Christmas Morning Finished

We finished opening presents at 11:00 AM. It's not that we had a ton of presents, but that we like to draw things out as long as possible. Isaac loved opening all of the CARS. Buzz was a hit -- so much that Isaac couldn't stand waiting for Trent to unwrap it. Jonah and Trent are currently playing "laser chess," which Grandpa Hickman would love! Noah is testing out several new video games. We're going to have a game/movie fest for the next week. Thanks everyone for all of the wonderful gifts. We love you all and miss you and hope you are having a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Preview

Christmas Eve

It's 8:30 AM Christmas morning. We've opened the first phase of presents and are getting ready to eat breakfast before opening the rest of the presents. So far, it's been a successful morning. Isaac paused and gasped before running to his new kitchen set. He has been cooking ever since. Jonah loves the aquarium and as expected quickly threw himself at me in excitement. Noah, as you can see, is loving the video chair. He and Jonah are busy trying out Excite Truck with it. More later.

Merry Christmas 2008

We just wanted to say Merry Christmas to all of you! We love this time of the year and are grateful for the birth of Jesus Christ which we celebrate. We're blessed with so many friends and family that are near and miss all of you that are far away. Please know that we think of you often.

Here's our 2008 family Top Twelve List (we know that it’s usually a “Top Ten,” but we couldn't help ourselves):

12. Family memorizes all the Charlie Brown holiday movies as Isaac enjoys them continuously throughout the year without regard to any holiday’s given proximity on the calendar, thus helping our family to remember the merits of the Easter Beagle during the Halloween season, the Great Pumpkin during Valentine’s Day, and so forth.

11. Jonah makes his debut as a member of the "chorus" (“It is NOT a choir,” Jonah insists through gritted teeth after any suggestion to the contrary) at Legacy Elementary. Trent gets to hear the choir -- oops, the chorus—at BYU when it comes to perform on campus as a surprise for the weary college students approaching their final exams. Said chorus is also featured on local radio stations as well as our family’s CD player.

10. Noah graduates from the Accelerated Learning Lab at Highland Elementary and becomes the family's newest 7th grader at American Fork Junior High. He celebrates by getting all A grades in difficult courses like Advanced Algebra, English, History, and so on and one F grade in CTE, a modern version of shop/home-economics at midterm. Trent, who managed to earn an A in his 7th grade shop class even after accidentally welding a piece of metal to the back of his left ear, doesn’t understand if getting such a grade in CTE is even possible and wonders if Noah might have inadvertently entered a parallel universe. Thankfully, Noah fixes his grade and makes the Honor Roll.

9. Wendy keeps local library in business by requesting, reserving and reading more than 30 books. Noah steals and reads a lot of these along with her.

8. Trent is awarded a semester-long leave at BYU in order to work on his book on Dominican-American literary history. Despite the fact that his colleagues see him every day at work, he has to endure their daily jokes about how his “vacation” is going. After a while, Trent wonders if when he was granted his leave everyone else understood that it was supposed to be a vacation.

7. After three years of on-again, off-again efforts, we finally finish the electrical work on our basement and even pass the official city inspection—at least until Wendy points out possible mistakes in our work to the inspector. “Uh, I guess you should probably fix those things,” he says sheepishly. Trent, who can think of few things more enjoyable than learning construction skills in a dark and dusty basement on any given Saturday, is extremely grateful that his wife has decided to help the city inspector do his job. Wendy’s father, who is the patient and long-suffering individual saddled with the task teaching his English professor son-in-law how to do all of the construction work, shakes his head and slaps his hand to his forehead when getting the news of his daughter’s unsolicited freelance work for the city. Don’t worry—we'll get all of those wires tacked up.

6. Wendy also successfully helps to defeat a controversial bond and subsequently helps pass a new city ordinance. In the wake of his defeat, the mayor goes out of his way in a newspaper article to clarify that it was the bad economy, not Wendy and her group’s efforts, which defeated the bond.

5. Noah turns 12 and is ordained as a deacon at church. For the first few weeks of passing the sacrament to the congregation, he is unwilling to make eye contact with his family as they smile at him from the pew, saying it is “against the rules.” Thus far, we cannot find these rules, but Noah has started to smile back nonetheless.

4. Jonah becomes inventor, architect, and entomologist as he creates an intricate 5' x 15' insect habitat out of mud (think Venice, but in one of our backyard flower beds). Premiere real estate at Jonah’s development is called Roly-Poly Island. Not understanding their good fortune, the roly-poly inhabitants need to be encouraged to remain at their beachfront property by digging a moat to keep them from moving away.

3. Summit Pictures loves Noah's new hairdo so much that they base the hip look Edward Cullen, the hunky vampire anti-hero of their movie Twilight, on Noah. “We know what you are, Noah,” we say. “Say it…out loud,” he replies. “Good looking 7th grader,” we reply. “Are you afraid?” he asks. We pause. The answer is yes…sometimes, at least.

2. Isaac learns to pray. As the devoted Buzz Lightyear fan that he is, though, he decides to replace the prayer’s simple concluding "amen" with the phrase "to infinity and beyond." Trent tries valiantly to help Isaac fix this problem, only to have Isaac increase the decibel level of his “improved” version of things. When Isaac opens his large talking Buzz Lightyear from Grandma and Grandpa Hickman this year, in other words, he may have a religious experience that none of us intended.

And the number one thing from 2008? . . .
1. Family finally takes a trip to Disneyland. We master the Fastpass and are able to skip most lines. Isaac enjoys the 10+ separate trips through the Winnie-The-Pooh ride while waiting for everyone else to ride Splash Mountain. After a wonderful week there, Trent is already trying to figure out a way to go again.

Hope you had an equally fun year!
Love - Wendy, Trent, Noah (12), Jonah (10), and Isaac (2) Hickman

To Infinity . . . and Beyond!

Since I'm obviously on an Isaac rant. I thought I would throw out this little tidbit.

Isaac is a huge Buzz Lightyear fan. He sleeps with Buzz, Woody and Zurg. He loves the movies. Anything Buzz guarantees that he'll love it. Apparently this is a two-year old boy thing since my friend Erin's similarly-aged son, Solomon, is also obsessed with Buzz.

Anyway, Isaac is also learning to pray. He has started throwing in comments like "cocoa," or "milk," or "Grandma." On Sundays at church, you might hear, "bread" or "water." It's quite cute to hear him add things like "door," or "light" (obviously he's peeking). He's always been very good about repeating, "amen" at the end of his prayers. Then Trent in all his father-glory launches Isaac into space by shouting, "To infinity and beyond!" Trent flies Isaac all through the house to give kisses to me, Noah and Jonah and then he lands him in his crib. Isaac loves this! And when Trent is gone, it's clear that I just don't get it right.

Recently, however, Isaac has abandoned all "amens" to be replaced with "to infinity and beyond!" Once Isaac has decided that the prayer is over, he lets us know with all the exuberance of a two-and-a-half year old that loves Buzz Lightyear! Now, how to fix that?!?

Batteries

Isaac is a climber. In fact I've already pulled him off my kitchen counter at least six times this morning (and it's only 9:00 AM). He is persistent and fast. He can be in the kitchen and all the way up in the cupboard by the time I even figure out that he isn't in the same room anymore.

But why is he climbing? Not for food or treats. He climbs up on the counter, opens the cupboard and gets batteries! He puts them into his mouth and chews them. Twice, he has filled up a cup with them. We can't leave the remotes on the tables because he pulls the batteries out and sucks on them. He even pulls batteries out of his toys.

Thankfully, he has only bitten a battery open once. I didn't know he had it (pulled it out of Jonah's backpack) - but he brought the very damaged 9 volt to me. So scary, but no damage!

The batteries have now been relocated, the remotes are stored in the top of the entertainment center, and the toy batteries are secure (I think). Thankfully he hasn't figured out how to open the child-proof door knobs. Yet.

Sunday

I've always worked hard to keep my children reverent on Sundays during sacrament meeting. I don't let them run around/climb/kick. If I have to take a child out, they are placed on my lap and not allowed to play/talk/move. I come prepared with age appropriate activities and try to redirect as much as possible. For most of the past 7 years, I've been all on my own as Trent has been busy doing Ward or Stake responsibilities. My kids have generally been great. I've even been able to serve as the ward organist. The boys have done a good job of taking care of Isaac while I'm on the stand.

Fast forward to yesterday. It's Ward Conference. Every single stake leader is at our sacrament meeting. I'd already struggled to get there on time. I was in charge of the floral arrangements that needed to be placed next to the pulpit. Trent had to be on the stand.

30 minutes before meetings, I remembered that Jonah was supposed to give a talk.
20 minutes before meetings, Isaac quietly went into my closet to do his business.
15 minutes before meetings, I sent Trent and Jonah out the door with my flowers (and a poem from the Children's Friend).
10 minutes before meetings, Isaac finished and I changed his pants and rushed out the door.

We made it with 6 or 7 minutes to spare. Unfortunately, all of the benches were full and Jonah had saved a spot in the back of the cultural hall (I hate sitting back there because there isn't enough solid wood to fence in my kids).

We all did really well through the first 30 minutes of the meeting. Noah joined us after having passed the sacrament. Both boys, who were sitting on either side of me, were instructed to NOT let Isaac get around them. Our Stake President was about 10 minutes into his talk when I looked over at Jonah/Isaac. Jonah was listening carefully to President Mitchell, but hadn't noticed that Isaac had quietly (deliberately) made it beyond his legs.

From this point, everything shifted into slow motion. I lunged for Isaac and so did Jonah but we both missed just by inches. It was a clear path from the edge of our chairs to the front of the chapel. And from Isaac's perspective the chase was on. He ran as fast as he could up to the stand, giggling loudly as he went. Trent sitting on the stand, heard the commotion, but couldn't see who the offending child was until Isaac rounded the front bench, firmly grasping his sippy cup and headed for the stand. Trent was as mortified as I was as I hurried down the side aisle trying desperately to catch Isaac before he made it up the stairs. Poor President Mitchell was stumbling over his words at this point. Isaac stalled at the top of the stairs, which was just enough time for me to catch up and whisk him into the lobby, at which point all eyes turned to Trent.

Once we headed back into the cultural hall, Isaac was not allowed to even get off my lap. Worst of all, everyone laughed. I'm sure the general murmurings were something along the lines of, "if it can happen to the Hickmans, it can happen to anyone." Our Relief Society President chuckled about never having seen Isaac do anything like this. And Sister Mitchell, the Stake President's wife thought it was cute. She said something like, "Wait until you have grandchildren." Of all the days that something like this could happen . . . ward conference during President Mitchell's talk (shaking my head). I'm not sure I can show my face in that building again.

20 Year Reunions

Trent went and I didn't. Thought you might enjoy some high school pictures. :o)

Halloween 2008

Isaac was batman (again). I had a cute "Ord" costume (Dragon Tales), but he refused to wear it. I did actually get him into it, but he screamed and started (literally) tearing it off. I'm not sure what the issue was, but apparently he didn't like it. I should have gotten an Incredibles costume instead -- he made comments on every single Incredibles costume he saw. Jonah was a World War II soldier. Noah started out as a nerd and by the end of the day had transitioned into a hippie costume, and unfortunately I never got a picture.

Isaac, of course, loved the idea of trick-or-treating. Trent and I took him out early, just along our own street, and luckily beat the rain. Isaac wanted to stop and eat every piece of candy along the way. Jonah and Noah both went out with friends. In an effort to keep Noah and his friends from any mischievous behaviour (including meeting up with girls), we hosted a Halloween party for his buddies. We had plenty of pizza, soda and treats and they ate most of it. They watched a filtered version of Signs, which was boasted as "not that scary." But by the end of the night, the boys were huddled together on the couch because they were so scared.

Give up?

Click on the picture for a hint!

Did you notice that the water in the tub was green (and was even more green by the time he drained the water) and that Isaac's lips were very yellow? Did you notice the smirk on his face? If you think that this doesn't look too bad. Let me tell you that merely wiping this stuff up just spreads the color everywhere. I wiped it up and then wiped it up and then wiped it up again. I've probably mopped five times and I'm still picking up lovely shades of yellow and green on my towel. The green was also on the carpet, but seems to be cleaning up. I'm not sure why it comes off the carpet, but doesn't come off Isaac.

Calling all detectives . . .

Here is the evidence. Can you reconstruct the crime?

Pumpkin Carving 2008

Here are the results of our Family Home Evening - Pumpkin Carving. [Sorry for the blurry picture. Jonah took it, but it's so hard to get a steady picture in the dark without using a tripod.] Noah's has glasses. Mine is the aboriginal spider (it was supposed to be spooky). Isaac's is the little one, of course. I carved his pumpkin first and he was so excited. He kept lifting the lid and telling us that he was "cookin'." Trent's is the "big bunny" pumpkin in front with the single tooth and Jonah's is the back right. There is an extra uncarved pumpkin in back, compliments of the unexpected harvest from our garden.

Arrow of Light

On Wednesday night, Jonah received his Arrow-Of-Light badge. He has now completed all of his requirements for Cub Scouts, including his religious knot. We'll attend one more pack meeting in January and then Jonah will move onto 11-year scouts and all the camping and merit badges associated with that.

They did a special ceremony teaching about the blue arrow and the seven rays of the sun. I put on corresponding colored glo-bracelets to go along with the story that Cameron Degroff tells.

We're proud of Jonah and all of the hard work he's done to achieve this award.

Only six years to go until Isaac is back in Cub Scouts. :o)

One Pumpkin One Pizza

We had our annual "One Pumpkin, One Pizza" (which is a tamer version of One Funny, One Scary) with the Tams family last Saturday. We ate pizza at Laurel's house and visited The Big Red Barn to pick out pumpkins. Isaac found this pitiful, rotten, green thing and couldn't be persuaded to pick anything else. Thankfully it was only $.50 (and is already mush).



Trent and I didn't pick out pumpkins this year because we accidentally grew four pumpkins in our garden. We originally planted both butternut squash and pumpkins. When we remembered past problems with cross-pollination, we decided to pull the pumpkins. But as you can see, it was the squash plants that got pulled, not the pumpkins.

Expensive Table!

Remember my new kitchen table that I love and got a great deal on? Well, it quadrupled in price on Sunday when Trent caught his suit pocket on one of the newly replaced drawer knobs and ripped a six-inch hole in his suit coat. Turns out it was a good time to assess the condition of his suit anyway. We went shopping yesterday. He looks fantastic in the two new suits that we purchased, but we're quite a bit poorer.

Cookie Cutters

Today was Isaac's first official haircut. We went to a place called Cookie Cutters. They have fun cars, a slide, movies, bubbles, balloons, and everything you could possibly want to make a hair cut fun. I've cut Isaac's hair before. It's always been a struggle and I never quite get it right. So I was willing to give this place a try -- and happy to pay them to eliminate the struggle. Well, the whole experience was 10 times worse. He screamed, cried, kicked, and fought hard. We were all covered with hair, spit, sticky sucker juices, and boogies after maybe 20 minutes. Needless to say, we left a very big tip. The first picture was before. The second is after. Does he look hot and sweaty to you? Well, he is and so were we.

Green PERMANENT Marker!

This is what happened today while I took a shower. You think I'd learn to only shower while Issac naps -- but apparently moments like this haven't happened enough.

The Good News: He didn't write on anything else.

The Bad News: It's not coming off. Any ideas?

Soccer Championship

Just thought I would post a little update here. Noah played in the 7th/8th grade soccer championship this morning at the Pleasant Grove High School field (on astro-turf). Noah played a fantastic game! They ended the game tied 0 to 0. I couldn't believe a zero point game could be so entertaining. A shoot-out was used as a tie-breaker. It all came down to the last kick. We were tied-up again 2 to 2 in the overtime with one last kick by the opposing team. It was a beautiful kick and our goalie didn't stop it. So, Noah's team, the Scorpions, took 2nd place.

Soccer

Last night, Jonah finished another fall soccer season. Noah's team won their game in the 7th/8th grade single-elimination tournament and get to play in the championship this week. They've had fantastic coaches. It's fun to see the boys improve and enjoy playing. (You can see Noah's brace that he has to wear because of his broken wrist.)

Isaac is his brother's best fan.

Yearbook Yourself

1950, 1964, 1984

Indulge me for a minute. This is too much fun! I used a picture taken when I was 33.

Baby Clothes

Isaac - 20 days old

Today, I finished sorting our baby clothes. Last week, I cleaned out Isaac's drawers, which still had some various clothes, socks and shoes from when he was just a baby. As I pulled these clothes out and set them aside, it didn't make any sense to pack them back up and take them into the basement. Trent's sister, Merideth and my neighbor, Marianne are both about ready to have their first boy and could really use the clothes.

I guess the big question is "are we done?" Having Isaac after an eight year gap has taught me to never say never. But I'll be 38 this year. I was a Special Education major in college. I read more than I ever wanted to know about older women and genetics. At the time, I resolved never to have a child after I was 35. I was 35 1/2 when I had Isaac. I think my file had a big "high risk" stamped on it. I held my breath for the alpha-fetal-protein test results. Everything worked out fine, but I was very aware of the odds. So, I'm pretty sure - sure enough that I'm willing to give away all of the baby clothes.

I pulled all of the baby clothes bins from the basement and started the bittersweet chore of sorting them. I saved several little outfits that had special memories associated with each of my boys. I'll put those into my cedar chest. As I sorted the clothes, I was surprised how hard it was to fold each outfit and set it down, my arms remembering too well how it felt to hold my boys when they wore that soft sleeper, creeper or onesie. I set aside the socks, marveling about how little their feet once were. I felt like I was letting go of my babies.

I suspect that like sending your youngest to kindergarten (which I already thought I did once), sending away the baby clothes is an important, but difficult rite-of-passage for mothers. I feel better knowing I'm passing the clothes onto my sisters who will love them and make new baby memories with them. Somehow that made a sad task a little bit easier.

Peaches and Broken Arms

We spent Labor Day in Perry doing 32 quarts of peaches. Usually we pick the Elbertas from my parent's tree, but they are late this year. So we bought Harmony Peaches (so expensive). They were harder to can (maybe a clingstone pit). But we were happy to have the peaches -- and so happy for my Mom's help. I've included the recipe on the Tams Kitchen site.

On a different note, Noah broke his wrist on Friday. He is in a splint for the next four weeks. Amazingly, he has been cleared for soccer, but no volleyball or basketball.

Scouts

It's been a busy scouting week. Noah was presented his Star rank advancement as well as 7 merit badges on Tuesday night. Jonah received his Webelos badge as well as 7 activity badges and 2 beltloops on Wednesday night. [Jonah's pack meeting was held at our beautiful neighborhood park.]

Jonah's First Day of School

. . . was actually a week ago. I've just been slow to post the picture. Jonah started the Monday after Noah. He loves his teacher and came home and pronounced, "I think this is going to be my best year ever!" And if you were wondering, these are all last-year's school clothes. He has several new outfits, but whatever!

Noah's First Day of School (2008)

Today was Noah first day of school. Thankfully, the local junior high allows the new 7th graders to experience a full schedule without any taunting 8th and 9th graders. He and I went to Back To School night last night. It was overwhelming! Noah has four different class schedules encompassing nine different courses. He also has four different lunch times - depending upon the day. Crazy. He was nervous this morning. I'm anxious to hear how the day went.

Added later: Noah said he had a great day. He found all of his classes and didn't have any problems with his locker. It sounds like he especially enjoyed his Foreign Language class.

16th Anniversary

Today, Trent and I are celebrating our 16th Wedding Anniversary. A few weeks ago, I scanned a bunch of pictures for a project. I thought it would be fun to post some of those photos to celebrate today. The peaches are real (not some "staged" backdrop) in the top picture - they were perfectly ripe in our backyard where we held the reception. The second was taken at the Jordan River Temple. The rest are snap shots from our dating, engagement and wedding. [You can click on the pictures to see them larger.] It's been a fantastic 16 years!