Tuesday, December 27, 2011

It's Christmas!

We had 9:00am church on Christmas Day, but that was no problem for our little family. Tucker was in our room at 6:15 all ready to go. We made him wait 15 minutes until our alarms went off. We woke up Aubrey and Blake, took the stairs picture and then let them loose!
 Santa brought Tucker a kids digital camera. Aubrey received a La La Loopsy doll, Cole a light up razor scooter and Blake a sit and scoot toy. Cody received his gun safe as a combo birthday/Christmas present and I just got my new awesome sewing/embroidery machine.

 Tucker is obsessed with Angry Birds on our Kindle Fire and Cody's phone. I found an Angry Birds game and bought it for him.
 Blake pretty much wandered around picking up candy and eating it. It was cute at the moment but the sugar high hit him at church and he was terrible!
 Aubrey loves to watch me sew, so I bought her a mini sewing machine. Now we can sew together. She can become my little slave worker. Muahahahaha!
 Tuckers stash!
 Yum. More Hershey kisses.
 After presents and breakfast we got the kids in their church clothes and took our annual Christmas photo.
 Silly faces picture worked much better. ; )
 After church we headed down to Cody's parents for more presents, food and company. Mickey and Cerola both received snorkeling gear as well. (Cody's parents, my parents and Carson and Marisa and us are all going on the Mexico trip).
 The newlyweds.
 And there I am. I took all the pictures the past couple days and decided I needed to be in one. : )
We all had a great Christmas and the fun continues each day as the kids play with their gifts.

Twas the night before Christmas

Like a lot of families we split time with both families over the holidays. This year was a Foster year for Christmas Eve and Calderwood year for Christmas Day. My family got together in the afternoon and we opened our presents, ate dinner and headed to Snowbird for the evening.
 My Mom gave each of us a bag of M&M's and told a Christmas story with them. Blake thought that was great!
 Aubrey received a desk from my parents. It's perfect for her.
 Tucker opening up some kind of animal sticker thing.
 We gave my Mom snorkeling gear. We are headed to Mexico the end of January! You can tell she's super excited!
 All of us kids and my Mom gave my Dad a concert piano bench. He is an amazing musician and has never had one. It was so fun to give him a gift that was completely unexpected yet thrilling for him.
 My Grandpa Foster was with us for the festivities. Aubrey loves to sit with him.
 A typical Cody/Lisa picture.
 After we ate dinner we drove up Little Cottonwood Canyon to Snowbird. My Dad gets asked to play for a nondenominational service every Christmas Eve. Before that begins, everyone stands on the plaza and you get to watch the torch parade. A bunch of skiers come down the mountain carrying torches. It's pretty cool. Then, Santa rides down the tram, repels off and the kids can go see him.
 Once that is over we head inside for the little service. My Dad plays the piano, a man plays the saxophone and there's usually a reverend that speaks. Other than that we sing a lot of Christmas songs, drink hot chocolate and get to hold candles.
 Cute Mckenna.
Once the service was over we headed back home to Midway to throw our reindeer food on the lawn, leave some treats for Santa and head to bed. : )

Temple Square Lights

We haven't taken our kids down to temple square to see the lights for a few years and we finally had a night present itself. We drove around with everyone else on the 23rd trying to get a parking spot and finally decided to pay to park. Well, the little parking lady was a gem and gave us back our money and told us Merry Christmas. I'm not sure if she was doing that for everyone - but we really appreciated it. Free parking right across the street!
 It was cold, but beautiful!

Saturday, December 17, 2011

The 2011 Calderwood Christmas Letter


What a year! We played hard, vacationed a lot, and learned new things.
Blake is almost 18 months old. We are counting down the Sundays until January 11th when he will finally be old enough to go to nursery at church. He loves to go go go and never sit still. He is our little thumb sucker – which habit we’ll have to break shortly. He has beautiful blue eyes, loves to cuddle and put his head on your shoulder and he’s begun to climb. He’s smart and pushes chairs around to the items he wants up on the counter. Nothing is safe from him. If you see a loaf of bread scattered on the ground, you know that he was hungry and just wanted a snack. : ) He can make car, train and gun noises and loves to play with his siblings. 

Cole is still our trouble maker, but a cute one at that. He tends to never listen to anything Cody or I say. Even if threatened, it’s just not clicking yet. Someday…we are hopeful. I tried to potty train a couple months ago, but he’s decided that it’s not for him – yet. He turns 3 at the end of January and my goal is to have him trained by then, but I have a feeling he’s not on my schedule. He loves nursery and will get to spend all of next year with Blake in it. He shares a room with Tucker and can often be found sharing the bed too. Even with his stubborn spirit he is a happy boy and loves to play outside.  He is so adventurous.

Our little princess is 4 1/2 and in her second year of preschool. She loves all things girly and is constantly asking for makeup for Christmas. Not happening this year! We got her ears pierced before her aunt Kristin got married in November. She was asked to be the flower girl and did a great job!  This past Spring Tucker taught her how to ride her bike without the training wheels.  She could frequently be found riding her bike around the neighborhood with all the other neighbor kids.  She also played on a soccer team for her first time.  She and Tucker were on the same team, and they not only had a blast together, but their team did great.

Tucker is in kindergarten and loving it. He comes home daily with stories and “fun facts” about the animals and things he’s learning in school. He is very smart and at the top of his class (according to his teacher!). Tucker and I have been taking piano lessons from my Dad this year and Tucker performed in 2 recitals. He does awesome, doesn’t always love practicing, but knows that he wants to play the Angry Birds theme song for the next recital in May. Animals, dinosaurs, insects etc are still his passion. He received an ant farm and tadpoles for his birthday. We are patiently waiting for his pet to turn into a frog.

Lisa started up an Etsy shop in the spring. www.littlelisalulu.etsy.com. I make hooded animal towels and crayon holders. Surprisingly the shop has been a huge success for being a stay at home Mom. I just completed all of my orders that were due before Christmas today. I’ve been sewing like crazy and it’s nice to relax and actually have time to write a Christmas letter. I also got into biking this summer. We have great mountain biking trails a couple miles from our house and I received a road bike for my 30th birthday this fall. I'm running the Canyonlands/Moab ½ marathon in March, so running will become my winter activity. I flew back to Maryland in June to teach clogging for a week and have been asked to come back yearly. It’s fun to see my old students and the fun sites we went to for 4 years. I’m currently serving as the assistant ward historian in church. Life is busy, but filled with lots of fun.

Cody had a year full of firsts. He bought his first truck in March. An ’08 Chevy that fits our whole family. But, he still drives the Subaru to work daily. He also bought us a ‘74 camping trailer at the end of May that required some major remodeling. I was extremely skeptical at first, but after recovering the cushions and updating some appliances, we’ve got ourselves a great trailer. We went camping in it 5 times this summer/fall. The dental business has been slowly growing and we are happy with our staff and grateful for our circumstances. Cody is now the 2nd counselor in the Young Men’s Presidency after a change took him out of being the Scoutmaster. He’s still heavily involved but the stress isn’t nearly as bad now that he has help. Cody took me and his office staff to Puerto Vallarta in May and we had fun playing on the beach and discovering that side of Mexico. He stayed busy this summer with yard work, scouts, biking, remodeling the trailer, and trying to keep up with the kids.  It’s hard to believe that 2011 is almost over, but it has been a very fun and memorable one for our family!

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Birthdays!

We celebrated Cerola and Cody's birthdays on the 27th of November. Kristin was in charge of the cake and somehow got a 29 out of their ages. We made a nice dinner with some deer roasts Cody killed and hacked off a couple weeks prior. I didn't take any pictures of Cody on his birthday, but we did go out  the weekend before and we celebrated the day of as well. Cody's HUGE gift this year was a gun safe from Cabela's. It holds 25 guns and a bunch of other stuff. He went down to buy it on Black Friday at 5 in the morning. We picked it up in the truck and invited some neighbor men over to help take it to the basement. Now it's safely in our storage room and I no longer have guns in my closet. : ) Happy Birthday Babe!

Lying Around

We were eating breakfast one morning when the kids yelled that there was a deer in our backyard. That's definitely not uncommon, but a bit unusual for the morning. Well, this little buck hung out all day long. It would go from our yard across the street to lie on the grass outside the business park. I think all the employees loved having a "wild" animal at their work. People kept taking pictures and softly walking around him all day.
 The funnest part is that the buck actually came back the next week and sat in the same spot again all day long. Tucker loves the below picture because he thinks it's hilarious that the deer is scratching his head with his back leg.

New Year's Resolution Completed

I played in my first piano recital in about 15 years the Monday before Thanksgiving. I was in Mexico for the May recital, so this was my chance to complete my goal. I practiced my piece tons and still managed to mess up. Oh well, maybe someday I'll perform the piano without a mistake. If you come over to my house I could probably play it perfectly. It's those jitters! I played All of Me by Jon Schmidt.
 Tucker played Shoo Fly and did awesome! That kid doesn't know what it means to be nervous.
 Heather also has started taking lessons and was in the recital too. Now my Dad can be so proud that he has 3 posterity still taking lessons. Go Dad!
Oh and Aubrey has been begging me to take lessons from Grandpa. I keep telling her that she can start when she's 5 - but maybe I should start her now while she's "begging"!
(Videos to come - gotta get them off Cody's phone)

Kristin & Chris's wedding

Kristin and Chris got married on 11-11-11. It was a small wedding downtown at Pierpont Place. Kristin's colors were this pretty aqua blue color and silver. Because Aubrey and Aspen are the only little girls Marisa was able to borrow this dress from a friend so that the girls could match. It was so beautiful on them. Unfortunately all I have are the pictures that I took that day. Kristin got her pictures a couple days ago, but I haven't seen them yet to transfer to my computer. So, this is our darling flower girl. It's funny because she totally forgot to throw the flowers as she walked down the aisle. When she reached me I whispered to her to throw some, but she was a little too late. : )
 All the men/boys dressed up in tuxes or bow ties depending on what fit them.
 Brides side - a LOT of little kids!
 The boys mainly played Angry Birds and other games on tablets, cell phones, etc all night long. They were happily entertained. : )
 Carson, Jaron and Marisa. It was fun to have Kristin get married so close to our Moab trip because Carson's family flew down for the wedding.
 The pretty bride and flower girl.
 After the ceremony there was a dinner and then dancing. I need to upload the videos that Cody took on his phone of Blake. He was hilarious and danced the night away.

Welcome to the crazy Calderwood family Chris!

Sparkly ears!

Aubrey has been asking to get her ears pierced for awhile now. I had to wait until I was 8, so at first I thought I'd make her wait until then, but Cody thought she could get them earlier, so we told her for her 5th birthday. Well, Cody's sister got engaged and asked Aubrey to be her flower girl - and I couldn't resist and we got her ears pierced at Claire's the day before the wedding.
 I prepared Aubrey by telling her that it would probably hurt like a shot for a second and then the pain would go away. She did awesome and didn't even flinch! They have such cute studs for little girls now. She chose sparkly flowers. They do look adorable on her. My only problem is she keeps going through my earrings deciding which dangling ones she wants. Probably not for a long time little girl!
 After getting her ears pierced we picked Cody up from work and headed down to Salt Lake for the rehearsal dinner. I think we ate at the Olive Garden? My mind is drawing a blank. Oh well, we practiced for the wedding and went out to eat. (Trevor, Mickey, Chris, Kristin, Chris's parents).
 Having way too much fun coloring and eating!

Little Cabin Fun

We live so close to my Grandpa's cabin and rarely take advantage of it. I finally booked it for the first weekend in November and we went up for a couple days. We got lucky and were able to enjoy a snowstorm.
 Blake was fascinated by the hanging icicles on the deck.
 Cody came up after work and gave horsey rides for the evening.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Who stole the cookie?

I didn't think my little man was old enough to steal a cookie, take it to his room, shut the door and then hide under his bed while he proceeds to eat it. He's 17 months on Sunday. I can't believe it!