Some Early Christmas Cheer

My sister Jessica was here today and created this  video

of our family to entertain Brynne.  It's pretty silly.  She 

did a disco version on her blog, but we chose the Charleston

 version instead.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

A New Addition

I guess I get to be the first one to officially break the news that we have a new addition to the family.  My parents adopted a new dog on Saturday while they were in Moab.  To be honest, they drove 4 hours each way just to go see this dog.  She's an English Coonhound and she resembles a Blue Tick Hound except her coloring is white and ginger instead of black and white with a little brown thrown in.  The name her foster parent was calling her was Punkin, which nobody wanted to keep.  After much consideration my parents decided to give her an English name.  They are calling her Dawleigh (pronounced Dolly) after a town my Dad served in on his LDS mission to Central Britain.  Brynne, our resident animal enthusiast,  was invited to accompany my parents on their trip to check out the prospective new pet.  

Brynne and Dawleigh with Solda in the background.

Dawleigh is a very sweet dog and everyone likes her, even Hannah and James who aren't keen on dogs in general and Ruby specifically because she's jumped up on them a time or two.  She and Solda get along great especially after cuddling up together the whole way home on Saturday.  She met Ruby yesterday on a hike in the woods and they mostly ignored each other, which we took as a good sign.  She went to work with Walt today and was very well behaved.  As Barrett and I were driving up to my parents house this afternoon he announced, "Mommy, I LOVE Dawleigh.  I want to buy a new dog."  I told him we could go visit Dawleigh anytime he wants because we are NOT getting a second dog.   

Cafe Rio Fiasco

We went to Cafe Rio for dinner last night.  A not uncommon event now that we finally have one close to us in Park City.  It's also one of the few restaurants we feel safe letting Barrett eat at with his nut allergy.  Anyway we picked Blythe up from her first soccer skills clinic at 5 p.m. and headed straight to Cafe Rio.  While we were in line after ordering our food, but still waiting for it to be prepared my cell phone rang.  I saw that it was my sister so I answered it.  I paid for our dinner and grabbed one tray of food while Justin grabbed the other.  Justin was ahead of me, then Barrett followed by Blythe and me.  Barrett decided to climb the soda machine.  I don't know why since Justin still had the cups on his tray.  But attempt to climb he did and he used the grate you set the cups on while you fill them to pull himself up with.  It worked at first, but then it came loose in his hand and he fell backwards onto the floor.  I was still trying to talk to my sister on my cell phone and I had my hands full with my tray with my salad on it.  So I walked right past to him to the table Justin had chosen, meanwhile telling Jess that I'd have to call her back.  Justin made it to Barrett before I did, but not before a horrified mother who was sitting close by did.  He was crying and his hair had somehow gotten wet with soda.  

Justin couldn't believe I'd walked right past Barrett.  I saw him fall and I wasn't too worried that he was hurt.  I was more mad at him for trying to climb it in the first place.  When I did go back to pick him up the first thing I said was, "That's what you get for climbing on things."  No, I will not be winning any Mother of the Year awards anytime soon.  The horrified mother was probably even more horrified when she heard me say that.  

He's developed a bad habit of climbing up on everything.  The day before we were at Costco together and there was a large ride-on Thomas the Tank Engine, which was on a shelf higher than my head.  Every time, I set Barrett down he made a beeline for Thomas and was determined to climb up so he could sit on it.  One time he actually got his head and shoulders up through a gap in the shelf before I caught up with him.  He also has been climbing up to reach where we hang our car keys.  He pulls himself up by grabbing the faucet to my laundry room sink.  I swear he's going to pull it out one of these days.  I cannot figure out how to keep him from doing it.  

But back to Cafe Rio, we got Barrett to our table where he promptly pulled off one of his shoes and socks and said that his foot hurt.  He cried for a few minutes and well within 10 minutes later he was laughing and happy again.  I'm hoping that he got scared and hurt just enough that he won't try it again.  Oh, and as Justin finally let me know when we were halfway through dinner I'd left my credit card with the cashier and hadn't signed the credit card slip either because I was on my cell phone at the time.  I was totally clueless.  That's a living testament to why you shouldn't talk on the phone and drive at the same time.  I'm going to try to be better about that.  I also won't be answering my phone at Cafe Rio anymore!

Halloween 2008

This year we broke with tradition and spent Halloween in Salt Lake with the Stevens family.  We initially turned Jessica down when she invited us to Tyler's First Birthday party because Justin thought that the girls would want to go trick-or-treating with their friends.  When Halloween arrived and the girls hadn't made any plans with their friends I asked Jess if it was too late to change our minds about coming.  She graciously said we were still invited.  We left to go trick-or-treating as soon as we got some photos of the kids in their costumes.  This was the first time I ever accompanied Barrett while trick-or-treating, since I usually stay home to pass out candy.  Nathan literally raced from door to door.  Barrett wasn't too far behind.  

Brynne as Hermione Granger from Harry Potter,

Barrett as Lightning McQueen's Pit Crew Chief,

(this was his costume last year but he was adamant

that he wanted to wear this costume again) and 

Blythe as a vampire.  She wore the same dress last

year when she went as a witch so all I had to buy 

for her was the vampire teeth and make up.

I finally took Brynne to get her hair cut after

she cut it herself.  She got a lecture from the 

hairdresser about leaving the hair cutting to her.

I love it short like this.

Brynne, Barrett, Nathan, and Blythe holding Tyler.

Notice Tyler's bare feet.  It was the warmest 

Halloween we've had in a long time.

This was in someone's front yard.

Halloween must be their favorite holiday.

Brynne holding Tyler, the birthday boy.

We were lucky that the rain held off until we finished trick-or-treating.  Jessica fed us chili and corn bread for dinner. Then we watched Tyler demolish his pumpkin shaped pumpkin cake.  After that we indulged in pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, banana cupcakes with chocolate frosting and halloween shaped molasses cookies.  We were all suffering from sugar overload by the end of the night!  

The next morning I sorted all the peanut and "may contain peanuts or tree nuts" candy from the kids Halloween haul.  I let the girls keep a few "may contains peanuts" items such as M&Ms and Kit-kats as long as they promised to keep them away from Barrett.  Blythe was upset because I took away all of her Nestle Crunches because they had a tree nut warning on them.  She had purposely collected a lot of them.  Justin ended up taking a gallon sized ziploc bag full of confiscated candy to work with him on Monday.  I replaced the forbidden candy with Barrett safe candy such as Junior Mints, Nerds, Starbursts, Skittles, Caramel Apple Pops etc.  Since I didn't end up passing out any candy I now have enough candy on the premises to last us until next Halloween.

A Big Mess

Last week I was on the computer reading blogs.  I was reading my cousin Kirsten's blog about her 2 year old son who put crayons in the jam jar.  She said she is counting down the months until she no longer has a two year old.  I left a comment saying how last year I'd been doing a similar countdown and I was thinking how nice it is that Barrett doesn't routinely trash my house the way he did last year.  While I was occupied Barrett was downstairs playing . . . OR SO I THOUGHT!  In reality he was doing this  . . .

trashing the family room.  Now the funny thing is (or more accurately the not so funny thing is) that Justin had actually made the effort to pick up all the toys the night before while I was at a bridal shower.  Barrett dumped every toy out onto the floor in front of the back door and then for good measure pulled all the cushions off the sofa and added those too.  He told me he piled everything there so that the girls wouldn't be able to get into the house when they came home from school.  I'm still not sure what that was all about.  You can't really tell from the photo just how many toys got dumped out because the smallest toys are underneath everything else.  It took me forever to sort all the toys back into their proper bins.  Barrett helped a little but then my Mom showed up with James and that was the end of Barrett's help.   The silver lining was that I did take the opportunity to sort a few items into a bag that ended up at D.I.  I'm hoping this doesn't turn into a new habit of his.