Too Busy

Due to the Christmas hullabaloo I haven't had much time for blogging (I know, I know, I'm crying too!). Hopefully, I'll post a thorough outline of Christmas soon (try to contain your excitement). In the meantime here's my brief summary:

I celebrated Christmas (unlike Peter, I had pants on most of the time).

I spent time with family (I didn't want to, but apparently Christmas is a "family" holiday and so I was forced to interact with a bunch of enjoyable and funny relatives that I love—totally unfair!).

I cleaned up Christmas morning chaos (how do a handful of presents create mountains of packaging?).

I played with Peter's new toys (having a kid is awesome—I get to play with toys!).

And I fought to save Princess Peach on my new Nintendo DS Lite! (I have the best husband.)

One Thanksgiving, One Location

For the past five years Thanksgiving has been a bit of a headache (in addition to the expected stomachache!) and a logistical nightmare. Usually Ryan and I are trying to hit two (sometimes three) family Thanksgiving dinners. When we got married we came up with an awesome plan that we would switch off where we spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in order to be fair. So the first year we had Thanksgiving with Ryan's family and Christmas with my family, and then the next year it was Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with his, etc. Now this would be all fine and dandy and simple except that our parents live less than five minutes away from each other. So there is really no excuse not to see both families on holidays. The result is an hour by hour breakdown where Ryan and I travel back and forth between the two homes (we waste more gas on holidays than any other day). And we always visit my Oma and Opa who also live close by. So depending on where my parents are at for Thanksgiving (usually at Oma and Opa's) we have at least two dinners to catch (or consume).

But this year we got a rest—we spent an entire day at ONE HOUSE! A bunch of my mom's family came to Utah for Thanksgiving so we spent the holiday with my family. It's been about 13 years since I have spent Thanksgiving with some of my mom's family. It was so much fun to see my Grandma and Grandpa W., Aunt Robbie and her family, and Uncle Brian and his family. And since I forgot to bring my camera so you will have to imagine lots of yummy food, beautiful table decorations, lots of laughter and more than a few "inappropriate jokes and/or comments" (my Uncle Brian and I should be separated at all serious family functions!). Or you can just look at the Norman Rockwell painting above. It looks exactly like our Thanksgiving dinner this year except my mom and dad are about thirty years younger, no one wore suits, my parents' dining room is a different color, the food was served buffet style, no fruit bowls were in sight, and I'm pretty sure none of my uncles made eye contact with a painter.

I ♥ Family

Oma & Opa with all five of their great-grandchildren. At least a few of them smiled!

So I'm going to milk this past weekend for another blog post (it was a big weekend)! Definitely one of the best parts of having the surprise party was having so many family members there. It was wonderful to catch up with people that I hadn't seen in a long time. For the last 10 years many of my out of state cousins have come to Utah to attend college; Sunday dinners at Oma and Opa's became very crowded and fun. Unfortunately, a lot of them have moved away to various distant locations (my cousin Krista is in Dominica!). And now it seems like all my younger cousins are going to Idaho for college. So it was great to have such a large family gathering.

My cousin Quinten, his wife Kate, and their 3 children decided to drive up from Arizona at the last minute. I was really excited when I found out they were coming. I haven't seen them in over 3 years and I had never met their youngest child Paige. I had fun catching up with Kate and Peter had fun running around with his second cousins.

Peter with his second cousins: Paige, Rhaegan, Sam & Tyson

Peter had a lot of fun playing with Paige and "showing off" for her. Isn't Paige adorable!

55 Years!

My grandparents (Oma and Opa) had their 55th wedding anniversary on October 23rd. No one in the family made a big deal about it because we are all too self absorbed and busy...no, actually we had a surprise party planned for them this past weekend. My dad and his four siblings thought that 55 years of marriage is something worth celebrating (that and they did nothing for their parents' 50th!). So family came from all across the country (Washington, Idaho, Arizona, California, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) and hid out until Saturday afternoon. Through lies and deception (the foundation of every good surprise) my dad brought Oma and Opa to the church where we were waiting. I really think it meant it a lot to them to have their children and grandchildren gather together to celebrate them and their marriage. All five of their children were there and 12 of their 18 grandchildren came along with all 5 of their great-grandchildren (not that my grandparents look old enough to have great-grandchildren. I love you Oma!).

I also think my grandparents liked having a large family meal where they didn't have to cook (both are amazing cooks)! My mom and aunts had prepared mounds (I'm not kidding) of yummy food and my cousin Kayla and her husband Kent helped things stay interesting and fun with several games. My mom and I (translation: my mom) were responsible for the decorations. My mom came up with some awesome ideas (like usual) and asked me to figure out a way to display Oma and Opa's wedding pictures. I cleaned them up in Photoshop and added a background and did other miscellaneous things to them which no one but me would ever care about. (As you read in the previous post, I did this all twice thanks to my computer crashing. I didn't get my computer back until after the party so I had to redo everything on my parents' computer.) I put them all on a CD and had them printed at Alphagraphics on nice thick and glossy 11x14 paper. I think they turned out great (my grandpa wanted all of them).

One of my favorite photos from Oma and Opa's wedding

Anyway I think Saturday was a success. I think we all made my grandparents really happy--both cried (Opa said he just had something in his eyes!). Marriage isn't always easy and so seeing my grandparents still in love after 55 years was awesome. They are definitely an inspiration.

My Little Puppy

So Ryan and I decided to take Peter on a practice run of trick-or-treating (because it is just so hard asking for free candy!) on Thursday night. We dressed him up in his costume (as an adorable and smell-free puppy) and took him to see his grandparents. Our first stop was Oma's (my Grandma P). She gave Peter a cute book and an adorable little bear dressed in a pumpkin costume that giggles and says, "Happy Halloween". While it definitely has not replaced Big Walter, Peter keeps nuzzling it. I'm hoping his first words aren't "Happy Halloween."Next we went to see Ryan's parents (Grandma & Grandpa T). Five of Peter's cousins were there meaning he recieved plenty of attention. We then wrapped up the night by visting my parents (Grandma & Grandap P) and my brother Kyle and his wife Renae. Unfortunately, Peter arrived in his pajamas with his costume in a grocery bag (he decided to pick fights with a bottle of milk and a sippy cup of apple juice—obviously he lost).

On Halloween I took Peter trick-or-treating . Peter was very confused at the first house when they tried giving him candy, but by the third house he became a fan of getting things from people. We ended up going to about 15 houses; Peter just kept walking and pulling me to down the street (more candy for me!). Once we got home he promptly dumped his loot out and organized it. He really didn't understand that it was candy but thought that people had given him lots of small colorful toys. First he sorted the candy on our living room coffee table then moved them up to my room. He laid the candy out in a line on Ryan's side of the bed and left (fortunately for Ryan and me, Peter has not remembered his candy).

Oh, I had to include a picture of Peter on Halloween 2007. What a cute farmer!