Festival of Trees

Every year I think that it would be fun to take the boys to the Festival of Trees. We finally did it this year. There are A LOT of trees and we started out strong and excited to see them all. This one could be Matt's dream tree.

This is more my taste.

An Eric Carle tree is fun. The ornaments were all the food the caterpillar from The Very Hungry Caterpillar ate--very cute.

This scuba diving/shark tree was really cool. I just didn't get a good picture of it. 

A tree for Grandpa. 

But after walking past a few rows of trees with crowds of people, the kids started to wear out. Then the thirst set in. And it wasn't long after that they were starving.  They couldn't  properly enjoy this super cute robot, or

 appreciate the Utah Jazz tree.

Poor Zack couldn't even walk.

 So we ate a few snacks, got drinks and coaxed the kids to look at a few more. We didn't want to miss this rockin' tree.

Or the various versions of the Grinch

We spent about an hour and a half looking before Matt & I called it quits. We didn't even see all the trees or make it to the wreaths.  Our kids are lightweights! Even with all the complaining, it really was fun to see all the creative and beautiful ways to decorate a tree.

Spanish singing should be fun, right?

Each year I can look forward to a Spanish Immersion Christmas program. The first two were at the school gym. It's a good venue because it's close to home, there is a stage & chairs, I can hear the songs and it's warm. Why mess with a good thing? Really, why mess? Because someone is messing and I am not happy about it. Last year we risked our lives on snow covered roads to get Noah down to the University Mall so that he could sing for...us. I am pretty sure he could have done that at the school. Instead, we waited 30 minutes past the time our group of over 100 kids was scheduled to sing, for some dancers who refused to leave the stage until they finished their performance. That wouldn't have happened at our gym. It was crowded & I couldn't hear anything. Hopefully that will be the end of mall singing.

This year they were invited to sing for the 1st annual Saratoga Springs Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. It's outside, a little fact I neglected to inform Zack of. I also should have prepped him that the Christmas tree wouldn't be very grand and that Santa would be there. The kid needs prior knowledge of what to expect or he'll cry, complain and whine like crazy and refuse to have any fun or allow anyone else to have any fun.

But even if he was happy I probably wouldn't have had a lot of fun. I couldn't hear hardly any of the songs, which may have had something to do with the fact that Noah has taken up lip sync caroling. The song Feliz Navidad is ridiculously long and repetitive and I missed the burrito song, which is my favorite. (On the plus side, it hasn't been stuck in my head.) We didn't even stick around for the high school choir, mayor's comments or the actual tree lighting. It was the frozen toes that finally did me in. I am finished with malls & civic events. If they want the Francis boys' singing (or fake singing) next year they better have it in the gym.

Thanksgiving In St. George

St. George is a nice place to go for Thanksgiving. A good reason (for Noah and I) was that it is warmer. Noah wore shorts the entire time. A great reason was so that we could celebrate with Papa and Nana & the Harris family. On Thanksgiving Day we tried to take the kids to the St. George Temple visitor's center. We were too early so we only saw this.  I love how white the temple looks against the blue sky. It is such a pretty temple.

For the big dinner, we had a slight seating dilemma: six kids and only four bar stools.

In order to sell Zack and Charlie on using the coffee table for dinner we made it look fancy. This gave Charlie the impression that she and Zack would be on a date. She went and changed into a fancier shirt and then told Zack that they were going on a date. I wish I had a picture of the stunned look on his face. He definitely did not want to pretend date Charlie, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings either. They worked it out and had a good time at their little table. 

On Friday we drove over to Zions and went on a little hike to the overlook.

 

 

The rest of the weekend we spent swimming, shopping and hanging out. We are definitely thankful we have such a great family.

Pilgrams & Indians

In my opinion one of the best units in kindergarten curriculum is Pilgrims and Indians. Mostly because my kids come home looking like this.

Noah sort of missed out because his teacher went with the Pilgrim hat. He didn't get a chance to make up an Indian name. For Ben and Zack, we were asked to come up with a name that combined one of their characteristics with a favorite animal. Hence Ben's Indian name was Laughing Penguin. Easy.  I think it took 2 minutes to come up with. I spent a week trying to get a name Zack liked but we didn't really follow the rules.  Every time I suggested a name, he would get mad and tell me that it was embarrassing. I am not sure what could be embarrassing about the name Strong Bear or Fast Cheetah. Goofy Monkey, well, he had a point. I enlisted his brothers to help me up the coolness factor. All their name suggestions were rejected too. We finally had to Google Indian names to see if we could find something that he would like. He was kind of tempted by Zackagawea but in the end he finally settled on Eye of the Tiger. I guess he wanted a name with an accompanying theme song.

It took awhile before he actually used the name and made his stuff. I was worried that he would be sensitive about it all. But he came home wearing all his Indian inspired fashions and was really excited. He learned all kinds of interesting Indian facts and was surprised his teacher knew the song for which he was named. He has a wealth of Indian knowledge like how they killed animals and used their skins for clothes. He thinks they are happy now that  we invented clothes so they don't have to do that anymore. He also told me that the Indians didn't always use animals for names. They also used body parts, like Squanto (toe).  

Did you see it?

Real Salt Lake-- 

MLS Cup Champions!!!

Hopefully this is a good omen for Utah professional sports. It's time for the Jazz to step it up.  Noah's team was able to participate in the "parade of kings" at a Real game a few months ago. He wears #23 like David Beckham, but maybe after this game he'll change to Rimando's number.

Do NOT change a thing

This conversation happened today:

Zack: "Mom, do you remember our old calendar?"
Me: "Yes."
Zack (sadly): "Me too. I loved that calendar. I miss it."
Me: "It was almost exactly the same as this calendar."
Zack: "I know. I just loved that calendar."

Zack doesn't like change. Not even change for the better. This summer we switched out the dining room light fixture. Even though the new one looks better (and is fancier) he misses the old one. It has brought him to tears a few times. I took the old one to the D.I. and told him that the next time we went, we could check and see if it was still there. We don't get to the D.I. very often but when we were watching Napoleon Dynamite the other night I pointed out that Napoleon was shopping at the D.I. Big mistake! That little fact reminded him of the light and how much he misses it and that we haven't been to the D.I to try to recover it. He nearly started crying. It's been 3 months!

Here are some recent changes that bother him:

the widening of Redwood road-- he does not believe in eminent domain

Albertson's becoming Fresh Market

his schedule since starting school-we had to write down a daily schedule to accommodate playing with all his favorite toys, friends and family members

the shelf I moved from his room to my bathroom-I probably should have asked first

my haircut

He pulls junk out of the garbage all the time. I am learning to be more sneaky when I get rid of things. Then I just hope he doesn't remember.

He can do it!!!

When the rest of the kids his age started riding bikes this spring, I thought for sure Zack would be ready to bust out the training wheel bike and start riding. He's the third boy and usually the most daring of my kids, but surprisingly he wanted nothing to do with bikes. Every time I mentioned it he said, "I can live my life without bikes." We couldn't even convince him to give it a try. Then this happened to Ben while he was riding Zack's bike.
That pretty much proved Zack's point and I didn't bother him about it again. But not being able to ride a bike started to bother Zack. At night he would get sad and tell me that he needed to learn how to ride his bike because he had been telling his friends that he knew how. His little lie and the whole not being able to ride a bike thing was pretty embarrassing for him, so we started practicing while some of his friends were at school so they wouldn't see him. He skipped the training wheels altogether and things were a little shaky at first but now he's doing pretty well. Soon he'll be able to go on a ride with the big boys and he's finally excited about it.