Kateisms

Kate is a VERY messy eater. I'm sure most kids her age are, but she usually one-ups them by tipping over her bowl or plate at EVERY meal time and scattering/smearing the contents on the table. We're working on this.

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A couple of months ago I caught Kate in this get-up. It's my sports bra, toque and part of a Wii controller. Kate LOVES to dress up. Finn didn't start liking dress-ups till he was 3, but Kate already brings me her Snow White costume at any/all times of day to put on. She is also constantly wearing my, Aaron and Finn's shoes around the house.

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Kate has started squinting her eyes at me when she is trying to talk nicely and be cute. I realized this is because I usually squint my eyes at her when I am telling her how cute she is. She also can't say 'cheese' for the camera without squinting, as evidenced in the above picture.

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Kate's favorite part of the backyard by far is our little slide. She shouts 'sliiiiide!!!' as soon as the gate opens and makes a bee-line for it. Pretty impressive that she can climb up the ladder in all her winter gear.

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Kate's favorite words right now:

SHOW (I know, bad mom.) She always get's sooooo excited when I turn a show on and exclaims 'shoooooowwww!' several times on her way to her seat
OWIE (hmmm, maybe I shouldn't be sharing these.) Unfortunately, Kate's first real word was 'ow'. Finn's was 'balloon'...much sweeter.
NO (uuhhh, are these getting worse?) Kate does not say yes or yeah. She says no. To everything. She is just barely starting to say 'kay' in response to a question that ends in 'okay?'. But if you ask her if she wants something, she says no, even if she wants it desperately. It's a very polite no, almost like a question, like this "no?" so right now we don't really mind.
PLEASE (ok, I'm just putting this one in to counter the other ones) But she signs please ALL THE TIME. Girl knows how to get what she wants.

HAPPY Not sure if she actually knows the true meaning of this word, but we like to think she does. She goes around the house saying it over and over and over again. Cutest. Thing. Ever.

We love this little gal. She is so loving and a total snuggler. She worships Finn and is just growing up so fast!

Finnisms

He had been quiet for a while and when I checked on him I found this. He said he was pretending to be a girl. Awesome.

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Finn and I were singing the primary song, "I know the scriptures are true" and completely on his own, without ever hearing his dad or other kids do this, he changed the words to: 'the spirit will guide, and deep inside, I know the scriptures are poo!" He was so proud of himself for thinking of a different word that rhymed with true, I don't even think he was trying to be rude. I cracked up, but made sure to tell him that things like that are funny once, and ONLY once...since he likes to reprise anything that gets a laugh. So far so good.

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While on the potty word topic, I will say that his latest tactic is to spout off some potty words and then say, "it's okay mom, I was talking about the LETTER, P (substitute 'the FOOD Pea, here as well)

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Finn was asked to give a talk in Primary. When I asked him about it, he said, "Yeah. Is my talk going to be in Sacrament Meeting or Primary?" I thought it was so cute that he would have been totally fine with either.

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In Provo and Orem, we are surrounded by mountains. While driving in the car, Finn looked out the window and said, "Hey Mom, can we climb up that mountain really quick?" He said it as if all I needed to do was pull over and we could take a quick 5 minute hike.

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Over the Christmas holidays, Finn loved singing Christmas carols. One day I heard him sing (accidentally), "Joy to the World! The Lord is gone!". Hmmm...kind of changes the meaning of Christmas just a bit.

This makes me feel old

This is Finn's first time reading these pages in Hop on Pop. The video was taken a couple weeks ago and he's already doing so much better! I promise we're not pushing this on a three-year-old, he's just so interested in letters and reading and soaks it all up faster than I can teach him. The other day he read the word Elmo and said, "Mom! His name's not El-mo it's O-mo!" After I explained that he read it right and his name really is Elmo, his reality was shaken...but he's coping with it well.

Where We Live

So this post is only about 6 months overdue, whatevs. I have been meaning to post pictures of our new house, but have been waiting until more renovations are done and more pictures are on the walls etc. Well I've realized that our home is pretty much going to be a constant work in progress so I might as well show you the 'befores' and 'afters' now...and I will post more pics as we get more done. All these before pictures were actually taken after we started demolition, so you can't quite appreciate what the house looked like before...but at least you can see what a wreck it was in the middle!

Living Room: (This is after we ripped the carpet out)

Office/Guest Room:

Kitchen...One of two rooms left untouched:

Bathroom: (other untouched room)

Finn and Kate's Room:

View Down the Stairs:

Basement: These pictures don't match up, but you can still get a feel for what we changed. I didn't take pictures of our master bathroom which has a tub, primed walls, and plumbing done, but will be finished in a few months.

Part of previous store room, now our Master Bathroom is built here:

Looking from current master bath area, through a wall we knocked down into the master bedroom: (That door is to an extra closet that we knocked down later)

Here's what the master bedroom looks like now. The master bath is to my left.Our Backyard! Looks a lot better in the late summer when all my grape vines are grown in!
We still have a lot to do (baseboards in the basement, pictures on the walls, plants all around etc etc etc) but seriously, I can't believe how much the place has changed. We love it here.

Christmas 2010

I didn't take nearly enough quality pictures during this Christmas season. Albeit undocumented, we did have a pretty amazing holiday. Let's start off with this little gem:
I hope you didn't get queasy at the end...I thought that the shot would look better with more Christmas tree in it and wrongly assumed that the camera would adjust when I flipped it like it does with still shots...my brain shocks me sometimes. Notice the guitar Finn's using? On a Saturday I went out to run errands while Aaron stayed with the kids and when I got back, he had made that for Finn. It's actually really sweet. He cut the shape out of cardboard, figured out a way to staple the elastics in securely, spray painted it and spray painted the letters to glue on it. Wow. If Finn had asked me to make him a guitar, I would have handed him the one from Guitar Hero and called it good. Finn LOVES this one that Aaron made for him and plays it all the time. Thanks Super Dad.

We were all impressed when Aaron got the tree up in record time this year without any frustration. We sipped egg nog and listened to Christmas music while decorating it. Kate was in awe of all the different ornaments. She managed not to shatter any, but it wasn't from lack of effort. She pointed and said, "stah!" (star) a lot and exclaimed "oooooooh!" amid the grandeur of it all. She might actually think Christmas trees are called ooooohs, I'm not sure. Finn was a good sport and helped Daddy with the lights and got to put the star at the top again. We DID take pictures of this, but I think Finn deleted them since I can't find them on my camera and there is a new suspicious picture of a tape measurer on there. At least we have a couple videos...I just don't have the patience to wait for those to upload :)

The whole Harker crew (even my sister's fam from Calgary!) was in Utah for Christmas this year and it was pretty fantastic. My parents stayed with us and it was so fun having them here on Christmas Eve/Christmas morning. We all got together for two big family meals and just spent a lot of time hanging out with eachother and playing games. Also, my Dad did a TON of work on our house while they were here and fixed a million little things that we wouldn't have gotten to for months. Best Christmas present ever.

On Christmas morning, Finn had to walk past the tree to get to our room and he woke me up saying, "Mom! My stocking's filled up! It is!" and I said, "Oh that's great Finn, (and then because it was so blasted early) why don't you snuggle me for a while and then we'll go up and see what Santa brought you." and he replied, "OK Mom, I will snuggle for ONE minute." I thought that was funny because that's what I tell him sometimes. After he layed by me for a few seconds he said, "I'm getting up now" and went upstairs alone to check out the tree. Finn NEVER gets up without me alongside him so that was pretty huge.

My mom helping Kate with her stocking while Finn opens candy from his. He kept waiting for me to tell him to put the candy away and when I didn't he said joyfully, "We get to have LOTS of treats on Christmas!"

Kate's favorite present by far. She could hardly wait for me to put it together before she started pushing her new Winnie the Pooh around in it.

LEGOS: Extreme Edition

Finn really got into the true meaning of Christmas this year and had a great time playing with his nativity and singing Christmas hymns. He had a cute book from the library called "Twas the Night: The Nativity Story" and while reading this part to him I felt the truth of the words, "...all the animals were awed, to know that this child was the TRUE Son of God!". I am so thankful for this season, and it's power to remind me of the Savior's birth and the life that he lived for me, and all of us.

Aaron's Not-So-Great Birthday

Last year, Aaron's birthday was great. This year, it was not-so-great.

The festivities started the night before, on a birthday date. It was SO great to get away for a few hours on a real date. We saw "The Tourist" which ended up being just okay. Definitely entertaining, but since we go to the full-price theater only a few times a year, we try to save those rare occasions for mind-blowing blockbusters and this one didn't fit the bill.

After the show, we went to Tucanos for dinner. To make this part of the story short I'll just say that even though we had reservations, it took us 45 minutes to get seated and then there was a whole lot of drama about Aaron's birthday meal and they weren't going to discount it for us and we ended up waiting to speak to a manager FOREVER and yadda yadda yadda the food was good but it wasn't worth all the shinanigans.

After dinner, we picked up Cleo and took her to Yoda's birthday party. Yes it was a party for dogs...and it was actually pretty great.

On to day two, Aaron's actual birthday. I planned ahead. I was prepared. It didn't matter.

Aaron's fam was coming over for dinner at 5. I had choir at 11 and wouldn't be home till after 4 from church so I knew I had to get started early. In between preparing and cleaning up meals for kids, changing award-winning diapers from Kate's recent viral nastiness, getting kids dressed, and getting myself showered and dressed, I made Aaron's birthday cake, frosting, and prepared the main course for dinner and put it in the fridge. Phew.

During sacrament meeting, Kate had another blow-0ut and wouldn't ya know it I forgot to bring diapers so Aaron had to take her home to change her. Here is our conversation via text message a short while after he left:

Aaron: Cleo ate my birthday cake
Me: Tell me you're joking
Aaron: I'm not, I just beat the crap out of her and put her in the backyard

AAAAAAAH! Oh and as an added bonus, she also got into the trash and spread it throughout the house. Cleo is SUCH a good dog, but even good dogs are still dogs. And since ours is the size of a draft horse, the cake might as well have been on the floor instead of cooling peacefully on the back of the oven. And in case you're thinking the cake was a mix, it wasn't. There was real cocoa in that baby.

Aaron came back to church a little forlorn after cleaning everything (including Kate) up. As church was ending, I remembered that I had a meeting so had to send him home with the kids to start dinner. I instructed him to start the rice ASAP because we only had brown rice left which takes at least an hour to cook.

I got home around 5 and whipped up a new cake. Aaron's fam arrived and the kitchen was a disaster and the rest of the house didn't look that great either. Whatever, at least we had a cake. I got everything together by 5:45 and lifted the lid of the rice to put it on the table...and it wasn't even CLOSE to being done! Seriously? An hour and a half later? So I turned the heat up and we waited. At 6:00 the rice was still crunchy. I was already stressed, but adding hunger into the mix turns me into somewhat of a Mrs. Hyde. Aaron took me quietly aside and suggested I just go to the store and grab some Minute Rice so we could eat this century. Ug. Alright.

I grabbed the keys, hopped in the Corolla and -- yep -- slammed into my mother-in-law's car. That's when the tears came. She was parked right behind me but apparently dark winter nights and urgency-induced tunnel vision don't mix. The kicker is, when she heard I was leaving, Ellen told Aaron she was parked behind me and he said, "better go move your car before Ash hits it."

She came out to find me sobbing in the front seat. When she opened the car door I wailed, "I hit your CAR!" And she just laughed.

Aaron didn't laugh.

There was no crumpling of fenders or anything serious, but we do have a nice little round hole in our bumper from where the screw in Ellen's licence plate punctured it. Nice.

Dejected, I slumped inside and waited for the rice to be done. I had to call my sister and un-invite her family for cake since we probably wouldn't eat it till after bed time. Finally at 6:45 I plated everything up and called everyone to dinner. Only to find out that two of Aaron's siblings had a church activity that evening so Ellen had left to take them to it. Awwwwesome. So we ate with Nate (Aaron's youngest brother) and when Ellen got back, she ate alone.

The bright side? Cake Jr. was delicious.

Finnisms

Me: (Tickling Finn)
Finn: (laughing)
Me: (Keep tickling him for a long time)
Finn: (laughing) Mom... (stops laughing, gets serious)I want you to go clean up some stuff.

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Finn: Mom, can we snuggle downstairs?
Me: (Surprised because he has never requested this) Sure! I'll be down in a minute.
Finn: (runs downstairs) Mom, I did everything we need!
(He had got a blanket out, dimmed the lights and put the footrest up on the recliner)

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Finn knows the phrase "Can I get a what what?!" and has figured out appropriate times to say it. At dinner one night, he was not eating very well. He did something funny that made Aaron and I laugh so he followed it up with "Can I get a what what?!" and we both said, "No. Eat your food."

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Finn: Mom, we're not old right?
Me: No, we're not old.
Finn: Yeah, because old people die.
Me: Well, that's right, but people don't die until they're really really really really old.
Finn: Yeah, like you're phone!
(My phone is super out-dated and falling apart. It's kind of a joke between Aaron and I how crappy it is and I guess Finn picked up on it. Luckily I just finished switching my contacts over to a new phone from my brother so I won't be calling from ghetto-ville much longer!)

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Finn: Mom, you're my little firecracker. (phrase that a dad says to his daughter in a story I read him the night before.)

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Finn: (looking me straight in the face) Shaloony! (He was being silly, trying to call me a name. He learned this from Toy Story when Woody says to Buzz "Good Riddance Ya Looney!" because it sounds like he says "Good Riddan-Shaloony!)

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Finn: (playing with army guys) Mom, what's this thing called? (Referring to the plastic piece that holds the legs together)
Me: Oh, that doesn't really have a name. It's just a piece of plastic to help the army guy stand up.
Finn: Yes it does have a name! It's C-H-I-N-A!