Santa Claus

Ethan has visited with Santa a total of FIVE times this holiday season (not to mention a couple fake phone calls from "Santa" (aka Adam) trying to convince Ethan why he needed to be a good boy at Christmas time.

The first visit was at my parents house back in November. My parents' good friends from Georgia were in town visiting for the weekend and the husband happens to be a professional Santa (he grows his white beard year round and then is hired to come to all sorts of parties in December). He looks so much like Santa that he has professional cards made up with his picture on it that he gives to kids he meets and he also has treats he keeps with him to give out to children that approach him thinking he's Santa. So anyway, when he walked in the room and Ethan saw him, Ethan's jaw dropped. It was hilarious!

The second encounter with Santa was at the mall; Ethan loved it but Austin refused to go anywhere near Santa.

The next encounter was at Ethan's preschool. Santa paid the kids in his class a visit and Ethan was sooooo excited about it. He talked about it all week and told everyone he saw about it.

The fourth visit was over the weekend. Adam's mom and dad took me, Austin, and Ethan to Riverside Country Club for their annual family Christmas luncheon. They had someone dressed up as Rudolph that scared Austin to death. Anytime Rudolph got near, Austin's hands would start to shake. While we were eating lunch, every time Rudolph walked by the doorway, Austin would yell out, "There he is!!" and when he'd disappear from sight, Austin would say, "Where is he? Is he hiding?" After eating lunch a helicopter landed on the golf course right by the window we were sitting next to. Ethan and Austin were sooooooooo excited to see the helicopter landing so close to them, and then to have Santa get off! Thanks Grandma Karon and Papa Steve, we had so much fun!!

The last visit (and probably last for this year) was last night. Adam's extended family does a big prime rib dinner every year at Christmas time. Then they have "Santa" come by the house and all the little kids get to sit on his lap and talk to him and get a candy cane and little present.

Playing in the snow

We had a big snow storm last week, so we went to our neighbor Jullian's house to play with her sleds. Austin usually hates getting all bundled up, but he had a great time. We pulled the boys around the block on sleds (what a great work out for the moms!!), made snow angels, ate lots of snow (Ethan), and had lots of fun.

Cohen & Ethan (it was still snowing pretty hard while we were out playing, so that's why the pictures look a little hazy)

Ethan flying over a big mound of snow

Me & Ethan

Austin kept his tounge sticking out trying to catch snow almost the whole time

Jullian & Cohen

Bowling, Christmas Trees, and Peanuts

I haven't done much posting lately, mainly due to the fact that I've been super busy with Christmas preparations. I've also felt like I haven't done much to blog about. But I was just looking through my pictures and realized I had a few things I'd completely missed blogging about so this will just have to cover a few topics.

Ethan LOVES the bowling game on our Wii. And he's actually REALLY good at it; he often beats Adam and I. So we took him to a real bowling alley a couple weeks ago. He had so much fun, but I think it was a sad reality for him to face that real bowling balls are heavy, and not so easy to throw like the Wii bowling ball.

Every year Adam's Grandma and Grandpa make gingerbread houses for ALL their grand kids and their spouses and great grand kids (probably around 50 houses that they make from scratch). Everyone brings decorations and go crazy. It's such a fun tradition and his grandparents are so nice to do it for so many people.

And here we are picking out our Christmas tree a couple weeks ago. Adam always begs to buy a fake tree, but I grew up always having a real tree, so I end up winning that discussion every year. I love the way real trees smell and look.

We bought a hot tub a couple months ago, and have loved it so far. We get in several nights a week (so if anyone ever wants to join us, let us know!)

A big stress we've been dealing with lately is Ethan's peanut and almond allergies. We've known he was allergic to peanuts since he was 1 and had a pretty severe reaction (hives, wheezing, trouble breathing). But I didn't ever take him to be tested because his pediatrician blew it off and said he'd probably outgrow it so just wait a year and try again (by the way, that's the worst advice ever). Last year, his preschool teacher gave him Reece's Pieces for several days in a row even though I told her he was allergic. He came home every day screaming and crying in pain and would throw up and diarrhea and be so out of it. I thought he was just sick, but then finally realized what was happening. So I took him to an allergist early this year and they did a blood RAST test, but somehow the lab FORGOT to test for peanuts. So we found out he was also allergic to eggs and almonds, but didn't know HOW allergic to peanuts he was. I found a new and MUCH better allergist last month and had him re-tested, and they also did a skin prick test. On the blood test, it starts at 0 and the highest possible score is 100 plus. For peanuts, if you score above 14, that means you will have a reaction 100% of the time. But even with a lower score of say 3 or 4 you could go into anaphylactic shock if you had even a trace amount of peanuts. Well, Ethan scored 100 plus!! His almond score was around 7 and luckily he's pretty much outgrown his egg allergy. But ever since I found out how severe his peanut allergy is, it has really hit me how dangerous ANY exposure to any amount of peanuts or almonds is. Doctors say that each time someone with a peanut allergy is exposed to peanuts, the reaction usually gets worse every time. And peanut allergies are the most deadly of food allergies for some reason. I never realized before how peanuts are everywhere and in the most random products. Even things that aren't la bled to have a trace of peanuts can still have them. Sorry for the LLLOOONNNGG post, but to make a long story short, we carry his epi-pen everywhere now, just in case.

Another stress in my family is that my older brother Eric had a seizure a few nights ago and had to be rushed by ambulance to the emergency room. He doesn't have a history of seizures and the doctor could find nothing wrong with him besides dehydration. He is doing great now and we are all praying that he continues to do so. Love you Eric!

Girls Night at Gardner Village

Last year we started a tradition in my family (the Izant side) for all the girls to go out to Gardner Village for some shopping and dinner right before Christmas. We went tonight and it was a lot of fun. I also go out for a Christmas dinner every year with the girls on the Winn side of the family, but didn't get any pictures of that when we went last week.

2 Cute Boys

My sister got a new lens for her camera, so we took some pictures of Ethan and Austin a few weeks ago while the leaves were still beautiful. They turned out sooooo cute, thanks Kristin!!

Friendship Feast

Ethan's preschool class had their Thanksgiving celebration today which they called the "Friendship Feast." The kids had made cute Indian headbands and turkey nametags, and they'd all been given Indian names by Miss Kerry (Ethan's was "Sly Fox" which is probably pretty appropriate for him). After their snack they sang some cute songs and read a Thanksgiving story. So cute; I can't wait for their Christmas party!

Ethan was so excited to see Austin when we came into his class, he ran over and they hugged.

Here they're singing everyone's favorite song, Boots, and jumping around

The Holy War

Adam's dad was able to get Adam and I tickets to the big rivalry game last night, BYU vs Utah. For those who don't know, Utah was undefeated and BYU had only 1 loss going into last night's game. The BYU vs. Utah game is always exciting, even if both teams have losing records, so last night's game was more exciting than usual. Unfortunately, just as BYU had their chance to pull into the lead at the end of the 2nd quarter, Max Hall threw an interception and that was just the beginning of many interceptions he threw that night. Very disappointing. And of course, to make things worse, we had all sorts of obnoxious Ute fans around us all night. Nothing gets me more angry than obnoxious Utah fans, so I spent much of the night very annoyed. We had one guy yell at us, "I hope you die!!!!!" Adam and I hadn't said ANYTHING to him... who says something like that?? Who else, an insaneUte fan. Another Utah fan was arrested near us. Despite the craziness, it was still a lot of fun, and really exciting, at least for the first half.

Photo 102, Week 1

I'm taking my second photo class from the talented Nicole Hill. Here classes are amazing, but unfortunately she is moving in January, and this is the last month that she'll be teaching here in Utah. The first class I took focused on learning to use the manual settings on your camera instead of automatic. We mainly took pictures of people. The advanced class is more about creativity and still life photography (so for me, creative=very hard). For one of our assignments we had to pick a random item out of a bag and shoot 6 unique creative pictures using that object (I picked a deck of cards). And for our other assignment we had to try different types of window lighting. So here's a few highlights from this week: