Christmas Eve

My mom makes Christmas Eve very special. She prepares a huge dinner, we act out the nativity, play chimes, play a white elephant game, and exchange gifts between my siblings and the grandchildren (we draw names). I love our Christmas Eve traditions at my mom's house.

The boy cousins admiring Grandma's fun decorations.

Enjoying all the attention

Our nativity was a little rough this year. Dallin played a very bored Joseph and Sam didn't really enjoy being Mary.
Jared taking over the role as Mary or maybe he just liked the scarf

Me as an angel trying to round up the kids

A funny picture of trying to get kids to cooperate. Towards the end Caleb decided he didn't want to be a shepard but wanted to put on that big white...I'm not sure what it was but he wanted to be wrapped in it. Sam was getting very tired, so Aunt Lindsey pretended to be a donkey and carry her. Probably not the most spiritual reenactment of Christ's birth.

Gift Exchange:

Dallin asked Santa for two presents for Christmas: Buzz and El Materdor. Dallin was thrilled when Caleb gave him Buzz.

El Materdor was the toy he has talked about for two months. He was speechless when he opened up this gift.

Once these presents were opened though, there was some confusion. Dallin asked Santa Claus for El Materdor and Buzz and yet Grandma and Caleb got him these gifts. What was Santa going to bring now???

Sweet Memories: Gavin's Sealing Day

We woke early on the 23rd making sure we all looked our best, clothes were ironed, bags packed and only leaving 10 minutes behind schedule. Some of my favorite memories of Gavin's special day happened on the ride to the temple.

I had to squeeze in the back between the two car seats in order to finish putting socks and shoes on the boys. I had Zane put on my favorite adoption music and I sat looking at my two beautiful boys. The day before I had talked to a friend who is going through some of the hardest parts of the adoption process...the waiting, the not knowing, the part where you feel out of control. For our adoption stories, there were three times when I felt totally out of control. The first was when Dallin's birthmom disappeared for a month. We met her and then she went home for Christmas and decided to stay through the month of January. Her cell phone stopped working while she was away and all of sudden I had no information or contact with her. In her defense, she was enjoying spending time with friends and didn't realize that there was a very emotional woman craving any kind of contact and reassurance from her. Dallin's birthmom came back to my city at the beginning of February ready to have Dallin and everything was fine again. January was the worst though for me. Then there was a failed adoption between Dallin and Gavin. Flying out to another city and coming home empty handed is something I never want to repeat again. The last is getting the news that we needed to rush to Florida to pick up a baby without any warning. These are the hard parts of adoption. The parts where everything seems out of control.

Sealing day though is the compensation for all the hard parts. It is a celebration of forever families. You can imagine then my emotions as I sat between my two boys listening to my adoption music and thinking back to our story and how both boys came into our lives. Of course I shed a few tears. Dallin looked at me and asked why I was sad. I told him mommy was crying because she is extremely happy. Kind of confusing for a two year old. Then Dallin broke out singing this song.

"I love to see the temple. I'm going there some day. To feel the Holy Spirit, to listen and to pray. For the temple is a house of God, a place of love and beauty. I'll prepare myself while I am young; this is my sacred duty."

Dallin doesn't know the second verse yet (and I was amazed he knew all the words to the first verse. He does listen!). The end of the chorus on the second verse says, "For the temple is a holy place where we are sealed together. As a child of God, I've learned this truth: A family is forever."

Listening to my two-year-old sing to me these words brought on a fresh wave of tears and Zane commenting that we haven't even entered the temple yet and maybe I should save some tears for inside. :) Although this is Gavin's special day, he won't remember it (although we took a lot of pictures). Dallin though may remember some of it and I got a chance to tell him all about his special day all over again. Love that.

(My talented sister-in-law Kara took pictures at the sealing. It will take her some time to go through all of them, so right now you will have to be content with my lame pictures. More will come though.)

Gavin in the car. Because he is rear facing and because it is such a tight fit in the back seat, I couldn't maneuver myself to get a picture with him.

Zane took this picture while he was stopped at a red light. Gavin is on the other side of me.

Another great memory was entering the temple together. I wish I could have caught this on camera. We walked hand in hand with Zane carrying Gavin into the temple together. Dallin was so excited to be able to go inside since we have talked and prepared him for this day for awhile. I, of course, was so happy to be going to the temple with my little family, that I cried. I always seem to have plenty of tears to shed.

My mom met us inside and took the boys into the nursery area to get them dressed in their white clothes. Zane and I went to change and of course I got to go into the Brides room again. I felt so special!

The ceremony finally started with my family and lots of our friends joining us. My mom brought Dallin in and sat with him while he looked around the room studying everything and every person there. My dad brought Gavin in and held him by Zane and me. Gavin's middle name is my dad's name, so I wanted him to hold Gavin. I have to say that Gavin looked so handsome and angelic in his little outfit. He was very good during the ceremony although he was very interested in the crochet doily laying across the alter. Afterward Zane and I held our boys close and hugged each other. This was the best moment for me. Dallin told me I looked pretty and told Zane that he looked funny. Sorry Zane. He kept talking about how he and Gavin had white clothes on. After all our guests left the room, we tried to show Dallin the mirrors in the room, but all he kept saying was, "Where's Kara?" My little brother and his wife arrived the night before and he was excited to see them.

We took lots of pictures outside and then headed to my mom's house for a family luncheon. It was great to be together and celebrate Gavin becoming part of our forever family. We love you baby Gavin and feel so lucky to be your parents!

Clever and Independent

I've taken to hiding all our yummy Christmas treats on top of the fridge. When Dallin wants a treat, he has learned it is better to just figure out a way to get it himself instead of asking since I usually say not right now. He will pull a chair over from the table, climb up and get what he wants. Hence the hiding of the candy on top of the fridge. Dallin figured out real fast that a chair wouldn't cut it so he tried the high chair. He then looked at me and asked for a ladder.

After growling at Gavin this morning and scaring him, Dallin climbed up and said over and over again, "It's ok Gavin. I'm not a real lion."

He's ready for Santa to come!

Cuteness and Big Happenings

His hair is turning curly.

Just on the top though. Baldness is still running through the family...

Cuteness also runs in the family.

At 5 1/2 months, Gavin is finally rolling over. He rolls from his back to his front to get the toy he wants. When he gets on his front though, he refuses to turn over and instead lets everyone know that he needs help.

In terms of big happenings, Thursday is the big day. We will go to the temple as a family and become a forever family.

Big, big happenings!

Please Just Sleep!

Before I started teaching preschool, a friend warned me that preschool takes over your life. It hasn't quite taken over my life, but between being a mom of two and preschool, my "me time" to blog and do projects is vanishing. I've written many posts in my head, but I never found the time to publish them. Some of them were brilliant and funny if I say so myself. Today I'm working on basics. Gavin is almost six months old, so I have a little catch up to do.


Dallin started sleeping through the night at 10 weeks. I thought I was a fabulous mother. I have since learned that some things have nothing to do with me. Dallin has always been a good sleeper and he needs his sleep. Gavin though, doesn't need sleep. He is a happy, laughing baby, and he never sleeps the recommended amount. He is also a very early riser. Gavin's lack of sleep and early rising is driving me nuts!!!

Though out the month of October, I started to really work and putting Gavin back to sleep during the night without feeding him. We started making some progress and then day light savings hit in November. For a whole week I had both Gavin and Dallin up at 5 a.m. Dallin eventually started adjusting, but Gavin will still wake up at 5 a.m. Now I have learned a couple of tricks about Gavin and I can put him back to sleep with a new wake up time of 6:30 a.m. In November though, Gavin would wake up giggling and hyper. Both Zane and I would try anything to get him back to sleep. After an hour and a half, he would go back to sleep but by then Dallin was awake. Let me tell you that giggling at 5 a.m. isn't the sound you want to hear. Gavin's early waking though was the least of our problems compared to his frequent waking at night.

I've already posted that Gavin had bronchitis in November. The medicines that Gavin had to take really affected his sleeping too. For a couple of weeks, Gavin was up every hour and a half. His breathing was so labored, that we kept him in his car seat by our bed. He slept better in his car seat and this way I wasn't trampling through my house every half hour. It would take Zane or I 15 to 20 minutes to get him back to sleep, we would lay back done, and then it felt like seconds later, he was awake again. We are now down to two breathing treatments a day to continue to help clear out Gavin's lungs. I mentioned before that Gavin was really good during breathing treatments as long as you sang a song and tried to entertain him. Now he is so tired of it, he acts like every other baby and cries...a lot. We do so many breathing treatments that Dallin has become intrigued by the neutralizer and every thing to do with it.

This is Gavin's mask turned upside down.

Eating and sleeping go hand and hand for a baby, so I need to add a note about Gavin's eating habits. Gavin is a chunky baby and yet, he doesn't eat much. A two ounce cereal feeding replaces a 6 ounce bottle for Gavin. With two cereal feedings, we started dropping bottles quickly. Gavin still needs those bottles though, so he wanted them at night. With both Dallin and Gavin, we have always done a dream feed at 11 p.m. (Gavin goes to bed at 7:30 and we get him out of bed at 11 p.m. to feed in order to keep him from waking up during the night. He usually sleeps through this feed.) Dallin dropped that feed by 3 months. This is Gavin's biggest bottle though so we haven't been able to drop it. Because of this feed, we go to bed late at our house.

November can be characterized as the month I walked around like a zombie. (Zane had one out of town trip in November and it about killed me to do all the wake ups on my own.) Now we are in December and I feel like we have Gavin's sleeping habits back to where they were in October (slightly better since I can put him back to bed at 5 a.m.). Hopefully by the end of this month, Gavin will no longer wake up at 5 a.m.!

Getting Ready for Christmas

This year's Christmas is even more exciting because Dallin is starting to get it.

The nieces and nephews dressing up on a special outing with Grandma and Aunt Lindsey. Dallin and Sam chose to be angels. I couldn't get a great picture with Dallin because he kept turning his head to see his wings, but I loved this one because Sam does look so angelic.

Camping- Yes we tried it again...

We tried camping again because my little sister Lindsey wanted to go. We went the Wednesday before Thanksgiving because the weather was cool, but not too cool. There are a lot of pluses to camping when people want to get together and stay up late playing games and talking. We hadn't seen Lindsey for 18 months, so there was a lot to catch up on. We have a hard time putting the kids to bed at someone else's house, so our days of staying up late and playing games as a family have dwindled. The down side to camping is that tents don't contain noise very well, so when certain members of our family wake up in the middle of the night your worry is to contain the noise so that no one else in the camp site wakes up even though everyone in your tent is nice and awake together.

I'm not sure why we keep trying camping. Dallin pulled his "I don't want to sleep in a tent but want to sleep in my car bed" stunt at midnight like he did last time. Luckily, we were able to get him back to sleep without driving around town since we were definitely far back into the forest, but he still was up for an hour and a half. Gavin pulled his 5 a.m. wake up and refused to go back to sleep. Instead he giggled loudly enough that Dallin woke up too. We enjoyed an early hike that morning so that others in the camp could keep sleeping. I think camping is just not for us until the kids are a little older. Dallin loves it and asks to go every day, but his midnight wake up/ I'm all done with tents just isn't cool.

Besides the sleeping issues, we had a great time. Here are some of the highlights.

Cousin Sam entertaining the babies while we set up tents- She is going to be a great babysitter!

The three babies hanging out- Carter 8 months, Gavin 5 months, and Alex 3 1/2 months

Checking out the bugs

Playing with Aunt Lindsey

Wrestling on the air mattress with Uncle Jared- Yes we sleep on air mattresses and Dallin still begs for his car bed

Playing No Bears Are Out Tonight except this is Thursday morning. We had a rousing game of it Wednesday night in the dark. Here is how you play: Someone hides in the woods as a bear. Everyone sings, "No bears are out tonight. Grandpa got rid of them all last night." Then you run through the woods looking for the bear and the bear comes out to chase you. All this is done without flashlights. The boys loved it. We thought they would be scared, but they are tough.
In this picture Drew is the bear chasing Grandpa and Dallin.

Running free

Playing on a tree that had just toppled over. It was kind of scary because the kids had been playing over there earlier and then later, all of sudden it fell down. We were lucky that no one was over there when it happened.

We did get a rousing game of Bang! in and enjoyed talking together, so besides the lack of sleep, we had a great time!

Welcome Home Hermana Shurtliff!

It isn't quite the same as being at the gate when a missionary walks off the plane, but I think our welcome party at baggage claim was good too. This is all of us waiting and getting the kids prepped. There were lots of reminders to hold the signs up high and to run to Aunt Lindsey when you see her and give her a hug.

Here she is walking down the runway and seeing all of us. I think everyone else at the airport thought we were strange or else wondered why Lindsey was getting such a big reception. We were/are just very proud of Lindsey!

Dallin was the first to break away and run to Aunt Lindsey. Aunt Lindsey is special because she sent him postcards from her mission.

Lindsey is on the ground here because Dallin decided to run and give her a hug again (actually he tackled her.) This is when I wish I had a nicer camera. I missed the shot because my camera is too slow in between pictures.
Mom greeting her daughter. There were a couple of happy tears shed from some of us. 18 months is a long time after all. Within that 18 months, our brother got married and she had three new nieces and nephews.

The best part of having Aunt Lindsey home...she doesn't return to BYU until January and so comes to visit (helps out with the kids) often. Loving that!