Baby, it's cold outside

Why is it that after living for almost eight years in Minnesota I've become a total winter baby? It's been in the 20s the last couple of days and I've been cold, cold, cold. In Minnesota, the 20s were childplay. Slightly cool, if anything. But when the people on Channel 5 Eyewitness News say "Oooh! Near record cold in the 20s!" instead of feeling judgmental and superior ("You want to see record cold? Try -15 below baby!") I agree with them and dread going outside. How quickly we humans go soft.

Today I get to pick the kids up 15 minutes early from school so I can take Elise to a Sunshine Generation performance at the Festival of Trees. I remember doing the Festival of Trees once in Young Womens--one of my leaders was above and beyond crafty and we made this glorious tree. I think it was Cookie Monster themed? Not entirely sure. However, I have very little recollection of actually helping. Mostly of being slightly bratty and 15 and sneaking around the Festival of Trees with my friends, looking for boys, and avoiding assisting anyone in any way. Do you ever think back on your adolescence with shame? I also regret what a whiny lazybones I was at girls' camp. I never liked girls' camp. Sleeping on the ground with half a dozen chattering, gossipy girls; digging latrines; going with out a shower or a (gasp!) curling iron for days on end. (Remember, this was the 80s, and a girl without a curling iron was seriously desperate. I do remember one year that Jenny Sproul bought a cordless curling iron powered by butane or some such thing and her hair looked PERFECT the whole time. Irked me.) Did anyone like girls' camp? I'm sure they did. Just not whiny, gossipy me. I remember when I missed out on going on Pioneer Trek because I had cheerleading camp I was overwhelmed with relief, then everyone else in my ward held it against me spiritually for oh, about two years, ("well, Angie, you would like totally understand if you had gone to trek, is what I'm saying,") at which time I whisked myself away to BYU, land of learning to be eminently spiritually superior. I am now extraordinarily humbled and realize that trek or no trek, BYU or no BYU, I'm in my mid-thirties and still don't sign up to go to the cannery if I can help it. So maybe I'm still the same as I was at fifteen, running around the Festival of Trees and letting other people do the hard work.

Okay, so I'll end this ramble with two pictures. First, here's a picture from home evening on Monday night. (Okay, so we DID have family home evening. Point.) Ethan had an "Armor of God" lesson in Primary on Sunday and wanted to do Home Evening himself, so he and Elise dressed up Jonas in the Armor of God. Ethan even read corresponding scriptures.




Then, on Tuesday night, Jonas lost his tooth. (He also promptly dropped it on the stairs while I was trying to get Elise dressed for her Sunshine Generation dress rehearsal--as she wolfed down a bowl of hastily prepared spaghetti; wrap a present for Grandpa Hiatt's 82nd birthday; find the address for Jonas's Jr. Jazz basketball meeting that night; and locate Ethan's shoes.) We all dropped everything and searched the stairs for a few minutes and-hallelujah!--found it, the all important (teeny tiny) first lost tooth. We were about six minutes late for everything else we had to do that night, but I'm usually six minutes late anyway, tooth on the stairs or no.


And please ignore Jonas's boogery nose. As I said in the beginning of the post, it's cold outside. Let the booger season begin!

Talking Turkey

So it's Sunday (my favorite day right now--don't have a hard Sunday calling, the kids are reasonable during church, and I get to come home and TAKE A NAP!) and I'm feeling particularly good because we've gotten so much accomplished now that Thanksgiving's over. Got the house all clean, got the Christmas decorations up, made lots of food for lots of folks, got almost ALL of my Christmas shopping done on Friday, and I even just sent off the final articles for Irreantum to the typesetter yesterday (while everybody else watched the BYU/Utah game). So I'm luxuriating in leftovers and the prospect of a few weeks of relative downtime where I don't have much to do but worry about the Enrichment Christmas party on the 13th--which shouldn't be too hard to pull off.

To kick off my round-up of Thanksgiving goings on at the Hallstrom house, here's a picture of Jonas in a turkey hat he made in Kindergarten. (For those of you who follow the Sweat family blogs, Jonas's cousin Brandon made an almost identical Turkey hat in his Kindergarten class in North Carolina, which is posted on Andi's blog--see sidebar :-).

Also notice Jonas's scraggly lower front tooth. It's been tempting to just yank the thing for the past week or so, but it's still pretty stuck on the front end, so I'm restraining myself. He's excited to finally lose a tooth, though, and get a "golden dollar" from the Tooth Fairy.

Thanksgiving Day was a lot of fun. We had 22 people total at our house (12 adults and 10 kids 10 and under). Thanksgiving was always one of the hardest holidays for me while we were living in Minnesota because I love the hustle and bustle of lots of people, and this Thanksgiving definitely had both hustle AND bustle. We were able to set up the grown-ups in the dining room and the kids were left to their own devices (kinda) eating at the table in the kitchen. So here's a before and after shot of the Hallstrom family's dining room table being put to actual good use:

Before:

After:

We had two roasted turkeys, one smoked turkey breast, and a ham--not to mention all the other Thanksgiving staples (stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes--the whole shebang.) We even bought a case of sparkling cider (note the lined up bottles in photo #1)--a product that is much easier to find at Thankgiving time in Utah, land of fake alcohol. You can hardly walk down a grocery store aisle without tripping over the stuff here. I've never actually tasted champagne (I haven't, Mom--I promise!) but I'm sure that a nice glass of Martinellis tastes a lot better than a $100 bottle of Cristal, albeit the sophistication factor is lowered somewhat.

The kids had a great time running around in the basement. Gotta love a basement. I also bought the DVD of Ice Age 2 so the adults could enjoy a touch of peace and quiet while we let our food digest.

It was also a lot of fun to have our three 1 1/2 year olds get to know each other. My brother Tony and his wife Cindy's boy Eli is 20 months old (Grandma Sweat's got him), Forrest's sister Mindy and her husband Pete's little girl Ava is 16 months old (I've got her), and my Aunt Denny and Uncle Joe recently adopted little Emma from China, and she's adorable and 19 months old (Denny's got her). Here's a shot of the three of them together:

We ate so much that I was physically unable to have any dessert--and no, it's not because I'm a girl of delicate appetite. I think it's more due to the fact that Baby No Name is taking up a considerable amount of room these days. (It's like having gastric bypass without the risky surgery!). There were a ton of leftovers for everyone, though, and I've been reaaalllly enjoying my turkey cranberry sandwiches for lunch the last couple of days. (Okay, so maybe the third trimester isn't *completely* like having gastric bypass surgery).

But Thanksgiving was a great time--lots of fun--and reminded me of all the good things that moving back to Utah has brought us. I even talked my mom and my sister-in-law into meeting me at Target the morning after for some Black Friday shopping! (And, yes, I got some smokin' deals). So it's been a fun weekend. I love the holidays. (Jonas drew a picture of a frightening looking alien at church today and drew a speech bubble coming out of his mouth and then asked me how to spell "I love Christmas," so, apparently Jonas and the Alien both share my sentiments.) I wish we could have had a dozen more people at our house on Thanksgiving so everybody in the family could have been included--but I know we'll be seeing all of you soon.

Let the Christmas Music Begin!

Random Subjects

Random Subject #1--I forgot to post about the boys' karate tournament a week a go last Saturday. They were both very excited, and as we sat waiting in the audience for the tournament to begin, watching some of the older kids perform exhibitions, suddenly some nunchucks came whizzing out of a performer's hands and into the audience. The speeding nunchucks hit Jonas directly in the face. I must admit, I freaked out a bit. He started bleeding--pretty badly--from his nose, and Forrest, Ethan and I hustled on out of there, followed closely behind by a woman from All-Star Karate who was probably praying we weren't the suing types. (We're not.) Forrest took care of his nose calmly and resonably, but I got a little panicky and even started to cry a bit when I thought his nose was broken. (It wasn't). It's so hard to see your child in pain, bleeding, upset. I'm not very good at it. I was also mad for him because he'd been so excited about the tournament and I figured he wouldn't be able to do it after a flying nunchuck to the face. But no! He surprised me by taking a good long drink of water, wiping the blood off his face with the back of his hand, and marching back into the auditorium to compete.

So here's my brave warrior, ready to take on the rest of those 5 year olds who hadn't looked death in the face and survived. (Note the warrior like blood ringing his nostrils. Very intimidating for his competitors, I'm sure :-).

Both Ethan and Jonas were able to earn trophies, Ethan for 2nd place in flag sparring (where you get to wear a cool protective helmet and try to rip the flags off of your competitor's belt) and Jonas for 2nd place in katas (which is basically repeating the specific karate moves you've learned in sequence) and 3rd place in "musical challenge." Musical challenge was by far my favorite event: kids freestylin' to "Eye of the Tiger" style music, dancing and coming up with their own karate moves. The 3,4 and 5 year olds were the best to watch because so many of them haven't learned shame yet, so they put their hearts and souls into kicking and spinning and whacking the air with great abandon. It was hilarious.




Random Subject #2--Elise is addicted to lip gloss. She went to the mall (!!) with her friend Taylor on Saturday and took her allowance with her. She came home with a baby bottle pop (if you're not the parent of a school age child, you are probably blessedly spared from knowing what a baby bottle pop is--a horrible candy baby bottle filled with sticky, sugary goo) and a tube of sparkly lip gloss, which she has been applying liberally about 10 times a day ever since. She even brought it to church without me knowing. I had to go confiscate it before sacrament meeting started because it was the Primary Program and I wouldn't have put it past her to whip it out and start applying during "Follow the Prophet."

I do have to give her props, though: She did homework for an hour and a half tonight (a book report on "Judy Moody Gets Famous" where she had to write a summary of the book, draw and color her favorite part of the book, color it, and cut it into a puzzle--AND she had a cursive handwriting worksheet) and didn't have a breakdown. I almost had a breakdown and I was just helping. Very impressive.

Random Subject #3: I'm getting tired. I wish I knew if it was because I'm pregnant or just because I'm tired. Being pregnant is a nice explanation, though, and a reasonable one, so I'll take it. But lately in the afternoon all I want to do is, well . . . nothing. Lumpify. Sit and think about what I could possibly eat for a snack that doesn't contain any carbs. Oh, and I'm already developing a bad attitude about the diabetes thing. Sometimes I techincally have "low" blood sugar (under 70), sometimes it's a bit high (140, when it should be under 120) but most of the time it's normal. I ate some peachy rings today, even, which are mostly pure sugar and which I LOVE, and felt kind of rebelliously pleased with myself.

Random Subject #4:

I took this picture of the kids today after school because I think it's hilarious. This is how they play computer games: All three of them squeeze into my computer chair, and two of them take turns watching the other one. I guess I should be glad for such expressions of sibling togetherness? Actually, I should probably be more strict about limiting their computer time (and t.v. time, and PlayStation time) . . .

but like I said . . .

I'm tired.

That's it for now. Need to go lie on the couch and wait for Forrest to get home.

p.s.--Please note the empty container on my desk in the above picture. This is the container that held the peachy rings. And NO I did not eat them all myself. The kids devoured whatever I hadn't while they were playing computer games. So even more responsible parenting points for me.

A Good Talking To

So, over the last 16 hours or so, I've had the opportunity to sit down opposite four different women and receive a good talking to.

The first three occurred last night at Monte Vista Elementary's parent teacher conferences. Here's the thing about parent teacher conferences (at least for me--I don't think Forrest is fazed by them): I actually get more nervous for my own children's parent teacher conferences than I ever did for my own. And to be totally honest, it's not necessarily because I'm such a great mom and care so much about my children's education that it ties me up in knots. It's that I'm still such an approval freak that I feel like the teachers are grading my momhood. ("Ohhh, yes," I imagine the teachers telling themselves when I sit down. "This is the mom who can never remember libraray day.")

But, like always (at least so far) parent teacher conferences went well. Ethan has straight 4s and Es (which, for those of us who went to schools with normal grades and citizenship means As and Hs). His teacher is young and sweet and had very little to say other than Ethan's a great kid--smart, funny, and helpful--to which Ethan responded in his Ethan-like way: "You know, parent teacher conferences always raise my spirits."

Where did this kid come from?

I was a little more nervous for Elise's conferences because my darling Lou is what one might call, well, an imaginative child. Which means that her head is in the clouds probably 72% of the time. I remember when I taught high school I could never understand the students who finished their assignments and then promptly put them in their folder and walked out the door--then wondered why they never received credit. And now I have one. :-). Hopefully by the time Elise is in high school we'll have her trained, but as it stands right now I have to say to her every morning before she walks out the door "What four things are you bringing home today?" and she says, "Lunch box, homework, caledar, coat." (Although, to be fair, Ethan has left his jacket behind just as often as Elise. He's in la-la land most of the day, too--he's just better at disguising it.) But Elise's conferences went very well also. She's an awesome reader and speller and scores very high on all those tests. She's also very kind and almost always happy and respectful. I was worried about her math scores because math is what most often makes her cry at home (you should be a fly on the wall some of our math homework nights . . . oh, my) but even with all the homework tears she was still in the 85% range and I was thrilled with that. Even her standardized test scores for math were smack average for her grade level at her school. So the lesson to me was that maybe I should chill a bit on the math and my poor girl won't be paralyzed with fear every time she sits down with me to do it.

Jonas had a very nice conference with his kindergarten teacher who said he was a kind and helpful friend, smart, and handsome. (His teacher is a very cute recent BYU grad and when she said that Jonas literally blushed. I think he has a kindergarten crush on her.) And--AND!!!--she said that he's an excellent cutter and colorer! Okay, so I know this sounds petty, but both Ethan and Elise have trouble with small motor stuf: handwriting, coloring, cutting, and general tidiness--and it has given me some anxiety over the years. Some of this issue must, literally, have to do with small muscle control, but I think a lot of it is the la-la land problem. They just don't notice detail. But Jonas. Jonas!! For the first time ever I come to a kindergarten parent teacher conference and don't hear how my kid's cutting and handwriting skills are in need of a major overhaul. Hallelujah! I betcha Jonas won't lose his lunchbox much, either.

See? The fact that I invest so much in a recent BYU grad's opinion of my 5-year-olds dexterity with a pair of scissors says something troubling about my personality. But at least I recognize my problem.

So, it was a good night overall. The kids are happy and doing well--and I wasn't even given a hard time about library day. Mommy got good grades!

Then, today, I had to go visit the gestational diabetes lady. (Mommy's apparently not getting the best blood sugar grades.) Although I don't technically have GD, I'm "borderline," so they wanted me to get a monitor and check on things since GD can progress throughout pregnancy. The nutritionist was very nice and said my numbers looked quite good--there was only one high blood sugar number out of four--but I still have to poke myself four times a day and watch my carbs. But the poking isn't so bad and I should be watching my carbs anyway (sigh). It's just not as much fun to watch one's carbs during the holidays. So now I have a little diabetes tester just like Dad. (And Aunt Karla and Uncle Ross and Grandma Ranquist. Hmmm . . . wonder if diabetes runs in the family?). The GD lady doesn't think that I should develop full blown GD now that I've got a handle on things, so that's good news.

So that's it for today. Oh! And I'm officially 30 weeks pregnant today, too. Hooray! 3/4 of the way done! Not too long before Sawyer Merriweather Hallstrom* makes his appearance.

*This name has recently replaced "Jimmy Dean" in Forrest and Angie's fantasy baby name game. Sawyer should be easy to recognize for those of you who watch the best t.v. show out there (now on hiatus!! Sad!). I'm a Sawyer girl. Sawyer and Sayid. Yes, I like the bad boys. I don't even mind if their hair is stringy. Jack doesn't do it for me. (No, not Jack Huish, sillies--Dr. Jack. Jack-the-kinda-boring. By the way, Amy, when are you going to dress up Jack Huish like Dr. Jack? I've been waiting.) Merriweather is Forrest's latest middle name suggestion, mostly becaue it's just so darn catchy.

Yep, I changed it!

Yes, I changed the template on the blog. I decided to go to the "Beta"--a little bit easier to navigate. Hope you like the changes!
Ang

Rainy Day at Home

So there's only one more day of "off track" left, and the time has gone by pretty fast. The kids have done a lot of playing outside (thanks to the weather), but today was kind of drizzly and cold so we stayed in. I kept trying to get the gumption to take them someplace thrilling and inexpensive, but there are very few thrilling and inexpensive places, it turns out. So we just stayed home. After a while I got sick of listening to the rhythmic shooting noises of PS2's "Star Wars: Battlefront" and the crinkling of surreptitiously snatched Halloween candy wrappers, so I gathered the kids together for some pictures we might be able to use for our Christmas card. (Yes, that's exactly what kids like to hear: stop playing video games and eating mini-Snickers! We need to brush your hair so we can take a picture!)

This year I feel absolutely no obligation to be included in the Christmas pictures due to my delicate condition. Besides, snapshots of the kids are just so cute. So here's a few. I'm still not sure which ones I'm going to use, but thought I'd share:

The cute, huggy pose I like so much. I wonder how many more years I'm going to be able to get them to do that?



I like this one, too.



We tried to get the cat involved, but Buttercup wasn't feeling at all photogenic. Sorry, Buttercup . . . it's doubtful that you'll make an appearance in the Hallstrom family Christmas card. Next time don't be so skittish.



Things started falling apart once Elise started kissing people. (I have a feeling I'll be repeating this phrase for other, more terrifying reasons in about 7 years.)

Since I don't have the wherewithal to actually dress the kids in matching Christmas colored clothes, I'll probalby have to turn these bad boys black and white or sepia in the end. But we have at least a couple good ones. Who can ask for anything more?

Final thoughts on the week:

So K-Fed wants full custody of the kids? Yeah. Right. A one year old and a newborn infant are this guy's idea of a good time.

Harry Reid, new Senate Majority Leader. A Mormon AND a Democrat weilding enormous political power. Hmmm . . . I'm sure some interpret this as a sure sign of the apocolypse.

Ethan's new friend, Cameron, has been pretty much living at our house while they've been off-track. He's a cute kid--nice, a little bit of trouble saying his Rs in an endearing way, never ever EVER wears socks or shoes even when it's raining and 45 degrees outside. His mother, Lohra Miller, just won a tight race for District Attorney in Salt Lake. (My friend Sally almost didn't vote for her because the way she spells her name--and I'm quoting here--"bugs.") Lohra's picture and her campaign signs have been everywhere. I've never actually met her (talked to the nanny a lot, though) but I'm sure she's very nice, and now if Forrest or I accidentally commit a crime against the state, we'll have a little leverage since I took her son to Classic Skating and have fed him lunch a half dozen times. Who says public officials aren't persuadable?

So that's it from here! Oh, and I need to put in a plug for Drew's blog and my very own husband's comments on the most recent Hagoth Award controversy. If he ever gets tired of selling commercial adhesives, he can start writing for SNL, I think. Actually, I'm very impressed with the quality of writing AND humor found in the whole lot of this family of bloggers. I think I can officially say as a former Freshman Comp instructor that we all could proably test out of that class altogether and go straight to English 2010.

A funny story & a helpful hint

Okay, no pictures this time. But I do have two blog-worthy items.

1. Funny story from church yesterday. Jonas was having a hard time sitting still during the sacrament, so I pulled him onto my lap and whispered in his ear, "Jonas, remember that we need to be reverent during the sacrament. We should think about Jesus."

He sighed and said, "That's so hard, Mom. I try to think about Jesus, but my mind just goes to silly things."

I couldn't resist and asked, "Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "Like Jesus playing Wac-a-Mole."

Then I couldn't stop laughing during sacrament. :-)

2. I found a square tablecloth! For those of you who are on the hunt for a good square tablecloth (and I know that at least some of our family members have square tables), I found a 70 x 70 tablecloth at Target for $19.99. It doesn't hang very far off of the edges of my table (which seats 8), but far enough that I think it looks just fine. It's a really pretty tablecloth, too--gold, kind of velvety, good for both Thanksgiving and Christmas and could work for other occasions as well. Just wanted to pass that along!

So another Halloween has come and gone, and the house is full of candy wrappers. When I woke up this morning, I found all three children sitting in front of the television at 8:00 a.m. watching cartoons and eating Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. I figure the day after Halloween I'll let it slide . . . but I'm going to have to put their Halloween buckets in a less accessible place than the middle of their bedroom floor.

So here's some pictures from Monday night, carving pumpkins. The kids made their own designs this year, and even Jonas helped scoop out the guts!



Jonas looks particularly menacing with his shirt off, don't you think? The guns!





Ethan dealing with pumpkin goop.



Elise trying her best to look scary but gives up and looks cute instead.



This is a shot of the kids right before taking off for trick or treating. Ethan is a menacing knight of some sort, Elise is a model/witch (that's what Forrest was calling her because she had woo-woo legs in her short skirt and black tights), and Jonas was Yoda. Ethan and Jonas's masks lasted about 5 minutes before they whipped them off.

This year, Elise went with some girls in the neighborhood (by herself!--although she was usually within sight of one grownup or another) and Ethan and Jonas went with some of the boys. Forrest ventured out with the kids into the chilly night while I stayed in a handed out candy.



Ethan's four friends came inside with him afterwards and they all dumped their loot out onto the floor in the basement for trading and sorting. Sorting is the best part of Halloween, I think!

It was nice to have the kids off track so they could stay up a little later. We took it easy this morning, then went to Classic Skating this afternoon with some friends--the kids had a ball rollerblading and getting all sweaty in the jump house. Only a week and a half until they're back on track . . . and next time their off-track: BABY! Ahh! I'd better enjoy sleeping until 8:00 while I can!