West Point & Boston Aquarium

Here are some highlights of our West Point trip. They had so many artifacts there - it was so interesting to see.

Flag hung over Ground Zero: Sitting Bull's Death Mask:

Hitler's pistol:

Gen. Yoshimoto's sword - the blade was made in the 1600's, given at the surrender of WWII:

While Christine, Nate and I explored the Freedom Trail and Fenway Park in Boston, Shawn took the kids to the Boston Aquarium. We thought it wouldn't be very busy, but boy were we wrong. Shawn said they waited in line for nearly 2 hours just to enter, and then once in Jack wasn't able to make it to the bathroom and pooped his pants. So after dealing with too many people and too much poop, they called it quits! It was perfectly timed, because we had finished the Freedom Trail about the same time.

Nate and Christine

My oldest neice and nephew, Christine and Nate, came out to stay the week with us Christmas Day night. We had a week of fun visiting, site seeing, and me realizing that I'm REALLY no longer young. The course of the week highlighted my "oldness" in comparison to their youth. For example, I found myself commenting on the lyrics of the music they listened too, how unnecessary cellphones really are, noting that none of my clothes would qualify as "trendy or cool", and feeling the aches and pains of my body being putting to the test after hiking up the Bunker Hill monument in Boston, staying up way too late to ice skate in Central Park, and being towered over by Nate and Christine who were once like my own babies!

We had a great week - and we explored the in's and out's of some of the greatest places in the East. I did a few firsts of my own too:
Visited West Point Museum,
I went to the top of the Empire State Blding at night and saw the city lit up in its glory,
Ice skated in Central Park
Visited Ellis Island
Listened to Drake, Lil' Wayne, and the like.... (thanks Nate)
Saw the Rockefeller tree all aglow!

It was a super fun week, and I think that I will spend the next week recovering from the FUNNNNN! Thanks Nate and Tine for coming out, we had a great time.

Christmas 2011

We had a really nice Christmas this year. I can't believe how quickly time flies, it seems like Christmas comes and goes before we know it. Christmas Eve was spent preparing food, going to see "We Bought a Zoo" (super good I would recommend seeing it, and having a yummy dinner. After dinner we got the kids bathed and cozied up in new Christmas pjs. We laid out our cookies for Santa, our reindeer food, and sent the kids to bed. They were too excited to stay for long and kept coming out promising that they saw Santa's sleigh. Finally about 10:30 they fell asleep. Sam woke up about 6:45, and excitedly declared that Santa had eaten all of the cookies, and completely overlooking the brand new bike and race track there for him! Jack and Sam both tore through their presents, and were so happy with what Santa, grandparents, and cousins had given them. Here are the kids' list this year:

Sam - bike, race track, beyblades, and angry birds toy

Jack - candy, gum, candy canes filled with candy, a bike helmet, angry birds game, and a Big Dipper Machine (to dry up all the water in the world)

Lyv - stroller, necklace, dress-ups.

Except for the Big Dipper machine (Santa really did try to find a way to make this happen) all was delivered. Santa is one popular guy here at our house because last but not least, he delivered a trip to Orlando in Februar with the entire Summers' Family! We are soooo excited for that.

We headed out to church after a yummy omlete breakfast, and enjoyed a really nice sacrament program. We came home and had a seafood fest with shrimp and crablegs with our friends the Thuns. After the kids went to bed happily exhausted, Shawn went to NYC to pick up Nate and Christine and I cleaned up the mess!) We had a great Christmas this year. This first Christmas without Ryan was difficult for everyone in our family. I thought about why this was - because if he hadn't died I probably still wouldn't have seen him during Christmas anyways. But there is something about Christmas that draws our thoughts to family, home, and happiness. Some of my best memories are of Christmas' spent with my family, and one in particular included Ryan specifically. I wish that I could have had him open our family Christmas card, and known that he was attending a family party or two. Christmas was felt a bit more deeply this year, with a stronger focus and appreciation for for the "Gift" that was given.

9 Happy Years

12-21-2011 marks Shawn and my 9th year of wedded bliss! As I woke up this morning, the thought came to me that this is the anniversary of the best decision that I ever made. We've lived in 4 different states, added three wonderful children to our home, completed 3 degrees including 2 bachelor's, 1 master's, and 1 doctorate, and through thick and thin, happy and sad, we have had each other.

Jolly Old Saint Nick

We had our ward Christmas party and the boys were sooooo excited to see Santa Claus. Jack was in such a state of shock and awe he couldn't remember what he wanted. But Santa delivered with a sack that contained a candy cane, an orange, and playdough! Sam is getting so big, I remember when he was screaming at the top of his lungs, now he comes with several items on his list ready to share with Santa. I tried to warm Lyv up to Santa by letting her watch the other kids sit on his lap. Her turn came and .... well a picture says a thousand words! All of my kids have a picture like this. Why is Santa so scary?? It is one of my favorite ironies!

The Primary kids also put on a Nativity. This is one of my favorite Christmas traditions, and the kids stole the show. There is something that is so beautiful about the simplicity of the birth of Christ. The humility that it inspires is a wonderful reminder of how my heart should be.

Friends

Lyv and Kennedi are dear friends. They are so adorable to watch. Though they can barely talk, they have entire conversations with each other. They giggle and play so well and it is fun to see that. Lyv and Jack are also starting to be "friends" - more out of lack of options, but it is happening. They like to play the wii together, destroy the house together, and get into the pantry together.
For preschool we attempted to build igloos out of marshmallows and frosting, but Warning to all igloo building persons: Jack will eat you out of house and home, literally. He and Lyv popped those marshmallows in faster than we could put them up.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Or Hannukah or Kwanza (notice the dreidel and Menorrah in the window!) Sam came home and asked me where our dreidel was. I broke the news that we weren't Jewish, which further shattered his dreams of getting multiple gifts for Hannukah. Fortunately big boxes shipped with love from Idaho have arrived the past few weeks. The kids are so excited for Christmas this year, as are we. Here's a picture of the kids in their new church clothes. Thanks Grandma Julie-dog and Grandpa Kelly.

Shawn's Birthday

I have been slacking on my updates. The past two weeks have been wild, crazy and hectic. This week is looking to be nice and slow, and we can really "enjoy" the holidays. Shawn celebrated his 31st birthday two weeks ago. His celebration consisted of him grilling a big juicy steak, building a fire, consuming a Cookie Monster, and showing off his new home theater system he got for his birthday and Christmas for the next two years:) His birthday wouldn't be complete without hearing the Happy Birthday song from New Kids on the Block courtesy of Brigit! Shawn we love you so much. Sam, Jack, Lyv and I so look foward to the second that he walks through the door each night. Thank you for all of your hard work each day to support our family, for you consideration and kindess to each of us, and most importantly for you love. We Love You!

Gingerbread houses and special visitors

Last week we put together a Gingerbread house. Now I'm new to the whole buy a kit and put it together. We usually do a graham crack house and buy candy to decorate it. This was much easier and had a larger assortment of decorating candy. The kids had a great time with this, mostly because they ate the candy the entire time. They spent the rest of the week carefully eating the gingerbread people out of their home - literally. Sam carved out pieces of the home until there wasn't much left.
We also had some special guests in the basement: baby and mommy salamander!

GROSS! As a child I used to have one of these, that I found and kept as a pet. Now I shiver with the ewwy nasty icky grossness of the whole idea of these in my basement. Anyone want to come and stay with us, we've got plenty of room in the basement?

For the Love!...(all in an hour)

I know that there have been several posts dedicated to Jack and his talent for destruction. I honestly stand all amazed at the trappings of his mind. Is there another child out there to match him? I would bet money that he is truly ONE of a kind. The past few days have been filled with horrible parent moments, and I have to say that I failed the test over 75% of the time. My hand hurt from spankings, and my conscience was pricked from all the yelling and shouting I did. Jack and I have had this constant battle since he turned 18 months. I can honestly say that I LOVE him, and his personality. I love his sense of humor, his crazy curiosity, and his ability to figure things out.... he is the comic relief we need everyday! However... I don't love his constant need (and for him it does seem to be a need) to destroy, take apart and ruin all things around him. Last week (just for fun mind you) he torn every key off of our laptop. Shawn and I spent 2 hours putting each one back on. Yesterday I woke up with resolve, yet again, to handle Jack with patience. I have broken up my household cleaning chores to do them on different days, so I don't leave Jack and Lyv unsupervised for an extended period of time. I was doing my usual Thursday chore of cleaning the big floor, and this is what Jack decided to do: I was mad, but handled it without yelling or spanking (pat myself on the back) started to clean that up, and looked over to see Jack dancing around in my dust piles from sweeping. This added to my frustration and I did give Jack a quick spank and told him to go to his room and play with TOYS!! I finally got the bean bag mess cleaned up, went to get the kids' shoes on for storytime and found them in the room with this creative play: All in 1 hour! For the love! I love this boy and wouldn't trade him for anything, but I need to remind myself of this quite a bit, and ask his forgiveness for the many, MANY times that I fail the patience test with him. But after all that mess, he wore himself out and gave me the gift of time: 2 hours of that I was actually able to not worry about what he was destroying or getting into.

I wanna Rock......

You can't tell me that you don't just love Sam's annoyed look in this picture. I have a feeling that this is going to be showing up regularly in family photos from now on! How embarrassing for him to have us for parents:) Janice Joplin's Porsche

And to round out the Thanksgiving extravaganza we headed to Cleveland to the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. Shawn has been itching to visit this and it was loaded with music memorabilia galore! From Elvis outfits to Janice Joplin's scarves; Michael Jackson's Thriller mask and jacket to Curt Kobaine's death certificate - it has a little bit of everything there. They had a great Beatles collection, and were featuring Women of Rock - so Lady Gaga, Shakira, Madonna, Aretha Franklin, etc. were all featured. The only downside was that you can't take pictures in the actual "museum" part, so we don't have any cool shots of any of this cool stuff. Shawn sat and worshipped on the ground of Steven Tyler's scarfed microphone stand and costume he wore for "Pink". I had to drag him away! It was here we said farwell to the Tolboe's and hopefully it won't be nearly as long until we get together again!

Kirtland, Ohio - Thanksgiving Weekend

Kirtland, Ohio was about 30 minutes from Erie so we took advantage of being so close to the church history sites. I have to say the Newel K. Whitney store is one of my favorite places. There is so much history that took place in the early part of the restoration of the church there. It has such a great spirit present there, and the majority of the building is original!The front doors are the original front doors of the store, and the ones that the Prophet Joseph Smith would have walked through the day he arrived in Kirtland.On the steps of the Kirtland Temple. The temple isn't owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is owned by the Community of Christ a break off church formed after Brigham Young became prophet and headed west to Utah. They have maintained the building along with our church, and give tours of this beautiful building. It is the first temple built in church history.


Kirtland was great - and we ate at a killa' Mexican restaurant that night, so it was great.