Home-Made Santa and overdue One-Liners

The holidays are such a fun time, I love getting together with family and friends and prepping for Christmas!

First off, our nephew Adam has a November birthday, and what did he want to have? A swim party, of course! So his obliging parents rented out a party room at a local community center with a pool and invited his class, and cousins.

The "most fun" part I didnt' get a picture of. That was the part where I was the only adult in the pool because Sam was under the age of 5 and I needed to stay within 5 feet of him at all times. So in my maternity swim-suit that was mysteriously missing a strap(???) I got to hang out with 20+ kids in the shallow end of the pool while all of the other parents watched from the side. *Awkward*

My parents visited us for Thanksgiving! This is me eating at Cracker Barrel with them one morning. We went swimming again at their hotel, but it was much less awkward as we were almost the only ones at the pool, and other adults were swimming too, and the pool did go deeper than 3 feet.

We hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year. Here's Jason's side of the family that came.

And here's my side of the family!

Apparently my kids love swimming in the winter (are you noticing a theme?) because one of Tanner and Sam's favorite things to do lately is swim in our spa bathtub. Can you see how much fun it is??

We got our first snow on December 7th, which meant the boys immediately wanted to play with legos out on the driveway while it was coming down.

And then of course they wanted to jump on the trampoline afterwards. You know, for the Freezing kind of Fun.

Santa has been a HUGE part of Tanner's December. He is OBSESSED with Santa this year. He has asked me so many questions about Santa, I can't even keep them straight. "Was Santa at the First Christmas when Jesus was born?" "Do reindeer get speeding tickets?" "Zach's dad looks like Santa, so did Zach grow up in the North Pole?" and so on and so on . . .

(In fact, here's a picture he drew of a Lion Police pulling over Santa's reindeer and giving them a speeding ticket. After all, they MUST be speeiding to get to everyone in the world's house in one night):

I could have taken hundreds of pictures of his Santa games all month, but I'll spare you. Here are just a few. First off, our coffee table became the sleigh, our unassembled bar stool became his seat, and his backpack became his bag of gifts:

He's making a list, and checking it twice . . .

He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows if you're awake. . .

Santa Claus is coming to town:

(excuse the living room mess, that picture was just too good to pass up).

They insisted I take this exact picture. Wasn't even my idea.

I attended my first "tag" party- making and exchanging Christmas tags. That was a new one, but the party was enjoyable and I had fun making my tags.

Great time of year to add cranberries to our green smoothies! So Christmasy!

And to end today, I have gone too long without putting down some random funny quotes from the kids (mostly Sam, since he's three, and half of what comes out of his mouth is hilarious),

 so here are a few:

1. Sam: "I can do whatever I want!"

    Tanner: "No you can't. You can't shoot people with a gun."

    Sam: "That's because it's not my job. My job is to put away the silverware!"

2. Sam, eating spaghetti: "Look at my BLOOD!!!" (way funnier with his voice)

3. Sam, as we're backing out of the driveway to go to church, and Frankie the dog is watching us from out our front window: "Frankie wants to go with us! But he's not wearing his church clothes."

4. After my explanation about things that Fugetts do and don't do, such as: Fugetts Flush the toilet, I wanted to clean off Sam's face- a task he DREADS having me do. So he runs away, crying, "Fugetts don't have boogers on their faces!"

5. Excited Sam: "I got pizza! And it's long! And it has ham on it! And it even has a point on it!"

6. Sam, after Tanner bowled him over in the living room and they're lying in a heap on the floor: "Tanner, you forgot to stop!"

7. Sam, after telling the kids that there's a baby in mommy's tummy: "And if you lift your shirt, it will escape!"

8. Confused Sam, after being told that there's no such thing as Fire Truck Day: "But I wished upon a star! " (except it sounded more like "But i wissed upon a stow"- like he was shocked that his dream didn't actually come true just because he wished upon a star.) Also note that he has a rotating star/universe night-light so he has numerous stars to wish on as often as he wants, so lately whenever he doesn't get what he wants, he makes the same confused statement, "But I wissed upon a stow!"

And finally, a couple from Tanner:

9. After watching the Sound of Music, which he LOVED, "Can we watch the next episode??"

10. This one is more of a story, that requires explanation. So Jason is the only one who can get Tanner to take a nap anymore. So one day Jason put Tanner down for a nap and Tanner was just crying and kicking the floor and having a fit, so I went in there, and Tanner growls, "It's just that I like taking naps with my pants ON!" I looked down, and sure enough, the kid had no pants on. Tanner explained that Dad took them off. So I questioned Jason about it, and Jason said, "Well yeah, doesn't everyone like to take naps without their pants on?" 

Romantic Getaway to NYC

Jason has spent (and will continue to spend) quite a bit of time traveling the second half of this year, so we took some of those racked-up airline points he accrued and headed to Manhattan, just the two of us! Our great friends, Zach and Sara, cared for our kiddos for the weekend so we could get away, because that's the kind of people that they are, and our kids just LOVE them!

Note, since we were vacationing in November, we probably would have gone to Florida if it weren't for the stinkin' Zika virus and the fact that, as a pregnant woman, I, or Jason for that matter, am not supposed to get any mosquito bites or else this kid could be born with a tiny head. NYC has always been on my bucket list. So many of the chick-lit books I read are based there, and so many movies show it, that it's a good place to go at least once, and with the weather only in the 40's in November, it was worth it!

This is the view from our hotel room (32nd floor)

We got pretty good at walking and taking the subway

We visited the 9/11 Memorial, but didn't wait in the 2 hour line to go to the museum. Did I mention this was Veteran's Day weekend?

A panoramic shot from the island that houses the Statue of Liberty

View of Manhattan from the Statue

OK, if you have had more than a 30 minute long conversation with me in the last few months, there's a good chance that you know my recent OBSESSION with Hamilton, the musical. SOOOOO GOOD! We would have loved to go, but tickets ranged from $750-$1350 per person to get in, and we tried the broadway lottery to no avail (they commonly have 10,000 entries for each show's lottery, and only have 21 winners). Imagine our surprise when we were walking down Broadway and came across Trinity Church where Alexander Hamilton was buried! As we were walking around the graveyard outside the church, you could hear people humming Hamilton songs, just like me.

Jason loves old churches too, so the visit wasn't a total bust for him :)

Times Square!

Central Park!

The Manhattan LDS temple!

And more of Central Park! What a beautiful place to visit in the fall!

Fugett Fall Follies

Raising two creative and fun-focused boys in the fall is a joy. Also, highly entertaining. Here are a few things that filled up our autumn season:

Walks in the park. I just thought this picture was too cute to leave out! Nothing like boys on a dock overlooking a lake!

Scarborough Rocks! This year Tanner's school had an ongoing painted rock hunt. We hunted the park for painted rocks, then took them home and found our own rocks to paint and re-hide. These are the ones they painted and re-hid. 

I took Sam to his very first dance party (hosted at the brand-new-temporary Indian Creek Library). This is what he did the entire time. (Yes, that is me in the blue skirt). To be fair, there were a lot of pretty little toddler girls dancing up a storm, so poor Sam was probably intimidated beyond belief. I could not get him to dance no matter what I did.

Tanner's first school pictures! They turned out so nice!

I went on a weekend cruise to Ensenada, Mexico with my mom and sister Natalie. More on that later.

Scarborough had a color run! You know, those runs where they spray you with chalk dust and you get super messy?! Well, truth be told, we didn't run. But we did get sno-cones!

Karyn (Jason's oldest sister) went through the temple for the first time! What a special day that was.

I knew I couldn't keep the kids from Chuck-E-Cheese forever, and no they ask to go back at least once a week.  .  .

Took Sam to the pumpkin patch! Gah, this kid is so photogenic!

Took the kids to Scheels (it's a sporting good store with a terrifying ferris wheel right in the middle. This is us on the very top of it).

I attended the second annual mom's outing at Ironwood Retreat in Leawood. It was a freezing cabin with no heat where we spent the night. Kelly Andrews organized it, her husband Charles cooked for us, and we stayed up late giggling and talking about motherhood and the challenges and blessings it grants us. Others in photo- left to right: Greisy Ogzewalla, me, Faith Wagner, Emalee Thompson, Leslee Soellner, and Kelly Andrews.

I don't even remember, but Tanner discovered my knee-high boots and had to use them in his superhero costume for like a week until he started causing irreparable damage to them. They're off-limits now. I guess I have to learn lessons the hard way sometimes too.

Halloween Houses!

Sam's Halloween class party (he's the one in the black SWAT costume)

Can't see us too well but this is us at the annual Trunk-or-treat at the church (note, now Sam is a warrior- last year's costume)

Tanner's Halloween class party (he's the policeman on the bottom row)

Cop and robber for trick-or-treating! (yes, this is Sam's 3rd costume for the year)

Waiting to go trick-or-treating with cousin Charlie (the minion)