Happy four years to us

A little blurry due to the fact that it was taken in a darkened booth with my cell phone

We had our four year wedding anniversary yesterday. We celebrated Wednesday night by dressing up and going out to a fancy fondue restaurant. Yesterday was pretty low key, but Alan did surprise me with a canvas wrap of one of our favorite beach wedding pictures taken by Becky. We ate chocolate molten lava cakes and drank a little sparkling cider and put the kids back to bed for the 5th time. Happy anniversary to us.

Eleven Months

Is my little stinker really eleven months old? Alice popped out another tooth on Christmas bringing her total number of teeth up to six seven (I just felt and she has another one that pushed through today). She has three on top and three four on bottom and she loves to use them. She loves to eat and easily out eats her older sister. Whenever she smells food cooking, especially meat, she crawls as fast as she can to the kitchen to get underfoot and whine until someone picks her up and gives her something. She seems to have gotten over her separation anxiety and is back to her adventurous self. She is still shy around strangers, but she is back to crawling around/over/under everything by herself. She is starting to be a real distructo kid and she is fast at it. If I blink she is at the DVDs and half of them are on the floor. Elsie has taken to climbing way back on the couch with her toys so that Alice can't reach her and mess up what she's doing. She loves to talk nonstop and very loudly. She has a lot of sounds and syllables, but only two discernible words: Mama and A-be (Elsie). Still working on Dada much to Alan's dismay.

Christmas morning

Lot of pictures in this post. Must satisfy the demands of the Grandparents... :-)

 Elsie left out cookies and milk for Santa on Christmas Eve. She was so amazed when she woke up and they were all gone! Santa even left her a note.

 Punch balloons! Growing up I always had a punch balloon in my stocking. The girls had a lot of fun with them.

 Alice got a little blue hippo from Great Grandma D. Aside from her taggie, it is her new go-to snuggle toy and goes with her everywhere.

 Elsie got a Mickey Mouse from Alan's parents. She was very happy when she opened it, and so was Alice. Whenever Elsie turned her back on it to open another present, Alice snuck in to give Mickey a squeeze.

 The ball popper has been a big hit. We have to keep reminding Elsie that it is Alice's toy, and Alice is being nice and sharing, so stop pushing Alice out of the way whenever she tries to play with it.

 The girls with their loot piles after church. I forgot to get a picture of us all in our church clothes and the girls in their Christmas dresses...

Merry Christmas!

Happy Christmas Eve

We're spending the day cleaning the apartment, picking up last minute food items from the store, preparing food for tomorrow's dinner, and making cookies to leave out for Alan Santa. Happy Christmas Eve!

We watched White Christmas last night. This is how Elsie watched most of the movie.

2011 Christmas letter

 Dear Family and Friends,

            2011 has been a big year for our little Swenson Family. Our family got a little bigger at the end of January. Alice was born on January 28th. She is ten months old now and just starting to learn how to get into trouble. She has an adventurous soul, and anything and everything is seen as a challenge that must be conquered. If it can be climbed, pushed, crawled over or under, Alice has tried it.

Elsie turned two years old in April. She talks a lot and loves to be the center of attention. She loves to sing and play with all of her friends. She knows all of her letters and can recognize most of the sounds they make. She is a smart kid with a very good memory, and she doesn’t forget things easily. She has recently been potty trained, which makes life easier and harder at the same time.

Alan graduated from Brigham Young University in April with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology. While he was still in school he was offered a job for a medical software company called Epic. A week after graduation we packed up and moved to Wisconsin where he started work in Epic’s Technical Services department. Epic is an amazing place to work and they have been very good to our family.

Sarah is mainly in charge of making sure everyone is fed, clothed, and entertained. She ran her second 5K race in August and improved her time from her first race. She keeps a regular blog with all of our comings and goings. Her days are filled with reading, trying new recipes, making memories, and trying to keep the kids from destroying the house and killing each other.

Alan is in the Young Men’s program in our local ward where he works with the twelve and thirteen year old Deacons. Sarah teaches the twelve and thirteen year old Sunday School class on Sunday, so they get a double dose of Swenson every week. The youth are great and we love working with them, even if they can get pretty crazy sometimes.

We are enjoying small town life. Our town has a great library that we go to at least once a week for story time and play time. Alan’s work is very family friendly and we meet him for lunch and to play in our favorite spots frequently. We have a great church family out here and have made many friends. Life is good for the Swenson Family.

                                    With Love,

                                                Sarah, Alan, Elsie, and Alice

Trying so hard

I think we made it snow...

Elsie and I cut out snowflakes yesterday to put up on the screen door. We had clear blue skies and no clouds in sight. This morning we woke up to everything covered in white fluffy snow...

Christmas tree

We have had a Christmas tree up for just about a month and a half now. As soon as Halloween is over, Alan starts pulling out the Christmas boxes and decorations. We started out with just our little tree, but we took advantage of a little Black Friday sale and bought a bigger tree this year.

We have started a new tradition of letting the girls pick out an ornament each year, and these are the ones they picked. Elsie was almost settled on getting a Darth Vader ornament before she saw the Mickey Mouse.  For Alice, we found all of the soft cuddle ornaments in the store and held them up to her. She giggled and clapped and lunged for the monkey, so monkey it is.

Wonder where Alice is?

Chances are she is right here...

We have been going through a lovely separation anxiety phase with Alice. If we set her down on the floor or get more than an arm's distance away from her, she screams bloody murder. The best part of this is not only does it happen all day, but all night as well. We have had quite a few sleepless nights around here trying to get her to go back to sleep. Most of the time she finally collapses out of exhaustion just to start it all back up again in another hour or two. To get anything done around the home I have to strap her in the backpack and wear her around while I use two hands to do everything. My arms are killing me, my back is killing me, I'm tired...

Trying to count my blessings... At least she will still go to Alan and is not fully Mommy dependent. Alan takes over with her as soon as he gets home so I can get a little space to myself.

Don't feed my baby beans

...Or else she will be up all night crying and farting.

Excuse me while I put on an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and hide behind the couch with a pillow...

So close

Alice wants to be walking so bad. She can pull herself up onto things and walk along the edge of them. She will get to the end of the couch or chair, stand and lean out - then pull back. Lean out, then pull back. Then stand and complain until some one helps her get to where she wants to go or until she sits down and starts crawling.

Happy Birthday Alan!

It was Alan's birthday on Saturday. We hired a babysitter and went out Friday night to celebrate just the two of us. We tried a little hole-in-the-wall mexican place that we have heard about. For a tiny little place, it was really good food. We stopped for some frozen custard before heading home to relieve the babysitter. On Saturday Elsie woke Alan up and brought him his birthday present. We got him Skyrim for the computer, and he was very excited. For his birthday I let him play all day with minimal interruptions from the kids.

The rest of the visit

December is just too busy! I feel like I need to rush around and get everything done right after Thanksgiving, and that's what I've been doing. All our Christmas cards are out, the kids presents are gathered, the house is decorated, and we are on our way through our 25 day advent calender. It's time to take a breather and get a few blogs scheduled to post before I get too much further behind.

Katie and I braved the crowds Thanksgiving night and went to a few Black Friday sales (since when does Black Friday start at 10pm Thursday night??). There were some crazy people out and about, but we came out on top. I came away with a new comforter set for our bed, big mixing bowls, cookie sheets, some presents for the kids, and a nice winter coat.

We took them though a tour of Epic. No visit to Wisconsin would be complete without a trip to Epic. The kids had fun running around and playing with everything.

This was on one of the bulletin boards...

On Saturday a lot of the shops around the city were having an "open house" where they offered free samples. Craig and Katie wanted to check out the city, and despite the constant rainy drizzle, we had a good time. We stopped for some free gelato in a fancy resturant, rode around on the trolly with the crazy driver, met Santa, and got pretty wet.

Santa was very baby faced...

Before they left, we looked up a local pub that specialized in house made soda pops. We tried a few different flavors while we ate our dinner. I didn't like the orange cream very much (too sweet), but the root beer and cream soda were delicious.

Thanksgiving 2011

We had a very nice Thanksgiving. Alan's older brother and family drove in for the holiday. Elsie loved having her cousin Lucas to run around and play with. They got along very well for being two and a half. There were only a few shoving matches, but otherwise they played (and ran and laughed and jumped) together pretty well.

We did a lot of food preparation in the kitchen...

Preparing my first turkey ever. What you don't see in this picture is me freaking out because I have to touch a dead bird. I really hate touching poultry...

Let's cook this sucker up so we can eat it.

The finished bird. I have to say, my turkey turned out fantastic. I followed this recipe, and even though it had a lot of prep that went into it, it was all worth it. It was so moist you could eat it without gravy, even the light meat was succulent. Plus, the gravy made from the drippings was divine. I don't think I will ever cook a turkey any other way.

Alice just waiting for the food. She ate so much... she slept really well that night.

Our full menu included: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, gravy, and rolls. It was all so yummy that we didn't mind eating the leftovers everyday for the next week.

Wishing everyone else a happy Thanksgiving.

And then there was pie. Somehow, we only ended up pulling the pie out after all the kids went to bed. And then it happened again the next night and the next night... We had a chocolate pie, lemon meringue, pumpkin, and razzleberry pie. Yes, we did have a pie per person. And it was awesome.