Christmas Lights

What would a Christmas Season be without looking at lights? We usually try to find a light display, because you never know what neighborhood is going to have multiple houses all decked out. After all we had lights up but today it was so windy they came down. So instead of just aimlessly driving around town we visited a light production called Prairie Lights. It was so much fun to see the kids get all excited about the different displays and lights that we saw. Bear was very concerned about seeing bears in the display and kept asking to see more. Isabelle really wanted to take a lot of pictures of what she saw and enjoyed pretty much everything. I think her favorite was the “gingerbread house.” Not really sure if that’s what it was, but that is what we called it. Overall the light display was pretty good and a quick drive through since we went after Christmas. I think had we gone earlier in the month it would have been crazy. One of my favorite parts was the “tunnel” of lights you could drive thru at the end, it had lots of purple and blue, which is always different from traditional Christmas colors.

Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to send out a quick note to everyone on Christmas Day. I know things will be busy and crazy for everyone, but I hope that you can all sit back and enjoy your day. Christmas is one of my favorite seasons and such a wonderful time to remember how it all came about. No matter what your traditions might be I hope you have some Christmas Spirit to spread around to those you will see. Merry Christmas!

Looks who's Four!

Happy Birthday Isabelle! I can hardly believe that you are four years old. Time flies when you are having fun. I’m so glad that we had a chance to celebrate your special day together and that you had so much fun. We started out your day with a waffle breakfast, candle included. Then it was off to Ice Skate the morning away. You tried to skate on one foot and all by yourself without help from a grown up or the wall. Not to be out done you also had a chance to ride the carousel thanks, to Bear remembering that was on his list of things to do today. Before you could open presents we had to have “noodle” dinner. Thanks to Pioneer Woman we had a great “noodle” dinner option. Then with family all around we had a very special cake, shaped like a butterfly. What dinner would be complete without cake! Afterwards you had a chance to open your presents. What a great surprise that was, a few of your favorites, are the play kitchen, dance lessons and blocks. You were ready to show off your dancing skills once you were dressed for the part; I think that you will have too much fun learning how to dance. Here is to another wonderful year full of new and exciting things.

Texas Ice

Here is how Texas does Ice! That’s right we do not wait for the weather to turn bad, we just have it trucked in and sculpted, and then keep it in a really cold room. Every year (I think) at the Gaylord Texan the resort puts together a “show” called Ice. You can walk though this 9 degree ice box and see the marvelous talents of the people who have taken the time to carve some beautiful items in a really cold environment. They are nice enough to hand out really thick parkas so that you can fully enjoy the experience especially if you get stuck in line or have to wait for any amount of time. I think one of my favorite displays was the Santa sleigh and reindeer set up as a slide. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of that one because the crowd was a little bit crazy. The other one I really liked was the display that looks like those fancy antique glass ornaments. Either way it was cold but entertaining.

Holiday "Letter" 2008

Usually I do a holiday letter with our Christmas card but since we are having a baby sometime soon I decided that this year would be different and I would wait to make an official update after the baby. The price of stamps you know. But I don’t think I’m going to do a letter. So for all those people who don’t read my blog, they better get hot and take a look. With out further ado here is our year in review:

Happy Holidays to all our Friends and Family,

Our biggest news this year is two fold, one we moved back to Texas, and two we are expecting baby number three sometime in the New Year. We were excited to be closer to family in Texas but very sad to leave behind our wonderful friends in Utah. They will be dearly missed but hopefully we’ll still get to see them every so often. (Read I expect everyone to visit after the baby is born. j/k) It took us a while to find a new house in Texas but at last we did, and we think we got a pretty good deal, purchasing it from HUD. A very trying process but a great learning experience. Ironically it is very close to our first house that we purchased in Texas, who knew. We still want to live out in the country so one day we’ll get around to moving out of town. What country and where has yet to be determined, after all small town life is very different from city or suburb life.

The kids are doing great. Isabelle will be turning four this holiday season and is very excited about that. She plans to rule the world one day, and I’m sure has it all worked out as to how she will get that done. She loves school and really enjoys starting to read, science and of course playing. We tried soccer this past fall and she enjoys it when the ball is close to her, other wise the action is not quite the same. But she did a great job and hopefully will try it again in the spring. But I think before then she might get a chance to try out dance. I know what could I be thinking but, she is always dancing around, and moving her little body, so I guess it won’t hurt to try. Nobody said it is a permanent activity.

Bear is just Bear! He is so full of energy and goes about a mile a minute. He turned two in July and has been going non-stop. As we say he is our little energizer Bear. He really likes to do what ever Isabelle is doing and has a hard time sitting still for anything longer than five seconds. He loves his shapes and balls, and hopes play as much as he can all day. I think one of the coolest things about Bear is that he has not picked a hand preference yet and switches back and forth. I am still secretly hoping for a lefty but who knows maybe he’ll never make a choice. He also did a soccer program this year called Soccer Tots. He loved it! It was great for him, he got to run around, play with other kids, and do activities that are skill building for later in life when he plays on a real soccer team. I think we’ll have to try that again, since he had so much fun.

Ben and I are doing great. Ben enjoys his work most days and is happy to be back in Texas. I know strange, right? It’s always interesting to see people whom you have not seen in years and they are like, didn’t you move. Especially since we pretty much moved back to where we lived before. I’m doing well with the kids and enjoy staying home with them, trying to make them into wonderful little people, and slowly awaiting the arrival of number three. Next year should be pretty interesting so stay tuned and check us out semi regularly to see what is going on in the Libby-Thesing household.

Happy Holidays, from Ben, Allison, Isabelle, and Barrett

Cookie Exchange

Wow, have you even baked cookies for a cookie exchange? I just did last night, what a load of work. But the end result is kind of fun, you get to get a dozen of the cookies that the other people baked as well. The added advantage is that you get to taste everything before hand, so you will know if you ever what to make that cookie again. But then the downside is that your left with all these cookies to eat. Not exactly the best thing when you are trying to show the doctor that you are not really gaining a lot of weight around this very tricky holiday season. Oh well, it all comes off eventually right?

First Haircut

Isabelle finally had her first haircut. I know she is almost four and has never had it professionally cut. What do you mean by professionally you say, well her brother has taken a little off the top every now and then, which of course takes me forever to find out from where. All I know is that there is hair on the floor and he did the cutting. I guess their even, since early on Isabelle tried to cut his hair as well. Anyway, if you did not see it before you really would not know it had been cut. Ben walks in and his response if “. . . did you get her hair cut?” Well yes, we just trimmed it up a bit so that it might “look” thicker, with out the end being all straggly. She did a pretty good job of sitting still, I think she really enjoyed watching the movie while she had her hair done. The place we went is not as cool as Cookie Cutters but it helps to entertain the kids. The stylist even said that some parents come in with their kids to have their hair cut, while the kids play. Not a bad idea if you do not have the time to wait on hubby or other babysitting alternatives. Here she is in her new hair glory. Now I do not normally take pictures of the back of my children, but it worked the best to show how “different” her hair looked.

Are you a spelunker?

What is a spelunker you ask? Well I will tell you, it is a person who goes caving. Now why not just use the word caver or something else? Too simple I’m sure. Spelunker makes me think that someone decided one day to make up their own word for what they were doing and it just happened to catch on. Now you may also be wondering how I know this term. Just so you do not think I’m a crazy word person I happened to hear it today on NPR, and thought it was funny enough to mention here. I guess if you find yourself exploring caves you can therefore be called a spelunker, how cool would that be. And look this is what you could look like after a long day of exploration.

Santa Clause

Now I don’t usually support the commercialization of Christmas, by taking the kids to see Santa and take some pictures, and continuously talk about Santa and what he is going to bring for Christmas, but this year, family members have been a little crazy about that. Maybe it’s the age of the kids and now that they are getting older, they understand a little bit better, who knows. I just try to acknowledge the kids when they ask questions about Santa if they have any, or ignore the whole situation. After all, stores were putting out Christmas stuff in October, before Halloween was over, just a bit soon. I know the economy is not where everyone would like to see it but come on, wait just a bit. Don’t get me wrong we still put out a plate of cookies, carrots and milk, but I try not to make Santa into a big deal. I think from now on Santa is just bringing the stockings and all other gifts are going to be from Mom and Dad or relatives.

Enough about my Santa philosophy; basically I broke down today and took the kids to see Santa. I figured it would be a pretty easy trip, no lines, we would be in and out. A good plan, going in the middle of the week and the kids did not disappoint. Bear was pretty excited about the whole adventure, and Isabelle did really well too. I kept asking them what they were going to ask Santa for so that they would have it down and Santa would understand. Bear can be a little hard to understand some days. Since I did not want the people to think I was stealing their thunder I just took a picture of the kids before they went in, but their Santa picture was pretty cute. If only my printer was talking to my computer I could probably scan it in, right now you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Dad's Helpers

For Christmas we are building the kids a backyard play set. Ben has a whole design worked out in his head for how he wants it to go. So far the kids are very excited and can hardly wait until they can play. But before they can climb on anything they have to help Dad transfer the first “tower” out to the back yard so he can put it together. They were so cute being Dad’s little helpers. Bear was just big enough to carry some of the smaller pieces of wood but had some trouble with the ones that were a little bit bigger. I hope Ben is able to at least get the swings in before the New Year. The kids already want to climb on the one tower that’s up but there are no stairs yet. I think some stairs, the swings and maybe a little sand pit would be a great place to start. We’ll see how far Dad can get before Christmas.

Oh yea when Ben went up to go get concrete Home Depot was having a project day, and the kids made these really cute Art Easels and even go to get aprons and see Santa. I guess they were doing the project very close to the front door and they asked Ben if the kids wanted to participate, and of course he said “. . . why yes, yes we would.”

Thanksgiving

Once back out to the hinter lands, we had to wait four more days before any of the fun people would arrive. Mom and Dad are just not a cool as all of our cousins. But once they got there, the fun times were a rollin’. Crafts, playing, Wii, and so much food, were the staples of our long weekend. Thanksgiving was nice, the bird was a little fried, but I hear it tasted great, since I watched them cook it I had a hard time trying to eat it. Go figure, my food aversion during pregnancy are very strange. Then on Friday we did the traditional Christmas with the in-laws, which is always crazy and wild but I think that everyone had fun and was please with their gifts. We could not get a tree though it was raining all day long. Oh well, we went the next day to get the tree. That was pretty fun too, we let a three year old pick out the perfect tree, a little on the Charlie Brown side but not too bad once you got it in the room and up with some decorations. Somehow the tree was not decorated though the day it was brought home but instead at six in the morning before the first group left to go home. Pretty crazy stuff, the kids had tons of fun putting the ornaments on the tree. We even managed to get a round of bowling where the adults like to see who can best the next person. It took some a while to warm up but soon the games got a little bit better. I think the most entertaining bowler went to Isabelle who after a while did not want any help and instated on doing it herself, with a little twirl here and a twist there. Who knew you could dance and bowl at the same time. Overall our Thanksgiving weekend was pretty good. I only finished three books while I was out there and came home with two more to read, so that says a lot.