A night with Auntie Em

Last night Nolan (Erin's middle boy) spent the night. He and Halle are only 4.5 months apart and had so much fun in Alaska that we invited him to spend the night while they were here for Christmas. Halle went down for a nap, Erin put Nolan down for a nap, and left. I went to check on Nolan...he had a poopy pull up and had a box of 100 crayons poured on the bed and was coloring on random paper that luckily wasn't important. He never slept. By this time Halle had been sleeping 2 hours or so, so we just got her up. They jumped in the bounce house for more than an hour.

They jumped, but I never got a good picture because they would jump and sit or splat, so I only got pictures of the sit/splat part.
Seriously, who wouldn't want this cute kid playing at their house??

Then we played airplane and I threw them over to do a flip.

Then it was time to rest and drink some milk.

Then more playing, but this time with balls. This is how it went (for about 30 minutes before we finally stopped them because we had to go somewhere).

Throw the balls over the edge.

Go get them.Get back in and start it all over again.Halle's hair was totally crazy the whole time. The static did wonders for her.

Jared and I played in church today, so we had to take the kids to the church so we could practice real quick. Then it was time for dinner. They had 3 cheese grilled cheese sandwiches and peaches. They were canned peaches and with the number of slices they ate I'd say that Nolan ate at least a whole peach and Halle a good peach and a half. Then they put on their jammies and ate ice cream. Note Halle's tongue sticking out. This is what she alwas does while concentrating whether it's trying to get a bit of food on her spoon or playing with toys. I love it. Then it was movie time. They watched My Friends Tigger and Pooh Super Sleuth Christmas Movie.

It was over around 9:00. They brushed their teeth and headed to bed. Erin warned us that Nolan hadn't been sleeping well at night, so we were a little nervous, which is why we kept them up pretty late. After 4-5 times of him coming out saying he had to pee or some other excuse or us hearing him playing in the room (which has no toys in it, which is why we were concerned) he finally fell asleep a little after 9:30.

We woke them up a little after 8 this morning and they ate cheerios. Then we went to the conference center for the annual Hurtado Sunday before Christmas Music and the Spoken Word followed by Little America brunch. They enjoyed the pretty music. Then we headed to Little America. I could not believe how much that little Nolan can eat! Usually he doesn't eat that much, but today, Holy Cow!! He had like 6 or 7 shrimp, fruit, cheese, crackers, half of my snow crab, some waffle, ice cream, and a bit of Jared's cake. I took him to get 3 or 4 plates of food, PLUS he ate off of my plate. Who knew a 2 (almost 3) year old would like shrimp, and most of all crab?? This is a $28 buffet and luckily the little kids are free, so man he got a GREAT meal considering it was free. Shrimp AND crab?? That's like a $20 meal!! Then Grandpa picked him up to go get Dustin's family from the airport. We all had so much fun together and we'll see them again on Wednesday for Christmas Eve and SANTA IS GOING TO COME!!

So now for some random pictures. This is something Halle has been doing a very long time. She loves to show us what she is eating and we just love the face she makes when she opens her mouth. We finally got a picture that may come close to doing that face justice.

For some reason we put the dogs in the same crate. I can't remember why, but I do know I got some cute pictures. I don't know if you can see it in Rameses' face, but I can and he's barely tolerating this. Although his head is down, he is obviously not happy with the situation.

Here he's getting a little more uncomfortable.Here he is begging. "PLEASE, get this little rat OUT of my crate!!" Really, they adore each other. Rameses just doesn't like things invading his personal space, especially in his crate. I am so excited for Christmas and to spend the time with all of my family so close. Only a few more days. Merry Christmas!!

Random Stuff

So lately I've blogged about big and exciting vacations, etc. Today it's for the random stuff in between that is so cute. So a while ago I posted about Halle "posing" and I just couldn't get a good picture. Well, we finally got one a month or so ago.

She also loves playing Hide and Seek, yet she only hides in one place. We ask her to hide other places and she says, "No." Lovely. So, Mom and Dad get to go in the pantry, count to ten, and then come pretend to search for Halle while she kneels down giggling like crazy. Yes, it's cute, but after the 20th time it's hard to find funny places to look, "Is Halle in the TV??....NO..."

And of course she's holding a giant yellow balloon, now that makes it even harder to find her in the same place everytime.

She also enjoys jumping off the couch. Those crazy little boy cousins of hers have taught her bad things.

She LOVES getting pampered. If I cut her finger nails then I have to cut her toe nails. This is actually a good thing because she used to scream and cry and squirm while I tried to cut her toe nails. It was terrible. She also likes to get her nails painted. She holds so still and is so careful not touch anything and mess them up. In fact, today Jared emailed me asking where the nailpolish remover is. I told him and then asked if something had happened. He said no, just that Halle made him paint her nails and he needed the remover to clean them up since he's a little messy. What a great dad painting his princess's nails.

Showing off her toe nails to daddy.Watching Little Einsteins while getting pampered.

This is how she holds her fingers out so they don't get messed up.

This is Patch praying. This is what he does while we eat dinner. "Please let them drop something on the ground so that I can eat it. Amen."

I am so excited for Christmas. My sister and her boys arrived from Alaska this morning at about 7:30. On Friday they are coming to our house (with my mom and dad) to eat dinner. Then hopefully she'll leave Nolan here (if he agrees to it) and Nolan and Halle will have a sleep over until Sunday. Halle talks about Nolan daily. More just mentions his name daily, she doesn't really talk that much to converse about it. This morning I asked her what she wants Santa to bring her for Christmas. She said Nolan and Ethan. Isn't that sweet? I think she'll be so thrilled to see them in two days. Then Dustin and his family are coming on Sunday. So, once we get down to my parent's on Christmas Eve there will be 7 children ages 6 and under and 4 dogs. So, let's see that, 8 adults (Grandma Kline, no Doug), 7 children, and 4 dogs. That's just the people sleeping over. In reality for dinner there will be 15 adults (2 great grandmas!), 2 teenagers (is Allison a teen?? I'm counting her as one) 9 kids 6 and under, and maybe a new baby (but I doubt that Summer will be early...speaking of Summer, Damon, would someone in the "Vimner" family PLEASE BLOG??). But really I am so excited. It's so fun to have everyone together for Christmas every other year. We visit each other, but rarely are we all there together at the same time in the same place. I'm sure we'll have lots of pictures.

Alaska - the final day

I wanted to post a bigger picture of Monday's sunrise for you.

I also forgot to mention in my previous posts that on Friday in Alaska we were sitting at dinner and discovered that Halle could count to 10. Who knew? It was so random, we didn't even think she could count to 3!! Genius on the way!

Tuesday was our last day in Alaska. Erin and I decided to be crafty and eat junk. Poor Nolan and Ethan woke up sick, and Doug, Jared and Nolan went looking for a Christmas tree. They didn't find one the first time out, then just Doug and Jared went out. They saw FOUR moose. Ugh. So then they came home without a tree and I decided I should go with them so that I could see a moose and...I DID! We found the Christmas tree on this scary unplowed road. It had 5-6 cars on the side of the road over turned (one of which was covered in rust and must have been many years old) and an old washer. Weird. I don't know why they don't take the cars off the road in the summer. Luckily we didn't end up on the side of the road. I didn't get a picture of the tree up, so hopefully Erin posts some great pictures.

It was so big the tree stand wouldn't hold it up so they had to improvise something (not sure what). It was a cool tree.

So, while Doug and Jared were out tree hunting Erin and I made bows - for like 5 hours. During one of their tree hunting breaks Jared made oreo balls. Later Erin made hopscotch, and we made this veggie pizza . We had this really good pizza from this place called Treehouse as a late lunch and didn't end up having salmon for dinner. Instead we just snacked on our veggie pizza and the other junk we made. Sorry we ruined your diet, Erin.

Anyway, these are the bows I made:

Mickey Mouse, a butterfly, Christmas tree - of course all with printed instructions and Erin's guidance.

These are Erin's bows:

A bee, dragonfly (that looks more like a butterfly), Christmas tree, snowflake, and she also made a ladybug, but we didn't get a picture of that.

They had some Harry Potter glasses that Ethan looked real cute in.

While Erin and I made bows the kids played and then watched Little Einsteins.

Aren't they adorable together?

Then Jared and I packed up our stuff, we left the house around 7 and Doug drove us to the airport. We flew on a 19 passenger plan. The "stewardess" said the flight would be good and calm and we should be there in 15 minutes...then she sat in the cockpit and flew the plane...not really the stewardess I guess. So that was the flight from Kenai to Anchorage. Then we flew from Anchorage to Seattle, arriving in Seattle at 3 am. Then we slept (or tried to sleep) at the airport until our flight left at 6. We flew into Salt Lake at 9. Then we went to my parent's and had a wonderful breakfast. Unfortunately by this time Halle was sick. We headed down to the basement and slept for 3-4 hours. Then we packed up the car with the dogs and headed home. I don't remember much after that, only that I went to bed pretty early.

Erin and Doug and kids - THANK YOU for allowing us into your home. We had so much fun and can't wait to come for another visit. Hopefully one for the summer to fish and another later in the winter to see the Northern Lights. Thank you so much!!

Days 3, 4, and 5

I can't believe our time in Alaska has almost come to an end. Our Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday was CRAZY good. The turkey was perfect. After dinner/lunch we went outside to play. That was so much fun. We didn't get any pictures because we were having such a blast. We would sled down this huge hill in the neighbor's yard and tredge back up. We tried having Doug bring us back up on the snowmobile, but the snow wasn't deep enough and were tearing up the neighbor's grass. Then we went down their driveway so the kids could go by themselves. Halle loved going by herself and on the driveway Doug would bring her back to the top. She thought Doug was awesome. After about 3 hours of that we were exhausted, but luckily not freezing since we all bundled well. Erin and Doug went to take some neighbors something so we were left with the 4 kids. I plopped them infront of Little Einsteins with some popcorn - they each had two bowls full!

Brenden on the left, then Nolan, and Halle sitting in the Elmo chair.
She really likes the Elmo chair.

Fudge, one of Erin's 3 dogs chased Erin everytime she sledded down the hill and would trudge back up. She was pretty tired after that (and unfortunately couldn't even walk on one of her hind legs and Erin had to give her pain medicine)...Everyone needs a good hug...
On Sunday (after relaxing, a good night's sleep, church, and another nap) it was time for more play time. Nolan and Brenden had fun playing in these boxes and hiding.
They each had a car (Brenden had a big yoga ball) and went around the table for a good 30 minutes. You can't see Ethan but he's on a big green jeep thing.Then Ethan played ball and threw it at Jared.Then Halle had a turn and became VERY silly.Then it was time for bed in preparation for another day.

So today is Monday and it has been so much fun. Brenden got up and went to school and Doug headed to work. The rest of us cleaned up the house until it was light enough to do anything. The sunrise is beautiful. The pictures just don't do it justice, but let's see if they can at least start to show the beauty. (I'm having troubles uploading images and have been trying off and on for a few hours, so I've had to make them smaller to get them to upload.)Then Halle and I headed out the door for some play time. We sledded for a while.Halle and I sledding down the hill. She preferred laying down.
Then she would continue to lay down and make me drag her back up the hill.

Then we convinced dad to join us and go snowmobiling. Your snot and spit freeze if you don't wear a helmet. After one time around the block Halle and I came in for the helmets. Then Jared and Halle went out.Halle was SO sad when daddy left her at the house.

Jared had so much fun going really fast around the block by himself.

We picked Brenden up from school so I could see his class. Then we went out to where the road ends and saw the ocean. It was beautiful. We didn't take a camera though, bummer. We had wonderful halibut for dinner and I hear we're having Salmon tomorrow!