Painting Demonstration

If anyone is curious to see an example of my painting process you can check it out here.

TV again

Am I mean if I took the new TV back? What if this is the replacement?:Brandon's brother upgraded. Probably the nicest hand-me-down I've seen in my life. Although, it is competing with the awesome Christmas tree that was handed down to us from some friends this year too. Remember our old little tree? We have a few oversized ornaments that fit so much better on this tree. They are from Brandon's childhood, so we always had to put them on. One is a 7" canoe, which I'm very skeptical that it's an ornament at all, but Brandon claims it is.

pointy elbows

Everyone has quirky things about them. I have discovered that Brandon has elbows with special powers. Special pointy powers. He used to have several long sleeve dress shirts for work, maybe 7 or 8. Now he has one. What happens to them all? The elbows all have holes in them. We've cut off the sleeves and hemmed them, and now he has a closet full of short sleeve shirts. If you ever see him at work don't be surprised if he still has his coat on. Maybe I should get him one of these jackets for Christmas:

Gingerbread Houses

Calvin and I were invited over to Brooke's for a fun morning of gingerbread decorating. Here are some samples of our creations.

new & exciting

I went to a Zumba class at the gym for the first time yesterday because everyone kept saying how great it is. And it's true! It was a combination of latin and hip hop dance turned into an aerobics class. But it really was more dance than aerobics. I LOVED it. Even if it didn't burn calories, I think I would go anyways, that's how fun it is. I loved the variety of people in the class too, the young, skinny, gym obsessed people, and old people, and larger people, everyone fits in.
The other new thing I tried is a paypal account. I feel so excited that any stranger in the world can so easily send me money. I just need to give them a reason to now...

(I would add a link here for you to send me money so I could really see how fun this is, but I don't know how to do that)

Parenting

Calvin has a serious problem with throwing his food. Nearly every meal and all kinds of food. Sometimes I think it's to tell us he's done eating, sometimes because he doesn't like a food, sometimes it's just for attention. We've tried a variety of methods to get him to stop, it's been going on for a loooong time. We've been doing more time outs lately. He's so funny about it, he doesn't care at all, he just stands in the corner until I tell him he is done. I'm pretty sure when I say "time out" I might as well be saying "let's play a game where you stand in the corner".

First real snow

This was Calvin's first real snow because last year he never played in it. This year he was fully equipped and ready to go. I think he was a little frustrated initially with the marshmallow look and how difficult that made it to walk around. He seemed to get used to it and when his neighbor friend invited him to come out again later, he was lovin' it.

Santa time

We meant to get pictures taken with Calvin & Santa last year, but it never happened. We had our ward Christmas party on Friday and I guess they had a hard time finding a Santa, not only was he an hour late, but he didn't pull it off really well. Even the two year old sitting next to me said, "that's not Santa!" We tried to have Calvin sit on his lap, but he was scared. Brandon insisted on a picture though, so here it is. The introduction:
The release:You can see he is trying hard to escape. Besides this one moment of the party, Calvin had a really good time. All the kids were running around the gym and eating lots of cookies. He loved it. He thought it was really funny to go over to the exit doors and smile at us while we motioned at him to come back. Then of course he would laugh and run out so we would chase him.
One time when I was following him around the hallways, I let him get too far ahead of me and he ran into the men's bathroom because someone had propped the door open. I stood there panicking, knowing any moment he was going to throw himself into the toilet. Since the door was wide open I could see that no one seemed to be in either of the stalls Calvin was running in and out of. I had been standing there for awhile trying to quickly figure out if I dared to run into the men's room or not. As he headed for a toilet, I went for it. As I spun around I realized the men's room was set up differently than the women's and besides the two stalls they also had urinals to the side of the door that I couldn't see before. Fortunately they were also empty because that could have turned into my most embarrassing moment ever.