Progressive Dinner

I love the holidays! I love the feeling of excitement, preparation, anticipation, and the joy of Christ that just permeates the air as we listen to Christmas music. This weekend we had a neighborhood Progressive Dinner. There were a dozen couples involved and we had so much fun. I was responsible for the salad course for 12 people. I loved getting things all ready. Putting both leaves in the table and using more dishes at once than we've ever used at once was kind of fun. Thankfully, Scott and Cheryl (Brett's parents) were here for our Nephews baptism and so they helped watch the boys. I'm excited to do it next year!

Pretty Lights

This Monday we decided to take a trip up to Salt Lake to see all of the beautiful lights on Temple Square. Sadly, it wasn't until we got to Sandy that we realized that I forgot to put the Memory Card back in my camera. So, I'm posting a picture from last year. Hyrum loved the train ride from Sandy to SL! The lights were amazing as always. On Tuesday Hyrum kept begging, "ChooTrain. . ride it. . . temple. . again" He's getting a really good grasp on placing words together to make semi-full sentences. It's great to finally be able to understand him. . . most of the time.

Laying the Turkey to Rest

It has been a great Thanksgiving weekend. Vacations are always so nice. Brett was able to finish the cold storage shelves, put up Christmas lights outside, assemble our tree inside, put Christmas music on the ipod for me and even stay up all night with his brother to be first in line at Old Navy on Black Friday for a free Lego's Rockband (yes we got it and it's pretty cool. . . feel free to come by and play! Ryan, you can use ours until you get your Wii:) Man, when I write it all down like that it makes me realize that Brett just doesn't do enough around here. . . haha. He definitely earned his Thanksgiving Dinner!
Thanksgiving was nice and relaxed. My sister Holly and her husband Jeremy and their youngest came to hang out with us on Thursday. We ate until we were tired and then put the boys down for a nap while we watched Wolverine.We loved making the big feast for Thanksgiving. Brett did most of the Turkey preparation and Hyrum helped me make whip cream to top off our Banoffee pie (One of my new favorites. It's an English dessert that Brett told me about, and thanks to Allrecipes-dot-com, we were able to have. YUMMMMYYY)Today was pretty nice out, so we played outside. Noah is the cutest little bundle when it's cold. We finished decorating the Christmas tree and it get's me so excited for the season. Hyrum has been fascinated by the stockings. I told them they were special big socks for Christmas and so, of course, he insisted on wearing them. Notice how they fit his entire leg!

Older and Wiser

So, with the sickies happening around here this last week I neglected to mention that NOAH IS 9 MONTHS OLD!!!! He's such a cute little man and it's amazing how fast he's growing and learning. It's crazy to think that Hyrum was right about this age when we conceived Noah! . . . Wow, we were crazy. We're so glad he's part of our family. So, this was by no means intended to be a photo shoot (messy hair, no pants, and crumbs on floor - the real life day), but he was being so cute that I had to show you. Lately, when he's really happy he'll squint his eyes until their shut. . . this is him in action:

Tummy Broken

We've all been taking turns being sick the past couple of weeks. Hyrum is the cutest little sick boy ever. He complained a few times saying, "Tummy, Broken". He made this 'nest' out of a box that we're letting him play with in the basement. One day while we were playing he just curled up in the nest and fell asleep. So, with being sick not much else has been happening. But we have enjoyed some beautiful sunsets from our deck. I love our view.

Night Number 2

We're getting there. . . Noah went down at about 7:30 and woke up around 8:30 (probably because we opened the garage door which is right below his room). Anyway, he was awake so I let him crawl around a little but it became evident that he was still very cranky and not really in a "I just had a nice power nap" so I put him back in the pack 'n play . . . 10 minutes of crying and he was out.He woke up again around 11:30 just before we were headed to bed so Steph gave him one more feeding and put him back to bed and that was the last thing I heard :)

NOTE: I don't even wake up when he's screaming in the room next to me so there's little chance that he'll wake me through a monitor :)

Steph told me this morning that he woke up just once in the night and cried for about 30 minutes and went back to sleep. . . so he's making progress. The goal is to get the 11/12ish to 7/8ish stretch without a hitch for about a week and then we'll bring him back upstairs to his crib. Then if we can expand that to what Hyrum used to do when he was 1 (7pm - 7am) or even something close, the plan is to move the crib into Hyrum's room so that they get used to being in the same room together (since whenever baby #3 comes . . . no that's not even close to an announcment, they'll be moving into bunk beds). Thanks for you're comments and well wishes. . . Stephanie hasn't had perfect nights the last two nights because she's still got a sore throat, but she's definitely not bloodshot anymore :)

There's a First for Everything . . . Almost!

So I normally don't post, Steph does such a good job keeping things up to date and interesting on here. But this event was too exciting. Noah will be 9 months old in 4 days and he is such a delight to have in our family. However he's a HORRIBLE SLEEPER :)

The longest stretch he's ever had is about 4 hours and that was a rarity. Usually his schedule is something like this, go down at 8, get up at 10 (feed and go back down), get up around 12 or 1 (feed and go back down), get up around 2 or 3 (sometimes feed and go back down), and often gets up around 5 (the goes back down for a few more hours).

I'm not complaining just trying to help you see how monumental last night was :). We have not let him cry it out like we did with Hyrum because he wakes Hyrum up. So last night we decided to put in a pack 'n play in the play room in the basement (with his heater of course). We set up the monitor so we could hear him in our bedroom (two floors up). He went down at 8 like normal and then woke up around 9:30. We kept him up as close to 11:00 as we could and then put him to bed in his new makeshift nursery. After reading scriptures and praying really hard that Steph and Noah would get a full night's sleep (for the first time since Noah was born). . . we went to bed and when we woke up at 7:00 am this is what we found in the playroom:


SUCCESS. . . he's still asleep. Unfortunately Steph has a bad sore throat and so she still woke up throughout the night, but even with that it was a much better night than she's had in a loooooooong time! We'll keep you posted as we try for two nights in a row tonight!


ADDENDUM:

The night was good for us but may not have been so good for Noah. When he woke up around 8:00 am he was acting confused, and more groggy than usual. That got us thinking maybe he was screaming and we didn't hear him. I checked the monitor and found that the green "link" light was on however there was no sound coming through it (not even white noise). Turns out the monitor tries to be smart, you can set a "sensitivity" level on it and if the noise doesn't exceed the sensitivity threshold then the monitor goes into a silent mode until some noise exceeds the threshold. We did not know this. The sensitivity was set to the lowest setting and after testing it this morning that meant that Noah would have had to basically have his mouth against the monitor and scream for it to "activate" our receiver upstairs. So the poor guy may have been screaming for 6 hours for all we know. Does this make us mean parents . . . I don't think so. Perhaps he "cried it out" a little longer and harder than we intended, but the point is for him to learn to sleep without our aid. . . so I guess mission accomplished :) But lest ye think me heartless we are going to make sure the sensitivity level is set adequately high tonight so that if he's crying we can at least be aware of it.