Catch up: November

Ah November...when the leaves all fell in two weeks and the first snow hit. My parents came out for a quick visit and caught the BYU vs. Wisconsin game. We tailgated for the first time and froze our buns off more than we did at the Packers game the week before. Sad we lost, but still fun to cheer for the cougars.

                            

Grandpa helped rake the wet leaves...they were a little tough for this pregnant momma...and the girls were great at helping us bag them. I can always count on my dad to help me out with projects when he comes to town.

 And he's great at entertaining the kids...with his iPad :)

 We got our first taste of a very long, cold winter...

 ...and made even more pumpkin cookies.

At at the end of the month, a party began. All of Paul's family came to our house for Thanksgiving. All 23 of us, with 4 of us pregnant. We smashed one family into each bedroom, threw Christina in the basement, and had a party. I never take enough pictures when family comes to town, but we had a great time together. The 11 grandkids played, the pregnant moms folded moravian stars, and plenty of root beer was drunk. 

We even went on a Sprecher factory tour, where the root beer and soda tastings are bottomless. Sprecher is an Iverson family favorite, and generally accepted (at least in these parts) as the greatest root beer in America.

What's Thanksgiving without tons of food?

And a family photo! Grateful to photoshop to knock out the water treatment facility in the background, and turn a few baby heads. It was about 30 degrees outside that day...hence Anna's open mouth smile.

Another Iverson family obsession is Moosejaw. No, not the city in Canada, but the quirky outdoor equipment store. Erika sent this picture to Moosejaw last month and it was featured on their Facebook page for a week, and all 23 of us...well, 27 of us since there are 4 new babies counting mine...got free t-shirts for next years' photo. No wonder we love this company! The Moosejaw photo will be a new Iverson tradition.

Recap: November

Somehow, with all of December's busyness, November was forgotten. Here are some highlights:

Niels has mastered the art of his baby walker (which we got for free at a rummage). He cruises all around the house and loves his freedom - and chasing his sisters. After his first tumble down the stairs (!) we quickly installed a gate and he is now relatively safe...unless one of his sisters forgets to lock the gate. 

One of autumn's greatest pleasures...jumping in leaves. Especially since we can't throw them in the garbage bin here, the only purpose of raking them is to jump in them.

Thanksgiving with the Elder Beech, Elder Harmon, and Paul's parents and brother. It was wonderful just being at home and not travelling.

The kids opened Christmas presents from Paul's sister Erika right after Thanksgiving...Christmas pajamas and a bunch of Christmas book! A great way to start off the season.

 And Erika included some $1 post-Halloween costumes...dress-up is always a favorite at our house.

And my chubby little Niels. He is growing so fast. He is crawling everywhere and wants to grab everything. He knows exactly how to turn on the iPad and I think he truly understands the sign for "all done" at dinner time. I can't believe his birthday is next month already!

November

Right before Halloween I took on a task of motherhood that I had been dreading: potty training. I had put it off as long as possible. Most of her friends were potty trained and I still didn't feel like my little girl was ready. Then one day, she suddenly hated having a wet diaper on. She would lay down on the ground holding a clean diaper while yelling, "PEED!!!" at the top of her lungs. I guess I could finally take the hint that she was ready.

Gratefully, I have 5 older siblings, all with a lot more parenting experience than I. Sharee introduced us all to a method called "Potty Training in Less Than a Day," which Laura used last year to potty-trained her twins. Like her, I am a total believer. I love how Hattie instigates going to the bathroom...I don't have to ask her every 10 minutes if she has to use the potty, nor did I waste hours with her sitting on the toilet trying to force her to go when she didn't need to. It really only took a day for it to click. It was such a breeze (at least in comparison to what I expected - months of dealing with accidents). On the contrary, she had accidents randomly for about two weeks, and has now gone about two weeks accident free. Well, I guess she did have an accident the other day, but it was our fault - she was in time-out and we told her she couldn't leave her room...at least she was obedient!

The girls have been fun this month, besides battling a little sickness. At least they are snuggly when sick.
(For some reason this picture rotated and i can't get it to turn back, so just angle your head a bit) Anna only gets chubbier...around the belly. I pulled out the 18-24 month clothes (she's 16 months) and put this shirt on. See that I can't button the buttons by about 3 inches? And I thought Hattie had a belly...this shirt was loose on her!
They love the box that our turkey fryer came in (never baking a turkey again!)
And they love it when I grind wheat...I think they think it's a mini sand box.

We also got family pictures taken, but I'll post those tomorrow...

Thanksgiving in Dallas and an early party

We left on the Monday before Thanksgiving to drive 5 hours to Paul's parents in Dallas. The girls did okay on the drive...Hattie complained only of an "ouwie bum" and was otherwise entertained by her little DVD player. Anna cried a bit, but slept a good portion of the drive. As always the week at Paul's parents was great...we just stayed home and spent time with family instead of rushing out and trying to get a million things done. Sadly with 2 kids there is never any sleeping in on vacation, so by the end of the week we were both exhausted from too many nights of late night board games.

The Thanksgiving meal was a huge success. Christina had a great time prepping the turkey.

And of course, per Iverson family tradition, we fried the turkey. Yum...it still makes my mouth water. Fried is definitely the best way to eat a turkey.

I didn't take very many pictures while we were there. Paul's brother Michael who was married in August had his wedding reception in Texas over the break, so we were able to see some old friends as well. But no pictures of the party, sorry! Paul and I did go out on a date, the first time since Anna was born, enjoying some free babysitting.

Hattie enjoyed being the only grandchild there (besides Anna) and was spoiled by aunts, uncle, and grandparents. She loves Grandma's house with its easy access toy closet and constant entertainment from Tang the Cat.

We also decided to celebrate my birthday early...we had a 1/2 eaten cake from the reception, and parties are always more fun with more people. As I have said before, Hattie LOVES birthdays. She wishes everyone in the family a happy birthday on a daily basis, so she was thrilled to have a real cake with real candles and real presents to open. Like on her birthday, Hattie opened all my presents and passed them over to me without looking at them. This girl is going to love Christmas.

Deep in the heart of Texas

Here we go, becoming bloggers!

We flew out to Texas two weeks ago for Thanksgiving and a medical school interview. Hattie did great on the flight...she slept the whole time. And a nice lady on the plane took pictures of her first flight for us :) The exciting part of this trip is that we got an acceptance to Texas Tech Medical School! We are thrilled that the LONG wait is over...we've been working toward this since we were dating. So unless we get a better offer elsewhere, we'll be moving to Lubbock in July. In case you are scratching your head wondering where Lubbock is, it's in the middle of West Texas, about 5 hours from anything else. So it's definitely remote, but we are glad to have an offer.

Thanksgiving was great, complete with Texas fried turkey, an Iverson family tradition that I experienced for the first time. It was hard having Thanksgiving with no milk products! No whipped cream on pie, no ice cream on pie, no mashed potatoes...no happiness! But Hattie is no longer having blood in her stools, so it is definitely worth the sacrifice.

A note on our blog title: One of our favorite movie quotes is from "Cinderella Man." Russell Crowe approaches his son who is jumping on a mattress. Crowe asks what he's doing and his son replies, "I'm being good; I'm being-have." We've added to that our own Iverson uniqueness, since we have developed a kid-like way of talking, replacing "I'm" with "I's", which is, of course, the contraction for "I is" which is how English-speaking missionaries must sound to Spanish and Portuguese speakers when they are just getting the hang of conjugating.