Boys Are Just Weird

Tanner has been at it again, keeping the entire family entertained and his mother mortified. OK, not so much mortified as at a loss for how to raise this kid! A couple of weeks ago the kids had a sleepover with their grandma. They live for these days because Grandma always takes them to dinner, lets them choose treats, and best of all, they get to choose any craft of any kind at the store. This is what Tanner chose:

I'm at a loss for words. Then on Sunday when we were at my parents house for dinner, he asked all present, "Does the 'B' in BYU stand for bikini girls?" I knew there was a perfectly logical reason that he had decided to cheer for BYU despite my urging in the right direction. And here it was, the last reason I would have ever imagined. I guess he can cheer for the bikini girls if he wants.

And not to be outdone in weirdness, Tayler is carrying on the strange male-child traditions. He decided he was going to potty train, and he has found a new favorite game associated with that. Most children lay on the grass, look at the clouds, and find shapes. Not my child. He stares in the toilet he just filled and finds shapes. Animals in particular. We've had everything from "poop fish" to whales, alligators, lions, elephants, and on and on. Very classy, I know.

And just because he's so good at picking out animals, Tayler walked up to me the other day, pointed right at me and said, "You're a whale." The diet started that day.

We Really Did Have Holidays Here

I'm a slacker. Once the holidays were a couple weeks past, I couldn't seem to force myself to blog about it. I had tons of excuses to wait, like we had to wait for McKayla to get home to finish our Christmas. Now, it's been nearly a month since Christmas, and I'm out of excuses, so here's the proof my children were not denied the fun of Christmas and New Years.

Christmas:
We actually had our own little Christmas miracle. McKayla was supposed to fly out to Texas on the Friday she got out of school. All of our family Christmas parties were scheduled for the next day, so we were pretty sad. Someone (thanks, Mom) prayed in a blizzard, and the flight was canceled to unaccompanied minors and there was no flight available until Sunday! We were so lucky to have McKayla for some of our longest standing Christmas traditions.

Christmas was great here. Tanner and Tayler were wired on Christmas Eve. Tayler had asked every night since Thanksgiving if it was the night Santa was bringing him his scooter and Buzz backpack, so it was great to finally be able to say yes. (Not so great that he has continued asking everyday if Santa is coming again...only 340 something days left of that :)) Here's some photo evidence of the festivities:


And then this is pretty much what the two boys looked like for the rest of Christmas (and most of the week after):


And how could I resist my own little Ralphie:



We had Christmas #2 on January 4th, when McKayla got home. We had asked Santa to please just leave her things in her room and then we emailed her a picture of her room. She couldn't wait to dig through the presents:


New Years:

While technically New Year's Eve came before Christmas #2, it's going after. Deal with it. My sister Lisa invited us to go to the zoo for Zoo Lights. I was a little leary and even made bad jokes about it "being a zoo" before we went, but it turned out it wasn't too crowded and it was really fun. There aren't many animals to look at in the middle of the winter at night, but the big cats were really active, and it was fun regardless. The lights are really done well.

So there you go. I'm caught up. Now I can quit worrying about being a bad mom, or at least worry about it for different reasons than lack of blogging.