Is a month off from school really long enough?

Well, this is it. Christian is trying to mentally prepare himself to start his last semester of coursework in Pharmacy school. It just seems so unreal. In the 6 1/2 years we've been married, I have never known a time where Christian didn't have homework and studying to do. Now, this does not mean that he is graduating quite yet...oh no, there's another year and a half until that glorious day. What this means is he that after this semester, he will immediately start doing a year of Pharmacy rotations and no more classes! He is really excited for this part of his education. He will learn so much to prepare him for the rest of his career. For me, this means he will have a regular schedule and when he comes home, he's all ours! No more shutting himself away in his office and coming out for short breaks (which usually include wrestling Anders). We have really been taking advantage of this Christmas Break with Christian. We have kept so busy and Christian has jammed in as many shifts at work as he could. These last three days of the break, we have been trying really hard to do fun things with Anders. I had to post these pictures of what we did on Wednesday. I saw online that Classic Skating just added a new Mini Bowling activity. I took Anders to a bowling alley last week for my aunt Cherilyn's birthday party, and he had an absolute blast. I knew he would love to give this a whirl. Boy, was I right! He flew through those 10 frames faster than anybody I've ever seen. This is such a fun thing for kids! The balls are a lot smaller and the lane is a lot shorter. It is literally a miniature bowling lane. I definitely recommend it! Of course we couldn't stop there. We had to play arcade games and jump in the bounce houses. What a day! It was so much fun to watch my boys enjoy themselves so much!

Is it just me, or was making a snowman much easier 20 years ago?

I've been promising Anders for the past two days that I will take him outside and build a snowman. He has this intense love for snowman (thanks to good ol' Once There Was a Snowman). Every time we drive by a house with a real snowman or even one of those blow-up snowmen in their yard, he gets very excited. I knew he would think it was so cool to have a snowman of his own. Just drawing them on his easel and making them out of play dough isn't enough anymore. Yesterday, I waited and waited for the snow to quit and it was not looking good. I'd considered postponing it for one more day, but there's no chance of a 2 year-old allowing that to happen. I finally decided to brave the snow in my face and make our first attempt. I had forgotten that building a snowman required getting on your knees. I of course, do not have snow pants...I doubt they even make them in maternity size! Boy, was a sight for sore eyes! I was bending over every which way to try to figure out how I could manage without getting my knees wet. I'm sure glad we decided to build it in the backyard and not the front! We finally finished the snowman and Anders could not have been more proud. He told everyone he saw that we built a snowman (including everyone at the grocery store) and that Mommy rolled and rolled and rolled. Hmmm, it sure felt like it. Man, my muscles are still sore. I swear, it wasn't that hard 20 years ago!

Anders loves to pick up the snow and throw it at people because of his obsession of Elf. However, he does not like to fall or sit in the snow. When that happens, it reminds me a lot of the Christmas Story. He just yells, "uh oh, mommy, help me!" He stays in place until I run to his rescue.

This is the proud new snowman owner. He was giving the snowman a high-five and having a cute little conversation with it. I guess it was a good thing that I ran out of energy and only could make it 3 feet high. Now, it's Anders-sized.

Sim Plify

For Christmas one year, someone gave my mom a hand-painted sign that says, "Simplify." The year she got it, I was a little confused about what it meant until I finally gained the courage to ask what it meant. The confusion was because there's a small space in the word, making it look like it says, "Sim Plify." Of course, I ask, "what does sim plify mean?" I felt much better when my sister-in-law said, "I was wondering the same thing!" I continue to feel much better every time I hear someone else ask the same question. I think the purpose of this sign is to remind us to simplify our lives to be able to really take it all in. This Christmas, I took on a few too many projects and got really lost in the stress and overwhelming feeling that Christmas can bring. After a couple of melt-downs, Christian convinced me that it would be okay to be later than I'd planned on a couple of things and just abandon others. I finally made this decision the week before Christmas. That week was thoroughly enjoyable and I hope I can remember to simplify my life next Christmas. My New Years Resolution will be to start projects throughout the year and have them finished before the Christmas season begins. I love Christmas and get so frustrated when the holiday is over before I even realize it's here! Thank goodness I had decided to make those changes before the week before Christmas because here is what that week included:

Firth Family Christmas Party

My family has a really fun tradition where we gather our very extended family together to have a family Christmas party. Our group is so big that we have to have it at a church. We have a small program, a visit from Santa (including gifts), an ornament exchange, and a DELICIOUS spread! This picture is of all the cousins, 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins twice removed (or whatever) waiting for Santa to call their name so they can have their present.

We did everything we could this year to prep Anders for this big Santa debut. We had him sit on the mall Santa's lap a couple of time, we talked him through it, I even sat on the floor with him while we waited for Santa to call his name. After all the pep talking, Anders still panicked! I of course, end up sitting on Santa's lap with him. Don't mind the hair in my face, my main focus was avoiding a panic attack on Anders' part. I was proud of him for uttering that he wanted a Wall-E toy to Santa. Of course, Santa delivered! Anders is a proud owner of a Wall-E toy!

This is our cute Ry Ry and Anders watching the program intently. I had to take a picture because it was so dang cute! They sat right on the front row, well, most of the time.

Here's the only picture of adults that we took. It is of my sister, Carly (recent U of U graduate)and her....(?) Jordan.

Speirs Family Christmas Party

This is my grandma and grandpa Speirs. We have a Christmas Eve tradition that I look forward to every year more than almost anything. You wouldn't know by just looking, but these two make the most AMAZING team in the kitchen! They prepare this fantastic lasagna dinner for us all to enjoy and they always make sure to make enough for everyone to take left-overs. Afterward, they give us their gifts and we open our Christmas pajamas. This year is our "in-law" year to spend Christmas, so we get to celebrate it on a different day (which means double the Christmas). Part of our tradition is that my grandparents stay late on Christmas Eve and come back really early on Christmas morning to watch us open presents. Now that Billy and I are married and have incorporated the "in-law year," we cram it all in on one crazy night.

Now do you believe me when I saw it gets a little crazy? This is Anders modeling his new matching big-boy undies my parents gave him and Ry Ry. Anders of course, wore it over his diaper and it was just too much. They were doing karate moves and jumping off chairs. It was a mixture of a sugar high and matching undies excitement! Notice the irony of Anders shirt! Whoever invented toddler boxer-briefs knew what they were doing...those chunky legs really accent the cute little tushy.

Yes, we all hit the jack-pot. I walked away feeling like Christmas was over and I could return all my gifts that I bought.
This is Anders checking out his new Imaginex castle he got. He loves this gift so much. He wants to take it out everyday and asks me where the "boys" are. I finally figured out that he was referring to knights.

Christmas with the Larsens

This Christmas was the Larsen's year to celebrate it together. We headed down to good ol' rural Utah on Christmas Eve to begin the Christmas festivities. The only kids that came down for Christmas Eve this year were Anders and Braxton. We had plenty of space and really enjoyed ourselves. This picture is of my favorite tradition Christian and I started when Anders was born. After he opens his Christmas jammies, he opens a new Christmas book that Christian reads as his bedtime story.

This was just after Anders opened his laptop on Christmas morning. He was very excited to have his own laptop just like Christian and I do. I am excited because that means he will not want to punch my keys while I'm on my laptop...hopefully.

Here is Christian after he opened his first gift. They are little ballerina slipper socks. They are so cute and I can't wait to put them on our little baby! Isn't my husband a hottie in the morning??

Some other things that happened over the week of Christmas as taking Anders to see Bedtime Stories in the movie theaters (so funny), visiting Christian's friend and old roommate and his new baby, visiting Christian's mission companion and their cute little family, a lot of shopping, and visiting with tons of family. We had a great time and now the hardest part is explaining to Anders that Christmas is over. He still asks to watch his favorite Christmas movies and wonders where the presents are that were under the tree.

Happy Sinterklaas Day!

December is such a fun month for our family because it is full of different traditions. We celebrate Sinterklaas day because my dad served his LDS Mission in Holland. We've been celebrating it for as long as I can remember. We each have our own pair of wooden shoes that we leave out the night before and Sinterklaas fills them with Dutch goodies. Our family favorite are the Stroopwafels. If you ever get a chance to taste one, take it! They're fantastic! I was so excited when I went to Holland with my Grandparents when I was in 8th grade and they actually made these. I was already so cultured! I dragged Anders out of bed at the wee hour of 8:30 this morning (hense the crazy hair Anders is sporting) to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house to see what Sinterklaas brought us. Ryder spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa's house, so he even came downstairs to a surprise. It confused Ryder a little because he kept saying, "Where's my Hungry Hungry Hippos?" I had to explain multiple times that Sinterklaas brings us treats and Santa Claus brings us toys. I'm sure he just thinks I'm the one that's confused!

The Festival of Trees

We got to take Anders and Ryder to the Festival of Trees yesterday and it was quite an experience. They LOVED looking at the trees, but Anders had a hard time remembering not to touch the cool things that were on or around the trees. Every tree that he was interested in , he'd drop to his knees so he could get a better look. Eventually, Ryder started copying him and it turned into a game where they're sprawled across the floor, laughing hysterically. People probably thought we were nuts.


The boys had a great time in the kid's area. They had lots of activities like "dial an elf," fishing, making reindeer antlers, and sitting on Santa's lap. This was the first time Anders has sat on Santa's lap without screaming! Progress! I'm sure it had everything to do with the moral support of his best buddy, Ryder. Anders even had a conversation with Santa. He was so proud of himself afterward. All night, he's been saying, "Santa not scary, Santa nice. Aners sit Santa's lap. Santa give Aners candy cane." The Festival is a great organization. It was so neat to see all the donations and volunteer work that goes into it. Each tree was donated by someone that had a story of a child close to them that has passed away somehow. It was really touching. It was pretty spectacular to see how much they were able to accomplish without paying a single person a dime. 100% of the proceeds go to Primary Children's. It's good to know that during such difficult times, people are still so generous to those in need. This is an event I plan on supporting for years to come!

Go Jazz, Go!

We went our first Jazz game of the season last week. Christian's brother, Travis called us and invited us to go with a few of his other siblings because he got a great deal on some tickets. We had a blast. Anders absolutely LOVES watching the Jazz at home with Christian, so he didn't quite know what to think seeing it person. He watched the entire game. He loved to cheer and clap when everyone else was. We were about 5 rows from the top, but we were so excited to be there that we would have been just as excited to sit anywhere in the arena. When I was telling someone about our great deal later, he suggested that we could have been sitting where a Jr. Jazz team was supposed to be sitting. If so, I'm so sorry your coach sold your tickets and for such a cheap price! We had a great time!

Thanksgiving 2008

Turkey Bowl

As we do every Thanksgiving morning, my extended family gathered for our annual Turkey Bowl early Thanksgiving morning. It is so fun to see how everyone gets so into it. As you can tell from the line-up, we're all getting pretty old and by the end of the day, everyone is sore from this strenuous activity. I've never actually been too involved in this activity. I love eating donuts and drinking hot chocolate afterward, but IF I participate, it's for about 5 minutes and then I go inside. My negative attitude probably stems from the fact that it's played in my parent's front yard and we started this tradition when I was a teenager. I wasn't willing to risk someone I knew driving by and seeing me! Now, I just don't like it because nobody throws the ball to me. This year, I had a fabulous excuse...my pregnancy and recent surgery. Sorry guys! No help from me this year!

The infamous "kids table." There was no complaining this year about who had to sit at the kid table. Could it be because Carly, Jessica and Nicole finally got to sit with the adults?? Or maybe it was because immediately after I took this picture, Ryder and Anders went MIA. Too bad, they missed out on some FABULOUS food! The turkey, the stuffing, the yams, the rolls, the salads...everything was masterpiece!

Tale as Old as Time...

Anders and I had the opportunity to go with my parent's church youth group to see the Beauty and the Beast production at my high school. It was so fun to see Anders' excitement when the Beast came out on the stage. When the Beast was nowhere to be seen, he would ask "where's Beast" the entire time. I thought he would be nervous about the Beast, but he was so brave! He was literally sitting on the edge of his seat the whole time and loved that we clapped every time the scenes changed. We left after the 1st Act because it was getting late and I knew the fun, exciting songs were already over. Beauty and the Beast has always been my favorite Disney movie. I watched it so much as a child that I have the entire movie memorized. It kind of bothered me that the script was the same as the movie and when it was, they didn't use the same tone...I'm a nerd. Overall, it was a pretty impressive play!

Here are the pictures of Anders as close as he'd get to the Beast. You can see my belly stinking out of the side of the picture where he's standing closer. I had to stand right next to him for him to get any closer. He's my little daredevil!

You Go Girl!

Today, we found out that the baby that we weren't sure if we'd get to see is a girl! Go figure! Right before I went into surgery, my doctor informed us that there would be a good chance that we'd lose our precious little baby. I was 12 weeks along at the time and this was devastating news. However, we knew we didn't have a choice, so we had to take the chance. After my surgery, I was relieved to find out that she'd made it that far. The next 48 hours were going to be a challenge and all we could do was hope that she'd be okay. We were reminded again today why we are so lucky. It was such an overwhelming feeling to see her moving around and as healthy as can be! Before my surgery, I was very open about my gender preference. I thought I had figured out the future of my family. I was convincing myself that Anders needed a baby brother for many reasons. After my surgery, I honestly was convinced that after all we'd been through, I didn't care either way. Of course, a boy still would have been more convenient since we already have all the stuff! After we found out that sure enough, our little baby is a girl, we were thrilled. I'm not going to lie, I did shed a tear or two, but I'm just so proud of my strong little girl! We will never forget what we've been through with her already. Of course, Christian's first comment was, "at least we don't have to worry about the circumcision this time!" Amen to that! I said it once and I'll say it again, YOU GO GIRL!

"A Picture Aners"

I have to explain the title of this post. Every time Anders sees me on my laptop, he runs up to me and says, "A picture Aners!" He knows that everything on our blog involves him and he absolutely loves looking at it! That's partially why I wanted to make this post, also because I just had to post the pictures my sister-in-law Amy took of my little Anders a couple of months ago. As many of you can imagine (if you weren't there), it was very difficult to get him to smile and somehow, Amy captured the rare moment! She's amazing! We get so many compliments on our pictures at our house that she has taken and I think it's about to get even better! Amy is really developing her business and creates some pretty impressive work. We had a HUGE group and she was able to take group pictures, individual pictures, and immediate family pictures all in record-breaking time. She did an amazing job and I'm so glad we chose to use her! I'm also posting the picture of our large (in quantity) family. This picture means so much to us because there were many events that this picture represents to our family.

#1. My Aunt Amy and Uncle PJ's sealing. We went directly over to the temple after this photo shoot.

#2. The diagnosis of my aunt Michelle's very serious brain tumor. Amy was able to crop in a picture of John and Michelle's family picture so that their family is represented. John was in town hours before this picture was taken, but received an emergency call to return home. We are so lucky to have this special picture of our family to remind us of how important we are to each other.

#3. The other picture that was cropped into this picture is my little brother Kenny. He's currently serving an LDS mission in New York. We miss him so much and are so glad we could include him in potentially our last family picture we'll get.

#4. My cousin Britton's last family picture before he goes on his mission in January to Washington.

#5. The last picture of me before I was one ovary less! Everyone kept asking me how I was feeling that day and I had never felt better! I was also very medicated...can you tell?

I really can't thank Amy enough for being a part of this very special day for us. If anyone is interested in getting more information about her, you can e-mail her at amy@clipsandclicks.com. She also has a website at http://www.clipsandclicks.com/.

Halloween...finally!

I am pleased to announce that we had a wonderful Halloween. I know that my chances aren't very high at that because of my Halloween bummer attitude. We deciding to take Anders down to Christian's parent's house for Halloween. We don't get down there as much as we'd like to. Grandma was so excited to take us to her school carnival and that is where our night began. Anders showed up the elementary kids with his bean bag tossing skills. He won lots of prizes and saw lots of spooky costumes. It was hard to get him to move from one spot to another because he was nervous. After the carnival, Christian and I drove Anders and Grandma around the town to go Trick or Treating at all of Grandma's friend's houses. I told Christian in the car that I felt so guilty that we'd never taken him Trick or Treating before and we were having his mother whom had 6 kids of her own take our child around. Hopefully, she enjoyed it! Anders had a great time! It was also fun to think that Anders was getting the "small town experience" that Christian had throughout his childhood. After we couldn't take it anymore, we finally went home and watched a Halloween movie on Lezlee's projector. Anders was, again, in heaven! He loves doing anything that allows him to eat popcorn. We had such a great time this weekend. As always, it was so relaxing and we came back feeling rejuvenated for the rest of our week...all thanks to Grandma and Grandpa!

Anders' First Haircut!

Yes, Anders is now two and is just now getting his first haircut. I realize that most kids his age have already had several, but his hair is VERY slow growing. He was our fat little bald baby for so long and now he's growing up! I was very nervous about whenever this day would come, so I tried to plan every detail meticulously. I new that I wanted to get it cut at Cookie Cutters in Bountiful that I saw on my cousin Cindy's blog a while back. I just wasn't sure when we'd get down there to do it. His hair continued to get longer and longer until we finally found ourselves in Bountiful on Friday at his 2 year-old check-up. We decided to make the most of our trip and stop to check it out. I was especially nervous that Anders wouldn't take it well, considering he got his shots only minutes before. I started to rethink my idea when we were walking out of the doctor's office and Anders told the apologetic nurse, "you hurt!" I thought he might have lost trust in all adults after that. Luckily, we walked in and saw this cool slide that kept Anders' attention for the majority of the time we waited in the waiting room. He also got to play video games with Daddy, which he loved. When it was his turn, they let him choose which chair he wanted to sit in. Their chairs are all types of vehicles that kids could drive while they were getting their haircut. Also, they Anders got to pick out a movie to watch, which he didn't spend any time watching because he was too fascinated with how he looked in the mirror. I was so pleased with the way it went and I know it was such a fun experience for Anders. Hopefully, he'll remember how fun haircuts are in the future so we can avoid any haircutting meltdowns!



*For any of those interested, Anders remains in the upper 90th percentile in his height and weight, his head circumference remains WAY off the charts. That's our boy!

Trunk or Treat!

Neither Christian or I have ever experienced a Trunk or Treat, so when our ward announced one, we weren't really sure what to expect. We had somewhat of an understanding that you were somehow supposed to decorate your trunk, but with what? We decorated our trunk and crossed our fingers that it would fit in with everyone else's. I didn't get a chance to go around and check out everyone else's but I think we did pretty well! The night started out with a carnival for the primary kids. Anders had a great time and is still talking about "monster bowling." Of course, the highlight of his night was getting his face painted. He LOVES getting his face painted.

Anders at the carnival.

Our first Trunk or Treat experience

My cute Grandma and Grandpa's Toystory trunk. Aren't they so creative???