Easter

Easter was pretty low key this year.  Saturday was our Easter basket day.  The kids loved their bunny ears.  Easter dinner was a little strange.  Dad insisted on steak instead of ham.  But, to each his own.

Easter

Easter was a little crazy around here because of the move.  Trying to find the stuff to dye eggs and put together an Easter basket amidst the chaos was a little daunting.  But, we prevailed!

On Saturday, Matthew and Anna dyed some eggs.  This year we decided to write on the eggs with crayon before dunking them in the dye.  Anna thought it was so cool.  She was very patient and careful in drawing her designs on the eggs.  Matthew, on the other hand, was bored a couple of minutes and and just wanted to eat the eggs.  He actually bit one so hard, he cracked the shell so we gave it to him.  I love the colors we get when we dye the brown eggs.

Easter morning started with the kids looking for the eggs hidden in the family room.  Matthew really liked this part.  He liked the chocolate bunny and jelly beans even more.

I couldn't get Matthew to sit still long enough for a good Easter picture.  You can see his outfit in the pictures.  I got one good picture of Anna, then she hammed it up for the rest of them.  She's such a silly.

We had deviled eggs and ham for our dinner.  I was a little worried about whether or not my ham would fit in our teeny oven, but it just made it with all but the bottom-most rack removed.  Happy Easter!

February 2014

February was an interesting month for us.  Anna and I started it out by making beeswax candles for Candlemas.  Anna made a heart candle for Valentine's day and a purple taper.  I made 4 small red candles to be used for Advent later.  It was a simple activity and Anna had a lot of fun.

A day later, though, I broke out in terrible, horrible, awful hives.  They were so bad!  I had them on my eyelids and the soles of my feet!  I ended up having to go on several medications plus get a steroid shot.  It took the rest of the month for them to completely disappear.  Steve was a trooper and took several days off of work to take care of the kids because all I could do was itch, take oatmeal baths, and be miserable.  Matthew was also a trooper.  Because of the steroid shot, I had to stop nursing him cold turkey that day.  Heavenly Father must have been helping him, because he hardly fussed at all to moving to a sippy cup.  The sister missionaries were great and came over to clean the house because I was so behind.  My visiting teacher also came and took my laundry home to do for me.  My doctor thinks I may be allergic to the antibiotic Flagyl because I had just finished a course when the hives came on.  Needless to say, there are no pictures from this period of time.

Matti Ihalmo & Steve

Steve & Sirpa Ihalmo

The last big thing in February was Steve's week long trip to Poland.  Google flew him and his team out there to meet with the rest of his group to have some team-building time.  On the way, he stopped in Finland to visit some friends, the Ihalmos.  Unfortunately, his layover in Frankfurt turned into a nightmare.  When he arrived, the security people were having a strike so although he got in, he couldn't get out.  His 3 hour layover turned into a 36 hour one.  When he finally did get to Finland, the airline had lost his luggage!  Luckily, Matti Ihalmo had a suit that fit Steve for church.


The rest of the time was spent in Poland at a resort outside of Krakow.  I'll put labels on the pictures so you know what you're looking at.

Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving this year was the complete opposite of last year.  We went up to Jeff and Gina's house in Rocklin for the holiday and a few more days.  I asked Gina what she would like me to bring, and at first she said, "Nothing.  You just moved!"  I couldn't show up empty-handed, though, so I asked if I could bring sweet potato casserole and a chocolate pecan pie.

That's it.  I didn't cook anything else!  I also didn't set the table or clean or organize!  To be honest, it felt a little like I was being lazy.

We headed up to Rocklin on Thanksgiving morning.  We wanted to avoid the mass exodus from the valley the night before.  It worked, and we got there in about 3 hours.  We had a great time talking with Jeff, Gina, their kids, and Gina's parents, Pete and Souki.  Anna had so much fun playing with all the kids there.  In fact, I don't think we really saw her after we got there except for nap time, dinner, and when she spilled the bubbles on her head.  Otherwise, she was running around outside.

Dinner was great!  Scott, Kim, and their kids showed up around 4:30 with a bunch of food.  Pete, Jeff, and Brendon were in charge of the turkeys.  We had 3!  Here's the menu- vegetable platter, a fruit and vegetable slaw, green salad, fruit salad, homemade rolls, sweet potato casserole, and green beans.  I'm sure there was more, I just can't remember.  For dessert, there were little personal sized pies, a cream pie, pumpkin pie, and chocolate pecan pie.  We discovered that Matthew LOVES pomegranate seeds.  He wouldn't stop stuffing them in his mouth until I took them away and hid them.

We stayed in Rocklin until Saturday afternoon.  Mostly, we just talked with everyone and let Anna and Matthew play.  I made it to a Black Friday sale at JoAnne's and Jeff, Gina, Scott, and Kim took us out to a Mongolian grill to celebrate Steve's birthday.  Gina and I also went shopping at the local kids consignment store- it's almost developing into a tradition.

It was a rocky couple of nights with Matthew.  He just doesn't like anything to be different when he sleeps.  It always throws him off.  I was glad to be home, just so we could get him back into his groove.  We had such a good time.

The Christmas Season

Anna working on her gingerbread house

Steve's decorating efforts on his side of the house.

Please excuse the wonky picture placement.  Blogger wasn't working for me.
We had a great Christmas season this year even though it felt a little more rushed than usual.  In years past, Steve and I have had a goal to have all Christmas gifts bought and Christmas letter written and sent out by the last day of November.  With the move to Morgan Hill in early November, it just didn't happen that way.  We didn't even mail out a letter; we just emailed it!

We started off the season with St. Nicholas day on December 6.  Anna and Matthew left their shoes outside their bedroom doors.  In the morning, they each found a candy cane, a winter book, and a little St. Nick.  Anna's St. Nick is a little wooden peg person, while Matthew's is a stuffed round gnome.

My decorated half of the house

This year's ornament, pinecone gnomes

Both kids with Santa, Matthew didn't last long.

On December 13, we had St. Lucia day.  This year, that just consisted of eating baked Lussekatter and reading a little picture book about a family celebrating it.  After reading the book, Anna says she wants me to make her a Lucy dress and candle head wreath.  I told her that would be fine as long as she remembers that means she has to make breakfast for everyone!

Anna with Santa at the ward party.

Making Christmas sweets with Anna

We finally got down to some serious Christmas preparations.  First up was decorating houses- our house and gingerbread houses.  We bought 2 house kits, one for Steve & I and one for Anna.  She had so much fun decorating that house!  She concentrated hard and had her little tongue stuck out.

Anna with her house.  She was so proud.

I got most of the decor set out on a Sunday afternoon while the kids were napping.  It will Venice when they can help, but now they are more likely to break something.  I love having a mantle and being able tout stuff up on the acoustic piano that was here was nice, too.  I think the downstairs looked very festive.

My three merry snowmen.

Sawing away with the stupid, ineffective saw.

We waited a little before getting our Christmas tree this year.  The last couple of years our trees got so dry that we were afraid we were going to start a fire.  This year, we went to a real tree farm and cut our own.  They don't have local evergreens like fir or spruce.  Instead there was a pine with really long needles or cypress trees.  We chose the cypress.  It was...interesting.  The needles are more like a cedar, flat, and the branches were very bendy.

We got 2 trees, a little one for the kids and a big one for the family.

Cutting the tree was the biggest pain.  The farm provided this saw on the end of a long stick.  It was like trying to cut through the trunk with dental floss.  Steve and I both worked at it for a good twenty minutes with no real progress.  Luckily, we brought a saw with us from home.  We got that out and were through the trunk in 3 minutes!

Decorating the big Christmas tree the first time.

Anna loved decorating the tree.  I love getting out the ornaments and looking at all the things we've made.  The tree was beautiful!  Anna went down for a nap and I started working on dinner.  Suddenly, I heard kind of a rushing sound.  I turned around just in time to see the entire tree topple over.  Oh dear.  Steve grabbed the tree and I mopped up the water all over the floor.  After getting everything all squared away, we sat back and admired our work.

Halloween Costumes

We tried on our Halloween costumes and the kids were so cute, I had to do a mini-photo shoot!  Plus, I really love this 1960s filter on Picassa.  Hope you like the pics.

4th of July

Our first 4th of July in California was pretty good.  Our original intention was to go to a parade with Charles & Desiree at 9am.  However, when we woke up at 6am, tired, we rethought our plans and went back to sleep for a while.

Instead, we had a nice, leisurely breakfast and then headed to the neighborhood park.  It was still early, so the heat hadn't built up yet.  Anna and I found a patch of dandelions with long stems.  We gathered up a few bunches.  I made a flower wreath for Anna's head.  I think that's the first time in years I've made one of those.  Even Matthew modeled it for a bit.

After the park, we had a nice lunch and everyone went down for a nap.  Yay!  I love it when everyone gets to rest all at the same time.

That afternoon, we headed to Charles and Desiree's house for a barbeque.  We thought it would only be us, them, and Desiree's high-school friend.  As it turned out, the friend had a husband and son with her.  We also had a friend that's living with them and her friend with two daughters plus two other friends of Desiree's.  It was quite the group!

There was a lot of talking amongst the adults and a lot of playing amongst the kids.  What I thought was the most impressive about the barbeque was that it was 99% fresh, whole foods!  We had chicken kebobs, natural hot dogs, real chicken brats, fruit salad, homemade bread, fresh pico and guacamole with whole corn chips as well as several other things I can't remember.  We were stuffed with all the good food.

When we got home, Anna took a bath and the kids went to bed.  Fireworks are illegal because of the fire danger, plus the kids were tired.  Steve and I ended the day by watching Day 2 of our Lord of the Rings marathon.

Summer Solstice (aka Midsummar)

Yesterday, we celebrated the longest day of the year; also called the Summer Solstice.  First, I want to quiet any worries that we are going all pagan over here.  We don't do any fertility rites or such things.  I just think it's nice to celebrate the changing of the seasons.

In past years, we have attended the Swedish Heritage Society's celebration.  However, with the move, our plans have needed to be adapted a bit.  Thus, we didn't do a traditional Swedish celebration, but a less formal family celebration of summer and the sun.

Anna and I started out by making some sugar cookies.  She really enjoyed stirring, but the best came when she got to roll the dough and cut different size circles out with cookie cutters.  After they were baked and cooled, we decorated them like suns.  Anna thought the red to be the best color so she stuck with squeezing lots of red puddles on her cookies.

Later, we used yarn and sticks we found in the yard to make Mexican stars.  We used red, yellow, and orange yarn.  Anna had fun even though she didn't quite catch on to the way to wind the string.  Her little sun is cute.  We used the three I made to make a little door hanger.

Steve brought me a beautiful bouquet of yellow and orange flowers (unasked!).  They were a perfect centerpiece to dinner.  At dinner, we served wedges of watermelon and oranges arranged to look like a sun and ate our cookies for dessert.  Then, to cap off the day, we all headed to the park to play.  Anna was so excited, she kept telling people, "Today is SUMMER!  Today is SUMMER!"

Easter Celebrations

This year I wanted to make Easter more about Christ this year, so I thought we could observe the whole week before- Holy Week.  I had a lot more plans than actually happened.

The Sunday before is Palm Sunday, so we had Date Bars (so yummy!) and read a little bit about Christ's entrance into Jerusalem.  On Good Friday I made Hot Cross Buns (also so yummy!) and we dyed our Easter eggs.

We had our Easter egg hunt on Saturday.  Anna
 got a chocolate bunny and an Easter Curious George coloring book.  She loved looking around the house for the eggs.

Sunday was Easter, but we kept it low-key.  We made a delicious dinner of ham, strawberry spinach salad, deviled eggs, and strawberry shortcake.

Christmas Morning

 Christmas morning was very nice.  Luckily, Anna is still young enough that she slept until after 7am.  That makes for a nice, relaxed morning.  Having Allison over was really nice, too.

Anna got some play food and pots for her play kitchen.  She also got some clothes and a doll bed.  Her two favorite things were a Pooh blanket for her bed and her own copy of Cinderella.  She snuggled up with the blanket to watch the movie as soon as possible.

Steve got a wall map of the world, the movie The Glenn Miller Story, and an external hard drive.   I got some books and a food processor.  We had such a great day and it was a good Christmas.

Christmas Eve

We had such a great Christmas Eve!

Alli came to visit for the weekend and we loved having her.  Unfortunately, she did catch the nasty stomach bug that has been going around the neighborhood and was sick most of the day.  Luckily, it's a 24 hour bug and she was better the next day.

We had a snowstorm on Friday so there was a great layer of snow.  Steve took Anna to the nearby ravine to do some sledding while I did some dinner prep.  They were gone for more than an hour having a blast.   Anna loved the sledding.  She met up with some of our friends from our old neighborhood: Skylar and Rylee.  She wanted to sled with only them.  Skylar wouldn't, but Rylee did.

Later, we made our ornaments.  I wanted to have an ornament that Anna could do and that used materials that I already had laying around.  Luckily, I noticed a few people had made cute holiday people from craft sticks.  I have a bunch of those, plus felt and paint, so away we went.

I used the craft sticks to make a snowflake and a Christmas tree.  Anna painted both of them with the paints.  After she finished those, she went off to bed for her nap and the rest of us worked on our ornaments.  We made ours a little different.  Steve made a snowman, I made a snowman and a Rudolf, and Alli got into it the most.  She made a snowman, elf, Santa, and Rudolf.  It was a lot of fun.

That night we had our fondue dinner.  I thought that I was conservative in cutting up the meat, but apparently I over-estimated and we had a lot left over.  It was delicious.  Anna had fun stuffing herself with ham and chicken dipped in honey and trying shrimp for the first time.  Luckily, Alli was feeling well enough to join in for dinner.

After Anna was in bed, we ended the night by watching A Muppet Christmas Carol.  The perfect ending to a great day.

December Crafts

Here's what you're looking at: Top l-r: Anna's pomander, finished beeswax snowflakes, cutting her snowflake, Steve & Anna decorating the house; Middle l-r: Steve working on his pomander, beeswax ornaments hardening in the pan, proud Anna with her snowflake; Bottom l-r: our finished pomanders, snowflakes I made on the library doors, Anna & I decorating, the finished gingerbread house!

Here's a little bit of what we've done this Christmas season.  We've tried to keep things low-key and fairly simple.

We started off December by making some orange pomanders.  I got some whole cloves and clementines at the store.  I got some recommendations to use clementines instead of oranges because the skin is thinner and easier for kids to pierce with the cloves.  Anna really enjoyed making them.  I did end up just piercing random holes all over her orange with a knife and that made it really easy for her to do it.  I made a couple and we even convinced Steve to join in.  His is the Christmas tree orange.  It was fun and fast and now our library smells great.

Later, Anna and I decided to make some snowflakes.  I folded hers into a square snowflake just so she wouldn't have to cut through so many layers of paper.  She's still learning how to use the scissors.  In fact, she mostly made random straight cuts along the sides.  I went back and just connected some of the cuts to make them holes.  She was so proud of herself and her snowflake.

One of the crafts I did mostly on my own.  I bought a pound of beeswax from Amazon and a cute snowflake cookie pan from JoAnn's.  I melted the beeswax in a double boiler and then Anna would point to the snowflake she wanted me to fill.  We ended up making 17 snowflakes total.  Later, I used a hot piece of metal to poke a hole in each one and threaded it with a piece of twine to make ornaments.  We passed them out to our neighbors and friends for their Christmas gifts.

Our biggest project so far has been the gingerbread house.  Steve picked up a kit at the grocery store.  We used the candy they provided plus some that we got at the bulk section of Winco to decorate.  Mostly, I put frosting on the house and Anna chose which candies she wanted and stuck them into the frosting.  I did candy corns around the bottom and the front door.  Steve did the jellybean windows.  We had a lot of fun making it and Anna is enthralled by it even two weeks later.  She drags her stool over to the counter to stare at it.  Well, stare at it and slowly eat a piece here and a piece there of the candy!

Just one more project left- ornaments.  We're going to do those when Alli gets here for Christmas weekend.  That'll be another post.  Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Week and a Visit

 
We invited Steve's parents to come visit for Thanksgiving this year.  We wanted to have it in our new home and wanted to have family there.  They agreed and came the Tuesday before until the Monday after.

It was a really busy, full of work week so I don't have a whole lot of pictures.  Steve and Dad Wheeler spent most of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday working through a super-long list of projects for around the house.  They both went to bed so tired each evening.  By the time they left, they had put up curtain rods around the house, put together shelving and installed it in the storage room, organized the garage so things weren't on the floor, put together all the baby furniture, bought and installed shelving in my craft room, put up the Christmas lights, plus a host of smaller projects.

Mom and I spent Wednesday and Thursday preparing and making food for the big feast.  Kate, my sister-in-law, brought rolls and mashed potatoes.  Mom made two apple pies and crusts for the two pumpkin pies.  She and I worked together on everything else.  We had turkey and gravy (Mom really liked the gravy!), homemade stuffing and cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, cornbread, salad, corn, carrots, and green beans in addition to the things already mentioned.

We also had a chocolate pecan pie for dessert.  I had such a hard time with it!  Wednesday night, I apparently heated the chocolate too much and it was all lumpy so I had to throw it out.  The next day, after talking with Stephanie about what I had done wrong, I tried again.  This time, the chocolate was nice and smooth.  I added the other ingredients and poured it into the pie crust only to discover that I had completely forgotten the eggs!  I tried pouring the filling out of the crust, but it was so thick and sticky that the pie crust just fell apart.  I had to pick little pieces of pie crust out as best I could, add the eggs, and pour it into a new crust.  Luckily, a little pie crust in the filling doesn't ruin it completely.

We really enjoyed having everyone here for the holiday.  We also appreciated all the hard work that Mom and Dad put in while they were here.  I'm sure that they will reconsider the length of the stays in light of the fact that we put them to work, but I hope that they'll come again for just as long.

Halloween 2012

 Our first part of our Halloween celebration had to be a visit to the pumpkin patch.  Steve's brother, Ken, and his family: Kate, Jared, and Billy, came down for the afternoon.  It was a little late in the season, so most of the pumpkins in the field were very small.  We chose 2 small pumpkins.  But two small pumpkins seemed a little disappointing.  So...we got one of the BIG pumpkins at the front.  It weighed in at a little over 50 lbs.  We took a hayride and posed in the bales of hay.  A very nice afternoon.

Next up, came decorating pumpkins and the Trunk or Treat.  I carved one of the little pumpkins and the huge pumpkin.  Anna colored and painted a white pumpkin.  That was just perfect for her.

The Trunk or Treat was the Saturday before Halloween.  We had soup and bread for dinner.  It was really cute; her friend Jonah grabbed Anna's tail and she pulled him around the gym.  They had so much fun.  We then went out for the candy.  Steve took Anna around.  There were several other kids dressed up as zoo animals.  A tiger and a giraffe, we were able to get pictures with.  Zufeldts dressed up as zookeepers with their kids as a monkey and something else.  We wanted to get a picture with them, but couldn't.  Anna was in love with getting free candy.

Finally, came the big day.  I, of course, forgot to paint her nose.  Oh well.  She was soooo excited to go trick or treating.  I took her to our old neighborhood.  She literally ran from one house to the next, barely stopping to knock on the door and get her treat.  Once, she tripped and fell and her candy went flying.  She jumped up, grabbed her candy and kept on running.  So cute.  Steve took her to the houses in our new neighborhood.  Needless to say, she was a little tired when she got home.  Not too tired, though to dump out all the candy and have a taste.

Midsommar...finally!

The last time I attended the Swedish Heritage Society's Midsommar was the summer that Steve and I met...2008.  Since then, we've tried repeatedly to get to it.  It always seems, though, that something always came up.  This year, we committed to ourselves that we were going to go.  It's funny because we had to change the date on some tickets to see Crazy For You so that we could make it, but we did it!
They hold the Midsommar every year at the International Peace Gardens at Jordan Park near the Swedish stugga (little cabin).  We arrived at 5:00 in 100 degree weather.  Luckily, there were lots of trees and a nice breeze blowing.  We watched them put up the pole and then they had some dancers do some dances.  They also did a line dance with anyone that wanted.  We watched those, but Anna and I did dance in the round dances around the pole.  Anna enjoyed running around in circles.  This year they had a live orchestra playing the music, fun!
At 7:00 they served dinner.  Steve stood in line for us while I watched Anna dance to the music that was playing.  She also found a tent pole and decided it made a good fireman pole to slide down.  She had so much fun climbing up on a chair and 'sliding' down the pole.  The dinner was catered by a restaurant.  It was good, but not $12 a piece good.  We split our meal with Anna.
In all, it was a fun evening.  Next time we have a couple of things we'd do differently.  First, I think Anna and I need flower crowns.  It's just not Midsommar without a crown of flowers.  We'd also go a little later and maybe bring our own dinner.
Glad Midsommar!

Fourth of July

We had a nice, quiet 4th of July.  Fireworks were banned in Stansbury because of the fire risks, plus we're not quite sure if Anna's ready for how loud they are.  She already freaks out with the Emergency Broadcast tests every Wednesday out here.
We started off the day with breakfast at Denny's.  Steve always takes us out on holidays to give me a little holiday from cooking.  We had fun in a mostly empty restaurant, eating yummy pancakes and bacon.
Unfortunately, later that morning, I did not feel very well at all.  I got all dizzy and nauseous.  I laid on the couch all morning while Anna watched cartoons and Steve played chess on the computer.  I felt much better in the afternoon.
For dinner, we headed up to Settlement Canyon.  It's just beyond Tooele and so much cooler up there than down here.  We found a nice shady site and cooked sausages for dinner.  We also ate chips and a TON of cherries.  It was funny to watch Anna try to figure out how to eat the cherry but not the pit.  We ended up with a pile of semi-chewed cherry on a napkin.
After dinner, we hiked from there back toward the entrance.  There was a little playground that we stopped at and Anna played.  Steve walked back to our dinner site to get the car.  We really enjoyed going up there.  It was nice and cool and we had a lot of fun.

Happy May Day!

We had such a great day on May Day that I wanted to share.

Steve had been in Colorado for a few days and wanted to take it easy.  We had a nice breakfast and watched Anne of Green Gables and ate popcorn.  For lunch we decided to start a new May Day tradition.

In Sweden, the first of May is called Valborg and on that day or the night before, huge groups of people gather together and light giant bonfires to welcome spring.  We decided we would do something similar.  We gathered up a blanket, some food, and an armful of wood and headed to Woodland park.  We're so lucky to have a park nearby with a firepit.  So, we had a little picnic and roasted brats over the fire.  I think having a first picnic of spring/summer will be a nice tradition.


After lunch, we all took naps and got a few things done.  For dinner, we headed to Salt Lake.  We haven't been able to get to the Tulip Festival this year, so we thought we'd visit Temple Square instead.  We had dinner at the Lion House and then walked around the plaza and Temple Square.

Anna was in heaven!  She loved looking at all of the flowers (she knows what tulips and daffodils are) and was mesmerized by all of the water.  She had to stick her hand in it over and over again.  Sometimes she'd lean so far over, Steve or I would have to grab the back of her pants to keep her from falling in.  The weather was perfect and there weren't too many people.  We finished the evening off by sharing a pint of BYU cookies and cream ice cream before heading home.

I would dare to say that it was a perfect day.