Christmas

December flew by as it usually does.  Unfortunately, Ryan's phone had some issues and lost all the pics we had taken that month (we mostly take pics on his phone since his camera is better). It was fixed by Christmas day though so luckily we didn't lose those.  

Tristan had been asking to put up Christmas lights since before Thanksgiving, so the day after Thanksgiving we put up Christmas.

We always (since having kids) go to the Lehi Santa parade which is awesome, because it lasts about 20 minutes, hardly anyones goes, so there is no traffic and its an easy festive thing to do to start the holiday season off and the kids love it!

Ryan and Ivory at the parade!

Tristan loved Santa, he hopped right on his lap and told him what he wanted the same thing every time (Bulldozer) like he and Santa were buds.

He did not feel the same way towards Buddy the elf ...

We also waited in line to see Elsa (Tristan is like every other toddler girl out there and loves Frozen) at Thanksgiving point and as soon as it was his turn he didn't want to get his pic taken with her and then spent the car ride home regretting/complaining he didn't get to hug Elsa.

This little cutie started Walking!!!

 Silly pictures of us...

We went to a couple of friend Christmas ugly sweater parties, we had a Bell Family white elephant gift exchange, saw the lights at Thanksgiving Point and had hot chocolate and peppermint sundae's and saw live reindeer, went to the Festival of trees, and a pre-Christmas dinner and gifts with Ryan's family and maybe  some other stuff too that I can't remember right now, but all in all it was a busy but fun month.  

Christmas Eve day we took the kiddos to breakfast at Chick-fil-a and then later in the afternoon went to Ryan's extended family Christmas eve party.  Grandma Cindy came over when we got home and we had snacks and started on the Santa preparations for Christmas morning and soon realized that Christmas Eve is no longer as relaxing as it was pre-kids, or we just weren't as prepared as we could have been. 

 Tristan got so excited for all of Santa's presents especially the long awaited for bull dozer, he literally jumped up and down screaming with excitement.  It helped that the first snow of the season was also Christmas morning.   He also loved opening presents in general.  We didn't take a lot of pics, mostly video.  Grandma Cindy came over for breakfast and opening of presents.  We did a fun Skype call with the Bell Family and also a visit from Grandpa Egan & Fanny.

Tristan checking out the scenery with his new binoculars

Pretty much wearing most of Christmas 

Later that night we ate dinner at Ryan's aunt house with  his mom and grandma and aunt & uncle. After putting the kids down for bed (who unfortunately were both a little sick that day and had fevers by the end of the night me and Ryan watched a movie.  The day after Christmas we totally vegged out not leaving the house at all to recuperate from the holiday!

Baby Girl #3

I've neglected to do a post about our newest addition being baked right now.  But for when someday I print this blog out into an awesome looking book,  I don't want baby #3 wondering why there is no mention of her until she's born, she's probably already not going to be happy being currently named Baby #3. Surprise,  I'm pregnant again, was an understatement, when I started feeling sick  this summer.  Tristan will have been 3 for about a month and Ivory won't quite be 18 months when this this little girl will be born.  I'm not quite sure how it will all work out as most days I feel barely able to keep up with the two I have, but I am sure this little one was meant to come to our family at this time for a specific reason and we already love her!!!

Getaway!

For our anniversary/last time we'll be able to go anywhere for quite a while trip, we decided to go to Washington D.C.   Ryan had been editing some videos thru his company for an organization that saves kids from sex slavery and they were having a charity gala in Washington D.C. beginning of November.  Tickets were $1000 (we could get in for free) and Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton and supposedly some other celebrities were supposed to be there too.  Anyways, it just sounded like a cool event to go to and get all dressed up fancy, but as we are not faboulously rich celebrities or politicians the airplane tickets were just too expensive for us to go out that weekend, but as Ryan (who loves history) had started researching all the things to do out there we decided it would still be fun to go out there.  So, a couple of weeks later tickets were not as pricey and we could use our credit card points for one of us to fly for free and we stayed at my cousin Arielle's house for 2 of the nights and splurged on a hotel for the last night.  It was very fall-ish  out there (I don't think that's a word) but the trees and the fall colored leaves were so pretty.

Mt. Vernon- George Washington's mansion

Back patio of the mansion- crazy beautiful view of the Potomac River

Ford's Theater

Freezing at the monuments

I'm not quite sure why we decide to do these sort of vacations (last vacation while I was pregnant with Tristan we went to NY) where a lot of walking is involved when I am pregnant.  But, it was really nice to get away and remember what it was like just the two of us for a change, sleeping all the way thru the night and in for as long as we wanted in the mornings and eating meals without interuption was vacation enough for me although we did look forward to coming home and seeing our little munchkins!

Ivory's Birthday 1 years old!!

The Invite!

         

                                                                The  Decor

The cake!  Not pinterest worthy but I'm hoping by the time the kids are maybe 5 or so I'll have some better cake decorating skills

Ivory got so excited for her cake but I made the mistake of kinda offering it to her then keeping it out of her reach while we lit the candle and sang to her, soooo.... this happened (watch video)

 She was so cute once it was actually put in front of her, she was too lady like at first to figure out how to dig in to it (the 2 min video would take to long to download and longer than anyone other than maybe my mom would watch- but take it from me it was adorable)

 Ryan also made an amazing video of her first year that we made everyone watch at the party!  He said he knew it turned out good when I got a little teary eyed watching it before everyone came over.

On the day of her actual birthday we met Ryan for lunch at pumpkin land by his work.

 She also got one of the leftover cupcakes after dinner, that she thoroughly enjoyed.

I just love this little girl!  I can't imagine life without her!  She is so sweet and cuddly and happy and sometimes a little silly!  She loves to explore and play with toys, look at books and she can entertain herself pretty good.  She is crawling all over the place, she especially loves the stairs.  She also loves standing and walking around holding on to furniture and trying to climb on anything possible.  Tristan makes her laugh more than anyone else and she's a little bit (or a lot) of a mommy's girl, which I love!

Fall

Well, I never really got why everyone loved fall so much, because in my mind it was always the begining of winter, but this year I understood what all the fuss was about!  We had about two months of 70 degree and sunny weather and plenty of fun fall activities.

Ivory turned one year (separate post on her birthday celebrations to follow) but she is getting so big and wanting to do a lot of the same things as Tristan now

We did hardly any hiking this summer and fall, so we went on a little hike on one of the last really beautiful Sunday afternoons we'll probably have for a while. 

Tristan and daddy throwing rocks into the river

Tristan and grandma in this fun little cave

 Finally stopped to see Mater which was fun until we had to leave.

 Ivory is going to be a reader, I just know it,  I find her like this all the time

 I made the mistake of mentioning the library was going to be having Halloween puppet shows at the beginning of October within Tristan's presence and that was all he could talk about doing for days unfortunately they didn't start until the week of Halloween, so there was a lot of days of me telling Tristan we couldn't go to the puppet show today.  I have learned my lesson not to tell him about anything fun until we are literally walking out the door to do the fun activity.  He did love it  when the time finally came and even got his pic in the local newspaper!

 She's just so cute! She wore this shirt on Halloween day, which says Wild Child but she so is not, which I love about her!

 We went to Corn Belly's for Penny's birthday celebration and it was a blast!

 We did a pumpking carving night for family night but what actually happened was Ivory went to bed early and me and Tristan watched Halloween cartoons while Ryan carved the pumpkin and this pic is totally set up  ;)

 Tristan had so many cousins/sister birthday parties this fall!  At the twin's birthday they had this zip liner which I was sure Tristan would be scared of doing, but he wasn't in the least!  He absolutely loved it and did it about 10 times.  Finally with no more birthday parties in the horizon Tristan wakes up a lot of mornings telling me it is his birthday, I think he feels like it has been everyone else's birthday so now it should logically be his turn.

 This was a fun little bean bag toss, Tristan waited his turn and finally when it was his turn instead of throwing the bean bags from the line he ran up to it and threw them in, like duh, why  stand so far back?  He cracks me up!

And finally the Grand Finale!  Trick or Treating Halloween night!  I don't think there's a better holiday for Tristan, he loves dressing up and he loves candy and he loved seeing all the other kids in their costumes! He could've trick or treated all night it was us who got tired and Ivory, who was the cutest little mouse there ever was!

Pillow Game

This is what we do to amuse ourselves sometimes...