Christmas 2009

We had a wonderful Christmas season at the Applehans' home. We were blessed to be visited by all of our families, had 4 Christmas celebrations, had opportunity to share Christmas with others, participate in many traditions brought from both Jesse's and my families, but most importantly, reflect on the birth, life, and gift of our Savior Jesus Christ.

Here are a few highlights, in no particular order:

Dad and Elaine were able to come up the middle of December and visit for the weekend, along with all the girls in the family (we sure missed Kevin, Amy, and Chloe!). Their visit occured during our Stake's Creche Show. It was simply amazing. There were hundreds of navitities on display, a Children's Room where the kids got to create some art projects and play with children's nativity sets, and a room set up for taking pictures such as the one below. We thoroughly enjoyed their visit and the boys loved playing with Puck (their little dog). We played many games of Wacky Six and ate lots of good food!

The day after Christmas, we were blessed have Jesse's parents come for a visit. We had the privledge of having them here for 10 days, during which time we accomplished a lot of eating, game playing, finishing projects around the house, shopping, and playing with the boys. We also celebrated Jesse's collage graduation! Tanner loved getting reacquainted with "Bub" (Grandpa) and getting spoiled by Grandma. Andrew thought Grandpa's mustache was really great and tried creating one of his own with sticky white paper. He also enjoyed going into Gma and Gpa's room each morning to cuddle. We sure wish they lived closer because we don't get to see them often enough!

One evening, we went to Lewiston to walk through the park with an amazing Christmas light display:

Our own little family's traditions this year included baking and decorating sugar cookies, making a gingerbread house, sharing Christmas with others in need, driving around looking at Christmas lights, cutting down a live Christmas tree, and spending as much time together as possible. We also enjoyed writing letters to Santa, reading a new Christmas story together, telling THE Christmas story, and having Daddy off work Christmas Eve for the first time since starting his career. Jess and I both ended up with a horrible 24 hour stomach flu about 9pm Christmas Eve. Go figure. We still loved our time together (even if it included several trips to the restroom).

Just a couple days before Christmas, my Mom and some of my sisters were able to come down and celebrate an early Christmas with us. We had a lovely Christmas dinner, played games, talked and talked (us girls do that quite well), decorated cookies, and worked on Amy's recipe scrapbook. The boys love visits from their "special Bonner's Ferry Grandma" and Aunts.

Well, I guess that's it in a nutshell. Now we're on to 2010 already! I just can't believe how quickly time passes. We have so much to be grateful for and count our blessings everyday for Jesse's job, a nice warm home, a graduated husband (woo-hoo, finally!) our wonderful families, good friends, the gospel, our Savior, our special little boys, and most certainly each other. We're looking forward to all the happiness this year will bring!

Ice Skating

Daddy surprised us one day (like he enjoys doing!) and took us ice skating. It was a blast!!! The boys were a bit scared and timid at first, but as the hour wore on, they started venturing out and trying to skate on their own. It was so fun to watch them and Daddy was proud of his little skaters!

Once Andrew figured out that this red thing (sorry, can't remember what it's called) helped him balance on his skates, a whole new skating-world opened up to him!

Tanner had fun too! He needed a little more support (ie. Mom or Dad)than Andrew, but he started catching on towards the end too. Last year when we took the boys skating, he didn't even wear skates, he enjoyed just sitting on the ice (he all but threw a fit everytime we tried to help him walk) but this time, he tried skating!!!

He didn't seem to mind spending time in this position:

My boys. My world.

And he's so stinkin' HOT! :)

HALLOWEEN 2009

The boys were so much fun this year. They got so excited to pick out their BIG pumpkin, carve it, and go trick-or-treating. It was so not the plan, but we ended up going trick-or-treating three times. Never again. That's way too much candy that we don't need lying around the house!

The first night of trick-or-treating, some friends invited us to go to the Uof I Kibbie Dome, where the college athletes handed out candy. The boys dressed up as ARMY BOYS. The 2nd night, we decided to go with some friends to go the the local ward's trunk-or-treat. We hadn't planned on doing so when we came into town, so I hadn't brought the boys' costumes. The other mom had some costumes lying around, so Andrew was a dinosaur and Tanner was a tiger. On Halloween, we went with the same friends and when it came time to put on the army boy costumes, the boys emphatically declared that they wanted to be dinosaur and tiger again. So, there you have it. :) Jess had to work all week, so when he joined us for a little trick-or-treating fun, he did so as a COP. I dressed up as a MOM. That didn't require much work and I probably even had someone's leftover dinner somewhere on my costume to add that little extra "umph" to my attire.

PS. Sorry the first two pics are sideways. They took over 15 mins to upload and I'm ready for bed, so they're staying as is. :)

Andrew the dinosaur.
Tanner the tiger.

Army boys and cop.

Tanner and Andrew with their pumpkin. They were so proud of it! Great carving job, Dad. Great de-gutting job, Mom and Andrew.

Our new deck

Here are pictures of our new deck - posted by popular request! As you can see, it's not quite finished yet, but we've eaten several meals outside and the boys love playing on it. It turned out quite a bit larger than we'd imagined, but it's perfect (I'm sure not going to complain)! It still needs the stairs built in the middle indented section and stained along the edges, but that'll probably happen here this next week (hopefully)!

What we've been up to today...

I love the look of concentration on Tanner's face! He got to use scissors for the first time today and it actually kept him entertained for quite a while. He also got to participate in Joy School (Andrew's preschool) today since it was my week to teach. He loved snack time and coloring during art project time.
What's wrong with this picture? Oh, yes, you got it - there's a little boy on the bottom shelf. Our Tan-man keeps us constantly entertained (and on our toes)! He climbed on the next shelf up, too, but I don't have picture of that.

Andrew loves "art projecks" as he calls them. Here he is "scrapbooking" - that's what he told me he was doing. That's my boy! :) I think that is one of his favorite parts of Joy School too - doing stuff with paper, scissors, crayons, and glue sticks. Notice the pen on Andrew's shirt. Yep, he wears his pen just like Daddy. So cute!

So what have we been up to today? Well, here's today in the life of the Applehans' fam.

3:25am: Jesse arrives home from work (yea, he's on swing shift now)

6:40am: Michele wakes up in order to have time to do P90X before the day begins

7:30: Michele finishes exercising and checks her email, showers, finishes preparing her lessons for Joy School

8:30am: Boys wake up, give Mom lots of hugs, get dressed, eat breakfast

9:00-11:30am: JOY SCHOOL I had all 4 preschool kids here today, Tanner, plus I babysat a friends' little girl. We had a house full!

10:30am: Kids are having way too much fun (or my singing is too abnoxious) and Jesse wakes up

1:00pm: Lunch - I made hamburgers, fries, and milkshakes - our big meal of the day since Jesse had school and work

2:00: Jesse was supposed to be at school. Opps, we lost track of time. Be better start setting a timer so he doesn't miss any more classes since he has school everyday this semester.
2:00-4:30: Boys took long naps today. Preschool must tire them out. Mom and Dad get some time to just chill, check email again (I know, I'm obsessed), Jesse does homework, Jesse takes a short nap, Michele finishes ordering Oct and Nov Paper Posies goodies.

4:30-6:30: Boys "scrapbook" and play while Mom blogs, cleans up the house, and thinks about what she should make for dinner.

6:30 (now) until bedtime: I think we'll go scrounge up something easy, yet nutritious for dinner, then we'll take a walk, play outside, and read stories. After the boys go to bed, I'll probably work on my Sharing Time for Sunday and maybe try to scrapbook the cute pictures taken today. Oh, yea, and I'll eagerly look forward to Jesse getting a slow streak at work so that he can call me! :)

There you have it. Just a peek into one of our days. I'm sure I forgot some important stuff, but oh well.

The Red, White, and Blue

Let this be a reminder to us all how blessed we are to live is this wonderful country of America. Despite the challenges we are currently facing and the different opinions we might have than some of this country's leaders, we are still very blessed to live here, to worship our Heavenly Father as we please, and to experience the other freedoms we do.
For as long as I have known him, Jesse has talked about "someday" having a flagpole in our front yard. That "someday" has finally arrived. When he found this flagpole on Craigslist (imagine that) and presented to me the idea that we should own it, of course I said yes, despite the fact that we had to drive over 2 hours to get it. After picking it up, he immediately went to work ordering a suitable size flag, pouring concrete, and laying decorative block around the base. It looks really nice!!! I now just have to get deep purple (as close to blue as I can find), red and white flowers to plant around it. At first I didn't know what the big deal was, but now that we have it in our front yard, I am very pleased that we do! And no, as you can tell, we don't have grass yet. But the yard is level, the weeds have been sprayed, and now we're waiting the two weeks after spraying to plant the grass! YEAH!

Flowers for Mommy

I love it when my precious little boys pick me flowers. Sometimes I get dandilions, sometimes I get wildflowers, and sometimes I even get the flowers that I've been waiting to see bloom the minute they finally do! Occasionally, Tanner has even been know to bring me sticks and he treats them like they're flowers. I love it!

Tanner

Andrew
Apparently Andrew decided that instead of picking me individual flowers, one by one, he'd just skip the tedious flower picking and give me the whole plant! It doesn't get much better than this. I sure love my boys!

Funny story: The other day Andrew and I were weeding the strawberries. Tanner decided he should help, but when he got bored with the weeding, he moved on to the flowers. He spotted a beautiful marigold that I got for Mother's Day (you know, the church tradition). There were two beautiful blossoms and one quickly ended up getting picked for Mommy. I graciously accepted his gift and then suggested that he leave the other one on the plant. No sooner than I turned my back, then he proceeded to pick the other bloom. I don't remember what I said, but Andrew responded, "Mom, CHILL, there are other ones!" Okay, okay. Now, WHERE did you hear that, Andrew-Man?