it was a very scary day for Adam.
Scott was home in the afternoon, so we decided to go see the new Madagascar movie. I had taken Adam to see "Horton hears a Who" early in the summer this year. He was a little scared when the previews came on - I think because they are always so loud!! But, once that movie started he moved back to his seat and did fine. So, we talked to him about going to a movie and he was really excited! We get to the theatre, buy the movie tickets ($7 for a child matinee ticket is ROBBERY!!), buy the popcorn and a drink. Scott even bought Adam's favorite "gummies" (gummy bears). Everything's going great, we walk through the doors and down the hallway and as soon as Adam sees that big screen he gets this look of total terror on his face, turns around and runs back down the hallway. I hand the popcorn to Scott and walk down to where Adam is standing, pick him up and walk back to Scott. This whole time Adam is quietly saying "I scared Mommy... I scared". Thinking he'll get over being scared, we tell him it's just like watching TV and head up the stairs to find a seat. Suddenly, Adam is screaming at the top of his lungs, kicking, hitting, doing everything he can to get out of my grip. We sit down, he wriggles of my lap, and starts heading back down the aisle screaming at the top of his lungs. Needless to say, we decided to leave. (Luckily there was only one other mom in the theatre with a little girl - hopefully we didn't convince her that this was a scary place to be!). As soon as we were out the of theatre, Adam was fine. The theatre manager was so nice and refunded our money both for the movie AND for our concessions - which totally shocked me!! It was so nice of her. Maybe the huge crocodile tears on Adam's cheeks helped a bit! The sad thing - as soon as we walked out of the theatre without the popcorn, Adam wanted to go watch a movie, because he wanted the popcorn!
After the failed attempt at a movie, we decided to go get some dinner, and went to this great restaurant called Susumu. It's one of those Japenses places where they cook the meal in front of you. We thought Adam would love this because he loves to help cook, he loves to watch cooking shows, he bascially loves anything having to do with cooking! We couldn't have been more WRONG - AGAIN (twice in one day really hurts!). All was fine until the guy came out in his tall red hat. He flipped his cooking utensils around and Adam was done. Crying ensued again. Scott took him away from the table and they sat over at the entrance to the restaurant and watched from a distance. Adam wouldn't even come over when Scott did so he could eat. He sat in the chairs over by the door all by himself, watching from that safe place (there were only 2 other people in the whole restaurant!). Once the chef left, Adam came back over, sat down and ate his dinner.
I guess we've really entered the "scary" part of childhood. Hopefully we didn't scar him for life by scaring him that bad twice in one day!!

I Love to see the Temple

Adam loves to sing this primary song. He always asks to sing "the temple song" and "the mission song" before going to bed. (the mission song is "I Hope they call me on a Mission"). The temple song was one of the songs our primary sang for their primary program a couple of weeks ago. Scott said that Adam sang right along with the rest of the Primary. I wish I had been sitting with him. It's so cute when he sings!

We decided to go spend some time at the temple, so Adam could have something to remember while we sing the song. He's been to a couple of different temples for weddings, but I'm not sure he realizes that when we sing this song. The Seattle temple is so beautiful! Especially with all the trees changing colors. It was a nice morning, even a little warm, so we walked slowly around the temple grounds and talked about who lived in the temple. Of course, Adam did not want to sing the temple song at the temple, but he did say "Goodbye" to Heavenly Father as we drove away. I hope he continues to love the temple as he gets older!

Halloween!

We had such a fun Halloween! Adam dressed as "Buzz Lightyear" (thanks for letting us borrow the costume, Noah!). Adam loved being Buzz. The funny thing is that his good friend, Wyatt was Woody - we didn't even plan it! They even posed for about two seconds so we could get a picture of the friends together!

Halloween night was lots of fun! We had a neighborhood potluck dinner prior to trick-or-treating. Adam had fun, once he got over being scared (he's entered a phase where he gets scared at the drop of a hat!!). He had great fun running around with his friends, "playing tag". I don't think Adam realized that's what they were doing. He just thought it was great that they were chasing him around!

After a bit, we trick-or-treated to a few homes in the neighborhood. I think Adam had the most fun answering the door and handing out candy to all the kids that stopped by our house.

I'm wondering if this might have been our last low key halloween. Will Adam have an opinion next year about what he wants to dress up as? Will he be more interested in getting as much candy as possible, instead of opening the door and giving out candy to everyone else? I guess only time will tell!