chet's kindergarten christmas party.

on thursday, the 2 kindergarten classes at chet's school had the cutest christmas party.

what a fun way to finish off the first half of kindergarten!

chet's teacher has been amazing so far, and she certainly lived up to her amazing-ness with this party.

parents, grandparents, and siblings were invited to the party too.

matt was able to skip out on work to make it some of the party, and grandma maralyn was able to come too!

first, the kids got to make couple crafts.

then we had lunch.

then santa arrived!

then the kindergartners performed the songs they have been practicing.

and last, but definitely not least, there was the magic show.

chet thought his party was so special, and he loved including holden in all the fun.

the boys both agreed that the magic show was their favorite part.

the magician was hilarious and (surprisingly) very tricky!

matt, maralyn, and i were watching him like a hawk, and we could not figure out the majority of his tricks of the life of us!

.. like when he showed us an empty balloon, blew it up, and then, when he popped it, a dove flew out. what the heck? devilry, i tell ya.

chet was called up to be a helper at one part of the show. he felt so special!

i agree that the magic show was super entertaining, but i also liked watching the kids perform their songs.

5 year olds are too funny - they have no shame!

click here to watch the kindergarten classes perform 3 songs.

up on the house top, if you can't wait for christmas, and call rudolph.

chet is 5 kids from the left, in a light blue shirt.
(but you may want to direct your attention to the loud girl in the red dress, closer to the middle of the group. she is pretty adorable!)

in september, i was quite worried about chet starting school but, i gotta say, it has been such a great experience so far.

first dump of snow.

on thursday morning, we woke up to our first big dump of snow this year.

holden couldn't wait to check it out. crazy kid..

when chet got home from school, the boys got all bundled up to play in the snow.

they had fun.

but we spent more time getting them bundled up then they spent actually playing!

and here are a couple pictures of tad because.. well.. he's cute.

chet and holden think he is the cutest baby in the world. quite the compliment!

16 weeks.

tad is 16 weeks old today.

on tuesday, he weighed 10 lbs 0 oz.

he is smiling!!

and man, we all love getting him to smile. it is the cutest!

he is also starting to coo.

he seems to like it when you get close to him and copy he sounds.

he is an excellent burper.
.. and farter.
he's got such nice, squishy cheeks to kiss.
the poor boy has 2 clogged tear ducts, so his eyes are always frustratingly goopy. 

he is sleeping a bit longer each night (now we up are to 6 straight hours - woohoo!).

he likes getting rides in the stroller, going for car rides, being held and walked around, and snuggling.

our christmas festivities, thus far.

we are in full-fledged christmas celebration mode over here.
here are some of the things we have done this past week.

december 4 - we went the santa claus parade in high river. high river is a smaller town so we anticipated it being an OK parade, but it ending up being amazing! i think the small town feel made it even more exciting for the boys - most of the 'floats' were just heavy machinery decorated with lights. we saw tractor trailers, fire trucks, off-road vehicles, enormous tow trucks, buses, and all sorts of farm equipment. my word, combines are huge!

december 5 - we picked out our christmas tree from ikea, brought it home, and decorated it (along with the rest of our home) while jamming out to christmas tunes.

december 6 - matt helped the boys make little sled christmas ornaments out of popsicle sticks. it took much longer then matt anticipated, but the boys loved cutting/gluing/drilling the sticks with their dad. 

december 7 - we had a christmas themed FHE with our clarke cousins and grandpa larry. jane taught us about the nativity and then we made more nifty ornaments for on our tree. this time our ornamnents were made by coloring on solo cups with sharpies, and melting them in the oven.. very fun!

december 10 - we visited santa at the mall. i didn't plan on doing this, but we skipped out on our ward christmas party and i didn't know where else the boys would get a chance to see santa this year. i was expecting to have to wait around for a couple hours (based on what others had told me) but we basically walked right to the front of the line. a christmas miracle! the boys were excited to see santa and enjoyed chatting with him. while at the mall, we also got to decorate a gingerbread man, write santa a letter, and plop it in a special north pole mailbox.

december 11 - we had a christmas playdate with almost all of the leavitt cousins at aunt marci's house. marci had set up a pretend store in the basement for the kids to buy, and and wrap up, a gift for their moms. chet got me something and can hardly wait for me to open it! 

december 12 - we decorated our gingerbread house! and then headed up to pure hell airdrie to check out the festival of lights there. it was sooOOoo cold. airdrie is only 50 minutes north of our home, but it was so much colder. by the end, holden was inconsolable (he gets his tolerance for cold weather straight from me - it's funny how similar we are in that area). despite being in legitimate pain from the cold, we did enjoy seeing the lights and riding the little train around the park. we drank a whole lot of hot chocolate that night.


coming up:
- chet's kindergarten christmas concert and celebration.
- the annual leavitt adult christmas party.
- the annual christmas eve party with all of matt's family (we have a really great performance in the works for the talent show that night!)
- we think it would be fun to check out the lights at spruce meadows and confederation park.
- it's tradition to visit the live nativity at heritage park.

these candid photos of the boys working on the house are my favorite..

i also like the background of this one..

this is a blurry picture of us at the airdrie festival of lights, all bundled up.. and still cold!

our trip to gilbert.

welp, if it wasn't for matt being in calgary, i may never have come back home.

the boys and i had such a perfect trip to arizona the past 2 weeks. (november 19 - december 2)

i loved spending time with my parents and my sister. i was spoiled with so much help taking care of my boys, and always was in good company.

and i also loved skipping out on 2 weeks of winter :)

it was dreamy.

we had brainstormed all these fun places in phoenix we could go to while i was there, but we ended up keeping things pretty simple.. which i loved.

our days generally consisted of going on walks, trips to playgrounds, swimming in the hot tub (and a couple crazy dips in the cold pool!), and playing with toys.

there were a few times where we all did venture out on the town, too - we went our to eat a couple times, went to the christmas lights at the mesa temple, spent an afternoon at the scottsdale train park, and did a hike very slow walk in san tan regional park (which chet has dubbed his "worst favorite part of the trip". heaven forbid we make him exert energy on a hot day!).

and then there were my selfish activities - late night trips to target and morning runs outside with no kids in sight.

chet loved having grandma's undecided attention, holden was grandpa's number 2 (my dad honestly couldn't go anywhere without holden tagging along), and tad and i appreciated having extra hands around to feed/change/love him.

i think tad may have been the saddest to leave because he knew that,when grandma and grandpa aren't around, and you are child #3, you can't be held allll the time.

when my sister was visiting, chet and holden spent their days playing with miss london (those 3 were so cute together!), april and i had a chance to catch up after almost a year of being apart, and we have devised a plan for how we can all live in the same place again. (we may have even spent an afternoon visiting show homes and day dreaming of how to make it all work!)

now we only need to get those husbands of ours on board...

but alas, all good things must come to an end.

we made it back to calgary safely.

the boys and i survived not 1, but 2, flights where i was outnumbered 3-1 by kids.

some people in the airport looked at me like i was a lunatic, as i pushed my small bus-load of children through the terminals.

but some people also looked at me like i was an all-star mom!

the boys were ridiculously good in the airports and on the flights so it honestly wasn't even stressful (i suppose they've had a fair share of practice..) and i all am ready for our next trip!

the reason for our trip was because matt is considering going to grad school to get an MBA.

to apply, he has to take the GMAT.

and, to do well on the GMAT, you need to do a whole lot of studying.

with the boys and i away for a couple weeks, matt was able to really hunker down and get a ton of studying done. he also attended a 4-day course at the U of C to help prep him.

now, for a whole lot of pictures!

chet was going to miss his class's teddy bear picnic at school while we were away. so we decided to have our own! teddy bear sandwiches, teddy grahams, gummy bears, berries, and a few teddy bear stories to read.

our hike:

i got to meet up with my long-time friend, lana, for a playdate at the mesa riverview park.

the park was awesome, and so was catching up!

after church pictures:

and the next sunday (wearing the exact. same. clothes.)

i have always referred to april as my little big sister. and i am her big little sister.

but this picture makes me look more like her mammoth little sister!

i have heard good things about the mccormick-stillman railroad park, in scottsdale, for years, but this was our first trip there. and it was awesome! we will definitely be going back. it has a couple playgrounds, tons of open green space (perfect for a picnic), a miniature train to ride, full size restored trains you can walk through, the biggest model train set-up i have ever seen (the boys honestly could have spent hours looking at that), and a carousel ride.

this is just a small part of the model train set.

my friend, jocelyn, is moving to gilbert next week so we went and checked out their place. one of our favorite parts was meeting their next door neighbor..

we love the christmas lights at the mesa temple. the are gorgeous. we have gone several years, and will probably go several more!

(too bad it is impossible to capture the beauty in pictures.)

photography by chet :)

other random stuff:

and to finish off, this is one of my favorite pictures from the trip..