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. 

New Years and Hockey

We went over to Mckay's sister's house for New Years Eve. She made a super cute "photo booth" with props for taking fun pictures.

Judd and Dallin

I love this one of Connor.

And this next one of Dallin:

The hosts: Annie (Mckay's sister) and Tommy

 We played a tournament of games (among the games: air hockey, arcade basketball, Jenga, Farkle). Mckay was assigned to tally up our individual scores from each game and normalize them to determine the winner.

And while Mckay did that, I got comfy on the couch and waited for the ball to drop.

I'm not sure what my face is doing here, but I used this picture because I wanted to show Trixie, the little dog that also got a lot tormenting attention from Connor.

Drinking sparkling apple cider and cheering to the New Year.

I'm pretty sure that clock is wrong. It was most definitely midnight.

One of the activities we planned before our visit was for all the adults to attend an Avalanche Hockey Game. On Jan. 2, we found babysitters for all the kids (no small feat) and went to the Pepsi Center for my first NHL game. I've watched more than I can count on TV (being married to a hockey fan will do that to you) but I'd never seen a game in person before.

The boys all sat together.

Mckay was too into the game to look away for a picture.

Here's all the girls... and Dad Easton.

I've decided that sporting events are a lot more fun watching them in person. I've always enjoyed going to baseball games and this hockey game was really fun too. It will definitely not be my last.

Oh, and the Avs won.

There was a..... 

...well you all know what this kind of things is, but I don't know a word for it. We'll just say there was a fill-in-your-own-face-photo-op-statue.

Garrett, Mckay, Evan. The brothers.

Notice that awesome "Easton" hockey stick? We were meant to be hockey fans.

2012 in review

I know we're well into the new year now, but I'm still catching up from being out of town.

2012 was a great year for us. It was a year of exploring and trying new things. We took a spring break trip to Cincinnati, bought a bike trailer and went on several bike rides, and went camping one and a half times (we were hit by a huge rain storm and went home early one time). We flew to California twice and Denver once and learned that as much as like living here in Indiana and doing our own thing, we miss our family. We had family members visit us here and took trips south to Indy and north to the Sand Dunes and Chicago.

Dallin started preschool this year and has loved every minute of it. He learned to talk so much this year and is actually putting his own thoughts into words rather than just mimicking others. He got to go on his first school field trip to the pumpkin patch. He discovered his love for pancakes and ate them for breakfast about 330 days last year. (As a result, I've gotten VERY good at making pancakes.)

Connor has probably changed the most over the year. He started it as a brand new baby and ended as a full blown toddler boy. He rolled once or twice before quickly moving right into crawling. He learned to laugh, walk, talk, eat solid foods, all with very little help. He is a busy, busy boy, always running around and playing with cars, and he is always hungry.

I didn't know two kids could be so angry with each other one minute and then best friends and laughing the next. I guess that how brothers are.

I've loved watching these two play together and be so loving and kind to each other.

Mckay has played many sports this year. He played several ultimate frisbee pick up games. He started playing basketball weekly at the church and joined a volleyball league. And he played soccer alongside his classmates against the Chem.E. professors. The students won. Mckay landscaped some of the front yard and spent countless hours watering and trying to bring our grass back to life. He still says it need lots of work, but it looks better than our neighbor's grass!

I started teaching piano lessons and had my first student recital in November. I tried out countless new recipes (several of which I posted about here), learned to make yogurt, gingerbread houses from scratch, and kept our grocery budget between $250-$300 each month. I helped plan and host a walk for Williams Syndrome, and I got to write a guest post on a friend's blog about our life raising a child with WS. I did many crafts (a diaper baby, bow ties, crayon roll, necklace display and bathroom artwork,  finger puppets and an advent calendar), some less successful than others (like the Valentine's heart).

Here are my personal and family goals for 2012 and how we did with each one:

• Read scriptures daily as a family. We didn't read every day, but we did better in 2012 than the previous year, There is certainly room for improving this one. 
• Weekly Family Home Evening. Every Monday night, we set aside time to have a gospel lesson (about things like prayer, service, faith, etc.) and quality time as a family. We did very well with this goal and had family night almost every week.
• Watch less TV. Having started the year with a new baby, I was at a pretty low point as far as productivity. I pretty much spent all day feeding Connor. That on it's own is an important accomplishment, but the rest of the household duties were lacking. And watching TV all day didn't help things. We went through phases with this, but ultimately, we spent a lot less time watching TV.
• Less wasted time on the computer. This one kind of goes with the TV one. Same excuses: it's easy to waste time while you're stuck feeding a baby. I did pretty well with managing my computer time. It amazes me how much more I can get done in a day when I don't go near the computer.
• Read more books for entertainment. Part of having less screen time involved finding something to fill the absence because I still had to sit and feed a baby. I finished seven books this year (maybe more that I can't remember): The Picture of Dorian Gray, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Help, The Strangest Song, and Brave New World.
• Establish a daily cleaning routine. I kind of worked on this and was really good about it through the summer, but then got really busy as school started up again. We'll say I half accomplished this one. :)
• Plan a weekly Dinner Menu. It took some time but I got really good at this by the end of the year. It really helped me save time trying to figure out what to make for dinner each day, and I tried to plan dinners that would use similar ingredients so food didn't get wasted. Planning really helped me to keep our grocery budget down.

Overall, I'd say 2012 was a successful year for us. I'm looking forward to the new year. We're making more goals as a family, and I'm excited to see how we grow and change for the better this year.

The End of 2011

On New Years Eve, we got together with a bunch of friends for a fondue party. Part of the night's festivities included a talent show. We weren't given much advanced notice though, so we had to come up with a talent to show off in a short amount of time.

Mckay's talent was that he can fit a lot in his large mouth. He fit 23 grapes in his mouth.

I'm so proud of him.

My talent was to do a reading of "There's a Wocket in my Pocket" from memory.

I memorized it at least 10 years ago and I still remember it all.

Dallin's talent was to point to his body parts (eyes, ears, nose, etc.) on command. He can do this really well and we practiced many times beforehand. But when he got up in front of the group, he wouldn't perform. It wasn't quite stage fright (I'm not sure Dallin is capable of that), it was more like he thought it was so cool that everyone was staring at him, all he could do was smile and stare back. He did point to his belly button though.

Looking back at 2011, it was a very eventful year, full of change for our family.

January: Patrick, our faithful 20 year old car died. It gave us an excuse to buy a newer car.

February: We found out that we were having another baby!

March: Dallin turned 2. He finally learned how to eat real food and hasn't stopped since.

April: We started plans for building a new house.

May: The local news aired a story on Dallin and Williams Syndrome. We participated in the walk for WS in Indianapolis.

June: Mckay's parents came to visit us and we showed them around Lafayette. Dallin finally started walking!

July: We went to Colorado for a short visit to see family. Dallin was too old to fly for free. :(

August: We signed papers for our house and officially became homeowners.

September: Our summer was very busy, full of therapy, doctor appointments, and lots of playing outside.

October: Connor was born on the 18th. He is a very welcome addition to our family.

November: Thanksgiving dinner for 15 Eastons was hosted at our house. There were 13 people sleeping in our small house. It was a little tight, but so much fun.

December: We had a wonderful Christmas and spent a lot of time together as a family. Dallin rang in the new year with style.

I love my handsome boy and his stylin' jeans.