We missed Daddy!

Alan had a race timing conference in St. Louis this week so Spencer and I were on our own for five days.  It was a good conference and I think he learned a lot, but we sure missed him!  

He read one last story to Spencer before he left.  Mr. Brown Can Moo is one of my favorite Dr. Seuss' and it was so funny to listen to these two make all the sounds.

 Spencer and I kept busy with preschool, playgroup, the dentist, visiting teaching, swimming at the YMCA and pizza and movie night.  Sadly, Spencer got sick on Saturday and felt too rotten to do much after that.  We did make a welcome home sign though.

On a side note, Spencer finally wrote his name!  He is getting to be a pretty good reader and does well with numbers, but he has never had much interest in writing of any kind.  I haven't been worried about it, but have tried to encourage him to write more when I can.  He usually resists me, but wrote this for his preschool teacher this week.  Funny, but it's progress!

New Aquarium

Last Saturday, we took advantage of the cold weather to check out Portland's brand-new aquarium.  Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea and the place was packed.  We wound up waiting outside for about 30 minutes just to get in the door.  Poor Spencer, who has insisted on only wearing a short sleeved shirt and light jacket all winter, about froze.  (I was hoping he'd be more willing to wear a coat after that, but no such luck.)

It would have been more fun if it wasn't so crowded, but the displays were cool and we had a good time.  This aquarium has a lot of hands-on tanks where you can gently touch the fish and sea creatures.  You can even buy little chopped up fish, shrimp-looking things, and seaweed to feed to them.  For an extra cost, of course.  We didn't buy any food, but someone who was leaving gave us their extra so Spencer got to feed the fish anyway.  None of the fish were very hungry though.  I'm sure kids had been throwing food at them all day long.

Spencer liked these little "Nemo" fish.

I liked the jellies the best, but the lighting made it really hard to get good pictures anywhere in the building.

Of all the things in the aquarium, Spencer was the most excited about this pretend boat.  My little boy is not an animal fanatic.  He's holding a stuffed sea lion.  

He did really like ripping up seaweed and throwing it in the tropical fish tank.  He looked at these fish for a long time and I think they were his favorites.

Hooray for Saturdays when Alan is home with us!

Animal Church

Spencer gets creative with his play on cold winter days.  This was his set-up for "animal church" last week.  I didn't hear what the talks were on, but everyone is sitting reverently in their pews.

The Rest

Katelyn and Zac had to leave the day after Christmas, but we got to hang around for a few more days.  I got to see the new Les Miserables movie with my Mom (thanks again Mom!) and we shot some more hoops at the Church.

We had hoped to come back home through Utah so we could stop and visit my Grandma and Elise, but decided it would be safer to stick with California after looking at the snowy weather reports in Utah.  Alan was super nice and let me stay in SJ as long as we possibly could before heading home on Friday.

At the last minute, we decided to see a few sights on the way home and drove down to San Diego.  Katelyn and Zac were so accommodating to let us stay with them on such short notice and then spent most of the day Saturday showing us a few sights.

I had pictures of a bunch of different temples when I was a teenager and the San Diego temple was always my favorite.  It did not disappoint in real life.   They had an impressive Christmas light display, but the temple itself is just gorgeous.

 

We visited La Jolla Cove on Saturday morning.  The Sea Lions were cool, but I mostly just liked feeling the warm sunshine on my face and seeing the bright, blue sky.

We also went out to Coronado Island, but I forgot to take any pictures of the cool hotel out there.  A rain storm was rolling in by the time we got there and it got pretty windy and cool, so we didn't stay on the beach long.

After playing a few more games at Kate and Zac's apartment, we headed up to Bakersfield.  (Thank you KT and Ben for letting us stay in your house when you weren't even there!)  That left us with the rest of our very long drive for Sunday.  We stopped at the Fresno Temple for a quick break, but mostly just drove and drove.

I was surprised at how pleasant all of that driving was.  Due to the fact that he pretty much watched movies, played games on the ipad and ate snacks the entire time we were in the car, there was a lot less whining from Spencer than I expected.  Alan and I spent a lot of the time listening to Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites cds.  We got lucky with the weather and only hit a couple of snowy spots, but they weren't bad.  The only car trouble we had was that our windshield wiper fluid froze in St. Johns and the slushy roads in the mountains made it a little hard to see.  Oh yes, and someone backed into our car while we were in Church and smashed our taillight.  Because of the way our car is designed, it cost nearly $170 to replace.  Booo!  We are feeling very blessed that that's all we have to complain about though.

As usual, my heart cracked a little when I had to say goodbye to my family.  There is truly no place like home and I miss it every day.  I love you Mom and Dad and am so grateful for the wonderful atmosphere in your home and all of the wonderful memories I have there.  Thank you for a very merry Christmas!

Christmas!

I think I've always like Christmas Eve better than Christmas day.  The anticipation is just so magical and no matter how great the presents are, much of the magic is lost by simply knowing what's in all of those boxes.  It's especially fun to get to help create that anticipation for Spencer now that he's old enough to really understand and believe in Santa.

We waited until Christmas Eve to decorate our gingerbread houses this year so Katelyn and Zac could join in on the fun.  Even us "adults" still love it.

 The rest of the day was spent cooking, playing, reading, napping and watching movies.  Ahhhh.

We always have a fancy candlelight dinner (Grandpa LeFevre's beef stew and rolls this year) and then a devotional in the evening.  Each of us kids shares a musical number, thought or story.  Our little family sang a few of the primary Christmas songs Spencer learned this year.  Dad always reads the Christmas story from the Bible to close the devotional and then we drive around town to look at Christmas lights.  Amazingly enough, it actually snowed a little on Christmas Eve.  It was only about an inch and the strong winds made for horizontal snow, but we had a white Christmas nevertheless.

Santa came to Michelle and Spencer this year.  Spencer has gotten pretty good on his balance bike so Santa brought him a pedal bike.  His favorite gift was a Cars Monopoly game from Grandma LeFevre though.  Alan and I are already getting a little tired of it. :)  Spencer got tons of very nice presents from everyone this year.  Thank you Grandmas and Grandpa and Aunts and Uncles!

Michelle has become a Celtic Thunder groupie and got several of their music videos.  She watched one on the big screen in the living room and then spent most of the rest of the week in her room watching them on her portable dvd player.  She's a teenager that likes cute boys with good voices just like any other teen girl.

Santa wasn't supposed to come to me, but my old computer was getting really bad and he couldn't pass up the black Friday deals on laptops. :)  Hooray for me!  It look me awhile to get everything up and running and I still have a lot to learn, but I'm loving it so far.

Dad surprised Mom with an iphone!  Whoo hoo!

Katelyn made this awesome t-shirt quilt for Zac.  She puts me to shame with her sewing skills.

In the afternoon, we had another nice dinner with a couple of lonely people from my parent's ward.  My parents have always been so good to invite people without family over for holidays.  It seems like we've had some one over for nearly every Christmas dinner.  They are such good examples of fellow-shipping.

After the dishes were done, we settled down to play with new electronics, read some more and the guys headed up to the Church building to shoot some baskets.  It was such a lovely, cozy day filled with family, food and love.

Christmas Road Trip

It was our turn to go to Arizona for Christmas this year, but after looking at the prices of plane tickets vs. the prices of the gas it would take us to get there, we decided to attempt driving.  Our longest road trip ever had been when we drove to Utah last September and that was only about half the distance of this journey. We took our car into the shop for an oil change and a safety check, stocked up on movies from the library and snacks, borrowed Alan's Dad's ipad, packed up all of our presents, and off we went.

We decided to drive down through California to avoid as much snow as possible.  Our plan was to stay with my awesome ex-roomie in Bakersfield, but we didn't quite make it that far the first day.  Alan had to work in the morning so we couldn't leave until noon.  We drove and drove, but when we still had two hours to go at midnight, we decided we'd better get a motel room.  We wound up staying in the glamorous town of Chowchilla.  Spencer had been sleeping in the car for awhile, but was thrilled to stay in a motel.  Especially one with a continental breakfast! 

We did get to stop in Bakersfield for a few minutes to visit KT, but couldn't stay long since we still had a monster day ahead of us.   I wish I had gotten a picture though!  After another long day, we finally rolled into St. Johns at nearly midnight the next night.  Then the real vacation began - sleeping in, playing outside in the sort-of warm weather, eating yummy food, watching cheesy Hallmark movies and our families' traditional Christmas movies, and just hanging out with my family.  Lindsey is on her mission in England and Elise couldn't make it this year, so it was just Katelyn & Zac, Marc, Michelle and us home with my parents this year.  We missed Lindsey and Elise a lot, but thanks to skype we got to see and talk to them on Christmas too.

Since my parents have a large empty field next to their house, the ward keeps their ward wood pile there. ( A lot of people in SJ have wood burning stoves and people occasionally need help heating their houses in the winter.)  None of the wood had been split however, so my Dad put Alan and Marc to work.  I think it took them around 6 hours total, but I have no idea how many corts of wood they wound up doing.  It was a big pile!  Spencer ran around and I played with my camera.

Alan got put on fudge duty again.  He takes it very seriously.  Ha!

Spencer always volunteers for spoon-licking duty.




The weather was quite nice the first few days we were there, so Marc treated us to his dutch oven cooking skills.  It was good!  Spencer became Marc's side-kick the whole time we were there.  They were so funny together.  They ran around outside, played games inside and did lots of wrestling and tickling.  I just hope Marc enjoyed it as much as Spencer did.  :)

This is one of my favorite views from home.  It's to the west of my parent's house and is gorgeous in the sunset most evenings.  It's so serene.  I used to occasionally climb the fence and walk around over there just to get away from the chaos of five younger siblings when I was in high school.

To be continued...