Merry Christmas to All!

Christmas morning was so exciting this year with Ethan! I kept waking up all night in anticipation, I kept having dreams that he would somehow get out of his port-a-crib and have Christmas morning without us!

When he came around the corner he saw his Thomas the Train track set up, he paused on the stairs for a second and said, "oh," then he ran over to the train track and pretty much hasn't stopped playing with it yet. He also sleeps and eats with the Thomas engine in his hand. We had so much fun watching him play and discover everything. (I will post some videos for Grammy Tammy when I get home). Santa knew just perfectly what Ethan wanted this year! He was so excited and overwhelmed...he didn't wake up til 9:00 and was already asleep taking a nap by 11:00.

I had fun making Ethan a Thomas blanket in the late hours before leaving town...I loved that he hugged it and loved it!

We spent the rest of the day with Clark's family...snowmobiling, sledding, eating hot dogs from the grill, playing games and having a lot of fun! It was such a wonderful day, Clark has loved being able to be home for Christmas with all of the traditions he grew up with!

Clark got his dad a remote control airplane for Christmas. When he opened it he said, "wow if you live long enough you get everything you ever wanted!"

Right before the maiden voyage (everything wasn't quite charged)...so stay tuned for the real maiden voyage.

Christmas Eve

(Thanks for the picture(s) Lucy - mine didn't turn out as good as yours)!

Christmas Eve was so much fun! There were 17 of us that gathered together for the festivities, so we were a full house.

The evening started out with Clark and his Dad lighting the luminarias up their road and around their driveway, it looked so pretty!

We had a wonderful dinner, enjoyed the musical talents of family members, listened to the Christmas story from Luke and the Night Before Christmas, and played a fun matching candy bar game.

We ended the evening with a fun pinata!

Ethan had a blast running all night with his cousins, he only got mad when we wouldn't let him play us a piano solo during the talent show!

His cousin Seth is so patient and kind to little Ethan!

Before going to bed Clark got revenge on his parents for never letting him open a gift on Christmas Eve by making them open a present!

Both Grandma and Grandpa got new Christmas jammies, and gave us a fashion show right on the spot!

Then Ethan got to open his new jammies!

This year he was still too little to really understand what Christmas Eve means...but he definitely understood that Christmas Eve is a huge party and tons of fun!

A Norman Rockwell Christmas Painting...(almost)

An old fashioned train, snow falling...runny nose, and a funny expression trying to keep snowflakes out of his eyes makes this almost picture perfect!

Our little Ethan loves trains so we braved the snow and took him downtown to see the Polar Express leaving. I don't think he realized trains were so BIG and LOUD! He clutched onto Clark for dear life when it went right in front of us and blew its whistle. CHOO-CHOO!

On the 5th, 6th, and 7th Days of Christmas...

My favorite boys and I have enjoyed sledding and snow mobiling in the yard, playing with cousins (lots of wrestling and running for Ethan), napping, bad haircuts at Walmart, Christmas party at church, and enjoying being with family!

Pretty perfect days!

A Year of Growth!

In case you were wondering if Ethan has grown in the last year...these pictures should give the proof! Tonight Clark put him in his Christmas Eve outfit from last year and I couldn't stop laughing. Even the hat was too small.

We think he is at such a fun age! It is amazing how much he learns, he is adding new words to his vocabulary everyday...today in a very angry voice he told me "no" for the first time. Here are some fast fun facts about Ethan at 20 months old!

He has claimed my cupboard as his shed for his train. As soon as I put it back in its toy box, I find it back in the "shed" and my cereal removed to the floor.

I love when he gets in the "shed" and shuts the door behind him saying, "bye-bye." When he wants me to find him I hear him yell, "knock knock."

He is becoming quite independent. 2 weeks ago when we were at church he was so anxious to go to nursery during the closing song and prayer. As soon as we said "amen," Clark and I started packing up his stuff and talking to people. After a minute I noticed Ethan was GONE! I got to the foyer just in time to see his red curls turning the corner at the end of the hall, he was sprinting straight to nursery! I walked down there to make sure he made it okay, he was busy playing with a puzzle (I felt a little bad being surrounded by kids crying and clutching on to their parents, when Ethan just looked at me and said, "bye-bye," with a look like why are you here mom I got this covered).

I love to hear him sing. He can sing "baa baa blacksheep," the abc song, and "we are a happy family." Now he doesn't actually sing any real words...just his own babble, but he stays right on tune. It is quite impressive.

I love that he talks to his stuffed animals while he is falling asleep. Sometimes he really gets giggling. I don't know if he is the funny one or if Brown Dog is saying something that cracks him up!

After stories and prayers, he loves to be tucked tight into bed. Then he insists that we kiss all four animals in his bed, and then all four animals cover him in kisses (this new ritual takes a couple of minutes...lots of kisses going on).

We are loving Ethan at 20 months!

WEEEEEEEE!

That is what Ethan says as we drive and slide around the rolling hills of Des Moines that are packed with snow!
I was so nervous driving Thursday I kept saying, "hold on Ethan," as we went down a hill - he thought it was a giant slide, loved it, and squealed "weeeee" all the way!
It is so fun to hear Ethan's little "wows" as he sees the world covered in snow for the first time, I wonder what he is thinking!

Santa's Little Helper

The Christmas before we moved to Iowa, Clark & I participated with the youth group at our church to adopt a family for Christmas. It was such a good experience, I missed being involved in something like that last year.
This year I am on the board for our spouses's club at school - I thought with all of us helping out (even on our student loan budgets) we could sponsor a family for Christmas. Through the Big Brothers Big Sisters club I found a family living on a very small income that has no extra money at all for Christmas gifts. Members of our club donated money and gifts from their wishlist for our little family. It has been a lot of fun and a lot of work pulling this project together.
This week we were supposed to meet to gather all of the gifts and get them ready to go...unfortunately the "Blizzard 09" blew in and our meeting was canceled...so this week has been a lot of scrambling for me to gather all of the gifts that were due today! Thanks to Clark we got everything right in the nick of time!

Hauling it out to the car!

It was so fun to organize everything last night and put all of the gifts out around our tree, I'm so excited for the kids on Christmas morning!

Even though there have been a few moments of stress, and lots of time in the carseat for Ethan...today dropping the stuff off made it all worth it. There were many families that were adopted and all the donations were due today. The entire lobby was filled with gifts - toys, bikes, clothes, etc. It was awesome to see the spirit of Christmas in action! As I drove away listening to "Oh Holy Night," on Lite 104.1 I was a little teary. I was just so filled with gratitude for all the blessings in my life, and filled with joy being able to help someone in need. I have learned that anytime I am serving others I get more out of it than the person being served.

"The joy of brightening other lives, bearing each others' burdens, easing other's loads and supplanting empty hearts and lives with generous gifts becomes for us the magic of Christmas." ~ W. C. Jones

Snowed In Part 2

So about noon today we started to feel the effects of not leaving the house for 2 days! Clark decided to go shovel us out of our house so we joined him.
Getting Ethan in his snow suit, boots, and mittens reminded me a lot of "A Christmas Story," the scene where Randy's mom is bundling him up for school and he can't put his arms down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW4IZ0Flh3M (Click on this link to see the scene).

Ethan was not happy with the situation at all! But we finally got him bundled up.

Our unhappy little linebacker. After we got him ready to go he refused to move. I finally coaxed him to walk a little bribing him with a Skittle in the video below. Sorry it is shaky, I was laughing so hard at his choppy little steps.

(my video wouldn't process, I'll add it later)

We lasted about 5 mins. outside. When the weather says feels like -10 and wind, that means cold! Poor Clark is still attempting to shovel us out!

Snowed In

We are officially snowed in! Literally, there is a drift by our back door that keeps me from opening it! Clark's school was even canceled. We got quite a bit of snow and then on top of that the wind is really hititng us today, the snow is drifting and it is impossible to even see our street right now. Pretty much everything is closed down.

I knew the storm was coming so I prepared by buying a few essentials so I wouldn't have to even leave the house yesterday and today. Yesterday Ethan and I stayed in our jammies most of the day, we enjoyed a movie night with popcorn last night and liked watching the snow around our lit Christmas tree with hot chocolate in our hands...

Then this morning Clark pointed out we were running really low on one essential item...WE ONLY HAVE 6 DIAPERS LEFT!!! (2 swim diapers in case of emergency) Do you think we can potty train Ethan in one day!?!? (I guess my pregnancy brain strikes again!

Should have just stayed in bed this morning...

This is my calendar for December:

It says: "If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something."

This morning I woke up not feeling very well, but I tried to be a productive person so I hauled Ethan out into the windy freezing day to run some errands and grocery shop.

When I ran upstairs to get ready Ethan came up about 5 minutes later with a really guilty look on his face holding a purple marker out to me. I asked Ethan if he did something naughty. He just held out his little hand and led me to the damage. In such a short time he had drawn on the walls that lead up to the stairs, he must have had a hard time getting the lid off because he also splattered ink all over the walls (much higher than where he can reach). All I had to say was, "oh no." He felt so bad he wouldn't even look at me. I had him sit in a time out chair for about a minute. I didn't have to lecture or raise my voice he totally punished himself. After a min. I went and kneeled by his little chair, he jumped out and gave me the biggest hug! He wouldn't let go for a couple of minutes. Although I was a little frustrated with the walls I just thought it was so cute, when he was having time out I had to go into the kitchen so he wouldn't see me giggle.

About an hour later we were at the grocery store. Ethan was getting lots of attention in his cuddly little camouflage fleece as he said, "hi" to everyone that walked by. I walked away from the cart for just a second to get some eggs. In the 30 seconds I was gone Ethan picked the plastic bottle of pizza sauce out of our cart and threw it. When I turned around I saw pizza sauce all over Ethan's face, all over the floor, the eggs...that stuff splattered everywhere! Then the lady standing about 5 feet away said, "he got some on my hand...can you check and make sure there isn't any on my coat!" She turned around and I about died!!! Her WHITE coat was covered in splotches of bright red pizza sauce! There were even large patches in her blonde hair! I grabbed a wet wipe and started dabbing at it and just made it worse. When she took off her coat and saw the mess she was mortified and was calmly freaking out. I found an employee and helped her find the bathroom. The store was really nice, they gave her a stain stick and offered to cover her dry cleaning bill. I also offered a million times to pay for the dry cleaning, and told her sorry a thousand times but I felt so bad. I ran into her 2 other times in the store and she was amazingly nice about it! But oh my, by the time we got home I was just wishing I had stayed in bed.

Luckily he has the cutest blue eyes in the world or there may have been a 20 month old on Ebay today!

Christmas with a Toddler

It is so fun to celebrate Christmas traditions this year with Ethan! He has been so excited for everything so far. He loved to help decorate the tree. We put up the rest of the decorations after he went to bed, so when he woke up the next morning it took him a full 30 mins. to walk around and look at everything new around the house. He has a countdown calendar that he opens a little door everyday and finds a treat. After getting his treat he also opens every other door just hoping there may be another (we have to put the treats in day by day).

His personalized 2009 ornament.

Ethan's biggest love right now is trains. Since every mall and event seems to have trains set up for Christmas he has been pretty excited to ride! This was the train at Festival of Trees.

He ran for the engine with 2 other little boys. He got to pull the cable to ring the bell. Everytime the train came around he would grin so big at us! Except one time when the cable came off of the engine and he had a look of panic on his face and mourned, "oh no, oh no!"

I thought this peppermint tree might inspire my mom's candy tree one day!

Last year this walking chicken terrified Ethan. This year he likes it a little better, but is still a bit nervous around it!