Christmas Eve Lights

On Christmas Eve, after I got put on call, we decided to take a tour of the local "Christmas Street"s.  There's one in Taylorsville, and Sugarhouse.  It was a fun little tour, and out driving in the snow really felt festive and Christmassy. 

 

Malcolm didn't make it through the whole thing.  He liked the one's in Taylorsville, but fell asleep before Sugarhouse.

 

White Christmas

 

LWP's 12/18-12/25

I thought I didn't have that many pictures for last week, turns out I was just thinking about how many I had actually posted to Instagram.  I actually had a bazillion pictures, so enjoy the recap of our daily life caught on camera phone!

 

Last week's "Modern Family night", (We watch Modern Family and have dinner with Laura, Andrew, and Denali every week) we went out for Chinese food.  It was quite tasty.

All our Christmas cards.  Actually that's a lie, because we've gotten many many more since this pic.

I had a little cabin fever and took Malcolm out to City Creek to play on the dinosaur play area.  Then we stopped into Anthropology just for fun. 

Making faces in the mirror.

 Here's a montage of cute little Malcolm cruising on the dining chairs:

 

I got Malcolm out of bed, and he had this sad little streak of dried blood on his face.  His lips get so dry this winter and I can't keep lip balm on him because he fights it so much.  They often crack and bleed.  Apparently they had bled before he went to sleep.

Thursday, I had a sort of Mommy's night out.  Ryan was willing to stay home with Malcolm while I went out to the Utah Voices concert.  It was lovely.

This is from Saturday.  I had a patient on airborne isolation and got to sport this lovely PAPR mask for half the day until they left the ICU.  You'd think I'd rather mask up, but the heafty masks you have to wear are so thick they're really suffocating.  The PAPR has cool air across your face and the patient can see your mouth.  So I like it better.  Space suit looking and all.

Also on Saturday, it was a pretty chill shift and I finished embroidering the sandwich for Malcolm's quiet book that I'm currently working on.  It's gonna take me forever, but I'm having lots of fun doing it.  But really, it's quite the project.

Sunday, I did this.  Melted my difuser with my curling iron.  So now both are out of order.  Guess I know what some of my Christmas money is going to...

Sunday, we went to two sacrament meetings because Ryan sang his "Mary Did You Know?" solo in both our ward and my old home ward.  Laura and Andrew were at my parent's ward too.  We were obviously very reverent, here keeping babies entertained by letting them look at themselves in the phone camera. 

Also on Sunday, Ryan, Dad, and Andrew attempted to push over a tree in my parent's back yard. They were unsuccessful, but it was fun to watch them try.

"Now I'll be able to find it when I need it." (Laura while playing games on Sunday)

We skipped out on our newest Christmas Eve tradition because that's going to the VanDenBerg's.  Malcolm was throwing up at Grandma's house and had caught the bug that's been going around to other family members.  We didn't want to spread it to the VDB's or the rest of the Green family, so we stayed home and did our old tradition.  We ate tons and tons of shrimp.  80, in fact.  It was amazing.

Also on Christmas eve it snowed!!! We had a white Christmas after all.  I went out to walk in it and take pictures of our house all snowy.

The after. yup, all 80.  Pretty sure 60 of those were Ryan.

Santa's goods.

After Malcolm had gone to bed.  I was put on call for Christmas Eve, but I never got called in!  Yay!





Widow Maker

I went downstairs to get the wrapping paper out and put it into my craft room to start wrapping gifts.  While rummaging about in the storage area, I pulled a few strings of sticky spider web off of the bags and boxes around me. 
Blech, stupid spiders, I thought to myself.  It had been a long time since I had had to wrap anything, so I didn't think much of it. Spiders in storage spaces are just one of those things, you know?
I grab the first load of paper, drop it off in the craft room, come back, round the corner and then-- I see it.  The HUGEST spider I have ever seen in that is not in the wild. 

Huge!  Black widow, and the best part?  Right above and to the right of where I'd been rummaging.  The spider web belonged to this ugly beast! 
I flipped out!  Started doing the heebee jeebee dance and I think shouted something like "AH! Ryan!  Ryan!  ew ew ew!  Oh my gosh!  You're gonna die if you see this.  Blech!  Ugh!  It's HUGE huge huge!  And I was right there!  Right THERE!!"
Ryan barely tip toes down the stairs and then leaned waaaaay over to see if he could catch a glimpse.  Weirdly enough, when he knew where it was and it couldn't "sneak up" on him, he was willling to decend the other 3/4ths of the stairwell and took this picture! 
Ryan started handing me the vacuum and I was about to suck the little bugger up in it, when I realized there was no way to know that it was dead.  I didn't want it getting out and wandering somewhere unknown to us. 
So I put on my big girl panties.  Like REALLY big girl panties.  Plus my superhero cape and ate some spinach, and went and got the Critter Catcher.  It's designed for humane removal of creepy crawlies from your house, but I had no mercy in mind.
Ryan cleared the way, opened the front door, and so when I was ready, I grabbed that nasty giantess of a spider and bolted out the door.  Then it was a quick release and BAM!!!  That thing was paste on the bottom of my shoe. 
ugh.
Seriously, the scariest spider I've ever gotten out of my house. 

The appointment for someone to spray for spiders is soon.  I'll have no more close encounters of the black widow kind, thank you very much.

Naughty List

Other working titles for this post:

- 16 Months Going On Terrible Two's
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- This one's defective, we're sending it back

Sunday, was the day. Oh the day!  Malcolm has been having tantrums increasingly over the last few weeks.  He's really starting to come in to his toddlerhood, so we are really coming in to our parenthood.  They are usually short lived, and easily taken care of, but Sunday... *shudder*

After church, and even after a full nap, malcolm threw the fit of a lifetime.  He wasn't getting what he wanted, yet didn't know what he wanted.  Everything just produced more screaming, so we just tried to ignore him. Which didn't make it stop, and turned into some more time spent screaming in his bed.  Then he couldn't calm down!  Just kept crying and screaming!  It was a full 45 min of insanity! 
Finally, he calmed and seemed happy. 

That is, until the Dearden Christmas party.  Where he was fine until it was time for the talent show.  Then he again couldn't figure out what he wanted yet wasn't getting whatever it was.  He wanted help, no don't help me, he wanted food, no not that food... then he lost his mind!  We decided to leave and as I carried him out to the car it was full on body thrashing.  He was crying, I was crying, and it lasted until we got home! 



It was awful.  But inevitable I guess.  A child this easy can't last forever, right? 

Since that night, he has had minor meltdowns and seems to be his normal self.  I don't know if he was just over stimulated or over tired or what, but it sucked.  and I hope it's never repeated.   knock on wood.  Sigh, parenting.  It's not always all it's cracked up to be. 

Temple Square + Sushi Night

It's that time of year again!  What time?  The time of year for our annual Sushi and Temple Square night with the Ovesons.  Okay, so we did it last year only, but now it's twice--so it's tradition!  That's what the text invite said anyway.  :) 

We grandfathered Mara and Jae in this year too.  Good times.

 

It started at Simply Sushi, for some good eats.  And for force feeding Mary things she doesn't like.  Because who's better to pick on?  Exactly.

 

(all pictures are by Mary.  Except the one's of Ryan and Denali at the end.  I took those with her camera.  Plus lots of blurry ones of myself that probably didn't turn out and therefore didn't make Mary's blog.  He he he.)

 



yeah, we ate a lot.

The boys

The girls

 Next, we wandered around Temple Square.  We saw the nativity, old men singing (see LWP's), bothered people to take our picture, oh!  and we saw Charley!  Well, the girl that plays her on the movie.  I'm sure she noticed as Ryan giddily shuffled up to Mary and Vince and whispered "That's Charley!"  So funny!  and embarassing.  We also stopped by the Macy's windows and wandered into Restoration Hardware.

 

(oh, Vince took this one)

We met up with Laura and Andrew when we were at the Fountains in City Creek.  If you go right at 9 o'clock, they play all three shows.  I'd told them that, so there they were!  Such a great finish to the night.

 



Thanks Vinsary for the great idea!  Until next year! (p.s. Mary--your eye color in this photo is super awesome!)