A Boy and His Tiger

Will and "tiger" are starting to remind me of Calvin and Hobbes.

Holidays

From Thanksgiving to New Years there's a whole lot of activity, family time, money spent, and food eaten. 

Here's the numbers. 

4 different states 

2 murder mystery parties 

3 Thanksgiving dinners 

2 birthdays 

10 personalized calendars 

2 "special" musical numbers 

3 Christmas light displays 

1 mountain hiked 

53 relatives seen 

lots of board games 

too many calories...

Here's a large chunk of the 53 relatives we saw over the holidays.  This is the Mickelson gang celebrating Thanksgiving in one of the many cultural halls of Orem, UT.  We had a great time with the most delicious food, a good bunco tournament, and an eclectic talent show.  Will's talent was doing an impression of a plane crashing.  

We spent most of our time in Utah here in Aspen Grove.  The snow was falling as we drove up here, and it was so cute to see the excitement in the little boys voices.  

We spent Christmas with my family in Washington.  Here's the Sommercorn Murder Mystery, "Under the Big Top."  This was the year of the fake mustache.  It started at the Mickelson murder mystery and made its way to Seattle, and even onto Joseph's face in the nativity below.

Mustache wearing, footie pajama-ed, guitar player.  Sorry Hailey, I had to include this picture.  

It was sunny and warm for my birthday again!  So I got out the sprinkler for Will to play in for a bit.  He got cold and bored quickly.

I went to get a haircut for my birthday and came home with a whole new look!  Elliot wouldn't let me hold him for a bit.  I got some sushi supplies for my birthday, and a bike!  My last bike was stolen when I was pregnant with Will about 3.5 years ago, and I've been missing it since then.  I've been taking the boys on bike rides lately and it is so much fun!  Elliot is not a fan of the bike trailer, but hopefully he'll come around.

For Elliot's birthday we made this classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  The frosting was made with sour cream and Elliot would not eat one bite of it.  Epic fail!!  Pity.  I definitely enjoyed it and ended up eating a lot of cake that weekend.

Britton's family met us here for the birthday party and we went to the Palo Alto Children's Museum and Zoo.  Elliot got to chase balls around and climb on fake animals.  His favorite thing!

Another memorable part of the holidays was trying to take family pictures with our own camera and tripod.  We pushed our jumbo stroller up a huge hill to use this outdoors-y background.

Two photo shoots later we end up picking a slightly blurry picture as the best of the bunch.  Maybe better luck next year.

We are still developing our own Christmastime traditions.  We got to see a lot of holiday light displays this year.  One in Spanish Fork, UT, one at the Oakland temple, and Clam Lights pictured below in Renton, WA.  On the middle left you can make out the walking clam lights courtesy of Ivars seafood.

Nana got the boys some adorable matching Christmas outfits.  In fact, all the cousins had matching clothes thanks to the new Carter's Outlet in Brentwood.

It's Christmas morning!  Britton says that to Will every time he wakes up.  Will was super excited Christmas morning and was very gracious when opening his presents.  Everything was, "Just what I wanted!"  It made the adults feel very appreciated.

Finally, we have decided on a New Year's tradition.  Hike a big mountain!  Of course this is only possible when the weather is ridiculously good.  The Olson ladies started from my sister in-law's back yard, and hiked all the way to the top of Mt. Diablo.  5 1/2 hours later we had the absolute best view of the bay area.  It was a fun and healthy way to start the new year.  Happy 2012 to you all!

Merry Christmas!

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Monsters and Spiders

Our Halloween festivities began at the annual Stanford family pumpkin patch.  There was no candy this year which made Will more than just a little disappointed.  "I got all dressed up, and all I get is this pumpkin I can't eat?!"  But there was plenty of candy at the rest of the Halloween activities to repay him for dressing up as Mike Wazowski.  Or a "struction site monster" as Will liked to describe his costume.



We also had a church Halloween Party, a courtyard party, and then a belated Olson Halloween party in Brentwood. I had so many chances to dress up, but it just didn't happen this year. The closest I got was spending 5 minutes drawing a spider web on a white t-shirt with a Sharpie.


My costume was a little less pathetic when accompanied by our cute crawling spider. Elliot hung on to the crawling phase just long enough for the spider costume to work. He took his first steps today! Despite feeling miserable with a fever and runny nose he walked across our living room by himself.

The Pre-Christmas Letter

Whew, it's been a while...again.  Let's just get started on the updates for everyone.

Starting with the youngest, Elliot the little schnookums.


I think this picture was taken a while ago.  He crawls up on his knees now.  But he still loves chasing balls around!  A few weeks ago Elliot and I flew up to Seattle to attend my niece's baptism.  At the airport we had some time to kill at the gate so I got out a ball for Elliot to chase around.  I think EVERY person on our flight fell in love with the little guy.  Look at that face, how can you not?  Watching the joy on his face as he throws and chases the ball around is just enchanting.  He slept for most of the flight so charming everyone beforehand wasn't necessary, but a good tactic in the future.  Elliot got lots of love from his cousins in Seattle and he gets lots of love from the kids here at our playground.  He is such a good sport when kids are picking him up, tickling him, getting in his face and whatnot. 
He is still eating everything in sight.  For a while I thought he had learned his lesson with sand, but he's back to being a sand-eater.



He chews on chalk, leaves, sticks, cords, stickers, balloon pieces, toys, books, and much more.  I do my best to watch him, keep the floor clean, and fish things out of his mouth, but he's no only child.  I have actually found a Trader Joe's sticker and a balloon piece in his poop.  I was so annoyed to find the balloon piece because I tried so hard to clean all those up! 
Lately he has been acting so much older...  He interacts with Will a lot more.  Will likes to make Elliot laugh, and Elliot likes to destroy anything Will is playing with.  He prefers to walk with assistance, and Britton has gotten him to stand up by himself for a few seconds.  I think he has said, Mama and ball.  It hasn't been very clear or consistent yet.  He's still my sweet baby, and I'm starting to understand why people don't want their kids to grow up.

Speaking of Will



William and his daddy started school together this fall.  It was Will's first day of his first year of school, and Britton's first day of hopefully his last year of school.  The Rainbow School is on campus and about a 10 minute walk from our house.  Will was SO excited to go to school like all the kids around here.  There is hardly anyone around in the mornings.  He goes to school MWF from 9-12.  It's the perfect schedule for us.  Elliot still naps in the morning so I have some kid-free time on those days.  Usually I do really boring stuff like clean or shower.  Nothing amazing.  I do have to co-op there twice a month.  It should be fun to see what preschool is like for Will since it's hard to get any real information about his time spent there.  I have to use clues like paint on his shirt or really muddy shoes.  He doesn't have much interest in drawing or making crafts so I'm hoping preschool will give him more exposure.
When Will is home he spends most of his time playing with trains or cars inside or playing with friends outside.  His favorite right now--I've heard BF mentioned--is a girl named Liesel.  I never really thought they would get along since she mostly teased him when he was younger, and they fought a lot.  But lately they are so excited when the other gets home from preschool.  They run up to each other, sometimes hug, and shout about what they're going to do.  Usually play "restaurant", trains, or ride bikes.

They both started preschool this year, and were so excited to go. This picture was taken before school started. They both had their backpacks and helmets on, ready to ride off to school. This picture was also taken seconds before a big fight between them. Liesel, or Leelee as she's known here, wanted to say, "Ready, set, go." Then they would ride their bikes to Liesel's house. But Will had to start early which started Liesel crying and swearing she wasn't going to play with him anymore.
While Elliot and I were in Seattle, Britton and Will were in Disneyland with the Olsons. This was Will's second trip to Disneyland, but he doesn't remember the first trip at all. They went for the special Halloween event, and the whole family dressed up as dalmatians!  They had such a great time.  There were hardly any lines and plenty of candy.  Will's favorite ride was, surprisingly, the Matterhorn.  I was mostly surprised he was big enough to ride it.  They stayed up until midnight to watch the spooky fireworks show.



Britton is doing it all. Seriously, what is he not doing right now? And, somehow, he is doing it all well. He's a busy grad student by day, and a fantastic father and Disneyland party-er by night.


This is shaping up to be--possibly, maybe, fingers crossed--his last year at Stanford.  He doesn't have any more classes to take, and can focus on getting his own research done.  He has a few conferences to attend this fall.  He already went to one in Tennessee.  There is one in Seattle and another in Baltimore in November.  A paper he wrote with a colleague was just accepted by a journal today, and he needs to start applying for post-docs at labs and universities for next year.
He just helped organize a mixer for the Elders Quorum at church.  He plays squash and catch with friends, and is a faithful calorie counter.  This is starting to sound like a Christmas letter.

Me...  I'm still here.  Taking care of business.  Day after day after day.



After visiting Seattle I thought it would be a fun activity for Will to collect the fall leaves, and make an art project with them.  We went outside and I quickly realized that it may be fall in other parts of the country, but it hasn't shown up here yet.  It should soon.  This weekend I'll be helping with the pumpkin patch for all the Stanford families.  We're also organizing a Halloween party for our courtyard.  I just got some supplies to make Elliot's costume.  He's going to be a crawling spider!  So cute.  Will is going to be a "struction site monster."  Britton and I will come up with something for our own costumes.  After Halloween maybe the leaves will change colors and we will finally stop wearing shorts and flip flops.  Except for Britton.  That is his year-round grad school uniform.
At church I'm Will's nursery teacher.  He's happy about it, and so am I!  His class is a bunch of well-behaved little boys.  I'm reading The Path Between the Seas about the creation of the Panama canal.  I really like it, but it's 622 pages long and consuming most of my free time right now.  Maybe after I finish I can work with Britton on his Panamanian genealogy, and then we can justify a trip to Panama.  I definitely want to see the canal now.
After pregnancy number two I wasn't sure if I would want to run again.  But I do!  Erin, Britton's sister, convinced me to run a half marathon with her in November in Santa Barbara.  We'll have most of the girls in the Olson family going on the trip down there.  It's nice to have some motivation again.  I am supposed to run 10 miles tomorrow.  I have some running buddies here that just ran a full marathon on Sunday.  I hope they keep running.  It will be a boring 10 miles tomorrow by myself.

Will's 3rd Birthday

We planned Will's first friend birthday party!  We held it right outside on the playground.  The theme this year was trains...of course.  Will doesn't watch Thomas as much as he used to, but trains are definitely still his favorite toy to play with.  Britton and I had a lot of fun putting everything together.


Our goal was to make a cake that actually tasted as good as it looked.  Success!  It was like a banana cake with custard filling topped with fudge frosting.  It was like banana Boston cream cake.


We also borrowed some extra train tracks from one of Will's friend to make a giant train table.  Will LOVES stores with train tables.  I have the hardest time tearing him away.  Britton managed to use almost every piece of track we had.  It was a big hit with the kids.


We also made this pin the funnel on Thomas game.  Will totally peeked.


There were 23 kids at the party...wowza!  I felt like a lot of Will's friends have moved away recently, but we definitely managed to get a big crowd for his birthday.  There are a lot of neighbors, a few kids from church, and some of our friends.
Will got a lot of great presents.  Mostly train stuff of course.  I was surprised at how thoughtful some of Will's friends were.  One of our neighbors was at our house one day, and overheard that Will wanted a Thomas backpack for school.  She is four years-old.  She said, "I'll get you a Thomas backpack."  And sure enough she did!  Also our next door neighbors have a boy a little older than Will who is just as obsessed with trains.  Maybe even more obsessed with trains than Will.  I was surprised when he got Will a train that he already had.  The Gordon train that we put on his cake in fact.  But Will was so excited for his NEW Gordon.  I realized later that Will's old Gordon was kind of broken so his friend wanted to get him a new working one.

The birthday party wouldn't be complete without some tears from the birthday boy right?  It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...

The party continued the next day in Brentwood.  We celebrated both Will and his uncle Alex's birthday.  They were born exactly 10 years apart so Alex turned 13 this year.

We had a nice family dinner followed by some good conversation.  Everyone is laughing at one of Britton's witty remarks.



This is such a sweet picture of Will and Tia.  None of the family presents were train related!  A little variety is good.  He got a cute fireman rain jacket, a sit-n-spin, and some gear magnets.  Britton and I were super excited about these presents too.  The rain jacket can double as a great Halloween costume as Tia pointed out.  I loved sit-n-spins when I was a kid, and Britton loved playing with gear magnets when he was a kid.


Here's the birthday boys together.

Camera Update

We finally updated our camera!  We got one that will take excellent pictures AND videos.  Now starts the process of learning how to use it, and learning more about photography in general.  Any recommendations for doing this?

These pictures are from the first day we played around with the camera.  Elliot is sitting in his favorite car.  He gets so excited when we put him in this he starts bouncing up and down.  He is at such a cute age!

Elliot is at the stage where he can't help but grab and eat my glasses.

July Shenanigans

I thought my vacation would be over after the Hawaii/Oregon saga, but a vacation 2011 trilogy was meant to be. Here's how the month went down.
After returning from Oregon we spent a few days together as a family before Britton was scheduled to help a friend drive a car from here to New York. It was the ultimate man friend cross country road trip. I'm not sure what Britton is doing in this picture, but with the pajama pants you can tell the road trip is off to a good start. They took a scenic route stopping in Rexburg (Home of BYU-Idaho and Britton's newly wed little bro, Derek.) The next day they drove through Yellowstone, and took their time enjoying the beautiful scenery.They even took some time out to play frisbee in this sprawling field.
They were having lots of fun talking and driving through Montana when disaster struck! They were just barely withing reach of cell phone service, and called a tow truck. They paid an unexpected visit to Broadus, Montana. A very small, small town. They had to ship some stuff to New York, and fly their seperate ways. I'm sorry for Peter and Nikki's loss, but I was very glad to have Britton back a few days early.
And then he flew out to Washington D.C. for his annual CSGF conference, and was going to stay an extra week to attend his college roommate's wedding. My mom generously offered to fly me and the boys out to Washington while he was gone.
Thus began my unexpected two week adventure. We spent every day with Will's cousins, Nick and Natalie. My mom watches them for my sister while she teaches at a private school. My favorite outing was our trip to Coulon Park. I loved going there as a kid, as a teenager, and I'm still loving it. They have a sandy beach with really cold water. The kids froze faster than I expected so we warmed up on the playground for a while.
Then we headed over to the "island" (bird refuge) for some secret agent adventures. They all had code names. Will was Agent Weirdo, Natalie was Agent Lame-o, and Nick was Agent Awesome. Can you guess who was the mastermind of this game?
The island is really small, but it has lots of criss-crossing paths perfect for secret agent exploration. I just sat in one spot with my stroller and my camera documenting the fun. Every once in a while they would come out into this clearing with these ridiculously large water guns. Below, Agent Awesome and Agent Weirdo are trying to convince Agent Lame-o to cross through the water to the other side. She is scared of losing her flip flops.
Here's the whole group together with a view of Lake Washington in the back. Elliot was pretty irate most of this outing.
We ended the day with some ice cold milk shakes from Kidd Valley. Wipe that grin off your face Agent Weirdo!
Speaking of funny faces, Elliot does the cutest kissy face. He manages to suck his whole mouth in before you hear the smack sound. Kissy face or grandpa face? It's a toss up. No offense Dad.
During those two weeks I got back into the exercise groove. I got to go running every day sometimes without kids (!) thanks to babysitters at home. I also took a beautiful hike on Cougar mountain with my sister in-law Sara while my dad watched the kids. I grew up there, but didn't really take advantage of the many hiking trails in the area. Thanks for convincing me to go Sara!
I really don't get to see my family often enough. I got to spend some time with my sister and we took a trip up to the train museum in Snoqualmie. Will was in heaven! Below everyone is standing on the original train station platform in front of the ticket booth.
Besides the outings, we spent a lot of time at my parents house. We did a lot more motorcycle riding than I was expecting. I even rode this little one around and, and Will couldn't get enough of it. Then my brother bought TWO motorcycles while I was there and could be found working on them every day.
It was probably a good thing I exercised so much because I ate junk food galore. There was a large supply of ice cream and Cheetos just asking to be eaten. Two of Will's most favorite things.
Will was a little disappointed upon arriving at Grandma's house to find out that there were no trains or train tracks. But the amount of cousins and other stuff definitely made up for it. One of the fist days we were there my cousin came over with her kids, and we had a big water balloon fest. The kids were trying to lure people outside so they could ambush them with water balloons. Don't they look menacing?

I hope we can see them all more often.

I know this post should be over, but I feel like I should elaborate on Britton's trip to the east coast. His conference was actually in Virginia this year instead of Washington D.C. He won first place for the poster session presentation! Way to go Britton! He took all the work he's been doing lately to his adviser and I think Britton is now on track to graduate next summer! After the conference he spent a few days with his friend from high school, Bill, who now lives in Virginia with his family. Then Britton had a great time playing Halo with his ol' college roommates and attended Jon Bennion's beautiful wedding also in Virginia. This is the only photo I have of Britton at the wedding. :) Checking email? All playing Words With Friends with each other? I know... Angry Birds.