Our Favorite Christmas Present!

This year Christmas seems to have come and gone, and we hardly had time to enjoy it. However, on Saturday December 27th, we received a Christmas present better than any other, ( I am sure on future December 27ths he will wish he'd waited!).

Hyrum Scott

joined our family

weighing in at 6 lbs 14 oz (our biggest so far)

Length 19 inches

We are all having a lot of fun with our new baby brother. KB loves holding him, changing his diaper, brushing his hair and doing anything else we may allow. Buster loves washing his hands so he can hold baby brother (sometimes I think he holds baby brother just so he can use the hand sanitizer, either way clean hands are never a bad thing)

So far, life with a new little baby has been great. It has been nice to have Swifty home to spend time with KB and Buster, so they don't feel left out, and it has been great to have so many friends bringing us dinner and taking the kids to play for a little while. We are looking forward to a month of visiting grandmas and grandpas starting soon.

SNOW

Although it did not snow much it was enough for the kids to beg to go outside. Last year if Buster even saw his coat or snow suit he would begin screaming and not stop until you took it off. If by chance snow got on his hand he would scream and scream. This year we can't seem to keep him out of the snow. If he is not playing in it he is standing at the back door looking out longingly waiting for his time to play. Oh what a difference a year makes!

The Land of Tunnels

Swifty had an interview in Pittsburgh, so we decided to make a little vacation out of it. The kids absolutely loved being in a hotel, who knew that watching a waterfall in a lobby, playing farm in a hotel room, and watching out our window from the 6th floor could be so entertaining. While we were there KB was mesmerized by two major things the first being that we were in the land of TUNNELS, and the second that she was driving next to the Ohio river, which she doesn't really see in Ohio but drives over in the land of TUNNELS! KB asks all the time when we get to back to Pittsburgh, because it was so fun. Little does she know that at times it was truly terrifying driving in the land of tunnels!

Haunting Halloween

We sure lucked out this year and got a fabulously warm Halloween night which worked out GREAT, considering Ariel could not wear a long sleeve shirt over her strong arm and a jacket would cover her beautiful mermaid fin! We began our festivities with some pumpkin carving (okay the kids painted, I made a lame simple jack o lantern and Swifty truly carved. In case you can't tell Swifty's is the really cool one also known as Aku the evil wizard! KB did an amazing job making a face all by herself and Buster loved "helping everyone else".

We had a fun dinner at a friend's house consisting of pumpkin, witch hats, cat vegetables and yummy candy orange rolls (which was the only thing Buster even attempted to put in his mouth). We then used the fun little neighborhood by them to trick or treat. Ariel rode in the stroller most of the time (at our request, she fell almost every step she took). Our cute little Rar-rar, who could not wait to put on his costume and was even excited to have his nose and whiskers painted so he looked like rar-rar, was very slow to go at first. Then Swifty pulled out a piece of candy and let him have it. After that Buster ran from house to house with his Elmo bucket. He even spoke to a few people. Sometime during the night one of our friends warned us of a bump in the sidewalk so KB was aware of it, all we heard from Buster after that was "BUMP" at every crack in the sidewalk. One of the houses had a pumpkin with its guts coming out of its mouth, we laughed at how mesmerized the kids were by this one pumpkin. I guess Dad will have to start carving the pumpkins from his childhood to impress our kids. It sure made us miss those Crazy pumpkins our uncles do!


Buster finally going up to a house without dada

The friends we could capture in the picture

Ariel showing Cruella Devil her cool green glow stick, and Cruella commenting on how she also has a cool glow stick!

Our sweet kids took their own sweet time trick or treating while all of their friends were off and running. They make me laugh, but I am truly grateful for how excited they are to just stop and enjoy themselves.

Look at all that LOOT!

KB's Krash

This morning during the early preparations to get ready for church, we heard KB screaming in the hallway between our bedrooms. In her own words, this is what happened. "I was running out of Mom's room and tripped over a Wet Wipe, then I jumped and turned and hit my arm on the railing that holds up the railing." We found her holding her forearm and crying. After she calmed down, she still wouldn't move her arm, and was moaning a lot, so we started considering taking her to urgent care. The dilemma with this was that KB has some hypochondriasis which she uses to try to get attention, so Swifty was quite suspicious and examined her arm several times. Finally we decided that we really couldn't tell if she was faking it or not, so we took her to the urgent care, and guess what, it really was broken. She had a small buckle fracture of her radius at her wrist, and got a purple cast past her elbow. We then went straight from urgent care to church, where KB refused to go to her class because she didn't want the attention her new cast would get her. She was very brave getting the cast on, and has been a real trooper about the whole thing. Going to bed tonight, KB had to verify with me that I had a hard time falling asleep too when I had a cast on my arm.

This is KB in her Halloween costume, sporting her new "hard arm"

GRANDMA!

Sorry grandma that it took so long to let you know how much we enjoyed your trip! We are so grateful you came and can't wait to see you again!

Some of the highlights of the trip were:
Buster's birthday - we went to the zoo, made a special train cake, and had a lot of presents. There is more about that special day in a previous post.

Apple picking and canning - we picked 60 lbs of apples, and then, after a long search for such things as canners and Victoria strainers, we managed to work out a scheme that allowed us to turn all those apples into applesauce. Since then, we (mostly Buster) have eaten a large amount of these stored goods.

Graeter's - this is a tradition for family visits that we all enjoy.

A lot of shopping - Grandma took the kids and I to many stores looking for just the right birthday and Christmas presents.

(Sorry, we do have pictures to post with this, but currently the back up computer is not equal to the challenge, we'll keep working on it)

Older and wiser. . . or just older?

Swifty has finally hit the big 30! He says he feels older and probably most definitely wiser, however, his birthday plans were much like our children's birthday plans. This was our executed plan.

-Work a crazy schedule before hand so you can have your whole birthday off!

-open presents, before breakfast

-go to the park and play on the playground

-hang out at home for naps

-eat a really yummy dinner, that he cooked I might add. Hmm, it kinda felt like my birthday!

-Go to the pet store

All in all I think it was a perfect day!

I love that he can truly get older and wiser, but still enjoy all the simple things and play just like our little ones. We are lucky to have such a special fun dad in our life! Happy Birthday Babe-- We LOVE you