Chevy Chase Ward Christmas Party

Okay, so we just have to brag a little bit. Saturday night we went to our ward's Christmas party and Ethan was quite the little entertainer. During dinner (Ethan ate nothing but rice but at least he loved it!) they had a guy walk around with a microphone interviewing people for entertainment. When he reached us, Taylor used Ethan to deflect the attention from himself and suggested Ethan could sing everyone a Christmas Carol. Much to our surprise Ethan happily took the microphone in his hands and sang the full chorus to "Jingle Bells" (we're not sure he realized he was being heard by everyone). He even clapped for himself when the rest of the room clapped. Another highlight was that he jumped right up on Santa's lap and wasn't afraid at all. Yeah Ethan! And Yeah Taylor for picking out the cute Christmas suit for him to wear!

Christmas Tree Farm with the Gilberts

Christmas Tree Farm with the Gilberts

We just had to say thank you to the Gilberts for inviting us along on their fun trip to the Christmas Tree Farm. Ethan loved being chased around by Sheldon and Kennedy and we had a great time even if we're still sticking with our fake "Charlie-Brown" tree!

Gingerbread Playgroup

Last week the moms in our playgroup had a moment of insanity and thought that making gingerbread houses with the kids might be fun- with 1 and 2 year olds! Crazy! After making a huge mess and getting very sticky, the kids got bored and the mothers got to finish. Oh well, at least there's a few cute pictures!

Christmas Lights with the Business School Group

We enjoyed our trip up to see the lights so much that we decided to go another night and Taylor invited along his group from business school. He was very apprehensive at the beginning of the sememster to be put into a group of 5 strangers and told to do every project, homework assignment, and paper with them. But they turned out to be amazing people and they get along so well. He loves working as well as socializing with them and has had a great semester mostly because of them. From left they are Achin, Trey, Giuliana, Taylor (of course), and Tara.

Temple Lights Trip

Temple Christmas Lights

Every year the Visitor Center next to the temple puts up thousands of Christmas lights. It's always crazy finding a parking spot and keeping your group together with the hundreds of people pouring off of buses but we love it. They have nightly performances and we always like to go to a bell choir one since Ethan is a little more interested in that (he's actually more excited about the stadium style chairs he can climb on and off of and bounce up and down on). After that we always go see the Nativity sets donated by local embassies and all the Christmas trees decorated in ornaments from other countries. Then it's outside to see the live Nativity (Mary was actually smiling this year since it was in the 50's) and then lots of pictures of the lights. They added these crazy gray-white LED lights last year and this year added some fuscia ones. They're actually quite pretty but hard to look directly at. This year we went up with a bunch of friends from the ward and law school so the pictures of other kids are Ethan's little friends.

First Snow!

So today we got hit with our first snowstorm of the year. It was actually kind of nice because it came down lightly most of the day. When Taylor got home from school we went out to enjoy it a bit. Instead of driving to a park to find some snow to use, we just took it off our car. Taylor was happy making a snowman while Ethan pummeled him with snowballs I handed him. Ahh.. family fun!

Trains at the Botanical Gardens

It has become a yearly Christmas tradition in D.C. for our playgroup to go see the train displays set up in the Botanical Gardens. They have amazing sculptures of the Washington Monument, Capitol Building, White House, etc made out of leaves and organic material that always amaze the adults. The kids meanwhile are enthralled by all the trains. You'll notice that Ethan is fuzzy in every single picture because he was so excited and couldn't stop jumping up and down and saying "train say choo-choo, chuga-chuga-whoo-whoo!".

Thanksgiving

For Turkey-Day we drove up to Cleveland and stayed with my brother Dave and his family. Another brother came along with his family and my parents as well. In all there were 8 adults and 8 children under the age of 7. It was crazy and loud at times but really nice to see all the kids play together and to be able to hang out as adults at night after then kids had gone to bed. The day after Thanksgiving dawned bright and early at 3:30 for the husbands who were all crazy enough to get up and fight the crowds trying to get their hands on a Wii. They were successful twice and it was so funny to watch how excited they were when they got home and the rest of the day as they played it (sharing with the little kids was a little hard for the "big boys"). One highlight of the trip was seeing Ethan and Ammon dressed up in their Halloween costumes. Who knew Nikki and I would buy the same costume for our kids?

Touring the Washington Monument

Taylor's first year of law school we discovered that amazingly, in his section alone, there were 7 other LDS guys- 6 of whom were married. It has been so great to have instant friends. The wives started meeting together for a book group the first year and we've expanded the group this year to be an official "Spouses Society" so everyone's invited. I volunteered to be in charge of a "touring" group so once a month I plan an activity where we go see another part of DC. So far we've visited George Washington's Mt. Vernon estate and gone to Cox Farm Pumpkin Patch. For November we went and toured the Washington Monument. We took a 2 minute elevator ride to the top and then spent a while looking out the observation windows that overlook the city. It was a fairly foggy day but the views were amazing. As a bonus, as we were walking back to our cars, the president's helicopter flew right over our heads and landed on the grass behind the White House. The lawn and balconies were overflowing with people and apparently Bush was arriving to "pardon" a Thanksgiving turkey.

Play Group at the Zoo

For our playgroup today we braved the 40 degree temperatures and went to the zoo. Ethan was most impressed by the "pana bears" and the meerkats (since he's seen them on animal planet). I was most impressed with the Elephant getting a bath from a hose and the 7000 pound hippopotamus that kept staring at Ethan and then flashing all his teeth at us. Was that a hint?

Trick-or-Treating

Just thought everyone would enjoy some more pictures of our little "monkey boy". He did great trick-or-treating mostly because he can now navigate stairs himself so I don't have to carry him up and down every front porch. He is very scared of masks though and actually jumped into the lap of a man handing out candy when another child turned around and walked past him with a Yoda mask. Before that he was very enthralled with all the lights and decorations. After that he stayed very close to Taylor and looked at every person's face to make sure they were "all right". And much to our surprise, after 45 minutes he announced "all done" and wouldn't go up to anymore houses. He was happy to go home to bed. We'll see if that one holds true in 10 years!

Bowling with the Auna's

Bowling with the Auna's

Last week for Family Home Evening we went bowling with another family in the ward. Ethan and Elise are just 3 weeks apart and love copying each other and laughing non-stop. We had a great time and Ethan has been asking to "go bowl" ever since. Sadly, if you look at the last picture you'll see that Jacky and I both got our butts kicked not only by our husbands but also by our 2-year-olds. I'm blaming that on the big belly!

Fam-o-ween

In September when we got back, we started holding Family Home Evenings every Monday. We figured it was time to get on the consistency bandwagon since Ethan's already two. He fell instantly in love with this "family time" and goes screaming through the house "Fam-o-ween" whenever I announce it's time for Family Home Evening. We assumed he was actually trying to say "Family Home Evening" until last week when we asked if he wanted to go trick-or-treating for Halloween. To which he did the same demonstration and went screaming "Fam-o-ween" throughout the house. We realized he has somehow merged his idea of Halloween with Family Home Evening. Oh well, at least he's happy and everything somehow makes sense in his little head!

Pumpkin Patch Pictures

Over the top Pumpkin Patch!

A bunch of the law school wives and I got together on Monday and took our kids to a "pumpkin patch". In DC that meant there wasn't even really a patch to pick pumpkins on the farm (Ethan picked one out at the end from a crate, and traded it every time we passed another crate since the grass being greener also applies to pumpkins) but there were 25 different huge slides, wooden trains to play around in, a haunted hayride, a live musician to accompany our lunch (you know Ethan did a lot of eating with that distraction), and every type of farm animal you can think of including a goat pen where he could chase the goats around and feed them. Ethan would have stayed all day if I'd let him. He loved the slides and would run up the 20 foot hills to jump on and go down over and over again. He had a great time!

Life is Good!

And the blogging begins...

So I'm finally giving in to the blogging craze, mostly because I love reading all of your family's blogs and also because it seems like the easiest way to keep a family journal (which I am pretty bad at). So here's a few pics to get us started.

Summer 2007

Alaska cruise with the Servoss family.

with a stop in Vancouver.

A visit to the aquarium was a must with a 2 year old.

Making snowcones with the snoopy snowcone maker.

With grams of course!

Kitchen family reunion in Chicago.

Going to see the white socks.

It was really hot!

Cooling off with the cousins at a splash/slide park.

We drove back to school from Utah, stopped in Chicago for the reunion, dropped our stuff in DC and promptly flew right back west to attend the Woodbury reunion.
Visiting the Hoover Dam.

And then back in DC, my Wade grandparents stopped by for a visit.  We took them to the Air and Space Museum.

Grandpa could have stayed for days as long as someone was willing to listen.

And visiting the World War II Memorial in downtown DC.