Let it snow/the dentist

Sunday night we came home from my brothers and it was clear as a bell, we woke up yesterday morning to this. A good seven or eight inches on the ground. Since Scott is out of town this week I had the joy of shoveling the driveway.
Annicka has been doing some crazy things lately. A few days ago she came up to me with this hairdo. Stylish, don't you think? She is definitely going to be a trend setter.
Today I took the kids to the dentist for the first time. Here they are showing off their pearly whites. Annicka did great too. She was a little nervous at first, but having grandma there helped (Scott's mom is their office manager)...okay, and the fact that they had a TV on the ceiling that she could watch cartoons on. She even let them take X-rays of her teeth, which the dentist said most kids her age won't do, they usually can't hold still that long. No cavities either! Which is something I hope will be how it always is. When I was a kid I had cavities every time we went. In fact I thought it was regular to set an appointment for two weeks after your checkup.
What an adorable little man! Can you see the eczema this kid has on his face? Poor guy...I'm open to any suggestions.
Gotta get a shot of the upper teeth too, right?

Love birds?

I think we have a couple of little love birds on our hands. This arm around Annicka is happening with increasing frequency. They were watching "Toy Story" together here. Sam's dad, Adam, has told us of a few times it's happened at their house too.
The other day Annicka came up to me with this hat on...it's one Scott used to take snowboarding. I think we might have a little thug on our hands too.

For those of you who have been reading our blog from the beginning you'll remember that last year Scott, wrote "I <3 Karin" on our trampoline with the first snow of the year and I posted it. Well, this isn't the first snow of the year, but I wanted to do this for Scott. I know this might make some of you puke (mostly BJ) but I want EVERYONE to know how much I love Scott.
You are the best thing that has EVER happened to me. I mean it. You are incredibly patient and understanding with me. You are an amazing father. THANK YOU for sharing your life with me! I LOVE YOU!

Happy New Year, Happy Birthday, Scott and finally Happy End of the Holidays!

Well, Happy New Year, I know we're a little late on that. Happy Birthday, Scott(yesterday) and with Scott's birthday comes an official end to the holidays for us. With both kid's birthdays and Thanksgiving in November, my birthday and Christmas in December and Scott's Birthday and New Years in January the last three months have been CRAZY! The break will be nice. This morning we got 6+ inches of new snow and Summer (our next door neighbor) and I decided it was time that we made a snowman! The snow packed very nicely, but wouldn't stick to the ball if we rolled it and so it turns out that we had to pack up a pile of snow.

Here is Annicka and Sam with our snowman...we later found some old Christmas tree branches that made great wings to make it an angel.

One more funny little blip, Annicka is now calling me by my first name. It's still "mommy" some of the time, but most of the time it's, "Karin, I'm really hungry!" Or something similar.

Christmas

Christmas was pretty low-key for us, especially after the crazy week we had before. Christmas eve we made a gingerbread house (gotta love the pre-package houses that have everything you need in them!). I did the icing and Annicka put on the candy. We had a lot of fun. For dinner that night we went to Chili's and left a big tip for the server. That's kind of a tradition that we have going. My sister Maureen came and spent the night and watched us open presents. We have video of that, but no pictures, it was too crazy. Annicka was really excited this year too. She woke up really excited to open presents and when we told her we had to eat breakfast first she had a melt down. Park on the other hand had no idea how to open the presents. He was excited when we got them open, but the opening didn't register. I think it is safe to say also, that Park is finally an official walker. He's been able to walk, but chose not to for a long time. On Christmas eve he spent a good 45 minutes walking back and forth between our couches and ever since, walks practically everywhere.


These pictures are the ones we took right before my brother's wedding reception.

Happy Birthday to me! (tomorrow)

Well, tomorrow is my birthday, but Scott took me out tonight because we'll be spending tomorrow at my dad's and at our ward Christmas party. We had a blast too! He took me rock climbing and shopping. I used to go rock climbing all the time in high school but I haven't gone since we've been married and so this was a great treat for me.

Scott took off from work at 3:30 and we were off by 4:15 and in Provo at The Quarry by 5. We climbed for an hour and fifteen minutes and then we decided to get something to eat. We went for Crappe Rio as Scott calls it, though he loves it as much as I do. It hit the spot, I love their Pork. Then we went to Kohl's so that I could spend a gift card and some money I had gotten from my mom and step-dad. I've decided I love Kohl's clearance racks...I was able to get four tops and five pairs of pants all for about $115. It felt good to get some new pants too, all of mine have gotten way too big. For some reason after I had Park I lost a bunch of weight. In fact, for the first time in my life I bought size six pants. AWESOME!


This is my favorite shot! Remember that picture from this summer, Scott? It's payback time!

C-R-A-Z-Y week!

Well, I think this will be my first novel. We'll start with this last Thursday. Three of Scott's brothers all came into town (Doug, Ross and Jeff. We haven't seen Jeff in a year and a half and so we were all excited to have all five brothers together and so we spent a lot of time over at Scott's mom's house spending time with them, up until Sunday. We played lots of games, in true Chamberlain fashion, and had lots of good laughs. They were in town until yesterday, but then my family came into town on Sunday for my younger brother Mike's wedding which was yesterday.

The real craziness started on Monday. Monday morning I had to put the kids in the bath at about 7:30 because we had to go shopping and they were dirty. I left the room for 30 seconds and Park had a bowel movement in the tub and it wasn't any little nugget either. There was poop EVERYWHERE. So I put the kids in the other bath tub (luckily we have two) and strained out as much as I could and then filled the tub with clorox and water. Well, then it was off to the store because my family was coming over that night for dinner and an early Christmas and I needed to pick some things up. I took our next door neighbor Sam with us so that his mom could have a break because she was sick the day before. At Walmart Park decided to take a head dive out of the shopping cart. He landed on his head. So we dropped everything that was in our basket and left to the ER. He was fine, but this being the first time something like this happened I had to take him to make sure he was okay. So, Summer came and picked up Annicka and Sam and she ended up watching Annicka for me for several hours, instead of me watching Sam. Thanks, Sum. Well, after the ER I had to finish the shopping, because my family was coming. Thankfully there were some good customer service people at Target because I had so much in my basket I couldn't put Park in it and I was already kind of stressed. Someone came and checked me out while I was standing in a long line and while I was on my way out one of the cart collectors asked if he could help me. The rest of the day ended up pretty good with spending time with my mom and Step-dad and all of my siblings, which doesn't happen very often. We opened presents and ate a yummy Ham dinner. This picture is the only one we took this whole week.

As you can see, Annicka got a princess dress for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa Copple and Park got a really fun tractor that he can ride.

Yesterday was Michael's Wedding. The ceremony was at 10 am at the Salt Lake Temple. It was really nice. Then we had the luncheon at 1pm. We took family pictures at 5:30p and then the reception was at 7. We spent the whole day up in Salt Lake and thankfully BJ and Maggie let our kids crash at their place for an afternoon nap in between everything. Congratulations Mike and Ashley! We love you!

And then to top everything off, this morning Park had a blowout in his crib like no other! He is always happy when he wakes up and doesn't hardly make a sound and so I didn't go and get him out for a while because I was still half sleeping with Annicka watching TV next to me in bed. When I did get up to get him out he had spread the poop everywhere! All over the crib railings and all over his clothes. GREAT! Isn't that what we live for as mothers? Well, all I have to say is Scott better take me out on a really good date this weekend for my birthday. I DESERVE IT!