Christmas Morning

We had Christmas at our house and stayed home all day. Christmas Eve day, Santa asked us to help him with a project upstairs in Nick's room, so nobody was allowed upstairs all day and all night. So, the kids had to sleep in the basement in the extra beds on sleeping bags. They slept in until 8am (Probably because it was so dark down there.) I think everyone was happy with their stuff--Mallory and Carter with their Ipods and earphones, and Nick was thrilled with his new room! They got games that they played most of the day. They also played on the new sled. I made a nice turkey dinner that night, which was a little more work than I had imagined--it always is. Stress relieving, but disappointing that night, we realized the weather was going to be too much to travel to Provo/Orem to see our families the next day, so we postponed the trip until New Year's Day. (By the way, that was very fun! It was like having two Christmas's) Enjoy the slideshow!

Jamie at 3 months

Jamie, just being cute and doing new things. He pretty much always smiles when you talk and smile at him, holds his head up, regards his hands and plays with toys. He's such a good baby--content when his needs are met and sleeps through the night!

Maeser 5th Grade Christmas Concert

Another great concert with the recorders--it's amazing how well they have taught the kids! They sound great! They got to perform for their own school and parents, then the next day, traveled to several different schools around Vernal and Roosevelt.


Recorders in action

Mallory and her good friend Lindsey

She looked darling in her sparkly Christmas dress!

Thanksgiving

We went to my brother Bruce's cabin in Heber and spent the weekend with their family and my parents. Dinner was great and we sat around playing games, watching movies, talking and laughing. One little problem: Bruce's cabin is up several extremely steep hills and we had our van--it snowed the first night! We were stuck! Even 4-wheel drives were sliding around. Michael tried to get down and park at the Timberlakes lot before it snowed again but he was sliding all over the road--he found a driveway of someone else's cabin after realizing that this was not going to work. Bruce chained up and took Michael and my Dad to the tire store (which was lined up with other Timberlakes residents and visitors) to get chains for their vehicles. They worked great--I guess I just didn't realize how effective those are or we would have bought them the first year we moved to Vernal. Traveling over Strawberry and Daniels in snow can get pretty bad--I can think of a few times where chains would have really helped. $75 to get a family safely down the hill seemed like nothing. Anyway, it was a fun weekend with LOTS OF PHOTOS! Aimee and Bruce have a beautiful cabin and were extremely generous and accomodating. Funniest moment (other than Bruce's re-cap of the Utah-BYU game) was when Bruce played the part of Nacho Libre when he says, "When you are a man, you sometimes wear stretchy pants in your room." Had to be there. . .We also headed down to AF to buy shoes and stopped by Grandma Peterson's for a visit. FUN THANKSGIVING!

Carter's Family Home Evening Lesson

Jen & Bryan Rouska are Carter's primary teachers. They are at the part of the manual where they teach about the Atonement, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Life of Jesus Christ, so it takes a few lessons. They brought that new book called "Reflections," which has beautiful photos representing the life of Jesus Christ. Carter was quite taken with that book and after class, he asked Jen if he could secretly borrow the book to teach a family night lesson with. Jen secretly told me about it--I said nothing to Carter after school on Monday, but knew what he was doing when he snuck out of the house. For family night, he sat up on a stool and faced the rest of us on the couch and started explaining the few pages they looked at in the lesson about the Crucifixion and Forgiveness. We had not seen the book, so we were all very quiet and reverent when he showed us the pictures. (I asked if I could take a couple of pictures since this was his first lesson he planned by himself.) He turned to the page about forgiveness when Jesus was on the cross and said, "This is probably the most important part that we learned." He stopped for a second and we realized he was trying to get a hold of himself so he wouldn't cry. Then, as started to talk, his voice cracked and he started to tear up as he said, "Jesus even forgave them after they hung him on the cross and killed him." You could tell he was trying so hard not to cry because if he did, he wouldn't be able to teach us. I couldn't even look at Michael who kept trying to get me to glance his way--I knew if I did that I would cry and embarrass Carter. I have not felt such a reverent spirit EVER during Family Home Evening. He told me when I was tucking him in that night that he loved the pictures in Primary but didn't feel as special as he did while he was teaching during Family Night.

Twilight

I took Mallory to Twilight on opening night. We went with Jen Rouska, her mom Joann, Liz Timonthy and her daughters. I was a little worried because she's right at that age of "Is it appropriate or not?" Well, she loved it and started reading the book. She hates reading but can't put this one down--kind of like the Harry Potter phenomenon for boys. She started Harry Potter book 1 a couple of months ago and likes it but only reads the minimum required pages for school. With Twilight, she is sneaking it at night after she is supposed to be in bed! Notice how un-mad I am about that. It reminds me of the Sylvan commercial from a few years ago where the mom "catches" her kid reading in their room and gets a little teary. I'll admit that I get a little teary from that commercial. . .I'm lame.

Who does Jamie look like?

It's fun to get comments like, "Oh, he's a Peterson!" Or saying he looks just like one of the other kids (Mallory is mentioned most often), but he looks like ALL of them, depending on the day and the look. Here is the proof: (Jamie is the top photo of all the pairs)

Jamie and Nick:

Jamie and Mallory:

Jamie and Carter:

It's so fun to go back to all these photos and compare!