Holiday Visit from Auntie Desha

We had a busy week while Auntie Desha was here! First, we enjoyed the St Paul Science Museum! It was our first time there, and we loved it.

Look at these astronauts!!

Yes, Tanner has his shirt off in this picture. He was using it to help move the air to form the tornado.

After the museum, we ate at a delicious Mediterranean Restaurant in Burnsville. Live music, cheese flambe, and super yummy buffet. The boys were good about trying new dishes and they loved dancing to the music.

At home, Desha got some good pics of Dallin in his usual goofy, cheerful disposition. I love this little bug!

Tanner has a chore chart with 4 chores that he is supposed to do everyday. 1- Clean bedroom floor. 2- Set the table for dinner. 3- Clean family room floor. 4- His choice. Sometimes he chooses vacuuming. Desha liked watching him work away. He always argues about his chores, says he wants to rip up his chore chart and never do chores again. I then tell him I feel like that everyday too when I have to do chores. Then after a lot of coercing, (some days more than others) he gets them done and is always super proud of himself.

Tanner was cuddling with Desha one morning.

Coloring buddies.

On Dec 3, I helped host a Christmas Craft Playgroup at church. My friend Sheila is the one that planned most of it. We had lots of friends in town join us, it was so much fun!

Dallin and Desha making reindeer antlers.

Tanner made a bell ornament. He was very proud to hang it on our tree.

Sheila with the painting of baby Jesus in the manger, created from our hand prints! 

Here is Dallin's painting

 Here is Tanner's painting. He really wanted his baby Jesus to have dark skin, and I didn't say no, especially since Jesus probably had dark skin anyway!

Playing so nicely with friends

Everyone brought snacks to share and we had a great spread!

Tanner's buddy

Tanner and Desha were talking about him needing a scarf, and Desha suggested that he ask Great Grandma Robertson to knit him one. He liked that idea, so he made "the instructions" for her to know how he would like the scarf to look. 

At Christmas, we got a special package in the mail from Great Grandma!

 He LOVED it and wanted to go outside immediately with his new winter gear. So cute! Thank you Grandma Robertson!! 

These two guys are school mates and buddies. They both wore orange and blue to our MOPS group (moms of preschoolers). 

Tanner made this robot for me. I thought it was pretty unique!

While Desha was here, we did some research about chewing. We wanted to know more about normal chewing habits in young kids to find out if Dallin has a chewing problem. He takes huge bites, but does not really chew his food. He swallows almost everything he eats completely whole, like a snake. We found out some really interesting things...  

Most toddlers and preschoolers will chew with their mouth open, using their teeth. This is good! If a child chews with their mouth closed (like Dallin), turns out it's something to take note about. We learned that young kids like Dallin, who eat with mouth closed often aren't actually chewing, they are merely using their tongue to mash the food against the roof of their mouth, which doesn't really mash their food. They swallow their food in chunks, and it makes it really hard for the digestive system to use any of the food properly. 

When we read this, we observed Dallin more, and it's true, he doesn't chew much at all, he just uses his tongue to mash the food! 

We also learned that kids with chewing problems will wince when they swallow (like Dallin). They don't gain much weight (like Dallin). And they are often constipated or have hard, chunky stools (like Dallin).

Luckily, from our readings, we got some great ideas to help Dallin. One is to tell him to eat with his mouth open so we can see his teeth working (who knew, right!?). We model lots of chomping, showing him what's happening with our teeth and the food. We tell him to let us hear his food crunch (he responds really well to this prompt). We pretend to be T-rex and lions and crocodiles while we eat. And we try to get him to chew a certain number of times before he swallows (he is averaging about 8 chews, which is a huge improvement from the 1-3 chews he did before, but still lots of room for improvement). We've also been giving him more smoothies to insure that something will get into his tummy that's properly mashed up. In the last three weeks, I have seen a lot of improvement with his eating (and his pooping). I hope that as Dallin improves his chewing we will see him gain some weight. 

Tanner and Jeremy went to play ball Friday evening.

Friday night, Desha came along with me to a special goodbye dinner for my friend, Kaye. I miss her so much already!

On Saturday night, we drove to Rochester to see the Wonder of the Nativity that our church hosts. It's an interfaith event where hundreds of nativities are on display for the public to view. There is also a live nativity presentation and multiple music performances from various groups in the area. This was our 3rd year going!! 

The best part is that we ran into our cousin Elder Renton again, who is serving a fulltime mission here!! (I promise, we did not intend on seeing him this time. We were all surprised!)

The boys really enjoyed the children's room this year.

Dallin moved the sheep into the barn, but he didn't want to dress up in anything or be in the picture.

The boys loved the refreshments.

After the Wonder of the Nativity, we ate dinner at a very authentic Mexican restaurant.

The next day, the boys did baking with Auntie.

And later, they made homemade wipping cream, YUM! 

They also loved having Auntie read to them.

On Monday morning, I went to teach my Kindergarten music classes. Desha came with me! Later that day, she had to go back to Colorado. (sniff, sniff). I'm so glad she came to visit us. 

We love you, Desha!

Giving Thanks

Grandpa Papa and Grandma Nana came to our house for Thanksgiving week! We had a really fun time with them, but I have to be honest, they mostly spent time with the boys, haha.

Dallin was very proud of his pilgrim hat that he made at Sheila's house. 

I took my parents to tour the Hormel Historic Home to see all the Christmas decorations. This home has grown to be a favorite place for our family. I teach my family music classes in their big living room with a grand piano built in 1914. I am also a member of the board for the home, on a task force to help make the home more of a family destination. A week before Thanksgiving, we hosted a big Holiday kick-off event that was very successful! 

My mom really enjoyed the self guided tour.

For lunch, I took us out to eat at B&J. I was glad there are still some restaurants in town that my parents haven't tried yet! This is the only picture I took while we were there. I can't remember what cute thing Dallin was doing.

We made some native american hats to go with the pilgrim hat.

It was fun to have Tanner help set the table. That is one of his four daily chores. He did a pretty good job!

The Petersons came to join us for the feast!

We ended up with so many yummy dishes that our turkey go neglected. But it saved well for lots of other meals.

After feasting, we had a Mario Cart tournament. I did not expect Leighsa to do so well!

The game continues...

Guitar buddies

Getting a family photo wasn't easy.

Dallin loves all of the Peterson kids.

I'm glad I got to spend some time with this lady!

On Black Friday, Tanner searched through the John Deer ads and decided what he would buy. 

Just happens to be the same kind of mower that Grandpa Papa has! Only $6,900!! Tanner says he's gonna start saving his money now. Lol.

On Saturday, Jeremy bought a real tree, and we all decorated it together. This was one of my favorite things about the week!

Dallin wanted to put all of his ornaments up very high.

Grandpa and Tanner had fun playing outside. Tanner insisted on wearing shorts since it was sunny outside. 

We're so glad that the boys got to play with their grandparents so much this week!! It was a nice, quiet visit with them, playing in the basement and outside, doing projects, watching football, cooking and eating. In addition to the Hormel Home, we also enjoyed a minor league Hockey Game in the stadium in our town. The game was delayed about 45 minutes, and we almost gave up on watching it, but I'm really glad we stayed because our team scored 2 points within the first ten minutes of the game and 1 more point before the period was over! The boys liked watching the game, Dallin loved watching the mascot. Mom and Dad were impressed that we have a hockey stadium in such a small town. That's Minnesota, haha! Also, Jeremy and I got to go to the movies by ourselves for the first time since we've lived here! We love you, Grandpa Papa and Grandma Nana! Thank you for coming to visit us!!