Warning!

Just when you thought it was safe to open another Christmas present....











































You feel the fear start to set in.....











































And then it strikes.....

Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Suicidal Santa

Our 3-D cookies for Santa took a turn for the worst tonight. Good
thing Santa doesn't mind. : )

A PICTURE FROM THE PAST

Christmas time makes me miss Grandpa. This picture hung in our living room when I was a kid growing up. It is a picture of Grandpa Peterson singing around a campfire down in the canyonlands. He was invited by a tour group to entertain them on a trip many years ago. I think it is a cool picture and I just wanted to share it with you. Merry Christmas everyone. I love you.

Dad

A CHRISTMAS TRADITION

Every year we have to make a trek to Gardner Village. Last year we went at halloween time to see the witches. This year we went at Christmas time to see the elves. However before we could be bothered with the elves we had to do a little tree climbing and duck watching.

With that out of the way now we could concentrate on the elves. They were really cute and Riley really got a kick out of them.

After seeing all the elves and doing some power shopping we were hungry so we went into Archibalds restraunt and had "Fried Green Tomatoe and Deep fried Avacados". The were really pretty good. I didn't even know you could deep fry avacados.

After we got home that night, we watched the "Light Parade" in Santaquin. As you can see both Bella and Riley enjoyed the parade.

Christmas is such a great time of the year. I can't wait to have everyone home safe and sound. I love you all.

Crafty-ness

Ok, so I have found this blog that I am absolutely in love with. It is called flipflops and applesauce.  It is a fun blog with the whole idea that spending time with your kids is important. Mind bending concept I know. Anyway, she has had some of the cutest crafts and activities on her blog. Riley and I have done a few. Well a few days ago she announced that she is having a kind of give-away contest. You have to do something from her blog. Take a picture and link back to her blog and you are entered into a drawing for some awesome jewelry. Well I decided that I would go ahead and enter since Riley and I are pretty much doing some of the things anyway. The post that I decided to put up is the halloween candy turkey. Because of this picture...

  

and this one...

 

Yes that's right. Riley is getting his first cavity filled.  It was quite a shaming experience for me as a parent. Riley doesn't eat a ton of sweets but because his teeth are so close together they are a breeding ground for 'sugar bugs' as his fabulous pediatric dentist calls them. P.S. I love the man. It is a wonderful dentists office. If anyone is looking for a pediatric dentist let me know and I will steer you toward this guy. Really, I can't say enough good things. Anyway, Halloween was a scary time sugar wise. I usually try to hide Riley's candy bucket at the top of our pantry and only let him have a few pieces until he forgets that he has a giant candy stash. So this year it was fun to get to do something with his candy other than hide it and he didn't seem to notice or mind when after we made our little project it ended up in the garbage a few days later without him having eaten a single piece of what we used. Thanks flipflops and applesauce!

Riley-ism

My boy is a strange one. I have training in Ogden today and Reed has
to work so we asked Reed's family to watch Riley. Reed's mom fell off
a ladder and fractured her pelvis hanging Christmas decorations the
other day so yesterday I spent a lot of time telling Riley about
grandma's injuries and how he needs to be very gentle around her. This
morning as he and Reed were headed up there I told him to be good. He
says "Don't worry mom. I won't punch grandma in the pelvis." Um. Yeah.
Go ahead and file that under things I never expected to hear my 4 year
old to say.

Riley-ism

Conversation after Riley counted to 100 all by himself.
Mom to Riley: you are a genius.
Riley to mom: it's because I eat smarties.

Riley-ism

Riley keeps calling out nutcracker a chimney cricket. I don't know why. 

RILEY'S FIRST SLEEP OVER

We have had a good ole cold taking it's turn with each member of the family this week so to give Andrea & Heather some much needed rest Grandpa & Momma Lynn offered to let Riley and Bella have a sleep over so Heather and Andrea could sleep. Riley was so excited about the whole "My first sleep over" concept that he could hardly stand it and Bella was just happy to be where ever Riley was. Riley of course thought he should get to sleep in Bella's cage. It took some coaxing to get him to let Bella sleep in her own bed.

Finally we were able to get him out of Bella's cage and into his P.J.'s and ready for bed.

Of course he had to make one last check to make sure Bella was alright.

Finally he was in bed but it took some time before he ran down and quit talking and singing and telling stories and anything else he could think of and finally gave in and fell asleep. He and bella were both so exhausted they sleep through the night.

Whew what a work out.

My Smart Little Boy

This afternoon, we were putting up our Christmas decorations. I was working on getting the tree up and lit and Riley was so excited. Unfortunately his idea of helping is taking a strand of lights and spinning them around like a lasso, so I gave him my phone to play with. Reed has learned over the years of being married to me that when putting the Christmas tree together he just lets me do it all and only offers to help if I ask. He may have had to learn that the hard way. Now he pretty much ignores my muttering and cries of frustrations because he knows if he interferes I usually have a surge of irrational tears and say, "Fine if you think you can do it better call me when it's done." Yeah. I'm not proud, its just how I am. So he was wisely keeping busy cleaning out our window wells muttering how disgusting a job it was. I must have gotten really involved in what I was doing because I realized that I hadn't heard from Riley for a while. He was no where to be found. I went to the stairs and called up thinking 'why isn't he downstairs?'
When he came down he had my phone on the notes page. He likes to pull up the page and 'tap' as he calls it. Usually it is just random stuff. Jibberish mostly. Today however when he showed me what he 'tapped' he was so proud. Here is a transcription:

Reed is. Rilehy. Ufrad. Uff duskcusteg chags yes he is rilehy du

Now this may look like jibberish still but when he showed it to me this is what he said was written:

Reed is really afraid of disgusting things yes he is really does.

I find this rather impressive. Not knowing how to spell he was able to put down things that are fairly close phonetically to what he wanted to say. I was awfully proud. He's only 4 people. He astounds me every day. :) As a side post, its a blurry picture but I wanted to show off my war wounds from getting fingers pinched by putting up the Christmas tree.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey everyone, I wanted to be the first to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving! I love you all so much and want to say how very thankful I am, especially for family and for how blessed we all are to have grown up surrounded by so much love and fun. I couldn't have asked for better parents, or siblings. I love you all so much and whether you are far away, like Rachel and Adam or close to home I hope you all know how thankful I am for you. I LOVE YOU!

Andrea's Dinner Dance

So I thought that I would post a few pictures from Andrea's work dinner dance this past weekend.  Her branch was hosting a charity ball in Payson. There wasn't a huge turnout but it was a lot of fun.  Dick Chappel, the VP for Andrea's bank (Chappel sound familiar? Yup he's a Wayne County Chappel. I don't know if I'm spelling it right.) Anyway, he has this really cool 'Big Band' group called Mississippi Mud. Reed said that he and some old military buddies were stationed in Mississippi during WWII which is when they got the band started. They reconnected years later and have been playing ever since. They were really good and it made for some fun dancing. As a side note, I am amazed at Reed's ability to hear and remember these random old stories about people. I think Dick did some kind of announcement but seriously, get Reed around someone with some kind of story and they tell him. Don't believe me, ask him about the homeless man he walked around with down at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Back to the story at hand, sorry the pictures aren't the greatest. Apparently my phone does not do so well with action shots. :(  Enjoy!

Here  is dad dancing with Chris Jennings, who works in the AF branch. She is pretty much Andrea, just at the Walmart up there. 

Here are Mom and Dad dancing to the final song, Goodnight Sweetheart. 
Here are Andrea and some random guy that works for the bank doing the Tango. Casey had to go in to work to get ready for the big Thanksgiving rush that is coming and Dick dedicated the tango to Andrea. Dad gracefully backed out (A.k.a hands in the air going 'oh no. I don't tango. Don't look at me to dance with you.) So Andrea had to round up someone to dance with.
Here are Reed and I sitting out the fast ones. His back wasn't up for all that hopping and swinging. Though he did threaten to do 'the worm' but I told him if he tried and ended up back in the hospital I would write my insurance and tell them not to pay the 40K for back surgery again because he was stupid and deserves it.  Just kidding hon. But seriously no more 40K surgeries okay?
Here are Dad and Click dancing up a storm. I don't think I have ever seen someone so tiny and, well, old (Sorry Click) dance so well or so fast. She was like a little jitter bug who wouldn't stay still.  It was great. 
Here are Casey and Chris (mentioned earlier) dancing. I came late so I didn't get any of Casey and Andrea and he had to leave shortly after I got there. 
Anyway, that is all. Hope that you enjoyed the blurry pictures!

A beautiful surprise

Reed said he never got to ask me to a dance so he thought he would get
all official for andrea's dinner dance tomorrow night.

Riley-ism

As I was putting Riley to bed last night, I gave him a big hug and said you are such a wonderful kid. This is his reply. "And you are a fantastic adult."

This kid kills me... :)

A trip to Provo

Riley and I ran to Provo to take care of some Christmas stuff and decided to pop into the hospital to say hi to Reed. As a side note, I can't believe that Thanksgiving is so close and my Christmas shopping is only just over half finished. Aghhh! I hate letting it sit until the last minute.

Riley LOVES the revolving door at the entrance.

And of course, pushing buttons in an elevator are on the top of his list of things he HAS to do himself.

Here is Daddy at his work.

As we were leaving we saw some guys rappelling down the side of the building to wash the windows. Riley thought it was awesome to see. It reminded me of a story I was told at work about a law student. Thanks Kayla, I will never be able to see a window washer again without thinking of cancer. Its a bit of an odd story that probably wouldn't be as funny if I wrote it out so sorry fam, I'm not gonna tell ya. But I still love you all.

A Little Fall Fun

Riley and I went over to Momma Lynn and Grandpa Brad's this afternoon. The temperature, while cold was still nice enough that we decided to go outside and play around a little/rake the leaves. I know that we reported snow the other day, but it has since retreated to just the mountains.

After some fun playing a little frisbee...

We decided to get down to the business of raking up the leaves and taking them to the garden so Momma Lynn can compost them. Since we all know how much Riley loves to help out, I thought I would show you just what a helper he is.

Even after the leaves were out, Riley decided that an empty wheelbarrow looked like just as much fun as a full one. Lucky Grandpa!