Christmas Part Four

Chirstmas Part Three

Christmas Part Two

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We went to visit the Belcher Family in Ballard and my Aunt Brenda in Redmond before jetting over to Mose Lake.

Chirstmas Part One

My kids sure do love each other. They like to fight, but they really depend on one another. They like to sleep in the same bed even. I think that Austin was used to having someone being with him 27/7 and Emma had someone sleeping in her room over half of the time with all of our out of town help staying in her room. We took out the queen sized bed in Emma's room and put her toddler bed in Austin's and converted Emma's room into the toy room (which we all totally love). so here are some pictures of them sharing both the queen sized bed and the twin sized bed in Austin's room. So cute.
My friend Wendy that I went to High School with came over and helped us decorate our tree. My kids just love Wendy and are excited whenever we say she is coming over.
Our car ride to Washington started off at 3:30 am. We made good time to see Samantha and Kyle Miller in Roseburg, Or. The kids had soooo much fun running around and being generally silly. We spent the night in our own little suite, which was sweet. Ha. Had a great dinner and a good time hanging out. We were sad that we could not stay longer! Thanks guys for the good time!

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with Jacob and Serenity in Mesa Az. It was a wonderful trip and the kids did surprisingly well considering the circumstances. Austin had been acting weird for a few days before we left. His attention span was next to nil, he was aggressive, and not sleeping. I know you may be thinking that most three year old boys are like this, which is true, but Austin was way beyond the norm. He was twitchy and overly emotional. Looking back he acted like what I would imagine a drug addict might. I thought to myself, it's a phase. He was really, really hard, so much so that I went to Barnes and Noble and picked up the book "Love and Logic" before we went on our trip. As it turns out Austin was getting twice as much Prograff as he should. There was a discrepancy between the pharmacist and the Dr., it really was the Dr's fault in the end since they sent eh wrong prescription with the wrong dose. Once they adjusted the dose it was like magic and the old Austin came back.
Despite having Austin act a little crazy on our trip we had a lot of fun. We played Pinochle and Settlers, and went to see the temple lights. Dinner was very good since Aunt Serenity is an excellent cook. We had good company with Serenity's Mom Laura and her boyfriend Earl.
Coming home we were stuck in a traffic jam. For two and a half hours we were in the middle of nowhere stuck in 20 miles worth of backed traffic, totally stopped. There was a fatal accident on the road and they shut down the freeway until the coroner came, since we were in the middle of nowhere it was a long process. Despite this we all had a lot of fun. We (Ben and I) got out of the car, walked around, did cartwheels down the divider line (much the the delight of our kids). We got home really late, but overall our first trip out of town since moving to Santa Clarita and Austin being sick was a great success.

Halloween

We were invited to at Starlight Foundation Halloween party which was a lot of fun. Emma felt a little timid with all the scary monsters (kids with masks). She thought Vader was especially scary (Darth Vader) and told Daddy to get the bad guys. Pretty hilarious. Austin loves all the spooky scary things. He enjoys telling stories and will start them out with "In dark and spooooky woods" and end with something like: " and then there was a with that jumped out and he said AAAAHHHH! And yeah it was really spooky, and scary." We went trick or treating with Mike and Anna Carr and their son Jeremy. Really fun and we probably collected a good 5 lbs of candy to the kids delight.

Spaghetti

Austin and Emma love spaghetti. They sometimes ask for lunch and when I am feeling especially nice I will concede. Here they are muching it down.