Blake is a constant source of teasing (and her best friend) to Clara.  Last night he was blocking her from climbing up onto a chair to get a pair of her pants down and she came upstairs crying pretty hard.  Ryan was upset with Blake and went walking firmly down the stairs to intervene. I don't know what happened after that but this morning Clara mentioned it to me like this:

"Dad came charging into the room.  He said, "Clara, you need to try harder to get your pants. Here you try it by yourself and he pulled over the white chair for me.  And now...I can do it!"

She has such an amazing ability to communicate.  It is a constant source of entertainment for me.  "Dad came charging into the room....." LOL.




Yesterday after 2 days of REALLY not sleeping (Luke wouldn't stay down for longer than 2 hours at any point).  I took him back to Dr. Carter for the 4th time in 2 weeks (one was a well check visit) to get ANOTHER round of antibiotic for an ear infection.  WE talked through the beginnings of getting tubes for him and after a few minutes Dr. Carter says, "well let's check his ears and see the damage" and looked in left ear--NOTHING.  Right ear--verdict....all clean!  And I said "well WHAT THE heck has been happening then."  And Dr. Carter checks his gums...."he's teething."

Nice.  #rookie

Yummy banana bread 

Blake is a reading machine these days

Helping Aubrie with Biology late one night (painful!)

Making tacos on Sunday in Robbie's old apron

We're in this.  Clara is trying to not use pullups at night to earn a dress.  Which is easy on my end.  Box of pullups-$35, dress=$14

Aquarium with Pratts and Liz and Lincoln

Sweet Lucas at 6 months. 

Aubrie works SO hard at school.  And its showing. 

Nov/Dec

 Luke's Blessing Day

 Family pictures, courtesy of Karla Pratt, at Wheeler Farm

I had a harder time really getting into the excitement of Christmas how I normally do, it was a
different Christmas season for me, not bad, just different.  I felt like I was slow to catch up and by the
time I was ready for it to be Christmas in my mind, it was over :) and I have been so lost in swimming
in our family’s details that it just felt different.  A few things I personally enjoyed was going to see the
Messiah all together as a family with mom, dad, Cara and Wes. Holladay has gotten together a choir
and orchestra for it for the last 37 years. It was so well done.  I really enjoyed Christmas Eve with Pratts
and Randy and Karen joining us. R&K gave all of us (the kids) a talk the night before about
manners--even how to put on an appropriate table setting and it made our very formal dinner the
following night a really nice time. The kids all talked softly at their table, didn’t get up from the table,
asked each other good questions, etc.  Then we all separated and we cleaned up with the kids and
gave them their CHristmas jammies and by then R&K came back from Pratts and we had I Love
Yous for the Savior which was pretty neat this year. Having older children to share their testimonies
and to last longer is so good. Blake kept adding addendums to his testimony (he went first) in between
others’. I loved that he kept thinking of things. THe kids all made their beds in Aubrie’s room (girls on
the bed) and Ryan and I stayed up WAY too late coming up with a fun way to tell the kids about our trip
to CA, we did clues going to different things that were clues to guess CA (fire, oranges in the fridge,
picture of Randy, towels, sandals, etc).  Robbie finally guessed that we were going somewhere and
they were so excited that we were going on a trip. My fave gift was a ping pong table from Ryan to
the whole family, that he used motobucks from work to buy so it was “free”. It has and will get tons of
use.

WE hung out at Pratts all day the next day playing games/eating and doing Legos.

We left 27th early in the morning after cleaning for a few hours the night before.  We rented our house to
all of the Browns (they were coming here to do a family ski trip and were trying to rent a house and so
we said, we’ll do it and find a place to go for a week--but that meant a lot of work to have our house
look like a hotel and bought a few extra portable beds--that will get a lot of use long term anyway).  
We got to CA around bedtime and the next morning we headed to Knotts Berry farm using a small
discount from Ryan’s work too. It was packed, but we still had such a good time. We took turns going
on the serious rollercoasters/rides and Clara got to go on quite a few kid rides (even Luke went on one).
We downloaded the Knotts app and it had wait times listed and we would just look up what the shortest
one was and run to it and did that all day.  Aubrie and Blake conquered some fears and went on
Montezumas revenge which goes upside down. Hallie was terrified and went on one of the scariest
(0-82 mph in 2 seconds) with Robbie and Ryan right at first and then she did everything the rest of the
day. The three of us did the shoot straight up almost 300 ft in a second and drop all the way back down
--we did it like 3 times in a row. SO fun! It felt like being a kid again.

We spent quite a few hours at the beach, boogie boarding (esp Aubrie, she is such a fish in cold water),
rented and all rode bikes together--Clara and I went tandem, Ryan wore Luke, walking through the
shops at listening to artists on Venice Beach, building a sand castle and turning Clara into a mermaid.  
We went to Venice and to Santa Monica. We all chose icecream at Salt and Straw and had the
yummiest brussel sprouts ever at TLT restaurant (used to be a food truck), we played lots of games,
went and watched Mary Poppins Returns at the nicest movie theater, rode the electric scooters for 15 c
ents a minute that are taking over all major cities in teh US (RObbie and I rented them to go the grocery
store and had to ride together and he had to drive since hes shorter--scary.) It was fun to catch up
talking with Ryan too--lots of downtime in the car.  New Years eve we made snacks, each told one thing
we want to stop and one thing we want to start for 2019 and “cheered” with Martinellis (Clara’s favorite
part of the trip), had a mini dance party that never really too off:) and then played Blokus, cards, Sets
and LOTS of wrestling from the oldest 4.