Provo's turn

What we woke up to this morning:

This storm system is coming to us from California which means Provo finally was included in the significant snow totals! Yippee! Most storms come through from the north and Provo seems to always get ripped off when that happens. It is still snowing too and is supposed to off and on for the next 48 hours or so. So exciting...except that we have a road trip planned for this weekend to help move my mom back to Kansas.

Christmas Party

Our church has a Christmas party every year and Santa makes a special appearance to visit with all of the little girls and boys. We also get to eat yummy food including all of the traditional foods like turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc. The party was this evening and Dave unfortunately had to work, but my mom was kind enough to go along with us. I figured Miles would be scared to death of Santa and he did not disappoint! Santa thought it might help to have Grandma sit on his lap with Miles, but no such luck. I got a few good laughs watching the little ones freak out! After Santa was done visiting with all the children, he walked by our table as we were eating and Miles started crying again and wouldn't stop until Santa was gone. Too funny! I have a picture of me as a little tiny girl sitting on Santa's lap reaching for mom while screaming so it is only fair to have the same sort of picture of Miles. He'll laugh at it someday.

You could color on the tables so Miles was having fun playing with/eating the crayons

"Ooo Li"

In the words of Miles, "Ooo Li!" He LOVES seeing all the pretty Christmas lights everywhere we go! We thought it would be fun to take him to Temple Square to see more lights. He had a blast, until he got tired. I'm glad we were able to go with him this year.

A Nice Surprise

We found out Thursday night that Dave's brother from Alaska was going to be in Salt Lake City on an overnight layover Friday night. We were both very excited for the opportunity to see him! Dave's mom also made the trip down from Logan to see him. It was great to spend a few hours with both of them! We hung out at the Gateway Mall and had a fabulous meal at Tucanos! We were going to go see the lights on Temple Square, but it was already past Miles' bedtime and he made the decision for us that we should probably head back to Provo.

Dorothy, Dan, & Miles "exploring" at the Clark Planetarium

Miles enjoyed running around looking at everything

David, Miles, & Dan outside Tucanos

Grandma Dorothy added to the picture

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Mom helping me put together the tree

Miles playing
(the TV is a dead giveaway to what Dave was doing)

Not having such a good time with the star garland stuff

I was a little worried about having a tree up with a toddler in the house, but he has done a great job of leaving it alone. As with anything else, if he is involved in the process he is less curious about it and treats it as if it belongs. I'm glad we got him involved versus doing the decorating while he slept!

Project

It would not be a holiday break around here if we didn't have some home improvement project going on! My poor hubby...I'm sure he hates doing home improvement projects on his time off, but he never complains! He is a great guy. This time we decided to do a little more "updating" in the kitchen. We found a counter-top refinishing kit at Lowe's and thought we'd give it a try. We aren't completely satisfied with how it turned out (not as smooth as we would've liked), but overall it looks good and completely changes the way the kitchen looks. We also replaced our white cast iron sink with a stainless steel sink. Yea!

Before

Dave putting down the decorative chips

After

What a dusty messy project! It is so rewarding though to have a new look in our kitchen that Dave was able to do himself. We have some touch-up painting to do because the tape we used to tape off the counter-tops pulled off some of the green wall paint and Dave needs to caulk around the sink still, but other than that the project is done and it only took him about two days to do it. Yea for Dave!

Thanksgiving

We spent a lot of time in our car and on the road this year for Thanksgiving. Some people think we are crazy for making a day trip to Logan (about 2 hrs. 15 mins. away), but it worked out for us. Miles does such a great job at traveling so we can do crazy things like this. In fact, he does better on day trips then he does at sleeping at different places so we chose the day trip option this year so he could sleep in his crib at night. He didn't nap very well in the car, but he had a good attitude all day and put the charm on for his family! He is definitely a cutie patootie!

We had lunch at Dave's brother's house and the whole crew that is left in the area (everyone else has moved away) was there. It was good to catch up and see how big all the kids are getting. Miles doesn't see Dave's side of the family as much as he probably should, so he spent a big portion of the time being shy, but he eventually warmed up and was giving everyone high fives! After lunch was over we drove over to Tremonton to spend some more time with Dave's brother, Zach, and his family. Lily is now 9 mos. old and is mobile so it was fun watching Miles and her interact although Miles was a bully to her most of the time pulling her hair, etc. She is a tough girl though and took it all! After all that fun, both of the kiddos started to get cranky so we packed up and headed home only to get stuck in a stupid traffic jam on I-15 in SLC. I HATE that stupid highway! We finally made it home though and got Miles tucked into his own bed. He was so happy to be home. It was a GREAT day and we have TONS to be thankful for! Too bad we both had to work today or we would've loved to stay longer. Here are a few pictures and videos from the day.

Uncle Dave giving Lily some love. I LOVE the expression on her face!

Miles loved playing with their piano

I was telling Zach & Tammy about how Miles reacted to soda pop and they wanted to see for themselves. Zach insisted we needed a video of it. The video definitely doesn't do it justice!

Where shy Miles spent a lot of his time, on mommy's lap. He isn't much of a snuggler, so I enjoyed every minute of it!

We got Lily this "Lil' Steeler" hat. Her parents are huge Steeler fans and I thought it was cute since it said "Lil' Steeler" and her name is Lily! LOL!

Zach & Tammy have a swing for Lily in their living room and Miles enjoyed every minute of it. Beware, this video may make you nauseous!

Lily crawling

We tried to get a picture of Lily & Miles together & this was the best we could do!

Miscellaneous

Not much exciting is happening here in Provo these days, just living life! Miles is getting bigger by the day (he turned 14 mos. old today) and learning so much. He loves to mimic us when we make sounds. He is too cute. Dave has been sick with a cold this weekend and Miles has had fun mimicking his dad's cough and clearing of his throat. I often find myself asking Miles to do things thinking that he doesn't really know what I'm saying, but being pleasantly surprised to find him actually doing it. The other day I asked him where his Mickey Mouse stuffed animal was, really just thinking out loud to myself. Not too much later he walked up to me and handed me his Mickey Mouse doll. I had a grin on my face from ear to ear! It is fun watching him grow! Right now we are struggling with the idea of transitioning him to just one nap a day and aren't quite sure how to go about it. He has about 90% of the time over the last two weeks not taken his afternoon nap. That has made for a couple of weeks of some really ROUGH evenings 'cause he has been awake for about 6+ hours straight. He gets SUPER grumpy and SUPER ornery when that happens.

He also has been bottle-free for about a week. The doctor recommended we wean him off the bottle ASAP after he turned 1 and we started to slowly wean him. He doesn't seem to miss his bottle at all and enjoys getting his milk out of a sippy.

Now that he understands more, I've been trying to teach him that mommy has to work and he has to entertain himself for a bit. Up until recently I've only been able to work while he was sleeping. It is nice to be able to get some work done while he is awake. I can only accomplish it during the morning after he first wakes up and so far I've only been able to do it for about an hour or less, but he is learning and that is HUGE for me. Below are a couple of pictures of what he does to entertain himself while I'm working.

Sitting inside his tunnel in it's closed position

Sitting inside the ottoman that we use to store his toys

A couple of weeks ago we got a nice surprise in the mail from my Grandparents. With this surprise we were able to purchase new bedding. In our 10 1/2 years of marriage we have never had a nice bedding set. We've looked for years at them, but have never been able to really agree on one or agree on spending the money for something we weren't totally in love with, etc. After doing some searching, we found a set at JCPenney's that we both love and it goes really well with our overall color scheme in the townhouse. It's so fun to have a nice bedding set and makes me feel like a grownup! Now I just need to figure out what color to paint the walls and what curtains I like. So fun! Thanks Grandma & Grandpa!

Happy Halloween!

This is going to be a mega post about all of our Halloween related activities for the last couple of weeks since I'm behind. The good news is, I'll be all caught up though! Yea me!

About a week and a half ago my mom and I took Miles to our local nursery to pick out pumpkins. We had heard from our neighbors that they had great pumpkins for a great price so we had to check it out ourselves. When we got there we were pleasantly surprised to find that they also had a corn maze, farm animals to pet, etc. Dave wasn't able to go with us unfortunately because of his evening schedule at Target and we were running out of time to get them especially with yucky weather in the forecast for the next weekend. Miles had a great time running around in the corn and picking up everything imaginable off the ground and shoving it in his mouth. He also seemed to be enthralled by the goats. He stood there and pointed at them for forever. We finally had to drag him away.

Last Monday while Dave had the evening off, we carved our pumpkins. Miles is still a bit young to understand what was going on. I was hoping he would help pull out the "guts," but he was more interested in eating the lid. Gross. He kept biting into it and then would make this face like that was the grossest thing he had ever tasted, but he kept doing it. Such a silly kid!

"Dad, give me my pumpkin!"

It took me a couple of days to get a picture of all of our pumpkins together and the morning I remembered to do it, we got our first dusting of snow!

The next evening was our Young Men/Young Women sponsored Halloween Carnival at our church. Miles wasn't technically old enough to go, but because I currently serve in Young Women's we took him anyway. He had a blast running all over the gym and seeing all the other kids dressed up in their costumes. He even helped Dad win three cupcakes in the cupcake walk! Cheating? Maybe so!

It was so hard to get pictures of our cute bag of M&Ms! He was in constant motion that night!

Fishing at the fishing pond

The cupcake walk

The donut on a string game

Our church had planned a "trunk or treat" activity for everyone last night since Halloween fell on a Sunday this year. Dave unfortunately had to work! I figured since Miles is still a bit too young to actually go trick or treating, that the trunk or treat activity would be perfect for us to attend. About 30 minutes before the activity was scheduled to begin, it began pouring cats and dogs. We never made it over to the church, but heard a few people showed up during the short break of no rain and then packed things up after the rain started again. We hung out with our neighbors for a bit trying to decide what to do when the rain finally stopped. We decided to go to a few houses in the neighborhood of people that we knew and then came back and answered the door for trick or treaters. It wasn't exactly what I had planned for the evening, but I think Miles had fun anyway which was the point. He got a few pieces of candy to give to Dad too!

Eating leaves along the route (don't you know leaves are WAY better than candy!)

More interested in the Halloween decorations at houses than getting free candy

Part 4 (finale)

After we ate lunch, but before Miles woke up, Dave was able to squeeze in one ride on a ride that Miles couldn't go on. It was a roller coaster-type ride so he had to do it alone (I'm not a big fan of rides these days, especially not roller coasters). After Miles' nap we thought it would be fun to take him through Mickey's house and our timing couldn't have been any better. We ended up getting there right in time to get our picture taken with Mickey Mouse. Later that afternoon we took the train ride around the park, watched the Celebration Parade, and did some souvenir shopping. After all of that was done Miles was pretty much done too. We decided to head back to the hotel and get dinner on the way home. After Miles went to bed, my mom once again offered to stay with him so that we could go back to Disneyland to watch the fireworks show. We both were so tired, but I'm glad we went back. We had fun watching the show and did a little bit more wandering before we gave up and headed back.

Our blurry picture with Mickey
(I'll have to buy the park's picture since ours turned out blurry, of course!)

So happy

Playing the piano in one of the play areas

Watching the parade

The Celebration Parade

Riding the train

So in LOVE with that face!!!

The castle at night

The water show before the fireworks