The end of an era

This year for Christmas I received the BEST present a mother could ever hope for...my

son decided he's done with diapers forever! Cole is potty trained and it's the COOLest thing ever. Our experience with it was a positive one, he showed interest in using the potty about a year ago so we encouraged him and reinforced it and got a little excited...and then he totally dropped it. So we kept the potty in the bathroom and would remind him about it occasionally, but when he walked in our room the week before Christmas holding a pair of undies and saying "I want to wear these today", I wasn't expecting it. A few accidents later, and he's totally on undies all day, even during naptime, and just using pull ups at night. It's the most amazing thing how it just clicked one day, I hope it's this easy with Kate! Anyway, that's the biggest news around here. And potty terms and body parts have never been said so much in such a casual way around here. It's great. Also, I'm giving you a fair warning that Cole is only wearing undies in about half of the pictures throughout this post. Just so you know. :)

So this past while has produced plenty of busy, crazy days but also lots of lazy, lounging around playing days. It's been a good mix. I'm still LOVING being home all day and just focusing being a mom and wife, it brings so much satisfaction and fulfillment to me. It's challenging enough to keep me feeling busy and not bored, and still relaxed enough to enjoy and be in the moment. Other than kids stuff, I've been subbing over at my old elementary school when I want to, and also running out in the snow and freezing temps a lot and loving it. I was running on a trail this week when a deer jumped out from behind a tree and almost gave me a heart attack. We have such beautiful places to run around here, it's great to experience them in the winter with the snow changing everything as well.

Anyway, I've got a bunch to catch up on. Here we go!

Oh dear, it's worse than I thought. Back in NOVEMBER, we road tripped down to Vegas with Mom, Dad, and Tegan to support Christine's Aggies in the WAC tournament, where they completely surprised everyone to WIN the whole thing! They blew Hawaii away in 3 games for the championship, it was surreal. So proud of her!

Here's Kate on the 6 hour drive...perfectly content!

Cole loved all the fantasy of Las Vegas, it was cool to experience it with him. Mom and dad and Tegan were so fun to sight see with. Although a little chilly, we made the best of it! Thanks to dad for pushing the stroller and hauling Kate's car seat around everywhere.
This Venetian statue was real, and if you pay him money he'll smile for a picture and shake Cole's hand with his pinky. He was talking about it for days.
They're #1!
We were SO lucky to get Jackson, Janale, Eliot, Shaely, Rod, Lisa, and Jess to come over for Thanksgiving. We really missed Jordan, Jolene, and Austyn! But know firsthand how hard making that 12 hour drive can be once the little ones come. I love how the girls wanted to include Kate in their play.
Catching the lights...and freezing our tooshies off. Worth it!
One of my fave pics of Cole ever taken.
Oh another happening...Tyler had knee surgery! He had a tear in his miniscus so they knocked him out then went in and scraped and fixed it all up. I was there when we woke up from the anesthetic, and he was sooo funny! He knew he would be loopy so he was purposefully trying to be funny and make all these jokes, it was great. Next time I'm bringing a video camera. The surgery was successful and he has no pain when he runs anymore.
Our family grateful tree was really fun, I think this is my teacher need to create some type of bulletin board type project coming through. I just slapped a tree together on the wall, put out some leaves and markers for people to write on, and this was made! It was fun to see what everyone was grateful for and think about what really matters to us.
Just a funny memory, Cole had a poopy diaper (one thing I DO NOT miss) and was sitting on Shane's head. Ha!
After church...the boys came home and snuggled up on the couch while I started dinner. How cute!
This kid LOVES her bath. Now that she can sit up by herself, she splashes and kicks and would stay in forever if she could.
Sitting here looking cute is hard work. It just wears her right out.
Getting excited for Christmas!
We had our annual Morrill Family Christmas Weekend in SL before Christmas, this year our service project was to stock the shelves at the Bishops Storehouse on Welfare Square. I love doing service with my fam, it brings us cloer and really reminds us how blessed we are and how great it is to think of others.
Look at his tall tower!
Later that day, we got all gussied up to meet Santa at the Harley store.
My least favorite part of this tradition - the scantily clad elves that have to be in the picture too. Ugggh. It stinks that when I look at my cute two year old's face I also have to see cleavage. The Santa is great though!We stayed at Little America and had a blast in their indoor/outdoor pool. It was Kate's first swimming experience and, just like the bathtub, she couldn't get enough.


Finding a tree! We found such a great tree this year. But it was freezing. But I wouldn't trade in our yummy smelling real tree any day!
Jess and I went domestic and made aprons for our sisters-in-law this year. They turned out not so bad, thanks to Jessica and my mom guiding me step by step.
These are the kind of things that we do for entertainment around here: Cole holds the end of a ball of yarn and starts spinning. Instant fun!
Our beautiful tree!
Cole wanted to measure to see how big he was next to Kate. Look how long he looks! When did he do all that growing?
:)
I love this beautiful baby!
This is funny cause it looks like he's sneaking away from the presents.
Craft day!

She loves being in this walker and scooting around everywhere.
Look at her hair! This makes me smile cause I said "Look at her hair!" right before I took the picture and Cole thought I said "Look at his hair!". And he said "What's in my hair?"
My Christmas present: 3 new barstools! From right to left, this is what the wood turned into, nice sturdy legs. I will put pics up when they are done.
He wanted to read this Christmas book to Kate, he just loves her. He is still the best big brother that she could ever have, so sweet and kind. Only an occasional wet willy or poke.
Then he wanted to feed her her bottle, he sat here for the whole 30 minutes while she finished. It was adorable!
My masculine son likes to wear aprons while he helps me cook in the kitchen, this is the one he picked this day. I love the undies underneath.
Home for Christmas! I love being home during the holidays especially, it reminds me of growing up and so many terrific memories. Here we're making a snowman in the backyard with some of the 2 feet of new snow they had.

Hanging out with auntie.
Sledding with Tegan. I love hanging out with her, she's always up for something fun.
Cole was not into sledding at all, to my surprise. He would much rather lay right here at the bottom of our hill and eat the snow.
Here's Santa's snack - girl scout Samoas, a Sprite, and veggies for the reindeer! He was amazed in the morning when it had disappeared!
Gifts from Santa - he asked for a fireman outfit and fishing pole. He has been way into firemen since seeing Uncle Jordan's truck and outfit up close, he asked for everything - oxygen tank, face mask, boots, ax, etc. He was so excited that Santa knew what to bring.
Wake up baby girl!
Dad got mom a flute, she had to sell hers back when they were poor young married couple. She was so surprised.
Riding the four wheeler with daddy.
So the fam had this great idea to dress up for Christmas dinner, they went to DI and got everyone an 80s outfit. We had so much fun getting ready for dinner and seeing each other looking so cool. These boys are up to no good. They're really putting out the vibe aren't they.
Check out my shoulder pads! I could play football with those.
Hee hee. "I'm relaxin mommy".
As you can tell, those goggles were Cole's new favorite thing for a couple weeks there. He wore them to Costco this day, and I had to take a picture because I've been waiting for this day since Kate was born: the day that Kate can sit with Cole in the shopping cart seat at Costco. It's just so cute. I don't know what face Cole is pulling here but it cracked me up.
He's trying to kiss me again.
One great Christmas gift we got as a family was a trip to Glenwood Springs, CO by way of Amtrak. It was a BLAST! The train picked us up in SL at 3:30 am, drove to Glenwood in 9 hours, we spent the next day and returned home at 11 pm. You can't imagine how excited this little guy was at 2 am when we woke him up to drive to the train station. He was just giddy. His favorite movie is Polar Express so he couldn't have done anything cooler.

This was a lounge car where you could sit and look out at the scenery.
We saw some beautiful views in the morning.
My favorite view by far!
Shane thought it would be funny to stick Cole up in the overhead baggage place, it was.
The boys bringing the luggage to the room for us.
Cole cuddled up in the bed.
We had to walk across this bridge to get to the hotel from the train and back. It was such a cool place to go, the hot springs pool was huge and fun. Highly recommend it.


Here's where we stayed.
Waiting at the quaint train station.
Cole taking his nap on the train. He also loved eating on the train, that was fun.
More hanging out time at home.

Wearing daddy's pants.

This was a good time, Cole is chewing gum and wants to do a somersault. He flips over and comes up like this, with the gum stuck in his hair! It had fallen out while he flipped and landed in his hair. After a few minutes of pulling and combing out, we were able to save the hair and remove all stickiness. Whew.

Kate's first experience in the snow...after we came inside.
Kids in pots.
Funny hair!

Looking ahead, we've got a weekend at Grandma and Grandpa Morrill's coming up while TP has a Klondike campout with the scouts, and also Valentine's Day. Things can't get much better!