Happy Holidays

Having spent entirely too much time playing in the last week, we now find ourselves in the quiet lull before the storm of work descends upon us again next week. But we have to admit that we enjoyed ourselves.

But first, some make-up photos from Thanksgiving. Since we finally retrieved our camera from Bubby and Poppy's house, we can display our shots of the kids in their Thanksgiving/Christmas finery.

There's really not much to say about the week preceding the break, except that it was entirely too busy. Saturday, we had a family party with my family, replete with a Bethlehem lunch (and entirely too much food, as per usual). Although the meal was not terribly authentic (cheese sticks? fish sticks? chicken nuggets?) at least everyone found something to enjoy.

After the party, we loaded up the car and headed down to Cedar City, trying to catch the lull between the big storms that had moved into Provo during the week and were set to start again in the next day or so. We managed okay, arriving to Cedar City just after dark. Evelyn, however, did not enjoy the ride. We're starting to notice a rather unfortunate trend: anytime we spend more than an hour or two in the car, she spends most of the last hour screaming. Since she's normally a happy, placid baby, this is rather hard on all of us!

On Sunday, we went to the blessing of Matt and Laurie's baby, Leo, the newest addition to the Eves clan. However, we don't have any pictures of the baby, or of Andrew and Evelyn in their Christmas finery. (Evelyn was particularly lovely in a chocolate brown satin and velvet dress that just matched her eyes. Not to mention the little gold ballet slippers. Can you tell I had a little bit too much fun accessorizing my baby?). After the blessing, we had a big family/friends gathering at the clubhouse behind Bubby and Poppy's house. The food and company were both lovely, but we retreated early to put down our increasingly tired and cranky kids.

True to the forecast, the first few days of the week were cold and snowy. Not that Andrew minded. We found him a child's shovel at the Cal Ranch store and he was more than happy to help his dad and Poppy shovel sidewalks. (Although truth be told, Andrew did more hindering than helping--he still hasn't exactly grasped the concept that you shovel snow *off* of the sidewalks--he's just as likely to shovel newly removed snow back onto the concrete.) Since both Bubby and Poppy had to work the first couple days of the week, we had a couple of nice, slow days just hanging out.


On Christmas Eve (and, not so coincidentally, Andrew's third birthday), we spent the morning at Dan's cousin Jodi's house. Andrew was thrilled to play with her boys (especially Zach, who's only a few weeks younger than he is). He was even more thrilled to try sledding in the back yard.

After wearing him out in the snow, we joined the rest of the family at Costa Vida for lunch. (Apologies if you've already seen these pictures--Poppy borrowed some of them to post on their blog). After lunch, Bubby brought out this lovely DQ cake for Andrew. Although Costa Vida may not have been *his* first choice for lunch (he was initially upset because he couldn't order a hamburger and french fries), he was more than recompensed by the cake.

I was undoubtedly a bad mother by giving my baby a few tiny bites of ice cream. It didn't take her long to warm to the idea, although it will probably be another five months until she gets to try this again.
Sarah and Laurie, looking charming, as always.



That afternoon, after naps (well, mostly just Andrew's nap), Dan and Aaron were instructed to take the kids sledding to get them out of the house and wear them out while dinner preparations were underway. However, the evening proved the adage that the best laid plans often go awry--the upstairs toilet backed up and overflowed, and Poppy, Dan, Matt and Aaron spent the better part of the evening trying to figure out how to fix it. (I'm still not sure if it *is* fixed--I know the toilet was off limits the rest of the trip). So we fixed the kids a quiet meal and the grown-ups waited until the kids were in bed to eat ourselves. We did finally manage to get everyone together to watch Andrew open a few birthday presents--I think the poor kid's sense of entitlement was seriously bent out of shape during this past month (and not necessarily in a good way). Between scattered birthday and Christmas presents all through the month, I think he thinks it's his permanent right to open any and all presents . . .


Christmas morning started bright and early at 6:30, when the last of the kids finally woke up. The kids were uniformly enchanted by what Santa brought them--and maybe even more enchanted by what Santa brought the others. Lydia seemed fascinated by the little animal zoo we bought for Evelyn; Andrew spent the rest of the weekend half-thinking that the stroller and bassinet sets that Lydia and Katie got also belonged to him; and all of the kids had fun playing with Andrew's jungle set.

Sarah's girls got a cute set of princess dress-up clothes that Andrew also wanted to lay claim to (but he was too bulky to put on the dresses--I was afraid he would rip a seam). Luckily, I had picked up a clearance knight costume for him after Halloween, so, despite his ardent desire to wear a pretty princess dress, he was eventually pacified by his knight costume. I was pretty entertained, afterwards, to find him and Lydia hiding from the "dragon" (Jake, I think) under the piano. Lydia shrieked a few times, and Andrew told her, encouragingly, not to be afraid because he would "fight the dragon. And dragons are scared of being fighted."




After exploring the contents of the stockings, we had a nice breakfast of monkey bread and some kind of egg casserole (it was good, but I think we all agreed we could do better next time). And then the real work of the morning began: presents. Because the family is gradually increasing (there were fourteen of us there that morning) it took a couple of hours to work through all of the presents.
Andrew got more animals from Bubby, and spent most of the time playing with them while waiting his turn to open more presents. Evelyn slept through most of the precedings (the only time, ironically enough, that she napped for more than 45 minutes our entire trip!).

Andrew also got another addition to his dress-up chest with a prince costume from Matt and Laurie. He looks pretty good with a crown on, I think.

Dan was less than excited by the ties I gave him (don't worry, that wasn't the only thing he got!),


but at least some of our gifts were appreciated! We found these great mugs from the Office (Kevin and Andy, respectively) for Poppy and Matt.


After that, Christmas settled into the post-presents lull that always makes the day seem sort of anti-climactic. The kids played with (and fought over) their new toys, while the grown-ups settled into cleaning up and just hanging out. We did have fun playing with Aaron's new Settlers of Cataan after the kids went to bed, though.

Friday morning, we all endured the ordeal known as Family Pictures for Trisha. That afternoon, we took the kids to the cultural hall at the church and ran them around for a while, playing four square, soccer, baseball, bowling, racing, and anything else we could think of to get them moving. I'm not sure what Lydia was doing here, but she sure looks cute. Apparently Lydia spent the early part of the afternoon (I missed part of it, as I was home with Evelyn) stealing some of the bowling pins from the bowling game. No matter how upset Andrew got, or how earnestly he tried reasoning with her, she simply refused to part with her prize. Lydia is definitely an independent spirit!

Saturday afternoon we returned home--we fully enjoyed our trip and were sorry to leave family, but, it must be confessed, we were rather pleased to be sleeping in our own beds again!

We hope that all of our readers also enjoyed a happy, hopeful Holiday season.