Colorado after Christmas

We spent the week after Christmas 2014 in Colorado. Since it's only an 8 hour drive from Utah to Denver, Bennett and I drove with the rest of the family. Bennett did great. We stopped twice for bathroom/gas breaks and I fed Bennett during both stops. Other than that, Bennett slept peacefully in his car seat. Dallin and Connor watched movies for most of the trip and danced for part of it.

Bennett was blessed at church in Colorado. We figured it made more sense to do his blessing when we were out visiting family, rather than have our family make an extra trip to Indiana.

My amazing parents and my brother Joseph drove from Utah to be there for it. The words of the blessing were beautiful and it was wonderful being surrounding by so many people who love us.

After church, Connor took a nap with his dad.

During our stay, we spent a lot of time with family, playing games and doing fun things. We took the boys to Casa Bonita for the first time.

I forgot how gross the food is. The boys didn't care about eating and had a wonderful time.

On New Years Eve, we did another soda taste test. 

This time it was Coke vs. Pepsi. The goal was to see how well we could tell the difference between the two. Given 4 cups of soda randomly filled with either soda (so you might have 1 Pepsi 3 Cokes, or 2 of each, or 3 Pepsi 1 Coke), you had to tell which drink was in each of your 4 cups. Mckay and I both got 100% right. Most were surprised by how difficult it was to tell the difference. I, who am not a big soda drinker, was surprised by how easily I could tell the difference. 

We did Easton family pictures too while we were all together.

This is not one of the professional pictures, just a cute one I snapped of my boys all dressed up.

It snowed a lot, so we spent some time out playing in the snow, and lots of time snuggled up inside.

This picture makes me laugh.

Three generations of Eastons napping.

We went to an Avalanche hockey game again like last year, but this time we had Bennett with us. I carried him in the moby wrap so he stayed plenty warm and safe. He slept through the first two periods, ate during the third, pooped during overtime and was wide awake for the shoot out.

We sat all the way up at the top of the arena so we had a little more privacy. The noise up that high wasn't too loud for Bennett, unless you count his own father and uncles screaming and cheering a few feet away.

The Avs won so it was a good game.

Our travel plans for Denver back to Indiana:  Bennett and I flew from Denver to St. Louis on my birthday. (Not one person at the airport who checked my ID that day wished me a happy birthday! Maybe that's because I flew out at 6 AM again. People are grumpy in the morning, especially at the airport.) Mckay dropped me off at the airport and then drove for 12 hours to St. Louis. I beat him there and hung out with Grace again. The next morning we left Grace's house and drove home. The drive back to Indiana was much more uneventful than our drive last year, though I did leave my travel case of baby wipes in the Taco Bell bathroom in Effingham, IL. Darn Effingham! Thank you Bennett for waiting to poop again until we got home. 

General Conference

We watched general conference on TV this past weekend. Dallin and Connor are still pretty young, but getting old enough to understand some things and they're picking up on gospel principles. So we came up with some activities they could do to keep themselves semi-engaged during the 8 total hours.

As each speaker came up, we had the boys find the matching picture for that person on the general authority page (found in every conference issue of the Ensign magazine).

Then they got to put a sticker on the person's face. They needed a little help sometimes with matching the faces (gray hair and glasses aren't much of a clue among this group of speakers), but they did surprisingly well at identifying each speaker. Found on a different page in the Ensign are the women and other presidency members who are potential speakers. We stickered them too.

 Then we told the boys to listen for specific words that we would hear in the talks. We chose our words based on what our boys have been learning about and what we had a picture for.

Our words to listen for were prayer, Joseph Smith, Jesus, baptism/baptized, sacrament, temple, and scriptures (or related words like Bible, Book of Mormon). When they heard one of our words from a speaker, they got to put a sticker on the corresponding picture.

I was amazed at how well Dallin and Connor listened for the words. They certainly did their fair share of coloring and playing with playdoh and toys during the two days of conference, but they really listened and were so excited every time they heard one of the words. At one point, Dallin heard the words and exclaimed, "Brass plates! He said brass plates", and then he went to put a sticker on the "scriptures" picture. He's learning a lot.

Not surprisingly, "Jesus Christ" was the picture with the most stickers. Every talk had his name at least once at the end.

On Sunday morning, I decided to switch things up and make waffles instead of  my weekly pancakes. Dallin seemed a little disappointed when I told the boys of the breakfast plan early that morning, but Connor lifted his sleepy head and with a huge smile, said, "I LIKE waffles!"

The waffles won Dallin over. He ate a good amount. But the best part was the next morning, when I went to get Dallin's usual frozen pancake out to cook, and he asked for a waffle instead.  ....GASP... He proceeded to eat one and a half plate-size waffles! I don't think he plans to stop eating pancakes, but it's nice to have an alternative breakfast food that he'll eat.

Day 4: Temples

For Family Home Evening tonight, we talked about temples. We're going to the temple in Chicago this Saturday, so it seemed like a timely lesson. (For more information about temples, click here.) We made temples out of playdoh for our activity.

Each person chose a picture of a different temple and then constructed a copy out of playdoh.

(I love the boys' faces in this picture!!!)

 Can you guess the locations of these temples we made?

For my lesson, I laid out an individual picture of each member of our family. Then I had the boys close their eyes and I removed one picture to see if they could figure out who was missing. We did that several times. Then I told them that because our family is sealed in the temple, we get to be together forever and no one will ever have to be missing or gone. That knowledge is a great comfort to me; to know that no matter what happens on this earth, I will get to see my family again. Today, I am grateful for temples.

Easter

 

 The day before Easter, we went to an egg hunt at a friend's house. This was Connor's first time so we had to teach him how to do it.

This is the only picture that proves my mom was actually here for Easter weekend. And the only picture of me (in the background, without a head).

 

He eventually figured it out and slowly wandered the yard looking for eggs.

 The problem was there were several kids who were older and faster than him. As soon as he had his eyes set on an egg, another child would reach it before he could.

 

So he started gathering rocks and chunks of dirt.

 

And somehow at the end he still didn't have much in his basket. I wonder how that happened?

Maybe if he could keep his basket upright.

 

 Dallin found lots of eggs and collected a basketful of candy he won't eat.

But he enjoyed the social aspect of opening his eggs and admiring the candy with the other kids anyway.

 

Easter Sunday is always very busy for us. Our ward at church always does a big musical Easter program and we are part of the choir (Mckay sings, I play the piano) and I'm one of the only people in our ward who will play the piano. (Notice I said WILL play. A few people

do play a little, but don't feel comfortable playing in front of others. Like I'm this outgoing extrovert that loves performing in front of others?! ...but this is a topic for another day...) So we had to get to church early Sunday morning to practice with the choir before performing.

 

AND there was a stake musical Easter program that night that I was also involved in. (Maybe I should start saying no the people.) Between the 2 musical programs, I learned and semi-perfected 9 new songs in a matter of weeks. (Not to mention the wedding I played for one week before Easter with a few new songs to learn for that.) AND did I mention I played a piano solo as part of the Easter program? I spent A LOT of time at the piano the weeks before Easter, practicing and marking notes on the music; so much time that Connor began to mimic me and make marks of his own on my music.

 

So, after morning church and a delicious ham dinner, we did a small egg hunt of our own. It was a rainy day, so we hid the eggs inside in our living room.

The boys, waiting at the starting line, thought their baskets should go on their heads.

 

 Having already hunted for eggs the day before, the boys were warmed up and ready to go! We did have to help them find a few of the harder eggs.

This picture makes me laugh. We told Dallin there was one by the window. He kept looking outside the window and couldn't see the two eggs 6 inches from his head.

 

 Several times he pointed to the decorative Easter tree and said "Egg!"

Mom and I just nodded. "Yes we know there are eggs on the tree." We didn't see the plastic egg that Mckay hid in the branches. Dallin is a pretty good egg finder.

Scriptures

One of our family goals for the year is to regularly read the scriptures as a family. Before we made this goal, we would often read after the kids went to bed, and the time varied depending on when we found time to read. Now, we've set a specific time to read each day: after dinner and before getting kids ready for bed. It's easier to remember to read now that we've scheduled time for it. And now it's FAMILY scripture time involving the kids as well. We're trying to make Dallin more of an active participant in reading now that he's getting older.

All of that was to set you up for this video. One night, feeling tired and not wanting to get off the couch to fetch the scriptures, we told Dallin to go get them. We'd never given him that command; we weren't even sure if he understood the words. But we wanted to see what he would do. This is what happened:

(We didn't intend for the video to end on him falling down, but the camera died. He wasn't hurt so don't feel bad if you laughed.)

We were amazed that he not only understood the command, but brought us our scriptures and knew which book belonged to which person! His "scriptures" are really a book of scripture stories with pictures. He loves looking at the pictures as we read. I love how his communication skills (both expressive and receptive) are improving. And hopefully he's learning a little about the scriptures as we read.

Easter

The day before Easter, we went to some friends' house for an egg hunt.  There were quite a few kids and hundreds of eggs.

 We didn't practice first, but Dallin caught on pretty quickly.

And he loved it!

 Easter egg hunts are perfect for Dallin. Collecting small things and putting them in baskets are his favorite activities!

We were in a big backyard with chickens running around and baby chicks too, so the kids had a lot of fun.

 On Easter Sunday, we had to be at church early to practice with the choir for our big Easter performance, so we didn't do any Easter festivities until the afternoon, 

and after Mckay and Connor took a nap.

I hid Dallin's Easter basket in the backyard. He had to follow a trail of eggs to find it.

 He kind of liked it.

He picked up each egg

 and then put it in a bag.

 He found his basket hiding under a blanket.

 He didn't get any candy in his basket (The Cookie Crisp is mostly for me since I doubt he'll eat it) but he got socks! I put some inside plastic eggs to make them more exciting.

And he got a little wind up toy and a puzzle.

 The puzzle makes a track for the wind up car to drive on.

Connor got socks as well. He enjoys pulling them off his feet, putting them in his mouth and rubbing them on his gums to make way for tooth number 1.

Bow Ties

Dallin and Connor wore matching bow ties to church today.

I made them out of felt inspired by this.

I don't think Dallin understood that him and Connor were matching, but he sure got a kick out of sitting together and holding his hand while we took pictures.

Great Sunday!

We had a wonderful Sunday yesterday! I wouldn't have predicted it being so great, but it really was.

It was our ward's Christmas program in church. Mckay and I are part of the choir in our ward, so naturally we participated in a large chunk of the program. We had 3 choir songs and I played the piano for all 3 of them. One of the songs had a very important and difficult tenor part, and Mckay being one of only 3 tenors in the choir, was nervous about getting it right. In another song, Mckay sang a solo for the first verse. A week ago we were asked to give talks as part of the program. I could have just said no because we were already participating in the musical part of the program, but I said yes. On top of that, I was asked 2 days before Sunday to play in a violin piano duet for the program. Granted, it was a song that I had already practiced and knew well, but it was one more thing to do for Sunday. AND on top of the the program, we still had our regular Nursery duties for church. I had to plan my Music time, and Mckay had to plan his lesson.

In case you couldn't have guessed it, Saturday was a stressful day in our home.

Of course, we had procrastinated writing our talks until that day. Mckay had 2 finals on Monday (today) that he should have been studying for, but had to write his talk. We were up until the wee hours of Sunday morning writing and perfecting our talks. Just to add to all the chaos, Mckay and I were both starting to feel sick. Ordinarily, we might have considered staying home from church, but you just can't skip out when half of the 3 hour meeting block is resting on your shoulders. Since we had to be at church at 8am for an extra choir practice before church started at 9, we didn't get much sleep.

I'm sure you're thinking, "Wait a second, Sheri said they had a great Sunday and this sounds like a terrible one." Don't worry. It got much better.

We had a wonderful Christmas Program. The music sounded beautiful. Mckay did a wonderful job on his solo. I made a few mistakes on the piano here and there as I played, but no one noticed. The violinist that I played with is amazing and I would perform with her any day just so I could hear her play. I feel very privileged that she asked me to play for her.

Our talks were wonderful, especially considering the amount of time we put into them. My talk was about the wise men and how they searched for Christ. I talked about how we need to come unto Christ and shared some ways that we can do that during this Christmas season. I used a lot of Elder Uchtdorf's talk from The Christmas Devotional last week. Mckay's talk was about how Christ has shown us the way to be with him again. We learn about His birth at Christmas time, but more important is that we learn about His life and atonement. He used the following line from the song "Once in Royal David's City" (the song that Mckay's solo was in): "And our eyes at last shall see him, through his own redeeming love. ...And he leads his children on, to the place where he is gone."

I've always thought that giving a talk in sacrament meeting is almost more uplifting for the person giving it than those listening. I learned a lot while researching for this talk and it made me appreciate the wise men's role in the Christmas story so much more. It helped me to see them more as spiritual leaders for their people who sought for Jesus out of faith, rather than astrologers who sought for the star out of curiosity.

Nursery was..... Nursery. It can be very draining on your energy and patience, but it's hard not to love those little kids. Especially when you're teaching them how to sing Away in a Manger and they rock on the 'asleep' chorus. They can roll around like crazy and cry for hours, but then they can be quiet and reverent as they pretend to be wise men, follow the star through the building, and present the baby (doll) in the manger (wicker basket) with gifts of gold (plastic fake coins).

The rest of our Sunday was spent relaxing. We had a Choir Christmas Get-together where we ate treats, played a game and talked with friends. At home, we listened to Christmas carols and had Gyoza for dinner. Perhaps the best part of the day was putting Dallin in bed, having spiced apple cider and pumpkin chocolate chip bread, and snuggling on the couch. We reflected on how much we actually enjoyed giving our talks. It's been really easy to get caught up with finals, travel plans, Christmas decorations and presents. It was nice to a have a day to recognize the importance of this season. Our talks helped us remember why we celebrate and it got us into the true Christmas spirit.