This Christmas

This Christmas season a few things, namely blogging, have slipped through the cracks. Still, I feel the need to document that not all traditions and memory making opportunities have fallen by the wayside. It's been a great many weeks leading up to Christmas Eve and while my fatigue often outweighs my Christmas cheer, I am finding myself as excited and happy as ever going into this holiday.

The season was kicked off with decorating our tree. I traded in my desire to control the outcome for some wonderful sounds of laughter and excitement as the children chose ornaments they loved and placed them on the tree where they wanted to. They were so excited and Addie said it was "the most beautiful tree ever." Jack just said it was "awesome," which is a new word he throws out when you least expect it. Our first holiday event was the annual City of Heath Tree Lighting, complete with Santa and a train ride. Addie also had a Christmas performance at ballet, which she loved. Then we immediately regrouped with the First Presidency Christmas Devotional and felt ready to properly celebrate the birth of Christ.



We've visited with Santa and wrapped our share of presents. "Jingle Bells" and "Deck the Halls" have been played by 5 year old fingers all month. We've been to Christmas parties, hosted Christmas parties, and talked about going to or hosting a few more. We decorated our annual gingerbread house (from a box, of course!) and even received a few emails from Santa giving the "nice" approval to both children. The wonder in Jack's face over those emails was priceless!


Anthony has picked up some of the Christmas fun for me this year and really entertained the children with Simon, our "Elf on the Shelf." Simon has been caught eating Christmas candy, taken a "bubble bath" of mini marshmallows, zip-lined through our entryway, and partially unwrapped a gift...to name a few adventures. Both Addie and Jack have had some exciting mornings finding him and I've felt guilty that I was the one who got to see the reactions after Anthony did all the work.


In my efforts to replace energy with Christmas cheer I have hit my standby Alabama Christmas pretty hard. In a pinch "A Marshmallow World" picks me up as well. If all else fails, this Target commercial makes me laugh until I cry:



I took a tip from President Thomas S. Monson this year and read The Mansion by Henry Van Dyke as well as A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in addition to Luke 2 as usual. Both books were a strong contrast to modern philosophies on charity that I enjoyed and learned a great deal from. I will definitely be reading both again!

This year we let the children pick out one gift for each other. Poor Jack was so unimpressed with his Christmas Eve pajama present that I caved and then put pressure on Anthony to cave and let them open something fun. I think it was a fun tradition we'll continue.


As Christmas Eve wraps up and we are preparing for Christmas Day, it is fun to look back at this past month and see how much really happened and how fun it has been. We've had to explain Santa's "parent gift approval" rule to Addie and the "list limit rule" to Jack. They are, of course, hyped up for the gifts of Christmas Day. Hopefully, the music we've had in our home, the books we've read, the Scripture Advent tradition we've continued, and the constant conversations we've had will set the true meaning of Christmas somewhere close to the front of their minds.

Tonight we had the Gardner family over for a great feast, prepared almost entirely by the men. It could have been cold cereal for me and I would have been happy just to not be cooking, but they really took things up a notch with prime rib, macaroni and cheese, green beans, and rolls. It was delicious. All followed up by Brent's homemade apple and pecan pies. Yum!

We closed our evening reading from Luke 2 with our finger puppets. It keeps the kids involved in the story and I loved feeling the peaceful spirit that entered our home at the close of the night as we read about the birth of our Savior. It was a great night!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Piano Recital

Addie had her first piano recital this afternoon and we were definitely proud parents! She played "Deck the Halls" and did really well. Having been a painfully shy child I am always amazed at her ability to just step up to the plate and do things that would have terrified me. Here is the clip of her grand performance. Jack bumped the cameraman a few times, hence the bumps.





Days like today are so good. I've seen a lot of uncertainty in my little girl's face these past few months with the start of elementary school. When she is playing the piano or doing ballet it's my confident girl again and that makes my heart happy. More days like this, please!

Fall Pictures

I took the kids out a few weeks ago to meet up with my friend, Sandra, for fall pictures. Jack was being weird, but she still managed to get me a few nice shots. Addie, as always, was more than happy to strike a pose.

These two are really pals these days. Jack misses "my Addie" when she is away at school, but he's always very excited when she comes home and I think they enjoy their play time together a bit more in the afternoons. Maybe quality over quantity? They swing and play house in their playset all afternoon any day the weather permits. If I let them take a box of raisins out to their "house" they get even more excited. It is so much more enjoyable to make dinner each afternoon as I look outside and see them swinging together instead of being right under my feet bored. Yay for cooler temperatures!


My boy Jack is always a trip. I made him a cape a few weeks ago, which he loves. He claims to be a bad guy still and sees no value in calling himself a good guy. Ever since I knew I was expecting baby #3 I really thought we were having a girl. Jack, though, was certain we were having a boy. We were having a boy and we were going to name him Rio. He was so certain I was thinking maybe he had more intuition than I did. He was bouncing off the walls last week when we were about to go to the sonogram. After we found out we're having a GIRL, Jack was very serious. He didn't have a thing to say for the entire way home. When Nana called to congratulate him on the news, he just replied, "It's not a boy."

He has since recovered from his disappointment and is walking around with various stuffed animals under his shirt which he says are all girls. He wants to name the baby Linda, also from Rio.



Addie is just your typical kindergarten going five year old. Growing and changing by leaps and bounds every single day. She explained the entire digestive system to me last Friday, which I even corrected her on because of course I know more, right? When she explained it to Anthony I learned she had been right and I was wrong. Only the beginning, I'm sure. She is taking ballet and piano. This Saturday she will play a song she has memorized for judges at a piano festival. I'm a little nervous about how it will go! She has the song memorized, I just hope her nerves are tougher than her momma's were!


We are enjoying our fall and finally getting in the swing of the new schedule school has thrown our way. You know...leaving the house fully dressed and fed at the same time you once rolled out of bed. Kinda threw me for a while but we're totally on top of it now. Totally. :)

First Day of Kindergarten

The big day is here! We successfully (I think!) filled out the thick stack of paperwork required to send your kid to school, hopefully proved our residency, stocked up on cool lunch foods, and our little girl is off to kindergarten!

Her daddy is one proud papa.

Things were a little hectic getting started, but Addie kept her cool as she put her lunch in it's place and then put her backpack into her cubby. She was so excited to find her desk.

She was a champ for sure. Hopefully tomorrow is as good. She was all smiles and very excited to be at school. I thought her eyes might just pop out of her head.

Little miss confident...here she is explaining how things work to me. She melted my heart as we were leaving. I gave her a hug and she just said, "If I want to make a new friend I just ask them their name and tell them mine, right?" Oh, sweet girl. There was an Addyson at her table so she was excited to see if her nickname was Addie as well.

Today was probably one of Addie's earliest mornings ever, so I'm very interested to see how she feels at the end of the day. I thought I was fine until I went into her room to make her bed for her and then I was sad. Jack following me around like a lost puppy dog didn't help. They have played so well together this summer and he will definitely miss his sister.

I have pictures from her 5th birthday, but they are trapped on my other camera while I try to find the cord. Other than that, I have no real excuse for my lack of blogging than too many other things to do. I've just finished the first trimester with baby #3 so hopefully some new life will hit me and I'll be able to stay on top of things...for a while!

In the meantime, I'm so grateful for my Adeline. She is eager to learn and most of the time I feel guilty for not spending more time with her teaching her things. I think she would sit and learn something new with me for as long as I would give her the time. I am going to miss her every day but I look forward to the time we'll get together when she gets home. Homework will simply force me to sit down more and work with her, which I look forward to.

Jack is 3!

This little boy of mine turned three this past week. We have had so much fun celebrating him! I feel like such a lucky mom to have my Jack. The outfit in the above picture is one of his favorites. He regularly finds Addie's rain boots or his cowboy boots and puts them on to play. After watching more than our share of "Tangled" he has decided that he needs a satchel like Flynn Ryder. He'll be in the middle of playing, stop and say, "wait, where is my satchel?"

Jack and Addie play so well these days. His ability to communicate is so nice! They play house mostly. Today they were using all of the birthday bags from Jack's party to pretend to "pack" for vacation and then load up in the recliner (aka "car"). For the past year Jack has called Addie "my Addie." I will be sad when he stops doing that.

He also still loves to play with cars, but has moved on to include action figures. Even Spiderman, whom he knows nothing about, is one of his favorites. He says he's a bad guy and loves to try to spar with his sister, which usually gets her upset.

We had a Cars 2 birthday party for him yesterday with a house full of 15 kids ages ranging from 3-7. All of Addie's friends love Jack, hence the older kids. They call him Jackie and love to make him laugh. I had fun planning the party. I made some little mini cakes of the Cars 2 characters and my dad and I decorated them. As I was looking at my destroyed kitchen complete with 10 different icing bags with different colors and tips, having spent what seemed like an eternity on each car I had to admit to myself the real truth: I would do just about anything for this kid! He's got his momma wrapped around his finger. :)

I put this little video together to show some of Jack's personality as well as his birthday party. The song I chose was "Godspeed" by the Dixie Chicks. This album came out in 2002, 6 years before Jack was born but I remember listening to it and dreaming of a little boy. I'm so grateful to have him in my life.

Untitled from Julie Berg on Vimeo.

Yardwork

This post is almost exclusively for Emily, my garden friendly sister. If gardening bores you...just skip on ahead of this! This is one of my favorite views of our front yard. I love all of the green! We planted pink and purple verbena and purple wave petunias in the beds. They are slowly filling in. Hoping they can tolerate the heat better than the Impatiens from last year did!


These salvia were randomly placed around the oak trees in the front yard so we transplanted them into a different bed. We missed one, so there's still a loner hiding amongst the day lilies. I like them clustered together. They looked funny all spread out.


I love the day lilies this time of year. Crazy blooms!! They are prettier in the morning but I can't seem to get myself to capture them early so I had to take an afternoon picture.


These are the wave petunias Anthony and the kids potted a few months ago. I'm looking forward to the ones we just put in the beds looking like this.


Anthony's pride and joy: Jack and the garden. :) He read all about the square foot garden and appears to have successfully executed it!


The first bell peppers of the year.


Beginnings of tomatoes...can't you just smell them??


The first zucchini harvested.


Jack was so excited to hold it.


Then he decided it was too heavy.


And my favorite: The herb bed. I love cooking with fresh herbs and Anthony hates the price so yay for everyone!


It has been really fun to have the kids involved with our garden. I look forward to this every year. The first things we harvested were a few jalepeno peppers. Addie came running in with them and said, "Mom! We have food in our yard!!"

Recital 2011

Addie had her second ballet recital today and it was SO fun! We are all tired, at least Addie and I are. It was hard for me to find a picture of her where you couldn't see it in her eyes!

I've spent just as many hours as Addie has involved in ballet so I should get a picture, too!


This was my debut ballet bun hairdo fixing opportunity! I was pretty proud of myself for mastering a new skill.



Two tired kiddos! Jack and Anthony went out all morning while we were doing the dress rehearsal, so Jack just had a short nap in the car to go on after a late night last night.


Here are the girls lined up and ready to go! So cute!


Mikaela and Addie


On stage looking so together...like they know what they are doing...


Then the fun begins. This isn't the greatest picture, but it highlights the fact that everyone on the stage is doing something different. I should explain that the goal of ballet at this age is form. It's all about the form of the move you are doing at the wrong time...




Addie and Elise


What fun! Addie improved so much this year. It makes me excited for next year. Today was really fun. My favorite part: I spent most of my day one-on-one with my little girl. I love the days I have to just focus on her!

Easter Weekend

We had a fun-filled Easter weekend in Pearland with both of our families. We went to the beach with Joe and Breana Berg, Dan and Amber Wilson, and Joe and Melissa Wilson(plus everyone's kids!) It was crazy windy and maybe a tad bit dirty but we still had a great time. We spent Easter Sunday with the Wilsons and it was a great day. We snapped a few pictures after church, even though it was hot and the sun was in everyone's eyes! I guess we all look a little more related if we have the same squinty expression on our faces, right?



I love this cousin picture! We were missing William because he was napping, but it was a cute crowd still.

On Monday Mom and I had a little fun on our own, which was a great treat. Later in the day we met with all of the Berg sibling families (Serena and Dave, Joe and Breana, and James and Shelby) down at Hermann Park for a dinner picnic. Breana was the only one who took pictures cause I'm kinda lame like that lately!!

Mike and Shaela Visit

My older brother, Mike, and his family came to visit us during their spring break. We mostly chilled out and let the kids play around the house, but it was a great change of pace for us and I think they enjoyed the warmer weather than what they have in Utah. Jack had an ear infection while they were here, which also contributed to the slow down, but Matthew, Katie, and Porter are the easiest going kids I know so it was all good.

The one outing we did go on was to the Dallas Car Show at the convention center downtown. Matthew, Addie, and Jack were with us as we went around the show. Here the kids are playing on the longhorns outside of the convention center.


Jack and Matthew were in heaven!! Cars as far as they could see. We quickly made our way over to the luxury car section where Matthew explained all of the cars, like Bugati, to me that I'd never heard of. He did humor me by letting me check out the new Honda Odyssey before we went into the "cool" section. :)

I had to save some face from my minivan shopping, so I showed Matthew what I would drive if I weren't driving a minivan. And had $60,000 burning a hole in my pocket. And had zero concerns about the price of gas...yeah, I lost him again. Oh well, the QX56 is pretty to look at as I drive by it on the road.


Happy Matthew!


Here is how we otherwise entertained ourselves...Katie sunbathed on the driveway.


Matthew stole the laptop as often as possible while we were outside. He's so grown up I can't hardly believe it!! One day he asked me if he could do anything for me. I had him wash my car...so awesome. I'm thinking I need a 9 year old around the house...


Porter was happy with the water table. He's a champ...pretty much always happy and easy to please. There were many times I was in Jack's room reading him a book before he went to bed that Porter would slip in and snuggle with us. It's like he could hear the sound of a book being read! Sweet little boy.


We enjoyed having cousins here and look forward to making more memories with them after they move to TEXAS this summer. Yay!