Christmas in Alberta!

Is Christmas really over already?? Coming up on 2015! We had a wonderful Christmas. The night that we did our gift exchange (the day of my last blog post) we went out to Woodinville Wonderland, which is a small lights display out in Woodinville, and then out to Red Robin for dinner. I needed to feel like we went out at least once in December! We had been avoiding going out as a family because it's just so much work, but this was a nice, manageable outing.

Our flight out to Alberta was fine, pretty uneventful. The kids did so well - no drama. We got to Brian's parents place around supper time and had the evening to get settled in. The kids were thrilled to be at Grandma's house! On Saturday, we left the kids at Grandma's and off Brian and I went to Dylana's wedding in Olds! It was a great day! We had lots of time to visit with my family and the wedding was really lovely. The weather in Alberta was perfect, not too cold and not snowing, I really can't complain! We went back to Edmonton for the night on Saturday and on Sunday, packed up the kids and headed to Three Hills for our family get together at Liz and Dave's house. We stayed at Mary and Dave's for night and then headed to Calgary for the day to hang out with some friends. Then back to Edmonton for the night, and we were in Edmonton the rest of the week until our flight on Sunday. We had a really fun time in Edmonton as well! Lynsey especially had a great time sledding! Adam really didn't want to try it but he had fun once he did try - just had to get those snow pants on him. Nathan was always sleeping when we went so he didn't head out this time, but we will hit up one of the sledding hills around here before the winter is over, I'm sure he will love it as well. The flight home on Sunday was a bit more tense - both Adam and Nathan were not as low maintenance as they were on the way there. Nathan just desperately needed a nap and that was not happening on the plane. We got home around 4 I think, so it was nice to have some time to unpack and unwind when we got home. And of course watch the Seahawks game we recorded!:)

Yesterday, I was washing the floor and had water in the kitchen sink. Adam saw the bubbles and wanted to play in them. I managed to convince him to wait until I was done and got him a clean sink-full of water with dish detergent. I took his shirt off, thinking he would stand by the sink and play with the water with his hands. Apparently he had other ideas! He wanted to strip all the way down so I let him, and he climbed right into the sink! The other kids of course wanted to join him, and at one point, I had all three kids in my kitchen sink! I couldn't post those pictures because I felt like they weren't "modest" enough for the internet, but it was a pretty funny sight:). I did put one of just Adam in so you can see how crowded it would have been with all three! Silly kids:).

Snow day, Early Christmas for the kids, and Nathan is Potty Trained!

Time to catch up! It's been a few weeks! We are busy here, just like most everyone else at this time of year. We spent American Thanksgiving with our friends the Daveys which was nice. Who can complain about two Thanksgivings to celebrate! We put up our tree, had a snow day (Lynsey and Nathan took advantage!) and have been getting ready for Christmas! We bought our kids a train to go around the Christmas tree which has been fun. We did "Christmas" with our kids this morning because we are leaving on Friday afternoon to go back to Alberta for Christmas. It was low-key but fun, the kids are enjoying what they got! We got Lynsey a Kindle Fire tablet for Christmas (with parental controls and screen time limits, don't worry;)). Nathan got an Olaf stuffy and a car track with battery operated cars that's pretty fun, and Adam got a sensory bin that Brian designed and made from scratch - it's so great! I can't tell you how GLAD I was to get rid of the below picture rice "corner" we had (it was spread all over the house as you can imagine). I think we had success all around:). We have stockings with 3-4 small gifts for each kid that we are going to take with us to Edmonton to give them on Christmas morning, as well as some new PJs for Christmas Eve night. I feel like this has been a pretty stress-free Christmas for the most part - teacher gifts are harder for me than anything else! We leave on Friday to spend Christmas in Alberta - looking forward to it!

So as you can see from the title, we had a break through with Nathan a few weeks back! He started pooping on the potty! It was really like something just clicked and he figured it out:). I am calling him potty trained, although he can't really be relied on to actually tell you when he needs to go (in Sunday School, because he didn't know where the bathroom was to just go by himself, he pooped in his diaper instead of telling the teacher). I'm sure this last step will come soon, he just prefers to be very independent. His nights are really good but he is still in a diaper because he is still wet about once every 10 days or so. I'm sure this will taper off, but in the meantime, I don't like changing bedding in the middle of the night so a diaper it is. I don't think it has any mental effect on him, he doesn't pee in it when he wakes up ever - even if he is wet, he still has pee in the morning which means it happened during the night sometime. It's so weird how something that is SO consuming when you're in the middle of it (potty training) can seem like no big deal even a week or two after it's done. So glad this got nailed down before our Christmas trip, hopefully he doesn't regress while we're gone:-S.

Adam is getting so much better at answering questions. The other day, a swim instructor asked him how old he was, and he answered with "4". Apparently they are working on that specific question at school, but the fact that he answered it to a complete stranger was impressive! When I told him last night that he would get a present the next day, the biggest grin came over his face - I think he finally knows that presents are a good thing and something to look forward to! Today he asked Brian for help using very appropriate and non-scripted language. I feel so much hope that his language is on the road to becoming conversational! Not there yet, though.

The hat that Lynsey is wearing in the first picture is a hat that I knitted for her on a day when she was home sick and we were all pretty bored. At least her knitting loom was useful for something! She doesn't quite have the patience to follow through on a project yet, maybe when she's a bit older. Or maybe it will never be her thing, which is fine, too:).