Westover Family

Our house is little, and we don't have a ton of Christmas decorations. But I love the way our living room feels after we put everything up, it's so festive and fun. Our boys love the tree and Avery is especially excited for all the Christmas happenings! Someday we'll upgrade from apartment/cramped/ultra child friendly/poor decorations.
Someday I'd like to have Christmas decorations in every room! We just LOVE Christmas around here!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Our tree this year. We opted to skip ornaments this year and I just tied strips of plaid fabric around branches. Jack gets a little crazy, so I thought this would be a good option. :)A Garland I made last year out of old Christmas Cards, strung on ribbon. I think it's cute and happy.Place mats. :) I've had them in our Christmas boxes for about 3 years and we never use them. So I thought I'd try something new.Blocks I made at RS Super Saturday.Andy stringing lights around the living room. We really like Christmas lights! :)And our Willow Tree Nativity. I love this and hope to add to it in future years.

This past week was busy. Andy's immediate family was in town for Chris' wedding and Thanksgiving. Then there was a Hinton (Andy's maternal grandparent's side of the family) family reunion. It was all fun, but it's so tiring and a bit overwhelming hauling 2 small kids around without naps for a week. Avery thrives off crowds (Where on earth did he get that from? Has he met his parents?!), Jack pretty much hates anyone who isn't Mom. Lucky me. So it was an interesting week.It was fun seeing family though, and Chris and Lauren's wedding was the highlight of the week! (Lunch at the creamery is a close second!) Avery is still talking about Lauren's princess dress, asking if she's going to sleep in it and wear it forever. He loves Chris and Lauren, so he was very excited about the whole thing!We also went to the Creamery for lunch, Jumpin Jack's, on a walk (well, Andy and Avery did), ate a TON, played games, there was a pinata, Andy played lots of Basketball/football, and we managed to squeeze in Christmas decorating!I barely saw Avery all week, he was off with other kids, being a big kid. I saw a lot of Jack.Overall it was a good week. I'm not going to lie though, I'm looking forward to our slow paced life for the next few weeks. Then it's off to Missouri for Christmas and more crazy, busy, fun, stressful events! We love our big families, really!! :)

Here's a picture of Andy and his greasy mustache. He grew it just for Chris' wedding. 5 years ago when we got married Chris grew a nasty little 'stache, that didn't show up in our pictures. Andy's was a little darker. He shaved soon after the wedding! :)

I've seen people making and selling these appliqued tie onesies and shirts and I've been wanting to try it out for a long time. I have no idea why I haven't done it yet, I have all the stuff.

Anyway, today while the boys are napping I decided to try it out on some of Jack's grubby onesies. I eventually want to make the boys matching tie t-shirts. Maybe for Thanksgiving...? hm.
It was really easy to make them, the blue tie was my first one and I didn't cut it at the right angle. But still sort of cute, for a skinny tie. I like the shape of the yellow tie much better! Now I just wish the boys had some plain t-shirts I could do this on!

I'm always happy to find cute projects to do for boys, there are so many girl things out there! So I'm quite pleased with this project.

I want some of whatever he's on. Think how much I could get done!?
He did this for probably 10-15 minutes straight this evening. I'm not sure why, but he seemed to enjoy it!

We've been doing a thankful activity each day, thanks to Somewhat Simple, yesterday was "I am Thankful for Turkeys" so we made paper turkeys together. I attempted to get Jack's had traced, but he just wanted to rip paper and throw it around. So our family of Turkey's has 2 Avery hands.
It's been really fun do this though, we never know what fun activity we're going to do, or what random thing we'll be talking about. So far we've written emails and letters to different family members, made phone calls, cooked together and done nice things for each other. It's just fun to have something a little different to do each day!


**Keep scrolling...I was on a blogging roll today!

Avery used the computer for the first time this morning. He did a ton better than I thought he would! And of course, he loved it! I downloaded Kid Rocket, and he played on Starfall for probably 30 or 40 minutes honing his letter skills. Then of course he threw a gigantic fit and landed himself in time out when I told him it was time to get off. He's already been begging to play more, he's getting to be such a big kid...and he's only 3! They seriously grow up and get smart way faster than I'm ready!!
Jack was so jealous. I finally let him sit near Avery, any closer and he'd snitch the mouse for himself and my laptop would become a pile are scrap metal. That kid's crazy! :)
Here is Jack's first attempt to get close to the computer

Jack loves to wear things around his neck. Like a scarf, not like he's choking himself. :)He's not picky. He'll use Dad's tie, a washcloth or this morning Avery's lightning McQueen undies, which ended up working as a hat better! :)

Earlier in the summer we bought the boys some fun little hawaiian print type shirts at DI. One day Avery wanted to wear it to church or something and I told him it wasn't a church shirt it's more of a picnic shirt. Or something like that. Well, that shirt became his picnic shirt. Every time he wears it we have to go on a picnic. Which is fine by me!

So the other day when I picked it out for him to wear he got really excited about going on a picnic.
Here are the boys on our picnic, in their picnic shirts.In the past Avery has had different names for food items and toys, if we call something a different name once it is that to Avery forever.
A couple examples -
-"Special Snacks" aka fruit snacks: One day just after Jack was born we were going somewhere and Avery didn't want to get in the car so I told him I'd give him a special snack if he got in his seat. I grabbed the first snack my hand touched in the diaper bag which happened to be fruit snacks, so for about a year after that he called fruit snacks, special snacks.

-When Avery first started talking we had gotten some of the fisher price little people at a yard sale and I jokingly called them little fat boys, (they're so cute and round how, could I not?) to this day he calls them fat boys. Bad, I know. We recently packed them away, maybe when we get them out again we can pick a new name!

-Also granola bars were Cookie Bars for a long time, just so I could convince Avery to eat them. If he thinks it's candy or a dessert, he'll eat it.

This post was much longer than I had intended it to be! Oh well.

I ordered a Cricut last night and now I can't stop looking at cartridges! It's killing me, I want them all now! I'm really not a patient person...

That's all. I'm just really excited. Beyond excited really.

*edited to add - I bought the Cricut on sale at Roberts.com for $99, then used the code FREESHIP45 for free shipping on orders of $50 or more. Awesome.
Merry {early} Christmas to me! : )

Jack just walked up to me with a little batman figure and said "na na na na baama"
We sing the Batman theme song frequently here. Both boys think it's pretty funny!

...tried to cram 2 adults and 2 uncooperative, confused, wiggly kids into a photo booth? Here is the proof of our attempt. Those machines take pictures way too fast... But it was fun and silly and we had fun, even if Andy barely fit in it! (they are definitely not made for people over 6 feet)

We started our Halloween Celebrations on Friday night with a Jack-O-Lantern Pizza, Pumpkin carving, and a Monsters vs. Aliens tv special.

This year was the first year we’ve (a) waited so late to carve pumpkins and (b) carved something other than the classic Jack-o-lantern face. Andy carved Yoda and Avery picked the sad face for the one I carved. Avery also painted a little pumpkin earlier in the week.

Avery was surprisingly excited about gutting the pumpkin, last year he wanted nothing to do with it, and he has an aversion to dirty nasty stuff, but he had fun with this task. (sometimes he insists on washing his hands between eating his sandwich and banana, he doesn’t like to be dirty. Lets hope this lasts through the teen years!)

Avery was pretty excited about the smiley face pizza, it tasted great too! Thank you Papa Murphey’s! :)

Pumpkin carving too longer than we though, so poor Avery had to eat on the floor. Jack got to enjoy the carving show from the comfort of his booster seat.

The finished pumpkins, Jack’s is the other small one, he just carried it around chewing on it. I finally too it away, much to his dismay. Andy’s quite proud of his Yoda pumpkin.

This is just a funny picture of Jack (Darth Vader) watching the end of Star Wars. I thought it was funny anyway…

On Saturday evening we went to the mall and did trick or treating there. SO not worth it, we got a bunch of crummy candy and there were thousands of kids, it was packed and crazy. Avery had fun though, and we liked showing the boys off in their adorable costumes. So I guess it wasn’t a complete waste!

Then we went to our ward Trunk-Or-Treat. I made some decorations for the van, which took a while, but ended up pretty fun. I like the Trunk or Treat, it doesn’t take very long, your kids get to see other costumes, you get candy (like we need any more!) and it saves you from walking door to door in the cold. Anyway…after getting more candy than a 3 year old and a 1 year old could ever possibly need we headed down to Andy’s brother’s house to let him see the kids costumes. In past years we run out of candy pretty early so we bought more this year. Then we only had 3 groups of kids come to our house. We had so much candy left over, between what we bought and the boys got. So today Andy took most of it to his office to donate to the secretary’s candy stash. Thank goodness, I was eating so much of it!

We didn’t get any great pictures of the boys costumes, but trust me, they were cute! Avery’s was awesome, Andy was jealous all night. (Avery ended up being a Jedi instead of Yoda, apparently I am not 100% knowledgeable when it comes to Star Wars, and Yoda’s robe and tunic thing are the reverse of a regular Jedi with cream as the robe and brown as the inside thing. Oh well, it saved me from making a Yoda hat! Being a Jedi is pretty awesome though. )

Now on to Thanksgiving! And then Christmas!! Yay!