Favorite December Kid Quotes

After spending most of December with the kiddies, I realized how hilarious they are. Here are some of my favorites:

(1) Lucy at Disneyworld asked me: "Dad, how old am I at Disneyworld?" This is because we told her in Chicago that she was five in Chicago, because she had to be five to see Wicked. I know we're evil.

(2) "Please don't make me go back to that wretched, awful place." Josh, after being told to go to timeout in the laundry room.

(3) "Who invented timeout? Tell me who invented it, because I hate him." Josh, during the same visit to timeout.

(4) "I wish I had another piece of bread. Another piece of bread would be awesome." Jake, during the sacrament.

(5) Jake, out of the blue, "Why does Santa Clause have so big pants?"

(6) And for about 2 months Lucy told me everyday, "Dad, you can't eat with the princesses. Only girls can eat with the princesses. You're not a girl. You are a boy."

Disneyworld!

We went with some of the Holland fam. to Disney World. Thanks to Steve for making it all happen. It was alot of fun, and I am proud to say that no one could keep up with the Droubays when it came to cramming as much Disney magic as possible into 6 days. We are still the undisputed kings and queens of Disney--so choke on our wake.

The gang waiting to ride Small World.
Special thanks to PJ (aka to Julie as "Peter," "Peej" and about 17 other derivations of PJ) for spending half of the trip with JJ clinging to him or climbing on him. He even rode in the back of the van with the boys.
Josh and J in front of their favorite ride. Jake loved the Yeti on the ride so much that he bought a stuffed one. Josh, on the other hand, refused to open his eyes on the ride to look at the Yeti. It was funny that the actual ride, which takes you backwards straight down a hill at about 60 mph did not bother him, but seeing the fake Yeti did. Go figure.
The girls with princess sunglasses.
The kids at Epcot. (And as I am just typing this, Lucy said, in an argumentative tone, "Daddy, I can pick my nose, I just can't eat it." At least we are making some progress in that department.)

After one day at Epcot, Steve was delerious (with joy).
The Disney MGM park was decked out.
Me and my girl on the carousel. And below are some of the lovely Holland sisters, with Josh "girl trapped" with them. On the trip, Josh and J. taught me that "girl trapped" means when you are sitting somewhere with a girls on both sides of you. I told them in a few years they would spend most of their waking moments thinking about ways to become girl trapped.

My two favorite girls.

J's Birthday and Snow

Jake turned 7. I still can't believe he is that old. He went on a shopping spree to Toys R Us for his birthday, and then on Sunday, we had a little party at the house. There was a working volcano cake, spagetti (at J's request), and an unprecedented mingling of Droubays and Hollands. It was fun.
Some of the family.

More of the family

Cutting the cake (in case you couldn't tell)

J opening a present.

Saturday December 1 was a great day. We went to Sadie's baptism, which was a great experience. Congratulations to her. I then found out that my trial, which was scheduled to start on Monday, was not going to go. I had been stressing about it for weeks, hardly sleeping, and only seeing my family ocassionally. I now have almost all of December free, and it is going to be fantastic. We also got the first real snow of the year. Jake and Lucy decided to go outside and play in it. They had a great time.

Lucy made snow angels. I asked her where she had learned to make them, and she said, "It's in Elf--remembow Daddy."

Jake ate a ton of snow and and made Jake faces.

Lucy ate snow too. The eating of snow went against the advice of Josh, who warned that the snow could be "acid snow." Because, "haven't you ever heard of acid rain? If there's acid rain, there can be acid snow."

All the snow also gave us a chance to be really lazy. Lucy plopped down in front of the fire, made herself comfortable, and drew on her magna-doodle. She's so ridiculously cute.

Sick

We spent most of this last week and weekend with some or all of us sick. Josh started it off early in the week; then Jake, and now Lucy and Amy. It has been fantastic. Needless to say--no photos, although we do need to post photos of Jake's birthday still. My two favorite moments from this past weekend:

(1) Lucy's enthusiasm for Christmas. Believe it or not, she is more excited about Christmas than Amy. All of the decorations are out at her insistance and she watches Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer constantly. She loves the song that goes, "We're a couple of mis-fits, we're a couple of nit-wits, what's the matter with mis-fits, seems we don't fit in." Except she sings it, "What's a matter with mit-kit, what's a matter with mit-kit, what's the matter with mit-kit, I don't get it." She sings it at the top of her lungs.

(2) Josh and Jake's hilarious fighting all weekend. They were both locked together in the house all weekend because they were sick, and they were both in a horrible mood. On Sunday, they were sharing a chair playing on the computer and J was being intentionally annoying. Josh got frustrated and pushed him off the chair onto the floor, and J immediately began wailing. I took Josh by the back of the neck (Big D. style) and led him to timeout. On the way I explained that pushing Jake off the chair was not an acceptable solution to the problem. Josh's comeback was classic. "And is pinching my neck an acceptable solution? I don't think so. That is soooo hypocritcal Dad."

Field of Dreams

I'm not sure if this deserves its own post or not, but after finding out that Field of Dreams is also one of PJ's favorite movies, I thought I would share it. In college, I watched that movie all the time. And there is a scene where Shoeless Joe Jackson is talking about how much he loves baseball, and as part of that little speech, he talks about loving the smell of the leather in his baseball glove. So once I woke up in the middle of the night, standing in the middle of my bedroom with my roomate staring at me like I was a freak. Yup, I was sleep walking, and I was standing there smelling my baseball glove. True story. That's how much I love that movie.

Tagged

Okay, Steph tagged me and Amy. This apparently means we need to list six habits or facts about ourselves and then tag six other people by leaving a comment on their blogs. Amy will have to do her own thing, but here are my six:

(1) I get choked up every time I watch Field of Dreams and Kevin Costner says to his dad, "Hey, dad, do you want to have a catch." That just gets me every time.

(2) I am a freak of a Yankees fan. For the past two years I couldn't watch the playoffs because the Yankees losing put me in a bad mood for weeks.

(3) I am a gadget geek. I spend way too much money on the latest gadgets.

(4) I love reading on the john, especially Dilbert comic books.

(5) In high school (way back in the late 80s), I was a new wave dork. My favorite band was Thompson Twins, and I wore suspenders on a regular basis.

(6) Like Steph, I sing in the car--usually Radiohead, Oasis, Coldplay or the Strokes, and I have never, in my life, purchased a country cd.

I'm tagging Mike D., Mike J., Mel, Bri, Heather, and Kelli.

Chicago, Halloween and More Halloween

Ever since I started working at good old PB&L, October has been my busiest month every year. This October was no exception. I billed around 230, which may not mean much to any of you, but it means a heck of alot of work for me and Amy. At one point, I billed for about thirty-six straight hours, which means Amy was picking up all of the slack with everything else. She really is the best, and I definitely couldn't do everything I do at work without her. She runs the house, runs the primary, runs the ballet program at her studio, and still manages to find time to about 1000 other things as well--pretty amazing.

Anyway, working at PB&L has some definite perks. For example, on Thursday-Saturday, I went to a conference in Chicago on the firm's dime, and because Josh and Jake got to go on a boys' trip to NYC in August, we decided to make this one a girls' trip plus Dad. The girls were nice enough to let me tag along to most of their stuff, and it was a blast.

Lucy was in a posing mood by the Chicago River.

Chicago really is a beautiful city, as this photo shows. Here is Lucy with her new dog, Penny. She is obsessed with plush dog toys.

Posing again across the street from the Wrigley Building.

We went to see Wicked. Lucy loved it, and Amy and I were excited to see it again.

The age limit to get into see Wicked was five. So we told Lucy she could be five years old in Chicago. By the way, I was supposed to be in this picture. You can see my knee in the lower left, but I guess Amy thought I was just to darn ugly to merit a spot in the photo.

Ever since we went to Chicago for the same seminar two years ago, Amy has wanted to take Lucy for a tea party at the American Girl Place. So we went. Again, they were nice enough to let me tag along. It was really fun.

Lucy brought her American Girl doll, Elizabeth, to the tea party. Here is Elizabeth getting a drink. Yes, the dolls get their own special seats that are mounted to the table.

The three girls at the tea party.

At the American Girl store, Lucy fell in love with this baby carriage. This sad face is her attempt to con us into getting her the stroller. We didn't cave. However, I have a feeling Santa may be bringing one for Christmas, along with a little baby to go with it.
I do have to brag about Lucy. She is the best girl. She is always happy; whether it was on a three-hour flight, walking all over the city, or sitting through Wicked for nearly three hours, she was always happy and never complained. Everywhere we went she made friends because she is always happy and smiling. Such a good girl. (And yes, I just used the word "happy" about thirteen times in the last two sentences. Happy?)

Before we went to Chicago, it was Halloween. We had a party with the Droubay family on Saturday, and then some of the Hollands came over on Halloween night.

Here are Kate, Uncle Dave, and Lucy getting ready for trick or treating.

Snow White and Cinderella.

A really bad, blurry picture of the trick-or-treaters.

Me and Bri at the Droubay party. We were the only two adults who dressed up. I was Massive Headwound Harry and Bri was a tatooed carny.

Cinderalla and Ga-Linda (aka Lucy and Meg)

Two vampires, Jake and Maddy.

Before the Droubay party.

Kate and Lucy and Kate's birthday party.

Good Music

Not much happening. But if you want to get the newest album from probably the best band of the past 10 years, go to www.inrainbows.com. You can name your price and download it.

Conference Week

I know everyone would rather be hearing from Amy, but she still is not feeling all that great so, there you go. I have added a "Pregnant Amy-isms" section to the page, because she can be just down-right hilarious when she is pregnant and bitter--so enjoy.

Conference weekend was a busy weekend for us. Here is some of what happened.



We re-furnished our bedroom and put a guest room in the basement. Josh wanted to know what you did with a guest room, and I told him it was a place where people could come to stay when the visit Utah. His immediate suggestion was that we get on the phone and invite PJ and Mike Jones, his uncles who live out of state, to come and stay in the room. I started to explain that it might be awkward for PJ and Mike to sleep in the same bed, but then I thought how hilarious it would be, so I'm all for it. Consider it a standing invitation. In any event, Josh was very excited at the prospect of having PJ and Julie or Mike and Steph staying at the house. It did make me think how lucky the boys are to have such great uncles (and aunts) on both sides of the family. They are definitely fortunate.






Conference weekend was wet and rainy. Here is a picture of some of the group on Temple Square before the Priesthood session. Mike, Uncle Richard, Dallin, Grandpa and Greg. Josh spent most of Friday and Saturday building this Lego Ferrari he got for X-mas last year. Apparently it fell apart a couple of times while he was building it. He said, "I felt the tears coming up, but I told myself to calm down and just keep building."









On Sunday, we went to visit Oma and Opa.









Josh, Sadie, Cooper and Jake doing their best to be hilarious.
Opa promised the kids 1 cent for every rotten apple they picked up off the grass.





Josh clocked J in the head with a wood chip. You can see the scratches on his forehead. The next day J went to school and got choked by a girl at recess. He said he wanted to hit the girl, but remembered that I told him we never hit girls. What a good boy. It was alot of drama that included a visit to the principal's office, so the principal could determine the appropriate punishment for the girl. We had a whole family home evening lesson on the appropriate response for a situation where a girl is trying to strangle you. Good times. My opinion is that the girl has a crush on him. He is apparantly quite the ladies' man, and has several girl-friends, one of whom is a Red Sox fan. They have a friendly rivalry going.

Wow

Over conference weekend, the boys and I went to Tooele to visit my grandparents, Opa and Oma. I'll post some pictures of the trip later. But while we were in Tooele, Kimber, my sister, and I started looking through some old photos. I ran across this little gem. That's me, on the far left, and yes my Toughskins are pulled up above my navel, my brother Mike with the Sherriff's badge, my cousin Ryan, and my brother Greg. My favorite part of the picture is Greg's visor. I had one just like it, but green. You can tell that we were excellent fishermen, and even better dressers. I have to say I miss those days; we always had a good time when we went on vacations as a family. So thanks to Mom and Dad and Oma and Opa.

Josh's Post

I went to new york! We got to see so many things! The

flight there was about five hours. We got there at about 10 o,clock. Our hotel room had two small rooms. One was burning, one was cold. My favorite thing about it was when A,Rod hit his 500'th home run. My worst favorite part was when we walked to the museum of natural history.

Losers?

You want to know what's been going on? Relax, I'll tell you what's been going on. Amy has been sick on the couch, and I have been working 14 hour days. How's that? Happy? Good. Now, on to the photos.

Amy is now over 13 weeks pregnant. She is starting to get a little belly--pretty cute girl I must say. She already has names picked, but they are top secret.

Lucy has about 10 friends her age in the neigborhood. Here she is at the church with a few of them. Her best friend, Brooklyn, is on the left in the pink shirt. Lucy is definitely the ring-leader of the group.

Here are some random pictures of the boys in the morning before school. Josh had a scouting activity where they built boats and raced them in raingutters.

And the Yankees made the playoffs for the 13th straight year; you heard me, the 13th straight year. To learn more about the greatest baseball team of all time, you can click on the Yankees link in the links section on this page--you might just learn something (Steve Holland, Dallin Droubay, and PJ Mitchell).