Winter Trees

Today we took down the Christmas decorations. Traditionally, I leave them up through New Years, but this year it feels like our house is over crowded with stuff, and the Christmas decor was just adding to the clutter, so it had to go. And since I was taking the decorations down, I also took down all the kids' Christmas art projects that were hanging in the kitchen window. After that I thought our window looked pretty bare. Plus, I like to have things hanging in the kitchen window because we live in the bottom of the apartment building and so people walk right by our window all the time to get to the mail boxes, and I feel like a gold fish at dinner time because our table is right next to the window, so we can pretty much make eye contact with everyone who walks by. But if I hang pictures up, the paper is just high enough so that it blocks people from being able to look in, and they look at our art work instead of us. And then I feel like we at least have some semi-privacy at dinner. (The people across the parking lot on the top floor can still see in our windows.)

Anyways, because of those two reasons, I decided to do an art project with the kids today so we'd have something to hang up that was wintery. I really like the hand print trees. We did one for fall. And I think the idea could be altered to work for spring and summer too, so I'm thinking that some day when I'm teaching a unit on seasons I'll be able to do these again to show all the seasons at the same time. But for today we just did winter.

To make a winter hand tree you just take a light blue piece of construction paper, cut it in half with a wavy line, and glue it onto a white piece of paper. Technically, the blue is supposed to be the sky and the white the snowy ground, which is how we did Lincoln's, but Ivan's got done upside down and I didn't notice until it was too late to fix it, so we just improvised with his, and I actually think it turned out just as good. Then you pick a hand and paint it brown and put a hand print down on the paper. Then finger paint a trunk. I helped Ivan with his, but Linc did his trunk all by himself. When the trees are dry, use a glue stick and put some glue everywhere in your picture that you'd want snow, the branches of the trees, falling from the sky, or in Ivan's case drifted on the ground, then sprinkle the glue spots with granulated sugar. Then shake the extra sugar off and you've got yourself a winter tree.

The Decision

We've finally made a decision about our future. It was a very stressful week or so. Lots of sleepless nights, praying, stressing, debating, circling, what-if-ing, and wondering. I don't really want to stay in Utah and I don't really want to live in Arizona, so I kept hoping that magically door number three would appear...but it did not. Aaron got an offer from imSAR for $7,000.00 a year less than the offer from Raytheon. One of us would decide to choose one thing, and the other would counter it so well that we'd switch over to the other thing, only to find that the other person had changed their mind and wanted to go the other way.

But Aaron had an impression that is wasn't about the money, and he felt like as far as job experience goes imSar would be the better fit for him because it would give him more opportunities. Although I'm having a hard time turning away from Raytheon and taking the pay cut, I support Aaron in his choice. We signed the offer with imSAR and will be taking the job 15 whole minutes away from here, in Spanish Fork, UT as soon as Aaron graduates.

I'm just glad to be done and have the decision made.

Pictures from Christmas

Thanks family, for sharing these with us!

Cousins on Christmas Eve

 Lincoln decorating a sugar cookie at Lisa's while we were at the temple

 Ivan using a butter knife for the first time

 Everyone around the table decorating graham cracker houses at Lisa's

 The finished houses

 Aaron, Adelia, and I working on our graham cracker farm

 Lincoln and Aaron Christmas morning

 Ivan showing off his new "The Wiggles Getting Strong" DVD

 Ivan and Lincoln opening their dinosaurs

 Aaron and Lincoln building with the toy drill set from Grandma and Grandpa Swan

 Ivan loved Grandma and Grandpa's little yellow chair so much, he carried it every where and always wanted to sit in it. At the end of our trip they gave it to him to take home. He was thrilled!

 Adelia in her Bumbo Chair she got for Christmas, and her new bow and headband.

 Baby's first Christmas!

 Lincoln and Zac sitting outside Sydni's apartment. They were such good buddies the whole trip.

 Ivan playing with the kitchen set at Out of This World, an indoor play place in Oregon.

 Lincoln climbing up the blow up toy at Out of This World

 Lincoln and Zac taking a break in front of the Jungle Book while Ivan and Luke take naps

 Human totem pole!

 Ryan and Melissa building their graham cracker castle

 Rob and Stacey building their Arizona Wonderland house.

 The only way to get all the kids to hold still at the same time was to put in a video :)

 Lincoln takin' it easy on Lisa's couch

 Audrey and Adelia in their Christmas jammies

 The Yoshioka boys: Zac, Jake, and Luke

 Melissa, Ryan, Bennett, Stacey, Kelly, and Mozart

 Aneya, Lisa, and Jared

 Grandma Swan and Audrey

 Esther and Kelly at the piano

 Ivan on Christmas morning opening his airplanes

 Lincoln and Aaron reading Shiver Me Letters, Lincoln's new book

Lincoln, Luke, and Zac in front of Grandma Swan's Christmas tree on Christmas morning

Ivan and Lincoln wearing their Woody and Buzz pajamas from Kyle and Kelsey.

The Aaron Swan Family graham cracker farm

The whole Chuck and Debbie Swan family at Lisa's house for dinner

Lincoln singing the Pre-Amble to the Constiution for his talent in the family talent show

Kelly, Rob, Esther, Krystal, Stacey, and Lisa singing Silent Night in the family talent show. Linc and Aneya jumped in to help too.

The whole family. We're getting so big! (and there are two on the way)

Our Christmas Vacation

Wow, I am so far behind on blogging. Is it weird that I get stressed out about that? Well I do. And, being the brilliant genius that I am...I forgot to pack the battery for our camera. So we did our entire Christmas vacation with no pictures. I'm even more irritated with myself because it was Adelia's first Christmas and I have no pictures. Grrr....  Maybe Sydni and Lisa and Aaron's mom will have pity and share some of theirs with me, but for now, here is a recap of our Christmas vacation in text only.

Sunday night- We got everything (and when I say that, I mean practically our entire house) packed into the van and drove to Hooper, where we spent the night at my mom's. We always do that when we drive to Washington because it puts us an hour closer.

Monday- Kelly and Esther met us in Hooper, and we, somehow, loaded their stuff into the already full van. LONG drive. The kids were pretty good. Adelia did much better than I ever dared to hope for, and only screamed for about the last hour. The wonderful aroma of Taco Pie greeted us at the door, and soon all our travel woes were forgotten, and our vacation began. :) Taco Pie is one of those favorite dinners that Aaron grew up with.

Tuesday- Spent a lot of the day at Aaron's sister Lisa's house. The kids had a blast with their cousins. Then we went back to Aaron's mom's and had a big family birthday dinner for Esther.

Wednesday- We drove 30ish minutes to Hillsboro, Oregon to see Aaron's sister Sydni and her two boys Zac and Luke. We ate lunch at her house, and then took the kids to an awesome indoor play place called Out of This World. The kids had a great time, and it was fun to spend some one on one time with Syd. Aaron wore himself out repeatedly climbing through the two-story rocket ship with Lincoln and Zac, and then managed to lose both boys when they ran for their moms without him knowing.

Thursday- Kelly and Esther graciously took our children over to Lisa's house and everyone there pitched in and kept an eye on them for us so that Aaron and Chuck and Debbie and I could go do a session at the Portland temple. I'd never been to the Portland temple before. It's beautiful. Probably the most beautiful celestial room I've ever seen. It was so nice to go to the temple, and we've made a goal to get there more often. After the temple we went to lunch at a very good Thai restaurant across the street. I love Thai food, I don't eat it nearly often enough. Then we went back to Lisa's to rescue everyone from our children. Everyone went in for pizza and we ate together and played Dance Party on the wii. I was not even close to good, but oh I loved it! It brought back great memories of DDR in high school. Sydni and family also came up to spend the next few days at Aaron's parents house with us. Lincoln loved having "sleep overs" with Zac, and was very jealous of his color changing night light. ;)

Friday- For Christmas Eve we all went over to Lisa's.  Oh, quick funny story, earlier in the day Aaron and I went to the store to get a few things, and we took Ivan with us because he wouldn't take a nap. Of course he fell asleep in the car, so Aaron carried him in to the store, and he was out cold, so we layed him down in the shopping cart, and he actually slept the whole time we were shopping in the back of the cart. Silly boy. At Lisa's we had a ginger bread house making contest. Each family did their own house. It was so fun to see everyone's creativity. We used hot glue guns to glue the graham crackers together, which definitely made it a lot easier to be creative. Aaron and I built a barn with a silo, a duck pond, and a herd of sheep with a shepard. We got awarded "most authentic". Some of the things other people built were a train, an Arizona house with cactus, a Scottish castle, a grass hut with palm tree, a zoo, and a candy coated house. Everyone got some kind of award, and we all had a good time. For dinner, everyone brought appetizers and finger food. I thought it was a good way to go. After that we gathered together and read the Christmas story from the Bible and sang Christmas carols and some of the kids played the piano for us. It was a really nice evening.

Saturday- Merry Christmas! Sydni and Jake's kids got up at 5:30am. Luckily, ours did not. But it all worked out for the best anyway. Sydni and Jake set out Santa presents for their kids, and we just have all our presents wrapped and under the tree. So their kids got up and played with the Santa presents, and then when Lincoln got up at about 7:30, breakfast was ready and after that we opened presents, so he didn't even notice that anything about his Christmas was different than his cousins'. Ivan got up right after we'd started opening presents, and Adelia waited until we were finished before she got up. After that we all showered and got ready and headed over to Lisa's for a big Christmas dinner. We had ham and rolls and potatoes, and everything was delicious. After dinner we had a family talent show, which I think was Stacey's idea, and I thought it was a really good one. Zac told jokes, Lincoln sang the Pre-Amble to the Constitution, Bennett counted to 100, Jordan tied knots, Carter and Esther and Ryan played the piano/viola/guitar together, Aneya and Lisa sang a song, Melissa and Stacey and Ryan and Rob did a skit, Stacey and Lisa and Kelly and Rob and I sang Silent Night with Esther accompanying us on the viola, Audrey did a back walk-over, and Aaron jumped up to standing from laying flat on his back, and Spencer built us something out of his ubersticks. I really loved that we had a family talent show and that adults and kids were involved and everyone had fun together. I think we should do things like that more often. I think it brings us together and makes us all feel more comfortable with each other.

Sunday- We got up and went to church at Aaron's parents' ward. The boys did great together in nursery. Adelia had a blow out diaper all over her beautiful Christmas dress. After church we all had naps, and Aaron and I packed. Then Ryan and Melissa and Kelly and Esther came over for dinner. We had a really good roast. After the kids were in bed, Aaron and I packed some more. Then Lisa came over and we got to spend some time with her. It's funny, I feel like we spent almost every day of our vacation at her house, but Sunday night was the first night I felt like we really got to see her and have conversation with her. Isn't that funny? But I'm glad she came over. Lisa is one of my very favorite people, and someone I look up to a lot. After she left Aaron and I stayed up until all hours of the night and morning, finishing our packing and talking about our future job situation with Chuck and Debbie, who had a lot of good advice. It's always nice to bounce our ideas off of someone who has some meaningful input.

Monday- After 3 hours of sleep (why do long trips always start that way?), we woke up and finished the last bit of packing, loaded the car, and said our good byes. LONG drive. The kids didn't do as well this trip. Lincoln was on one right from the get go. Adelia did pretty good, but by the time we were in southern Idaho, she was done. Ivan wins the prize for best child traveler on both legs of our trip. We finally made it to Hooper.

Tuesday- Spent the day in Hooper opening presents and visiting with family. In the evening we had Lemmon/Sparks family pictures. I am excited to see how they turn out. Then we drove to Provo. I think that I never want to get in my van ever again. :) But we had a great trip. It was so nice to see every one on both sides of the family. It would have been the perfect holiday if only I'd remembered my stupid camera battery!

Thirsty? Why Wait...

"Jump Around...Jump Around...Jump Up, Jump Up, and Get Down"

Adi loves the bouncy chair...YAY! And I love her little blue hat...YAY! And as you can see in the video, my boys like to be on camera. :)

Tucson

At the first of December, Raytheon called and invited Aaron down to Tuscon for an on site interview. This is the job that contacted Aaron awhile ago asking him to put in for a specific job down there. So last Thursday we took Aaron back to the airport so he could fly back to Arizona.

The interview went well. And yesterday they contacted Aaron and made him a verbal offer and said they would over night him all the details in writing. We have about three weeks to make a decision. Major life changing decision sooner than we expected it equals a lot of stress at the Swan house hold this week. On top of stress we are already feeling from Aaron's finals and trying to get ready to go on a vacation.

 Aaron said he felt like everyone he talked to down there really liked their jobs, and that the work environment would be enjoyable. He would get top-secret security clearance and work on designing missiles. Cool. From my perspective it also seems like a great job. The salary they're offering was a bit more than I expected, plus he'd get 3 weeks paid vacation right off the bat, plus an extra week and a half at Christmas time. He would work 9 hour days with every other Friday off. He probably wouldn't have to travel very much.

Sounds like a dream job, right? Well it is. So what's the problem? Why all the stress? Well, because the job is located in Tucson, Arizona, which is number one on my list of places I have absolutely no desire to live or raise a family. I'm not a 115 degree summer type person. I'm not a stucco house type person. And I'm definitely not an organized-rocks-for-a-back-yard-instead-of-grass type person.  I don't like cactus, or even palm trees, that much. I grew up in a place where I spent a lot of my days playing outside in trees and grass and dirt, so did Aaron, so we don't really know what our kids would do for play outside in AZ. We definitely don't want them to stay inside their whole lives and be couch potatoes. How will we build Lincoln and Ivan a tree fort? How will we raise a huge garden and fruit trees so we can do lots of canning and preserving? What about the tulips I always thought I'd plant in the spring? How about decorating for Christmas in 75 degree weather? What about that fact that I love to see my kids wearing fuzzy footy pajamas? I don't know. Some of these things sound stupid, I know, but they are what's running through my head.

Especially the playing outside thing. I keep coming back to that. I think it's an important part of development for kids to play outside, and have their own freedom to explore nature at their whim. I don't know how excited I'd be as a kid in AZ when all I have are cactus and rocks to play with, and other kids in other places have huge trees, and all kinds of plants, and streams and fields, and shade to spend an afternoon reading a book in, and on and on. Maybe it's that I don't know any better...someone from AZ please enlighten me. I know there are places to go and do things. You can go to a park, or a museum, or wherever. I'm not really worried about finding things to go and do. What I worry about is when we are home and I'm doing chores or whatever, and the kids need to be able to go out in the back yard and play. What will they do in an Arizona backyard? I refuse to get a house with a pool...I'd spend every waking hour of the day terrified that one of my kids was drowning in it. Maybe if they were older, but right now while they are all so young it just seems like asking for trouble.

So I get all this whirling around in my head and I think, no, we can't move to Arizona. But then I start thinking about the job. It's a job Aaron would love, I think. Which is really important to me. Aaron has worked so hard the last who knows how many years. He deserves a good job with a company that wants him, and clearly Raytheon does...they've pulled out all the stops, so to speak. The pay is great. The benefits are great. The company is family oriented. They would pay for us to move our stuff, pay for us to ship our car, fly us out there. Pay for us to come down a separate time to look for a place to live. And you really can't beat three weeks paid time off with a week and a half at Christmas and every other Friday off, can you? Can I pass something like that up? We'd get to see SO much of Aaron. I would love that.  So then I start thinking, ok, we'll take the job. It won't be so bad, lots of people live in Tucson, they must go outside. There is a mountain in Tucson, with a ski resort on top, so it would be better than Phoenix was. And I start looking on craigslist for places to rent, and I see all the awful stucco houses and want to vomit. Why can't this job just be located somewhere, anywhere, else?

The other side of the coin is the company in Spanish Fork that Aaron is interning for. There is a possibility that they will make Aaron an offer. It probably won't be as much pay, or as much vacation time, though. Aaron told them about his offer from Raytheon, so we are just waiting to see what happens. Making life altering decisions is not my favorite thing...but I guess in a couple weeks we'll have had to decide and it will all be over. Oh boy.

Mini Preschool: Christmas: Games/Activities/Movement

I was in charge of preschool today. And I had a few activities planned that I thought would be good, but I felt like things didn't really come together as I had planned in my mind, so I was a bit disappointed with the whole thing.

My category was games/activities/movement. The first thing we did was I gathered the kids together on the

 floor in the living room and gave each child a mini-book I'd printed out off of DLTK's website (I find a lot of great resources on this website btw) that told the story of the ginger bread man. We read the story together, and then I gave each child 4 flash cards that had pictures of different parts of the story, and I had them help me put the pictures in order of how they happened. I thought this activity went well. It seemed like it was a good difficulty level, and the kids had fun and liked having their own books to follow along.

For the second activity, I split the kids up into two groups. The first group did a Christmas tree activity. I had Aaron draw me two Christmas trees on poster board with blank spaces for ornaments. Each of the ornaments was a different shape (circle, square, triangle, etc.) and the kids had to pick an ornament off the side and put it in the right place on the tree. Shape matching. This activity was way too easy for all the kids, and they accomplished it in about 3 seconds flat.

The second group went into the kitchen, where I had strung Christmas lights onto my washer and dryer. They had to take clothes pins that I'd painted different colors and clip the clothes pin next to the color of Christmas light that it matched (red to red, blue to blue, etc.). This activity was also way too easy, and didn't take up the time I'd anticipated that it would. When each group was finished with their activity, then we traded.

After that we came back together as a big group. I showed the kids a jingle bell and talked about how a jingle bell is a type of instrument and that you play a jingle bell by making the little ball inside of it vibrate against the sides. I showed them how if I held the jingle bell tightly it would stop the vibration and the bell wouldn't make noise. Then I gave each kid a jingle bell of their very own (dollar store, 9 bells for $0.80, can't beat that!) and we played a gave where I'd have them hold the jingle bell in different places (above their head, behind their backs, etc.) and shake it really fast and really slow. We shook our bells while we spun around in circles. Then I put on the song by Transiberian Orchestra called A Mad Russians Christmas, which has slow parts and fast parts. I encouraged the kids to shake their bells slowly during the slow parts, and as fast as the could during the fast parts. We also danced around the room. But whenever I stopped the music, everyone had to freeze until the music started again. I think this was probably the favorite activity.

For our last thing, we did candy cane races. I gave each kid a candy cane and a shishkabob stick (don't worry, we cut the pointy ends off). The game was to hold the stick in both hand and hook the candy cane in the middle, and balance the candy cane while running between the stair cases at each end of the building. The kids did great, and were very funny to watch. Then I let them eat their candy canes for a treat.

And that was it. The whole thing took about 30 minutes. Oops. My bad. I guess when it's my turn again I'll have to do a time trial first. I felt really bad, since usually preschool is supposed to be about an hour.

Christmas Card 2010

The Swan Family’s ABCs of 2010

A Adelia Mae Swan, born August 3rd 2010. She weighed 8 lbs 5 oz. and was 20 in. long.

B Blog posts are frequent. Krystal posts them on AKSwanFamily.blogspot.com.

C Cardboard and all the things Aaron has built with it to entertain our boys.

D Dirty Dash website Developed by Aaron—Krystal and Lincoln participated in the race. And Dozens of Diapers changed Daily.

E Eating healthier has been one of our goals this year. Our favorites are cracked wheat for breakfast and green shakes for lunch, and we’ve been eating more vegetables for dinner.

F Family History teaching assignment for Krystal at church, and a goal to have Family Home Evening every week.

G Graduate School is keeping Aaron busy. He also teaches Gospel Doctrine at church.

H Hand Foot and Mouth Disease (aka the plague) contracted by our kids in April wasn’t any fun. But Halloween was memorable—we went as pirates, with our own pirate ship.

I Ivan has been growing up fast this year, talking nonstop, saying prayers, making animal noises, going to nursery, and riding his tricycle. Since we discovered his milk allergy, he’s been sleeping great at night. Ivan will turn two this March.

J Job hunting…a long stressful process. The unknown is a killer.

K Krystal organizes play groups, teaches preschool with a group, attends story time, learns about homeschooling, does crafts with the kids, blogs, sews, and reads.

L Lincoln learned to ride a big bike, all his letters and sounds, and how to use the potty this year. He loves playing outside, water, preschool and story time, and his friends. He turned three in August.

M Marshmallows are our bribing tool. The kids will do almost anything to get one. And on Memorial Day we had a family barbeque and water fight.

N
O When you combine N and O, you get the word most often used in our house

P Preschool and Play Group are our two favorite activities every week.

Q Quitting the apartment management job we’ve been doing for the last year so that Aaron can begin an internship with a company called imSAR in Spanish Fork.

R Roommates—Lincoln and Ivan started sharing a room this year and are doing well.

S Summer—Seven Peaks, sprinklers, sandboxes, swelling (Krystal, because of pregnancy), slides, sunshine, and swimming. We love summer!

T Thesis—Aaron is still working on it. He hopes to complete it and graduate in April.

U Utah, been here 2 years now, and with Aaron’s internship we’ll be here a bit longer.

V Valentine’s Day dinner at Good Wood BBQ, thanks to Kelly for watching our kids.

W Washington trip in June—homeschool conference, websites, parks, Debbie’s birthday.

X eXams will be done forever in December. Aaron finishes his course work this semester.

Y The Y—Some things we’ve done on campus this year: Bean Museum, Halloween party, Eyring Science Center, Sunday walks, information sessions, and free pizza.

Z Zzzzs— not getting much sleep.


Merry Christmas! Love, the Swans
Aaron, Krystal, Lincoln, Ivan, Adelia

Hand Print Reindeer

For any out there who may mistakenly think that all (or any, for that matter) of our crafts and projects go nicely and smoothly...I'd like you to know that the child pictured above eats paint every time. And then throws a fit, every time, because it tastes terrible. He gets paint all over his chair, and all over the table, and all over his face, and all over in his hair--always. And he's only 1/3 of the chaos that goes around here when we do a project. But we keep doing them, not because it's easy (because it isn't) but because I think it has value for the kids, and that makes it worth it.

We made hand print reindeer this week. My kids are really in to hand print art. So I'm lucky that you can do pretty much everything with a hand print. In fact, we've done so many that now the first thing they do when we pull out the paint is to try and paint their hand. But I thought these reindeer turned out really cute. I've we ever get around to it, I think I'll do Santas to match. They look good hanging in my kitchen window. (All our good art gets hung in the kitchen window, it lasts longer there than on the fridge, and that way we can use it for decorations as well.)

These were nice and easy to finish up too. Once the hand print dried, I just used a magic marker to make black hooves and antlers, an eye, and a mouth. And a red marker for the nose, and a green marker to write Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays. Oh, and I should mention that the tail is a thumb print. You can't really see it in the picture.

We've reached a point where Adelia takes a morning nap and gets up just in time for Linc and Ivan to go down for their naps, and then by the time Ivan is about to get up, Adelia is ready to go back down. So we have a very long section of our day devoted to nap time. It's fine, it just means we stay home a lot. But we've been getting creative with the ways we entertain ourselves, so that's good.

One of the things we've been doing a lot of, is telling the nativity story. Lincoln loves it. He likes to repeat the line that the angel says to the shepards. Aaron came up with a creative way to use Lincoln's Imaginets to tell the nativity story. (I LOVE the Imaginets set by the way! And Lincoln is really starting to get in to it, which makes it even more fun. Highly recommend it.) They used the Imaginet pieces to create a nativity scene. I thought they were so clever.

We've also been impersonating Buzz Lighteryear quite a bit.

We've been playing with Adelia a lot. Seeing which toys she really likes, how long she'll stay in her jumpy seat, and trying to be quiet when she's down for her naps.

We've built a few forts, found a new love for our Mega Bloks, and just generally trying to keep ourselves entertained with any means we can find. But my boys have been playing so well together lately. It's made being in a lot easier. The other day Ivan was napping and Lincoln was not, and Linc asked me if it was time to go wake up Ivan yet. I said no. And Linc got a pouty lip and said, "But I wanna play with him." SO CUTE!! I almost let him wake Ivan up....but then I thought about it for one second and came to my senses. :)