Christmas is over.

Ahhh Christmas is over! As fun as it is for the kids to have our apartment full of Christmas stuff, it is equally fun for me to put it away. With each box that gets packed up I feel a little more at peace to see a small bit of order restored to our living space.  The kids were sure sad to see our tree go.  This year however, we were able to put it to good use.  We took it a farm where Jake is working on a stream restoration project.  The kids felt better about it leaving us since it was going to help the fish in the stream.  Jakes professor even brought some fish food and we were able to feed some huge rainbow trout. The kids enjoyed getting to see the fish their tree was going to help. It was pretty cold but fun to get out for a bit.



Hudson was reasuring Ellie, that the tree was going to be happy living on the farm.
They were so cute!






We just keep falling in love with our little Autumn more and more.  She is growing way too fast and is such a good baby.  We have a lot of fun watching her discover new things each week. Lately she has been spending a lot of time staring at her hands and discovering that she can grab things when she wants to.  She suddenly loves toys and coo’s happily at them and the people she loves when she sees them. We took her swimming for the first time and she loved it.  I think she is going to be a little fish just like the rest of us.  She sure looked cute in her tiny little swim trunks.   

                    I Love you THIIIS much!

Jake and I turned 30!!!

Jake, Hudson, and Ellie made me an amazing rice cripie cake!

I had a WONDERFUL birthday! I awoke to Hudson in my room.  He was very excited and told me that it was my birthday and I needed to sleep in.  While I dozed in bed he went to work decorating the house with streamers, and helping Jake make me a special birthday breakfast of yummy crepes with strawberries and whip cream. I have such wonderful boys! Later a friend watched our kids for us and Jake and I spent the afternoon together.  He took me shopping for a new coat and to a yummy lunch at our favorite Indian restaurant.

A funny thing I realized, was that I purchased my previos coat with money from my twentieth birthday. A few years later when Jake and I were dating, I was invited on my first outing with the Powells.  We went to Pine Valley to stay at the cabin and play in the snow.  Jake pulled me on a sled with a 4wheeler. Durring my ride we hit a patch of rocks and I ripped my then 2 year old coat up the back, destroyed the sled, and nearly broke my tail bone.  Jake felt aweful for both.  His mom lovingly patched up the back of my coat and time healed my tail bone.  Jake always offered to get me a new coat and it only took us eight years to get around to it. I can not believe how quickly ten years went by. The past ten years brought more blessings to my life then I could have ever imagined. I wonder what the next ten will bring?

 Jakes birthday seemed to revolve all around food. He also got to sleep in, but his breakfast was skillet eggs, and of coarse chocolate milk and donuts!  He was over joyed to get an enormouse brown sugar spiral sliced ham for diner. Everyone was excited to get to share his "black cookie" ice cream cake. He spent the bulk of the day up at school working, but at least he got to eat all his favorite things. 


A funny thing about Jakes birthday is that I spend most of the day thinking about his parents.  It must be because I am in mom mode these days, but I feel so much gratitude for them giving me him. Even today I can't think of them without tears in my eyes. Everything I love most in my life I have because of them. Jake is more then I could have ever even dreamed of. He is my definition of Joy.



Happy New Year!

 This year we went to a friends house for a new years eve party. It was a lot of fun and since everyone had little kids we had a mock countdown at seven thirty. It was just the right amount of partying for us. Ellie and Autumn weren’t very fond of the cheering and noise makers, but Hudson joined in with enthusiasm. 2011 was pretty great, but I think 2012 might just be even better.

Christmas 2011

We have had quite a festive week. We made gingerbread houses and trains, had carolers, attended Christmas parties, and made and received lots and lots of good things to eat. It has been a lot of fun, but it has dragged on due to our excitement for Christmas morning.  I found myself even more excited then the kids. I even found that I was the one who laid awake Christmas eve full of anticipation for the excitement of the next morning, and quite a morning it was. Our house was sure full of Christmas spirit! 

A few days before Christmas we found out that Santa's "Elks", (as Hudson calls them), like treats just as much as Santa. We also learned that if you leave treats out for them and are very nice while you sing Christmas songs and get your jamies on, the elks will bring you a fun game to play with your family. We sure had a lot of fun playing the game they brought us.

Can you believe we went to the park on Christmas Eve.  How sad is that!?
We sure missed the snow, but we did enjoy the sunshine.

The more excited Hudson got for Santa to come the more he seemed to test the limits of the naughty or nice list.  We saw a lot of the Charlie Brown pout in all its mopey glory. The first picture is a pout that followed Hudson exclaiming,
 "Ohh Christmas will never come!"

Christmas eve was full of fun family traditions.

I made a Palmer family traditional dinner of chicken noodle soup with mashed potatoes.

We performed a traditional Powell family birth of Jesus production. 

  

We also opened a small gift with treats and each of the kids got a Christmas book for us to read to them before bed.





Aunt Kim sent us a very fun advent calendar or the twelve days of Christmas.  Each day the kids took turns opening a small present that held an idea for a Christmas activity or small gift for the kids.  She also took the time to make the girls cute little Christmas hair decorations. The kids looked forward to it each day and kept close track of who would be the one to open the present. Hudson was thrilled to get to open the last one.

 We made and decorated cookies to put out for Santa. Hudson colored him a picture of a train and left it with the cookies just in case Santa forgot what he wanted. Then we hurried to bed so that Santa could come. I don't think the kids have ever fallen asleep so quickly.

Jake and I sat back and felt so much gratitude for the three precious gifts that were slumbering in their beds.

We thought about Heavenly Father's gift of his son on the first Christmas, and we felt his love so strong as we looked at our sweet sleeping children. Sometimes it is hard believe just how blessed we are.

The next morning the kids came and snuggled us in bed and then we all went out together to see if Santa had made it to our house.  Sure enough, he had filled our stockings, left us gifts and eaten our cookies.  There was even a little note for Hudson.

Each gift that was opened brought a burst of joy!

 Every gift Ellie opened got a big snuggle and love.



Little Autumn slept through most of the Christmas morning excitement. Her brother and sister even opened all of her gifts for her. We were sure happy to get to share her first Christmas with her even if she didn't know it was Christmas.
 I look forward to seeing her face light up with excitement next year. 

We all received so many wonderful gifts that were truly enjoyed.  Our families really spoiled us this year!  

Ellie was quite the little princess in these dress up clothes Aunt Jenny sent her.

 After the present opening extravaganza, we wolfed down some cake for breakfast. (Hudson had insisted that since it was Jesus birthday we needed to have a cake for him. Although, we never have a very hard time coming up with reasons for cake!) Then we got dressed in our new church clothes and headed to the church where Hudson got to sing to us with the primary. The wonderful Christmas music brought such a strong spirit and helped to make our day even more special.

 The rest of the day was spent talking to family and enjoying the day with friends. We are blessed to have so many good people in our lives.  We really missed our wonderful family back in Utah.  It was so nice to get to visit with them on the phone and computer.

One gift I was especially excited about was our new "indoor fire pit".  The Palmer's sent us this smore maker, so now we can enjoy the fun of a camp fire whenever we get the urge.....which for me, is often.

It was a wonderful Christmas indeed. We owe so much thanks to our family's who sent us gifts to make it even more special.  The only problem now is that the kids seen to think that Christmas should come everyday.  They can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that they have to wait a whole year to enjoy it again. I'm sure it will come faster then we all expect.

You Better Not Cry

Only seven more days until Christmas. I can not believe how excited I am. I think it is even better being the parent with the anticipation of seeing your children’s excitement, then it is being a child excited to see your own gifts Christmas morning. At least I can't remember another Christmas that I was so anxious for. The kids are so excited and I can’t wait to see them run out of their rooms Christmas morning.

We have been passing the time with lots of Christmas crafts. Our tree is starting to run out of places to hang all of the kid’s home made ornaments(or ORGAMENTS as Hudsons calls them). It makes me smile every time I look at it. We have also been making a ridiculous amount of treats. The kids love helping me make them and we all enjoy eating them. "Tis the Season, Right!?" I have decided that since I have been wearing my "maternity jeans" so long, and it doesn't look like that is going to be changing anytime soon, I should just start calling them my "jeans".

The highlight of the kid’s week was going to ride on the State College "Polar Express". It was a community activity that started at the library where the kids were read "The Polar Express", which is one of Hudson favorite books. After the story, the kids were given a bell and a ride on a trolley that took them a few blocks to the "North Pole", where they got to meet Santa and pick out a toy from his work shop. The kids were entranced!




This Santa is not nearly as cute as my Grandpa Clause back in Blanding!



My heart is a little bit broken as I just went to my camera and discovered that I shot a weeks worth of pictures with no memory card in it. Just another one of the many ditzy occurrences in my everyday life. At least I have this one scan to share from the photo the kids got with Santa at our Polar Express outing.

The highlight of my week is that Jake finished his last final this week, marking the completion of another semester.  This semseter was a busy one and it is nice to have it behind us. 

Christmas is Coming

Another week closer to Christmas and the kids are getting more and more excited. We have filled our time with lots of fun Christmas crafts and activities.



Last year the primary gave Hudson his first copy of the book of Mormon, with the challenge that we read it all by the end of the  next year. We have read a little with him almost every night. Sometimes he has loved it and sometimes not, but it has been a wonderful activity for our family.  This month we finished it, largely because he has made sure that we never forget. I'm really proud of him for accomplishing his goal this year and I hope he will continue to treasure his time with the scriptures.



We attended our ward Christmas party.  The theme was a "night in Bethlehem" and we had fun dressing up the kids.

I took the kids to the festival of trees. It sent them into a Christmas crazed frenzy.  I could hardly keep track of Ellie as she darted in between trees running like an elf on crack.  She turned the event into quite the treasure hunt for me. Every time I got close to her I discovered she had removed another ornament from one of the over 100 decorated trees. It was then my job to try and find the correct tree and return the missing ornament.

kicking off Christmas

Our house has been filled with Christmas spirit.  It all started with pulling out the few Christmas decorations we had here.  We never planned on spending Christmas in PA so most of our Christmas stuff is still in Utah. The kids got so excited over the few little things we had we quickly decided we needed a tree. We set off to find one and ended up at a huge Christmas tree farm.  The kids loved hiking around until we found just the right one, a beautiful concolor fir that makes our apartment smell like a Christmas explosion. That same day we went to a fund raiser at the high school, where the kids got to go shopping with one of “Santa’s elves”. We filled out a form to indicate who the kids were shopping for and how much money we wanted to spend and a student dressed like an elf took them on their to shop for gifts.  That night we got to finish up our festive day and a Nativity party at the church.  Hudson got to perform Christmas songs with the primary.  We also enjoyed walking through a nativity display and eating cookies and hot cocoa.



Beautiful Baby Autumn
At two months old  Autumn was 10 lbs 9 oz and 22 1/2 inches long.
(Hudson was 13.8 lbs and 23 1/2 in.; Ellie was 13.6 lbs and 24 1/2in.)
So Autumn is by far our runt.  She is still in the 50 percentile, but I guess we are just used to our Hudson and Ellie who  exploded at 5 weeks. They were both in the 95th percentile.
Autumn is always looking around and seems to be trying to figure out the world around her, and has consequently worn a little round bald spot on the back of her head.




Ellie loved all of the trees that were the same size she was. She kept hugging them and saying, " I yuv this one!"




This is Hudson's new signature move. He pouts like Charlie Brown when he gets scolded. This is a mild representation.  I'm not sure exactly what the cause of this particular pout was, but I believe it had something to do with jumping into mud puddles.



The highlight of the week was certainly Sunday when Jake blessed our little Autumn in church.  It was really strange to not have any family members here to share the special day with us, but we had good friends and home teachers who were able to join in the circle. Jake gave her a wonderful blessing, where in he blessed her with many tools to help her accomplish the things in her life that would be pleasing to her heavenly father and her family. The spirit was very strong.  I was told that during the blessing she happily stared into the faces of the men in the circle. Many of whom approached me later and commented on her beautiful spirit and the joy she seemed to have about receiving her blessing. It was a wonderful day and I wish we could have shared it with our loved ones back home in Utah.



Someone loves her Daddy!





I have aspirations of getting a good picture of the three kids together to use for some type of Christmas card.  I took at least 30 pics of them sitting on the couch together and this is about as good as it gets. I guess whatever I end up with will be a true snapshot into our life.



I really need to learn how to use photoshop!