gottula christmas

Our tree and loot. Lots of wrapped presents.

Wesley engrossed in one of his presents (new pedometer) and Shane showing off one of my presents (water bath canner). Yay!

Finding presents....

The model showing off her awesome airplane shirt from Dad. She looooves it. She put it on over her PJs and it stayed on all day.

Opening... she loved opening presents. I had her open mine to keep her happy :-) After every present she was like, "nother one?" Like so cute. Just 'cause it was fun to unwrap.

Some of her cute toys... she got a blender and some other food for her kitchen, and some dress up clothes. Plus many other things. She loves this shadow flashlight books (we read them over and over last night), plus the kids looove dad's remote control helicopter. Well and Shane loves the helicopter too :-)  He's kinda a big kid.

I made bean bags for the kids :-)  Well, Wesley got a bean bag LAST year, but after Gabby pooped on it we threw out all the beans and it has lived bean-less in a drawer until now. She's clutching one of my cute surprise presents from Shane, a raccoon figure for my garden. He got me two of them, a pair, they're cute! A raccoon and a moose.

Minnie convertible from Grandma Gottula... love!

I got two pairs of Christmas socks and I asked each kid which pair I should put on.... and each kid said something different. So I had to please both of them :-)

I'm still lame from my surgery so Shane did all the cooking... I helped him with the menu and scheduling but he did all the hard work!! Turkey loaf (which I liked, but he said it tasted like spam, true), mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes with some strategically placed marshmallows to entice the kids, green bean casserole, rolls, and PIE!

Wrapped in a Christmas bow with wings... Laurel's wings. Awesome.

Do you like how Laurel is doing the dishes? She's UH-mazing.

Christmas was lovely. Orange cinnamon rolls and clementines for breakfast (kids slept in until 9 or something!), then presents, lounging around, playing with presents, big dinner, and more lounging around. I think we all stayed in PJs all day.

My arm finally felt a bit better! It's a Christmas miracle!! I woke up and actually felt capable. Still nowhere near close to normal but better. I have HOPE.

merry christmas

more december advent

After my surgery we had to keep the rest of the advent activities pretty painless. One day it was coloring Christmas pictures (Shane printed out trees), one day it was watching a Christmas movie (which they only watched half of), stuff like that. Tonight we're going out on a drive to see Christmas lights. It's actually my favorite thing to do on Christmas Eve and I can't wait. I'm glad Shane puts up with me. I loved doing it with my family when we were kids, so I wouldn't miss it. I'll be thinking of you tonight Mom & Dad while listening to Mannheim Steamroller :-)

OK, so some of our recent escapades....

1. Going to the Christmas breakfast at Church, PJs and all:

The breakfast was AWESOME. They had everyone like, make and bring the same thing. You either brought an egg casserole, cinnamon rolls, muffins, or fruit. Then we all sat on long tables and every table had a "runner" that went to the kitchen and came back with an egg casserole, a plate of assorted breads/rolls, a bowl of fruit, and pancakes and sausages (provided by the committee). Then we ate family style. It was AWESOME. No lines! The way we all sorta sat down was funny, I was on the corner next to my two kids, and across from me were FOUR other kids. Their parents were down the table. So basically, I helped the kids color on their activity sheets, and their parents all got me food :-) they were grateful I helped with the kids, and I was grateful I didn't have to move! It was awesome. Shane wasn't there so the help was appreciated. (It was a few days before my surgery and all, so that wasn't a problem or anything, I was just in charge of a lot of kids!! :-)

2. Having an adventure in downtown Seattle! We went as a family and met a friend and her two kids there.

We did the carousel... which was fun!

(That's Wesley with Emily and his carousel ticket!)

We rode the monorail to Seattle Center...

And saw the model trains! The kids got a chance to "drive" one of the trains and Wesley loved it.

3. Decorated cookies for the neighbors. This was particularly good because I made the dough BEFORE my surgery and thawed it out and cooked it a week after surgery. So it was nice most of it was done.

We had chocolate chip M&M cookies (Twining specialty), sugar cookies, chocolate covered pretzels (easy enough), and mock toffee that you make with Saltines which is SERIOUSLY CRACK. IT IS SO GOOD. I am SO LUCKY I only made half a pan TO SHARE because I'd eat every. single. bite. It's good. And dangerous.

I let the kids go crazy with the sugar cookie decorations. Why not? Laurel wasn't as into it. She'd poke her frosting and eat all the decorations. Wesley however really had a good time. It was cool!

Here he's giving one of his sugar men "feet," which I just loved. I had fun decorating too :-) We had gingerbread men, nutcrackers, angels, trumpets (I only made one of them... they didn't cut out well), and trees.

4. I guess this wasn't part of the advent, but we got a fun snowstorm and the kids had a great time being "snow plow trains" which is just hilarious. Shane went out and played with them and I had the arm strength to boil water and make hot chocolate.

Being laid up seriously sucks. I went to my post-op this morning and cried. My doctor handled my emotions very well, encouraging me and telling me I'm responding normally in every way. I just wish I could like, wash my hair better or cut white bread. Sigh. In time, in time.

For now.... Christmas tomorrow!

the story behind the surgery

About two years ago, right after Laurel was born, I started having pain in my elbow. It was a sharp, piercing kinda pain, in the back of the elbow bone, and it happened when I'd like, grab laundry to pull it from the washer to the dryer, or pick up cans while making dinner.

I basically ignored it. I figured it would go away. When Laurel was 9 months old and I was ready to lose the baby weight, I started exercising and was bothered by the elbow pain still. Boo. I saw my Primary Care doctor who recommended physical therapy. Shane had had physical therapy on his shoulder recently and it went well for him, so I was eager to give it a shot. I went to PT twice a week from basically from December 2012 to May 2013, taking off a week or two here or there for various reasons. It was a lot of stress on my family, and it didn't even really work. 

In April I started looking at other options. I got one of those cortisone shots in my elbow. My aunt had said she had the same kind of problem and the elbow shot totally fixed her. I was hopeful.... It hurt like HECK, but when it finally felt better I supposed I did feel better. I didn't have any pain for awhile, but over time I started feeling pain again. By June I figured the shot didn't really work.

It wasn't as if things were just as bad as Day 1. I actually feel like the pain evolved. I had less pain doing things like pulling laundry or weeds, and more pain doing things like cutting vegetables or picking up my daughter. Some days my elbow really hurt, and other days I didn't feel it at all. One doctor said people can experience residual pain from the particular drug used in the cortisone shot, and when that "shot-related pain" wears off the actual tendinitis pain is gone. I suppose I was hoping for that, but as the months wore on I got more weary. In the course of self treatment I had tried applying ice packs and heat packs, taking handfuls of Advil, just taking it easy, and more, and things weren't better or even looking like they'd improve.

I really had no clue what was right or true.

In July I got an MRI. I started seeing an elbow guy, who was very nonchalant about the whole thing, telling me I had "classic tendinitis of the elbow" and since it had gone on for 18 months there was no way it would go away, and I just needed to get surgery to fix it. He'd go in there, at the elbow, clean up all the inflammation, reattach the tendons, etc., and I'd be all better.

I just didn't like this option. I thought about it for some time, and asked my PT and other friends some advice. I decided to get two second opinions. My PT recommended one guy, and his suggestion was this fancy technology that's new and not covered by insurance. It would have been about $700. (The technology is this... they pull out some of your OWN BLOOD and they "spin" it so it's reduced to just high concentrates of red blood cells or something, then they inject your own blood back in you. The goal isn't healing, actually the goal is MORE INFLAMMATION, but they say that with a lot of inflammation and your OWN super-charged miracle blood, your body heals itself better.) The doctor didn't try to "sell" me, he just laid out the pluses and minuses of the technology and left it up to me. It sounded intriguing, but who knew.

This brings us to Dr. Ericson. By this point, I had seen four different doctors about this elbow problem. At each one I had to start from the beginning, tell my story, etc. I had to explain my pain and the evolution and my concerns. Well, Dr. Ericson is a "hand" guy so I was skeptical at first that he could even help me. A friend of mine had terrible wrist problems before she had kids and he helped her, so I decided to go ahead and see him for my final second opinion (a "third" opinion actually).

He walked in the room and asked what I was there for. I said I'd had elbow pain for 2 years and wanted some answers. He took one look at me, and with kinda a twinkle in his eye said, "I can fix you." Then, to all amazement, he took his finger and touched a spot on my elbow and said, "I bet you hurt the most right... here." Boom on the money. Then he told me how my shoulder probably hurt (I didn't realize it, but when he touched the muscle it did hurt), and he said the next thing to hurt would be the bicep. He explained the evolution of my pain and he explained the CAUSE of my pain. See, tendinitis wasn't the problem. Tendinitis was a symptom of a bigger problem.

The actual phrase is.... proximal median nerve entrapment / radial tunnel syndrome. Or some combination of the two. The jist is this.... in the physiology of my arm, and in a lot of people's arms (it's genetic and happens often), there are some muscles and tendons and such that are criss-crossed in the forearm area. This leads to some weakness in grip strength, so what people do, unknowingly, is compensate by moving their wrist a certain angle. By just tweaking the grip slightly, the strength that was lacking is gained. However, that creates a host of problems. For me, the muscle that runs up the forearm and connects to the elbow was strengthened so much by use that it bulged and ripped right off the elbow, causing lots of inflammation, pain, reduced grip strength, etc. Of course, what's funny about all this is that when you first start having pain, you continue to "re-train" yourself and do activities just a touch different to reduce pain, in essence strengthening more muscles (that really aren't supposed to be strengthened) and creating more of a chain of events mess.

I was skeptical of the first doctor, who just wanted to "clean up" my inflammation. And I was skeptical of the second doctor, who wanted to do this new technology on me (which the third doctor said hurts like heck). But for the third doctor, as much as I wanted to be skeptical, he convinced me that this was right. He knew where my pain was. He could explain my grip strength problems (some I didn't even realize I had). He SAW me overcompensate in his office. And -- here's the kicker -- he said this happens all the time to 1) women who are 2) loose jointed, 3) stubborn, and 4) very busy. We don't have time to deal with it, so we ignore it and hope it goes away, and it doesn't. It gets worse. It got worse.

Unfortunately, the cure was surgery -- but at least I was confident this wasn't a band-aid surgery, an unnecessary surgery, a shot-in-the-dark surgery. I knew the reasons behind what was going on and I knew the root cause of my problem would be fixed. It felt kinda exciting to be able to explain this and feel empowered and yes, feel like his description of the problem totally fit me!

And that, my friends, is how we got to Monday. I had used up all my medical deductible for the year, so I convinced Shane to take an extra week off work (Boeing already gets the 24th-1st off), and I had surgery on Monday the 16th.

By the time Monday got here I was dreading it but also really looking forward to it. I didn't want surgery but I wanted this pain to go away! I felt so comforted to know I'd be fixed! I'd be able to cut butternut squash without wincing! I'd be able to pick up Laurel! I'd have strength to pull the toughest of the weeds!

At my pre-op last week and again in the pre-op room at the hospital, I continued to want to be absolutely sure. I kept telling Dr. Ericson, "you're a hand guy, my hand doesn't hurt," and his nurse would correct me, "he's an arm guy." He'd look me in the eye and tell me he was completely confident I'd get all better. At my pre-op appointment he was feeling around my elbow and even found what he thought was a bone spur. For lots of people, bone spurs aren't that big of a deal, but if you have muscles and tendons that are enlarged and slipping and sliding all over the place, it could really hurt. Um, ME!!!! I suppose I was actually eager for him to get in there so he knew exactly what was what.

On Monday Shane dropped me off and jetted home to put Wesley on the school bus. I wasn't allowed to eat anything so I was equal parts terrified and starving. Dr. Ericson was behind so I got to wait it out even longer than I expected.

The anesthesiologist comes to visit you first. You can ask him whatever you want. I asked him a fairly thoughtful question about how general anesthesia works, and then I said I just wanted to wake up afterwards. He said that is actually his #1 priority -- lots of patients come in and ask him to please make sure they go to sleep, but that is the #2 priority. I appreciated that.

When it finally all happened, I was in a rush. I had to text Shane so he knew I was finally going in (Dr. was an hour late by then!), get to the bathroom, and breathe. Remember I'm starving so I kinda want this to be over so I can eat already.

The OR room is bright and freaky. You lay down on the table and I just remember saying to myself, "I'm freaking out, I'm freaking out, I'm freaking out." They got the IV in me, they hooked some kinda of oxygen thing up to my ear, they wrapped my legs in compression bands, and then the nice lady said, "OK Angela, it's time for your nap. Just breathe deeply." They put a mask on my face. I remember staring at the ceiling and taking two deep breaths, and on the third breath the lights started getting fuzzy. That was it.

I actually felt like I had dreamed, like I really slept. The anesthesiologist says not a lot of people say that. Surgery isn't really "restful," it's just kind of a "pause."

The first thing I heard was, "OK Angela, you should be waking up now." My eyes opened. My arm was all bandaged up. I was SO TIRED. SO TIRED. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep! They gave me some gingerale and Saltines. I sat there for awhile. At one point I asked someone what time it was, and the math didn't make sense in my head so I felt like I'd lost an hour somewhere in there.

Dr. Ericson checked in with me after I woke up, and told me he fixed everything. The tendon was reattached, the bone spur was taken care of, this forearm muscle of mine was HUGE and one of the largest he's seen (I'm a busy mom!), so it made plenty of sense why I had pain. I don't remember anything else. I'm curious to speak to him while NOT in a mental fog at my post-op next week.

Shane got there (thank heaven for my friend Vicki who watched the kiddos so he could be with me) and got instructions to give me lots of drugs.

This recovery week has been interesting, to say the least. I don't really HURT, more I'm just SORE. The muscles they moved around are just sore. I only started to feel the incision spots maybe yesterday. I was on a lot of narcotics, which have their own set of terrible side effects. I quit them cold turkey and basically I went through withdrawals so that felt awful too. Some of these side effects have been worse than my actual arm pain. 

I've had to take a shower with my bandages covered. That's kinda lame. I'll cut a hole in the end of a bag that newspaper came in and pull it up my arm like a sleeve, then Shane duct tapes it closed. Haha. It's hard to shampoo my own hair, and put it up in a hair clip even. I can't write, I can't grip a pencil. Typing is ok, but I need to take breaks (I've written this post over a few days!). I'm not cooking or doing anything really, since I can't grip. I hesitate to even read the kids stories since they jump around and are busy, and sometimes they've run into my arm and it's been painful. Soooo basically I can't wait for things to be more normal. I just want to be able to write with a pencil and buckle my kids into their car seats. I tried to reeeeeach for something on the floor the other day and I definitely could NOT do that. Boo.

On the one hand, it has been SUPER nice that Christmas was DONE by the 15th. Like, awesome. Plus I scheduled Laurel's birthday party for early and made sure the surgery was after her big day. Then, I made no plans for the rest of the month so that's been good for recovery. 

I've been reading, sleeping, and watching some movies. I've been a slug. I read my book club book in a few days (totally didn't love it) and now I'm getting quickly through a Nicholas Sparks book, since his are easy to digest. Last night awesome Vicki took me on a date to see Catching Fire and it was probably my first trip out of the house. That felt good! She even snuck in popcorn for us :-)   

It's been a wild ride. My post-op appointment is Tuesday and I'm eager to get the bandages off and see how things are healing. I'm expecting it'll be about four weeks for recovery.

Well 2013, you did your worst. I'm ready to move on.

christmas poopourri

Some assorted randomness from the last week...

1.

I had just arrived at my visiting teachee's house, had taken off my coat, and had sat down, when I discovered something wet on my back left side. What was it? Vomit. A total vomit splotch on me. Since I was at someone else's house and there were four kids around, I cleaned myself up with a rag from the diaper bag and played it cool. I asked my kids later who barfed on me, and neither claimed it. I will never know how it got there. It was UNDER my coat, over my shirt, not too large and manageable but still random and weird and gross. Clothes went into the wash the second we got home.

2.

The kids have been begging to go swimming. I finally got my ducks all in a row and we went last Wednesday to the Lynnwood Rec Center. It was kinda awful since Wesley's swimsuit didn't make it into my bag (well, I claim it was taken out at some point, but regardless), so we had to come home after buying our passes then go back, but luckily we had a good 90 minutes of water time.

There are two kid-friendly parts of the pool, one part that is like a "beach" -- not sand, just very shallow wading water height. It gets a little deeper and holds a play structure with slides, stairs, etc. They can turn on some water features so there are play water guns, fountains, etc. Some of the features were rough for the smallest (like Laurel), so we also went to the other kid-friendly place, a section off the bigger pool that's just 3-feet deep total, AND to have it even shallower there are these 2-ft platforms in the 3-ft sections so kids can stand on them and play with water toys, like pails, duckies, etc.

I carried Laurel to a platform and expected Wesley to follow us. I thought he could walk it himself (he's almost 4 ft tall), but it turns out he was having a tough time as it got deeper so I put Laurel down with a toy and went back for Wesley. As I'm bringing Wesley over, and I can see this happening right before my eyes, Laurel is excited about showing me a toy and walks right off the platform into the water. I'm shouting Laurel stop, Laurel stop, Laurel stop, but she doesn't listen and boop, plunges feet first into the pool. She's literally underwater for probably 2 seconds, as I'm bolting in THE WATER over there to get her. But remember, I'm carrying Wesley, this ridiculous unhelpful dead weight, and with all the chaos he's hanging off me and PULLS MY SWIMSUIT DOWN and I flash the entire pool. I totally played it cool with my boob hanging out as I save my daughter from drowning. There was, I think, a mom and dad and a baby there, and another mom and her two kids and like, her FATHER (grandpa), and I think that was it. It wasn't totally packed with people, so lucky me. Regardless, it was a total fun morning and we're all OK, and my boob got some fresh air.

3.

I WON CHRISTMAS last week. Wesley is into numbers and all things digital so his Christmas presents include a new pedometer (a cool Boeing one Shane got him), a clock for his wall, and a watch. I took him to two or three stores and he showed me watches he was interested in. He expressed very specifically he wanted one that counted seconds (good to know), and of course the calculator watches piqued his interest. Well, finally at one point Laurel and I got to Fred Meyer sans Wesley and we looked at the watches. The standard black Casio watch was just OK, I wasn't in love with it, but it was our best option. I would have been about $15 with all the sales and coupons I had. However, at the last moment, we happen upon this white and orange Casio watch, which looked pretty cool. It was priced a smidge higher (because it was a cooler color), but I decided to go for it. It would have been maybe $16 or $17.




Well, we went to check out and I verified with the cashier that a watch is an "accessory," since my 20% off coupon was for "Apparel and Accessories." She went to scan it and the computer beeped at her, which usually means its invalid. I was semi-bummed, but she said she'd do it manually. She found the watch to void it, and lo-and-behold it was ringing up for 7 cents, with 3 cents actually coming off (20%?). She said, "ohh, it's only ringing up as 5 cents... it's a donation item." I had no idea what that meant, but she called over a manager who explained that it was a discontinued item and was supposed to be pulled off the shelves and donated to one of Fred Meyer's charity partners. I um, totally wanted it, and they sold it to me for FOUR CENTS!!!! She just rang it up as 7 cents, minus 3 cents. INSANE! This is Wesley's main present and he'll love it. And you can't beat the price. I guess if he destroys it with his love (which is how he treats most of his things), it won't really matter much financially :-)

4.

Lastly, here is a real thing that is freaking hilarious (the actress below is a BYU graduate, which is awesome) and I totally bought some for Shane's stocking. I can't wait to try it. (Since he doesn't read the blog really I can spill beans on his gifts, right?)

Enjoy! I watch it often because it's so freaking funny.



Merry Christmas. I'm typing this gingerly with my post-surgery right arm and it's going OK. More on surgery next time.

laurel update (lots of videos!)

In celebration of sweet lady's birthday and at the request of a Grandma Twining, here are a bunch super adorable videos from the last 6 months or so, with commentary on her awesomeness to follow.

This kids are KINDA obsessed with watching videos of themselves on the computer, and this one above is a definite favorite. (The most favorite video of all is one of Laurel from last Halloween crying oh so sadly. It's pretty hilarious.)

And this last one I just took today. This is her on her first day of being two. Note she talks about this book... we have only read this book ONE TIME and she remembers details about it. Awesome.

Laurel is pretty much amazing. She can practically spell her name, count to 25, sing the ABCs, and more. She sings Itsy Bitsy Spider and I Am a Child of God. She tells us what she's thinking, like at the bus stop when she says "I hear two dogs," or when she's crying in the middle of the night and she says, "I want a drink of water." Once she said, "my body is cold," and dang -- she had a fever. It's uh-mazing. She communicates so well. I'm in awe of her! I couldn't even begin to estimate her word count. She says everything. 

She plays with toys. She took all the animals from the nativity set and put them on the windowsill today. She takes burp rags she found in her room and uses them to put all her stuffed animals to sleep. She lines them up on the floor, covers them in a burp rag, and says "night night." She loves to mix her foods... she'll dip her garlic bread in her water (gross), and pour all her water into her chocolate milk. She loves dunking fruits and veggies in ranch. She's our little chemist, haha. I love that she can entertain herself! Although I suspect she'll get into trouble before too long... toilet paper off the roll, every ornament off the tree, stuff like that. 

Since Wesley's gone to school, she has become obsessed with backpacks. She has one, she uses his old one, and she got a third one for her birthday from a friend, so now she has three backpacks that she puts random things in and totes around the house and to the bus stop, wanting to be like her brother. She mimics him a lot. She's good at his toys -- like she likes to build with blocks and make wooden train tracks. She LOVES the iPad and it's dangerous. I've got to put it on airplane mode or I'm afraid she'll buy something. I can't trust her with my smartphone (she can figure out how to turn its airplane mode off). 

She loves loves loves books. We read LOTS of books. She can ask for the exact books she wants by name. She has her favorites we read over and over again, usually in waves. Some of them drive me crazy and I sorta want them to disappear! She's also very observant with her books, like we'll read them and she'll look at the pictures and point out things in the background of the pictures. Very cool. 

She gives the best hugs. When she's really stressed out and throwing a crazy tantrum I'll ask her if she wants a hug. I get this sad exasperated "yes!" and she melts in my arms. She loves to cuddle :-)

I bet she could potty train. I'm not ready for that. She has peed and pooped on the potty. She just wants to be like everyone else. 

She is picky about her clothes. I give her choices... "do you want to wear pants or a dress?" "do you want the little cupcake shirt or the big cupcake shirt?" "do you want the monkey pajamas or the flower pajamas?" and heavens, if I pick up the WRONG monkey pajamas she'll let me know. She has her favorite things, like ladybug socks and babylegs and this blue shirt. She wears them the second they are clean. She has A LOT of clothes, thanks to my friends and their hand-me-downs. We are VERY well taken care of. 

Physically, she'll have her 2-year checkup next week. I think she's just perfect. She's probably around 25 pounds? She has all her teeth and her hazel eyes are so beautiful. She sleeps wonderfully at night, goes down for naps easily, is just so temperamentally fantastic. She can definitely throw a tantrum when she wants something, AND she is sorta addicted to mom. Some days I have a hard time dropping her off at nursery or leaving her with sitters. But she's easily distracted and she's fine, I know she's fine. 

She is a great eater. She um, eats everything. She loves yogurt, milk/chocolate milk, cheese (we had to cut down some dairy after a bout with constipation!), peaches & prunes (to combat the constipation, and it is really cute when she says "prunes help us poop" and then she asks about all sorts of food, "bananas help us poop? -no- "oatmeal helps us poop?" -yes- etc.), all types of berries, white bread with butter, anything sweet (especially M&Ms and chocolate), and more. She simply eats almost everything. She'll eat twice as much dinner as Wesley does. She's just amenable.

She is really into helping me cook these days. She wants to get up on our blue stool and stir the bowl when I make sweets or bread, she wants to get up and help stir boiling water on the stove (terrifying), she wants to help me cut vegetables and fruits (also terrifying), etc. She's hands on. I have to think of good jobs for her to do. For example, her and Wesley are good about counting, so if a recipe calls for 2.5 cups of flour I'll use a 1/2 cup and they'll help me count 5 of them. I'll fill the 1/2 cup and let them pour it in. They love that stuff. I complain that they don't like helping as much when it's "cleaning up," although now that I think about it, Laurel helps there a lot too. Sometimes when I'm almost done making dinner I'll have her set the table, like I'll give her two plates and say, "mommy gets one and daddy gets one." Then she'll come back and I'll give her two forks and two knives, etc. She loves doing the dishes, either emptying the dishwasher and giving me things so I can put them away, or picking up dirty things out of the sink (while standing on the stool) and handing them to me so I can put them in the dishwasher. (Amazing!) She also likes to push the vacuum and I have to assist. It makes vacuuming take five times as long, but sigh, she's interested so I'm patient and accommodating :-)  

She's into arts and crafts. She LOVES putting dozens of stickers in sticker books or on paper. She loves stamping. She loves painting (dot paints, water colors, finger paints). She loves coloring, and her and Wesley both are really into dry-erase marker boards right now. They do lots of play-doh, too. We do craft projects at library storytime and she just eats it up, like gluing feathers onto a paper turkey, etc. I know I did a co-op preschool with Wesley because I think he needed me there, with her I'd love to do it simply because it would be fun.  

I just asked Shane what his favorite thing about Laurel is, and he said "her voice. The way she says, 'I did it!'" And she seriously says that all. the. time. She is always wanting to do things herself, and she succeeds lots, and she's so very capable and sweet. We're working more on like, having her put on her shoes and stuff like that. 

Someone posted this thing on Facebook the other day, it was so very appropriate. It said "You will never have this day with your children again. Tomorrow they will be a little older than they were today. This day is a gift. Just breathe, notice, study their faces and little feet. Pay attention. Relish the charms of the present. Enjoy today, it will be over before you know it."  

It was posted on Wednesday, the day before she turned 2. How funny, she will never be 1 again. Now she's 2, and before too long she'll be 3. Gosh I love her so much, I'm cherishing the time I have with her. I'm doing my best to be patient and accommodating, especially when she wants to read that book yet again.

Here are some pics from her actual birthday yesterday....

(yes, helping make her birthday dinner... spaghetti and meatballs)

(butterfly cupcakes... for the win!)

I love my little Laurel Brenda. Happy birthday sweetie!!!

december advent so far

Since I suppose I'm not happy unless I'm insanely busy, I made a December advent and the kids have been having a blast. Like last year, it's a string of stockings and in each stocking are two candies (one per kid), and ornament for our ceramic gingerbread house, and an activity. (Ideally, every day we also open our M&M advent, rip a link off Wesley's chain he made at school, AND read a Christmas story and scripture in our storybook -- we have a lot of advents.)

The activities have been fun. So far, we've:

1. Been to WildLights at the Woodland Park Zoo:

LOTS of lights. Very fun. They decked the Zoomazium out as a "Snowmazium" with these pom-pom snowballs, and the kids had a BLAST throwing them all over, at me, at each other, etc. I also had fun throwing them at them :-) I hit Laurel in the face once (oops!) and got Wesley a bunch of times. They LAUGHED and it was wonderful. I got tired even. It was such a fun night with my kids.

2. Ate all red and green food one day:

That's a quesadilla with a spinach wrap, plus salsa and sour cream, and pomegranate arils for lunch. Breakfast was green eggs and ham plus raspberries. Dinner was a pasta with red sauce and peas :-) Wesley wanted some yogurt and I dyed it green.

3. Had a gingerbread house making party with some friends:

My friends all bought kits but I'm insane and made our house myself. Awhile ago I bought gingerbread house "cookie cutters" off eBay and I've been dying to use them. I bought molasses, I followed the directions to a T, and I assembled the bare-bones house the night before. Using royal icing but then, realistically, Super Glue. I had to do some crazy engineering to get it to stand. The cookies spread while in the oven and the edges aren't straight, so the roof is too angled and too heavy. I suppose I've learned some lessons for next year, we'll see.

It was AWESOME to use all the crappy Halloween candy we have around the house. I LOVE that it didn't "go to waste." I'll be happy to throw this thing away in a few weeks with all of it put to good use.

4. Got out the nativity and read the nativity story:

So precious. Thanks Grandma Twining for the nativity. Every year my kids love it. Jesus is currently stuck under the couch so I need to work on that.

5. Bought and decorated the tree:

This is the first year of our 10 years of marriage that we've had a real tree. Someone gave us a fake one our first year, and we've used it every year. Last year Shane was having some allergy issues and we chucked the tree after Christmas since he thought maybe the tree was the culprit. Having a real tree is SO COOL. I really love it. It's just beautiful. It was crazy expensive and I don't know if we'll do it again, but it's gorgeous and I'm glad we did it for this year at least. I water it and vacuum up needles every day :-)  It's a "noble" which some people tell me is the best!

We've also visited Santa at the mall, gone to the local Tree Lighting (disastrous -- I won't go into it), and watched the Christmas Devotional (while playing Christmas BINGO with marshmallows and M&Ms).

Coming up... celebrate someone's birthday tomorrow :-), make a fort in the living room and read Christmas stories underneath, watch a Christmas movie and eat popcorn, listen to Christmas music and play with instruments, go to a nativity festival, go to the ward Christmas party, etc. I'm trying to get a lot of the busy ones done before Monday when, dum-dum, I have surgery on my arm. LAME but necessary and I'm sort of looking forward to it.

Anyway, after tomorrow it's full-speed ahead for Christmas. After tomorrow. Tomorrow is all about my birthday girl.