How was your Thanksgiving weekend? Ours was wonderful and completely jam-packed. It was one of those weekends when you do so much stuff you're exhausted afterwards, but wouldn't change a thing. Well, Eric decided that this year instead of buying a tree at a lot we would buy a cheap $10 permit and go cut a tree ourselves. I was hugely on board. So was Aspen. Oakley, I'm not so sure (see his head drooped?). He doesn't like being in the car for very long.
Being from western Oregon, I didn't even know people bought trees from lots until I moved to Utah after high school. I just thought everyone went to a tree farm and cut their own, or just cut one on their property. I remember the year we went down to the edge of our property growing up and cut a beautiful pine tree right there.
So we took our trip up to the mountains and had nothing else planned for the day, just in case. We figured this being our first time cutting our own tree, well, we had no idea how the day was going to go.
We drove out to a town called Idaho City (which I have a past with. A very tainted past) and then beyond, basically following the other truck drivers who were obviously scouting out a prime location for cutting a tree.
We finally found a spot and got the kids out of the truck that we borrowed from Eric's dad. We walked around in the snow for about 20 minutes debating which tree to cut. We were looking for an ideal tree, full and even, and then realized that out in the wild those don't exist that often. Then I thought to myself how cool it would be to find an imperfect tree, one that really did look just that: wild.
We eventually agreed to one that wasn't too tall and not too far from the truck, and Eric asked me to pass him the axe.

I just assumed Eric would be cutting down the tree with a saw, but I felt even more lumberjack-y when I saw him use that axe!

After the deed was done.

Once we hauled the tree back to the truck we let the kids play around in the snow for a bit. Who knows when we'll be seeing it in the valley! Here's Oaks with a bit of it.
The trip took about twice as long as we thought, but it was a lot of fun and I love looking at our crooked, imperfect, beautiful tree. Merry Christmas!

The last couple days I've been pretty sick with a cough and sore throat so the kids and I haven't left the house unless we had to. It's been nice though to just stick around and play with blocks, read stories, and bake with our fireplace running. I leave the thermostat pretty low so I can have the fireplace runnign all day and I love it!
Oakley's been more serious the last couple days about learning to walk. He's been just on the brink for so long with no interest, but I guess something clicked yesterday and he finally waddled his way between Aspen and I, over and over again.
I was so proud of my little boy! I really could just sit and help him walk all day long. It's so fun to see him accomplish something new.
Aspen's been a great helper and example. She's been showing Oakley how to walk between Eric and I and it's done the trick to get him moving.
Here's a shot of the back of Oakley's hair. It's hard to see the trim I did but trust me, it looks so much better!
The other thing Oakley did yesterday was say his first words (Eric says he's been saying this for a while now but I never caught it until last night). When he's done eating he'll say, "all done," which sounds more like, "aaaah doh!" It's really cute.
For some reason he loves having his binky in his mouth upside down. What is it with my kids and binkies?! I just think they look so cute with them popped in their mouth.

One thing that's nice about having a boy is not having to deal with the inner strugglings of deciding when to get your kid's first hair cut. With Aspen there was so much stress and guilt. She was three years old when we finally trimmed her hair! I've already used shears on Oakley at least four times. And counting. Afterall, I had no choice. I mean look at this kid:

He's just crying out for help!

It's taken me several tries to get a hold of his mullet in the back, and it's usually in the bath that I'm making the attempt. Which means I'm bending over and in an awkward position and all he wants to do is play. But yesterday I finally got him to hold still long enough and voila! my baby looks human. (pictures later)

Twelve months two days ago....

Oakley's making the transition from two naps to one, so the days have seemed especially long this week! And somehow he's going from taking 2 2-hour naps to one 2-hour nap. It's been an... adjustment.

Anyhow yesterday I thought it would be fun to venture outside since the weather seemed warm enough. I always want to spend more time outside with the kids than we do. So I thought we'd take a walk to a nearby park and get Aspen some exercise.

We made it around the corner and then Aspen decided to walk instead. Her bike is the squeakiest thing I've ever heard! Seriously it's so loud.
When we made it to the park I was really regretting not bringing some gloves for the kids. It was such a gorgeous, overcast, eerily perfect November afternoon, and I wasn't sure the kids were going to last long without their gloves.

Unfortunately I was right and after a couple minutes Roo was begging me to turn around and go home. I had brought her a coat but for some reason she refused to wear it. So home we went, straight to bathtime!

This Halloween was one of the scariest yet for Eric and I. Oakley was pretty tired before we left to go trick-or-treating so I stayed home to hand out candy while he went down for bed. With the doorbell ringing all night the poor guy couldn't get any sleep, and was still awake when Aspen and Eric came home. Aspen hadn't gotten a lot of sleep over the weekend, and when we got her ready for bed she started to throw a fit. It was bad. She was yelling and crying, which made Oakley cry, and when he finally quieted down Aspen would start up again and the whole thing would begin all over again. Eric and I were downstairs folding laundry and laughing about it. "Well, this is supposed to be a night of terror....." I teased him. He turned on some Brahms and pumped up the volume hoping to calm down the kids upstairs. It eventually worked, thank goodness. Who'd have thought the scariest part of Halloween could be your own kids?!

Yesterday the kids and I were hanging out upstairs. They were playing well together so I grabbed a book I was reading. After about 5 minutes I realized they were in my room, and somehow the door was closed, but I figured they couldn't be getting into much trouble in there so I kept on reading. About 5 minutes later I decided to go check on the kids, and I found them leaning against our bed with my makeup bag on top. I panicked!! I ran over to them and looked at Oakley, who was smiling at me with these nice, penciled in eyebrows. Well that's not so bad, I thought, and then noticed the hair that was all over the place. Aspen had snipped Oakley's hair with some shears she had found from our bathroom, leaving Oaks's hair....let's just say unpleasant.

The most ironic thing about this whole story is that after all Oakley went through with getting prettied up and trimmed he didn't start to cry until after I took away my makeup from him.