What a Difference a Year Makes

I didn't post anything about Thanksgiving this year because I didn't take any good pictures. We spent Wednesday, November 26 to Tuesday, December 2 in New Harmony, Utah with my family. We ate too much, and the kids played hard, and it was a great time.

Anyway, on to my original post. Every year we try to take the kids to see Santa to get their pictures taken for Christmas. This year we went to Town Square because we heard that they had a cute Norman Rockwell inspired Christmas house and that it snowed there at night.

Last year, this was William's reaction to sitting on Santa's lap:

Blissfully ignorant to what was even happening, I'm sure.

This was his reaction to sitting on Santa's lap this year:

At least Rebecca was happy, and we got our Christmas picture of the kids for 2008. We'll see if he likes Santa any better next year.

Rebecca's Birthday Weekend

Rebecca turned four on Saturday, and we celebrated all weekend long.

On Saturday we went to Target to let her pick out her gift. She picked this box of Tinkerbell fairies.

Kevin works near the Excalibur Hotel, and every time we go see him at work Rebecca tells me she wants to go to the castle. So after Target we headed to the Strip.

She's also seen the monorail running on the Strip, and she always talks about wanting to ride the "train", so we parked at the Mandalay Bay and took the tram to the Excalibur. That was enough of a train ride for her, and it didn't cost us anything.

At the castle we walked around and played a few games. She bought some candy with the tickets she won, and that was all for Saturday.

Sunday we had our families over for dinner and more celebrating.

Kevin has the steady artist hand in our family, so he was in charge of decorating the cake. He did such a good job.

My mom brought cupcakes for the kids to eat. Rebecca likes to eat the frosting off the top and a little bit of the cake, and then she throws the rest away.

It's not a birthday party without presents!

William also enjoyed Rebecca's party.

He especially loved the cupcakes.

My sister Denise bought these cute Dora Ugg Boots for Rebecca, and William decided he wanted to wear them. After Rebecca opened them, he took the box over to Kevin's dad so that he could help William put them on. He wore them for the rest of the night. They have pink trim and fur on them, but he still loved 'em.

Rebecca has seemed to grow up so much in the past couple of months. She's really become more of a little girl. Here are some things that she's been doing lately:

• She's started calling me "Mom" and Kevin "Dad". I don't know what happened to "Mommy" and "Daddy", but I kind of miss those names.
  
  
• She doesn't really sleep in our room anymore. She used to come in every night in the middle of the night with her pillow and sleep on the floor by our bed, but she has stopped doing that.
  
  
• She's been terrified of primary since the day she started Sunbeams. I would have to leave her screaming with her teachers Sister Bingham and Sister Hibbard. Lately she's been better about going in, and she even stood up at the pulpit two Sundays ago and said her part for the primary program all by herself.
  
  
• She wants to dress herself AND pick out her own outfits. I've started picking out two outfits for her to choose from so that she doesn't leave the house looking too crazy. She even wants to tie her own shoes now. I let her try, but she can't get it. I let her pull the "bunny ears" after I double knot her laces, and that seems to be good enough for now.
  
  
• She has just started praying in front of us, and she has the sweetest little prayer voice. When Kevin helps her, he likes to see how long he can make his sentences before she forgets what he told her to say. He can go on for quite a few words, and she remembers every word. It's amazing to see what kind of retention little kids have.
  
  
• We bought her a bike for Christmas two years ago, and she has just started to have an interest in riding it. She goes outside and rides her bike almost every day.
  
  
• She wants to go play at her friends' houses all of the time now. I don't do a whole lot with her when she's at home with me, but now that she's gone a lot more, I miss her when she's not around.

My little girl is growing up too fast. Happy Birthday, Baby. I hope you had a good one.

Midnight Movie

The best way to see a movie is to go see it at midnight the day it's released. So Thursday night, I was lucky to go see Twilight with some other die hard fans from my ward past and present.

We made a stop at Wal-Mart to get treats, and we made sure to bring our big purses. Kevin's sister Melissa came with us even though she had a rough weekend to look forward to. She had Sadie Hawkins the next night, and her group was waking up at 2:00 am on Saturday to go to Disneyland for the day. She came over Sunday for Rebecca's birthday, and I could tell she was exhausted, but I'm so glad she came to the movie. We had a blast.

This was us later when the rest of the group (minus Heather) showed up. We got there at 9:45 pm, which we thought was plenty early. When we saw we were at the end of the line, we switched our tickets to 12:30 am so that we could get better seats. I'm so glad we did. Our seats were awesome.

Since we arrived so early, we had to find a way to entertain ourselves for a couple of hours. We played the name game with some new friends we made. Does anyone from the ward recognize the girl next to Emilee on the left?

She was our cute singing waitress when we went to Roxy's Diner.

Here we are in line waiting to go in after they let the midnight people sit in their theater. That's Rachel's sister Amy to the left of me in the bottom picture. She drove in from California to see it with us. As you can see, she is a lot of fun. I'm so glad you came with us, Amy.

We were all pretty exhausted after we got into our theater. Amy and Melissa were smart enough to take a power nap before the movie started.

I had such a great time with all of you beautiful ladies. Thanks for getting my ticket, Ashley. I wouldn't have wanted my first viewing of Twilight any other way. (By the way, I saw it three times this weekend, and it gets better every time I see it.)

I Saw The Movie

Don't worry - I'm not going to give anything away.

I loved it. I'm trying to get Kevin to take me to see it again today after he gets off work.

Although all of the actors did a great job in this movie, I have to say that Alice was my favorite.

She was especially cute in the baseball scene.

I'm ready for the sequels already.

Rebecca And Politics

The other morning I was getting ready in my bathroom when Rebecca picked up my glasses and asked, "Mom, are these your Sarah Patlin (Payt-lin) glasses?"

I love how she calls her Sarah Patlin.

Then today I was listening to her play with her Little People while I was looking at blogs on the computer. She started saying, "Come on, Barack Obama. It's okay. Come with us." I turned around to see which of her Little People she was calling Barack Obama.

This one, of course.

It's funny what kids pick up.

I Lost

Oh well. Better luck next time, I guess.

Halloween Week

We celebrated Halloween a few different times this past week. We started with Trunk or Treat at the church last Saturday, a Halloween party on Tuesday, Halloween day at dance on Wednesday, and trick or treating with cousins on Friday. I love that Rebecca got to wear her costume so many different times.

The Trunk or Treat was a great party.

Kevin and I dressed up as Todd and Sarah Palin. People kept asking me, "You're Sarah Palin, right?" I think they couldn't tell if I was in a costume or if I was just coming from work. When I was away from Kevin, people had no idea who he was until he told them, "I'm the husband of a hockey mom." We never dress up, and I had so much fun wearing costumes this year. Now I want to try to find a costume to wear every year.

I didn't get any pictures from Rebecca's dance class, although I wish I did. (I actually forgot my camera for all four of our Halloween activities. I'm pregnant - what can I say. All of the pictures for this post came from Rachel S. and my sister Jodi.) At dance, there was a Snow White, an Aerial, a Sleeping Beauty, and a Cinderella. It was so fun to see all of the different princesses, and it was cute that each princess chose a different princess costume. I also wish I got a picture of Ms. Stephanie who had on a long nightgown, big slippers, a shower cap with rollers hanging out, and some huge pink glasses. Her costume was a hoot.

On Friday, my brother had a Halloween party at his house.

Every year Travis and Wendy get a trailer and put lights and bales of hay on it for the kids to ride around the neighborhood. Here are all the cousins waiting to go get some candy.

My brother-in-law Randy took these cute pictures of my kids with his nice camera. As you can see, William did not miss out on getting some candy of his own.

My favorite costume that night had to be my nephew Ryder's costume.

I can't believe he let his parents put all of this make-up on his face. People at every house handing out candy loved his costume. His brother Gage was going to be Batman, but his costume didn't fit, so he was Harry Potter instead.

We had a really fun Halloween week this year, and this pregnant lady is loving all of the candy she gets to eat out of her kids' buckets after they go to bed.