classic

family nativity

i present for your viewing pleasure the wilkinson family nativity.

mary, joseph and the baby Jesus

cute little wise man

hark! the herald angel sung

and the sheep. good thing we want more kids. we were kind of scrapping for parts!

visit from the Dicous - Thanksgiving weekend

we had a lovely visit from some of our favorite people Thanksgiving weekend. the Dicous came to stay at "Hotel Wilkie". we ate. we biked 35 miles. we stayed up late talking. we went to see Donny & Marie (she's Donny's dog's vet!) and even met them. Marie gave Bishop and Aaron a "man hug". they came to church with us and looked like proud parents while they watched me lead the music in sacrament meeting.

thanks for a great weekend - we love you guys!
i only wish sister D had sent me their "over excited" picture. if you think ours was funny you should see theirs! :)

em's first time climbing (Dec 4)

we bought a childrens' rock climbing harness when i was pregnant with emery 3 years ago. we were clearly a little over excited. it's hard to believe, but we actually have a munchkin big enough to fit in it now. emery did so good her first time climbing and her daddy was SOOOOO proud.

and mom and van had fun too. van ate rocks and mom made sure he didn't choke or crawl off a cliff. :)

brave

we interrupt these holiday updates to bring you a brave (spelled out on his forehead to try and distract him at the doctor's office) little boy with a broken arm. got jumbled amongst five 3-year-old girls at the top of the stairs and fell to the bottom. fractured both bones just above the wrist. he's taking it in stride. in 4 weeks he should be good as new.


something about my son tells me this isn't van's last cast.

Holiday Catch up

We're a little behind, so here's some of what we've been up to!

We celebrated Thanksgiving with our Wilkinson family in Filmore, UT. We eat in a barn (with 100+ people!), go on a hay ride, eat the best meat you'll ever put in your mouth, dress for the 10 degree weather and just enjoy spending time together. So festive! Emery is a little obsessed with horses right now, so needless to say she LOVED the hay ride and the wild horses. Until she got tired and fell asleep at the end. Which was awesome because she REALLY needed a nap.




We've also been up to the usual Christmas festivities, including decorating the tree and our house (and our heads with pretty Christmas bows), seeing lots of Christmas lights, Christmas crafts, making ornaments and making gingerbread houses with Emery's cute bff Ruthie! Here are some pics of those!




We also had a visit from our favorite Dicous, Aaron and I rode biked together for the 1st time and the kids and I went to the beach with Grandma, Pa, Great Grandma and Great Grandpa. More to come.

Thankful

Since my Aunt Heather thinks that everyone's blog are too quiet and this is basically my way of journaling, I thought I'd just write tonight about what I'm thankful for, it being November and all:

• I'm thankful that Aaron has a good job. Did you know that Las Vegas has the highest unemployment rate in the nation? This is a scary place to live right now. But we are so blessed that Aaron has a great job that makes us enough money that I can stay home with our babies. My dad likes to remind me of that when I whine about him being out of town or working a 12 hour day (like today). He tells me "But at least he has a job". And it's a good one. My dad is so right.
  
• I'm thankful for prayer and fasting. I'm an awful, terrible, no-good faster. I eat about once every 2 hours on normal days so I'm prone to getting really low blood sugar, really fast when I try and fast. Yesterday was one of those days. I really didn't think I was going to make it. But I've discovered the key to fasting - fasting with a purpose. And not just a purpose, but a purpose that matters so much more to you than your own physical pain. A purpose for which you'd sacrifice food for much longer than a day if the Lord would just grant that blessing to the person for whom you are fasting. And then pray. Pray that you'll have the strength to make it. It works. My fast was physically easy yesterday after I got down on my knees and pleaded for His help. It's cool to see a physical blessing come from a spiritual plea. I was very literally physically sustained by the spirit. I wish I could have a fast like that every month. I guess I have time to get there, right?
  
• I'm thankful for friends. My friends saved me two weeks ago from what could have been a very terrible, abnormally emotional (for me - if you know me you know I'm not very emotional), lonely week. But they were here. And they always are.
• I'm thankful to be a mother. I have 2 amazing kids and as much as I want more, if I never got them I'd still be a mother to the 2 most amazing creatures I've ever known. I can't believe we created them. I couldn't ask for more.
• I'm thankful for Target. Shallow, I know. But I really am. $0.74 hand towels for my kids' bathroom make me so happy.
  
• I'm thankful for the innocence of children. They are so purely charitable and mine teach and remind me every day how much I often lack. I talked to Emery for 5 minutes about giving the money in her money jar to sick kids who need it more than she does and she jumped on giving it all to them. Would I give all of my money to them if I could?
• I'm thankful that I found Van doing this today.

Happy Halloween!!

From Princess Tiana, the Frog and Ray the Bayou Firefly....




and from the annual Halloween sugar cookie sprinkle monster!

more of Van's birthday!

i'll spare you the 3 1/2 minute video of Van eating his cake. if you've ever seen the kid eat a banana you can imagine how it happened - he basically pureed it through his teeth. pretty funny. we celebrated with his friends Jack and Caden and families and Grandma and Pa. thanks for celebrating with us, all! :)


for the sake of journaling, i should document some of Van's favorite and milestones when he turned 1.

height: 33 inches (95%)
weight: 23 lbs 4 oz (50%)
head: big

favorites...

• food - bananas and meat of any kind
• song - In the Leafy Tree Tops (always has been)
• game - wrestling
  
• activity - climbing stairs (at home, at the park... anywhere...) and anything sissy is doing - making dirt soup in the backyard, taking a bath, etc.
  
• toy - balls and your Buzz Lightyear push cart Grandma and Pa gave you for your birthday
  
• attachments - blankey and Froggy (Froggy used to be Emery's, but I told her one day it would be nice if she gave it to brother - which she did! so cute!)
  
• book - Baby Face, Pajama Time (thanks to mom's acquired "reading rap" skills from Auntie Bek) and Gallop
• TV show/movie - his weird parents still don't have a TV but he sure gets giggly when sissy is watching Dora in the car on vacations - I think he has a crush on her
• favorite person - mom. he loves me!
  

milestones...

• words - mama, dad, sissss (for sissy), ba (ball), nana (banana), woof, bye bye
  
• words he's said once or twice - "hi da" (hi dad), amen, potty
• claps with music, dances to music (he's a crazy dancer!), feeds himself everything including oatmeal and cheerios with milk (holds, but doesn't exactly use, the spoon), climbs on things as tall as he is, mimics letter sounds really well, does "up and down" and "open and shut" in the wheels on the bus

and...

• laughs the hardest - when he plays with Emery
• dad says what he loves the most about Van is his laugh, how he always is exploring and moving, unless he's cuddling and how sweet he is

here he is doing what he does best - first, cuddling and then climbing stairs and laughing

Happy 1st birthday, Van!!

how did we get from this (FRESH out of the womb)....

to this... (3 months)....

to this... (6 months)...

to this... (9 months)....

to this so fast!! (1 year - today at his birthday breakfast and play at the mall slides - it was raining!)

Vander Mander - you're such a good boy and we love you so much! I really can't believe how fast you're growing up. You're our big boy now and we love you more every minute of every day. Happy birthday!


the "dig into his own cake" birthday celebration is pending til dad gets home from his business trip. more pictures to come.

5 years

I think this pretty well sums up our 1st 5 years of marriage...
5 years
4 cities
3 college degrees
2 kids
1 (or 1st) real career and 1st home


Dear Aaron,

Being married to you is so wonderful and so easy. So, thank you. Thank you....

• for kissing me on our first date and every day since.
• for always insisting I eat the leftovers.
• for indulging my love for shopping.
  
• for thinking I'm the most amazing cook on the planet and for preferring my cooking to your endless $50/day and hotel employee dining room possibilities with your new job.
• for sweeping the floor and doing the dishes just because when my to-do list gets a little too ambitious.
• for taking care of the little things that lose me - insurance, car maintenance, toilet plunging and this morning - kiddie barf clean up.
  
• for masking your face when you change stinky diapers.
• for being such a hands-on dad and wanting to spend more time with our kids than I could ever even ask for.
  
• for being the world's best story teller.
  
• for unintentionally helping a spoiled princess become even more stingy than you are.
  
• for being so sexy when you install our new tub with your shirt off... and with Van "helping".
• for making me a better, more mellow, more patient mother.
  
• for always putting my needs, wants, feelings, goals and hunger pains above your own.

Love,
Wifey

Thanks, Grandma and Pa, for watching our kids so we could spend all afternoon playing! We went and did the Bootleg Canyon Flight Lines (where my little bro works - thanks for the hook up Boog!), then a sunset mountain bike ride, then McDonalds Smoothies and a dollar movie, then dinner at Chilis (with a gift card - do you think we're made of money or something?). We had a blast! have you ever been off-roading on a short bus? i have now! :) aaron and my little bro.

the view from the top (see lake mead behind us?). did i mention I'm blonde again?

looking down one of the lines

aaron going down one of the runs. so so so fun!

i've never thought sunset was romantic - apparently it is on a mountain bike.

awww.... 5 years later and we still like each other. cute!

my beautiful babies

i took these a month ago with my mom's camera and then had some fun on iPhoto. i'm really happy with the way they turned out. and more importantly, i really love my precious, beautiful babies. i'm so lucky to be their mom.