Christmas and Utah Randomness

Aren't kids in snow suits the cutest things ever? With their little hats and mittens and their poor little arms stuck mid-air because of puffy jackets? I really loved putting Owen in his little snow suit this year. I was super excited to take him outside and build a snowman with him. He was more excited about the prospect of knocking the snowman down once  me, my mom and dad finished building it. Oh well, he was still a lover of snow which made me super happy.

Have I mentioned I love winter activities? Espeically the ones leading up to Christmas. Our family has a few traditions that I can't wait for each year.  My personal favorite, making popcorn balls and then heading out to see the Christmas lights.

The only thing I hate about the Christmas season is when it's over. I love Christmas Eve but always feel sad Christmas morning. I get all sentimental and wishing it wasn't all going to be over with. I will say though that having Owen around this year made Christmas morning so much fun. He was super excited about the gifts (or the unwrapping of gifts). I won't bore you with a million Christmas pictures, just a few of my favorites from Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.

The three youngest got rocking horses.... so cute.

Owen loves Baby Jesus or "Baby Geez"

New train set from Santa

The Rhodes Clan

Loved the unwrapping

Luckily my mom hates when Christmas is over as well so the week after Christmas, she had an after-Christmas Christmas party for the grandkids. It was fantastic. So much fun to be had and it made the holidays seem like they were lasting a titch longer.

Shoot the marshmallow through the snowman

Christmas Jeopardy

Wiggle the bells out of the box

Get ten puff balls in the bowl with just your nose

Painting window hangings

So much fun. What a great grandma! Owen and I were super excited to be there to take part.

A few things Owen discovered while in Utah:
1. His love of "The Grinch", not the cartoon, the one with Jim Carey. Also his love of Shrek. He watched them at least once a day if not more. What is it with our child and green monsters?
2. How much he misses being around grandparents and cousins.

Aren't they the cutest group of kids ever?

Grandpa Rhodes

Grandma Rhodes

Loved playing Wii with Grandma and cousins

3. How to sing Ruldolph with actions and twinkle twinkle with actions. I'm not kidding, it's the cutest thing I've ever seen. I know I'm his mom but really... so cute.
4. His love of treats or as he calls them "teets". Living with Grandma for a month does that to a kid.
5. His love of boxes. My dad seriously wants to market boxes to parents. Every grandkid my parents have, ages 2-11 played in the box that my parents saved from their water heater.

6. He loves my dad's night ritual of cookies and milk. He wasn't such a fan of eating the cookies as he was of dunking them in Grandpa's milk and leaving them there.

7. His favorite new trick "balancing a spoon on his nose"























I know this post is a bit lame and a little late (seeing that it's almost mid-January). One of my new years resolutions: Get back to the blog. I've been super lazy with it. Non-creative and hardly ever writing. Hopefully with the new year comes a new sense of creativity.

Owen's Got Heart

YAY for this past week being over with! We came out to Utah a couple weeks before Christmas so that Owen could get a VSD (Ventrical Septal Defect) fixed. What does that mean? Owen had a hole in his heart that needed a patch so we flew in to Utah and headed to Primary Children's for a little open heart surgery.
When we found out about Owen needing the surgery Tyler and I talked about our biggest fears concerning the surgery. Obviously, the fact that it was an open heart was our biggest fear but, beyond that... My biggest fear was when they were going to take him away to get him prepped for surgery. I imagined he and I both bawling as they wheeled him away and then him waking up for surgery and me not being in the room. Tyler's biggest fear was just about the scar Owen was going to have live with for the rest of his life and how it would affect him. Isn't it crazy the different things mom's and dad's think about? Tyler kept assuring me that even when I wasn't going to be in the room that Owen would be in good hands and I kept assuring Tyler that Owen would definitely be able to pull a big scar off. I'm convinced it won't bother him when he's older.
The morning of the surgery came and instead of Owen being ripped out of my arms bawling, this is what he looked like:

Happy as could be. He couldn't wait to drive away in the car. Those people at Primary Children's really know what they are doing.
We went to see him after surgery and he was pretty out of it because he was being so fiesty that they had to sedate him. Poor little guy. It was not a fun couple of days for him or for us.
When he finally did wake up, he saw some trains they had brought to him, grabbed on to them and went right back to sleep. Comfort choo choo's. I guess they do the trick.

Just a little video for your viewing pleasure. This is one day after surgery. Sad... nevermind about the video. Apparently I have issues uploading videos. It hardly ever works for me...

After a couple of days in the ICU, we were able to move to a regular room. You can not believe the differene a couple of days make for a little kid. This is him two days after surgery:

Singing songs to me and reading me an Elmo book

Playing with the suds from the sponge bath

 

Skoping out the play room



Loving the fun the hospital provides

Couldn't get enough of Toy Story

We ended up being in the hospital five days and were sent on our way. I'm going to quickly pre-empt this picture by saying that we had been sleeping in the hospital for those five days and hair and makeup were not my first priority. Saying goodbye:

We're so grateful to have the surgery over with and our the little man on the mend. YAY for Primary Children's Hospital and all of the doctors and nurses who took such good care of Owen. They were seriously amazing there.

We had so many visitors, phone calls, texts, emails, etc. from people who love Owen. Thank you so much to all of you who had us in your thoughts and prayers! It means so much to know people were concerned for our little guy. We love you!

How to teach a one and half year old to unlock a door?

I really think that without the Rhodes Family to save, the Landon and Melanie John family would have nothing to do here in Ft. Lauderdale (oh wait, besides Landon working full time and going to school and Mel taking care of her own little guy). But really, we keep them pretty busy.

Yesterday Mel was at our place at 7:30 in the morning taking Tyler to the airport because both of our cars were dead. Then she was at our place later that day jumping the car so I could get around town. Did I mention that Tyler accidently took our house keys and car keys with him to Puerto Rico? Luckily Mel has an extra house key so saved our day with that as well. Anyway, that was yesterday. Today is a new day, with a fresh new start. It actually started out looking like we wouldn't need to bother the John's with any of our little family problems today but that didn't last too long.

I had a presidency meeting this morning (did I mention that I have a new calling in the Ft. Lauderdale ward? I'm the new YW President... WOW, anyway, that deserves it's own post in itself... who ever would have thought it right?). So anyway, my first counselor and one of my advisors were at my house while the kiddos (Owen and a buddy) were playing in the back room. Owen't little friend walks out of the room, I hear a door close and then Owen calling for me. Owen doesn't quite know how to open doors yet so I went back to open the door and let him out only to discover that the door was locked. It's not a door we usually close and to be honest, I didn't even realize that the door had a lock on it. Needless to say, we do not have a key to that particular door. Here is a picture of the room he is locked in:

Not sure if you can tell or not but one door leads to the kitchen and the french doors lead out back. I figured I'd go out back and open the door and grab him and then realize that somehow the back door has gotten locked as well. No go on saving him that way. I'm sure you are asking yourselves why we don't have keys to our own doors? It's a valid question. We just don't. We have keys to the front door... we rent and the landlord lives in Washington and until now we haven't needed those keys. Guess I'll be calling him today to find out where those are located. Anyway, didn't get him out of the door by way of the backyard.

So, we tried to pick the lock (It's harder than it looks):

We tried taking the hinges off of the door (too tight to get out):

We tried going through the window (windows were locked).
We tried teaching Owen how to unlock the door for us (he thought it was a game and just kept jiggling the door handle, didn't quite get the whole unlocking part of the game).
So, we tried breaking one of the glass panes (tempered windows, not happening):
Then, we tried calling re-inforcements (Mel and her bobby-pin), when that didn't work, we called her reinforcement (Landon)

After an hour and a half, while I was on the phone with a locksmith, one of those reinforcements got the door open... with the old credit card and butter knife trick.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thanks Landon! Oh and everyone else who tried to break in the other ways... it's greatly appreciated!

Kent and Chris Rhodes Came to Visit... YAY!

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays so I was super bummed when we weren't going to be home with family to celebrate.  You can imagine my excitement when I found out thet Kent and Chris (Tyler's parents) were going to be visiting us for a week over Thanksgiving. We had such an amazing time with them and Owen couldn't get enough of mama (grandma) and drampa (grandpa). He's been asking about them every day since they left. Some of the highlights from the trip are pictured below...

Hanging at the beach (yes... it was warm enough, it's still like mid-80's here). Definitely does not feel like Thanksgiving time of year.

Making my first Thanksgiving dinner. As you can see, I was not impressed with the innards of the turkey, especially when my father-in-law was going to eat them. Yuck...

Tyler cutting his first turkey... Doesn't he look manly?

The set up...

The feast and the company... mmmm, yummy. Thanks to all of my mother-in-law's expert advice and help(thanks Chris!) It would not have been the same without her.

And, what would a Florida trip be without seeing the alligators while visiting here?

Oh and guess what? Even though it's still summer weather here, they still celebrate Christmas! There was a little light it up party on the Riverwalk by our place so we decided to check it out while they were here...
Owen got to see "Danda" (Santa). BTW... don't kids catch on to the Christmas concept so quick? Seeing Father Christmas once and Owen is smitten with Santa. Can't get enough.

The train ride (Owen's favorite part of the night)

Santa was supposed to be sitting in this chair but I guess we missed that part of the evening. Instead we just stuck Owen in the chair with a sucker for a cute photo op.

The whole point of  "Light it up" night was supposed to be lighting up this big tree in the park, we got there a little late so we walked down to see the tree and guess what? Not lit up. We were sorely disappointed.

Since it was on the Riverwalk we decided to sit down, relax and watch the "boap" (boats).

We actually showed Tyler's parents around on our little boat (still to be named) and I didn't get ANY pictures. Why didn't I take any pictures? Oh well, next time. Chris, if you read this and have some pics from the boat ride, maybe you could send them over... 

We had such a fantastic time with the Kent and Chris Rhodes Family! Owen hasn't stopped asking for Grandma or Grandpa since they left last week and he is constantly saying "choo choo mama"... referring to going on the choo choo with Grandma (I think). Anyway, thanks so much for the visit you guys! We can't wait to see you again in just a few weeks!