"Fiddler on the Roof"...

TRADITION....TRADITION! I feel like Tevye grasping at what few familiar family traditions I have left in my ever changing life. It's like you get married and the tide comes in, washing away most of your own footprints you managed to leave in the sand over the last 20 years, unless the prints were deep enough that the waves can never completely cause them to disappear--just reshape them a little--forcing them to fit better into the new mold that is married life. We continue to implement our favorite familial past times as our children grow older, finding ourselves full of nostalgia and wishful thinking this time of year. Oh to be a child again!

Back to Tevye--one of my favorite traditions has been for our family to head to Salt Lake City each Christmas and spend a weekend attending some Christmas concert (which has recently evolved to include college basketball games at the Delta Center), eating out at a favorite restaurant-usually the Lion House-and wrapping it up with a magical walk to see all the lights on Temple Square. It is always accompanied by evenings as a family sipping hot chocolate--to which I am totally & irrevocably addicted--and eating Mrs. Cavanaugh's Mindy Mints. (can't remember when those came into play but I can't remember a SLC Christmas weekend without them--little melt-in-your-mouth morsels of creamy mint chocolaty goodness, I'm drooling again already!) Ever since my brothers and sisters started college & serving missions, our Christmas weekend has not quite been the same. Someone is always missing and I subtly tear up a little looking around the dinner table or sitting around chatting at 2am, when I realize one of them is not there. I can't wait for the time when this busy part of life is over and we can all be back together again. This year we had two extras join us, my brother David's girlfriend Summer and my sister Lisa's boyfriend Spencer. It was refreshing to watch them interact, holding hands, opening doors for each other, not wanting to be apart for even a second. It made Scott and I a little more sensitive to how we treated each other--but we also wanted to shout "just give it 10 years and then we'll so who's more in love!" ha ha.

Nevertheless, to write the obvious, I love my family--enough to want to have 6 houses right next door to each other and one big fence around all of them. I want our kids to play in the yard together and eat meals together (actually, the others can fix the meals--I'll do dessert!) and not miss one more second of growing up without each other. That's what my heaven looks like, 6 houses, one big fence, lots of kids and Mindy Mints.

Dinner at the Lion House

Ryan--sick the whole weekend--poor boy!

Go Cougars!

Dave & Summer

Lisa & Spencer

Temple Square!

Gobble Gobble

Turkey Day was pretty basic around here this year--as basic as TIDWELL'S do Thanksgiving! Thursday we got together with a couple other families in our ward who have younger kids and had dinner with them. I made sugar rolls, pies and green been casserole. The feast was fantastic--so great in fact that when we all went to go home that afternoon, instead of splitting up the leftovers and heading our separate ways for the weekend, we were all invited back on Friday for "left-over" Thanksgiving dinner. The kids loved it and so did Scott--getting a four day weekend and time to play with his friends too was a real treat. We did lots of lounging, decorating for Christmas, Scott took Jason to see a movie Saturday night, and on Sunday we cooked our own turkey and had a feast all over again! I know, I know, you think I'm crazy but when you do joint dinner with friends, you don't have left overs of your own and turkey sandwiches for a week after Thanksgiving are almost important as the actual meal. So now I have a 17lb cooked turkey in my fridge and am trying to figure out what to do with it. Next step, Christmas!

Ryan...


Pies pies and more pies


Jason & Dad


Scott and his boys playing Halo (an old college fav!)

"Do as I'm Doing"...and other adventures

When my father was very little (less than 4 the story goes) his mother-my Grandma-got a phone call from the neighbor who says "do you know where your son is?" Turns out Grandma thought he was just in the backyard playing when in reality he managed to shimmy his little behind up onto the roof and was running back and forth like the squirrels! So needless to say, when I walked out of the bathroom--and no I wasn't in there for 20 minutes, we're talking 45 seconds tops--and saw my little Ryan standing proudly on top of my piano I thought of my father and all of his stories and think I'm in for a long ride! (dad also lit the neighbors bushes on fire once, hopefully Ryan won't be doing anything to remind me of that).


On another note, one of Scott's projects wrapped up last week--a city park called Old Spanish Trails. It actually has great historical significance being a spot where the Morman Handcart Companies once walked. On Saturday they had a little press conference, a few speakers from the historical society and city officials and then fed everyone hotdogs and hamburgers while the kids played. Jason, being the self-aware poser that he is, managed to get his picture taken and published in the Review Journal article about the park. It is fun to drive around the city and see places that Scott's company built and know that he had a part in something that will hopefully be around for a long time and help make people's lives better. I'm proud of him. Now if the economy would just pick up so they could land a few more jobs and keep building things, well, that would be nice too! More to come in a few days...happy weekending!



They kept this rode unpaved since it was one of the Pioneer trails...



Jason's Paper Picture...

Jekyll or Hyde

I try not to complain on this blog--and let's be honest, it isn't me trying to be good as much as it is me remembering all the pioneer journal entries that have been preached to me over the years. I'm basically pre-censoring and editing what my posterity will have to remember me by. I don't want to sound "too" terrible right--in print, permanently, forever and ever? (pioneers and their persevering attitudes-blah!) But here's the long and short of it (well, just long)if I don't get this all out, I'll explode. And we all know if mommy isn't around to clean up a mess, it just sits there till she gets to it right?

Anyway...I have a 2 year old and each morning when he wakes up, I never know who I'm going to get, Jason or Hyde! For example:
* he refuses to take normal naps now (constantly trying to escape until he passes out when ever where ever.
* i caught him with the foamy hand soap spread all over his bed, hair, body etc
* he took an orange highlighter out of the trash and colored the inside roof of the car as well as his whole body right before his dr. appointment!
* cracked 18 eggs all over the floor of the grocery store
* got into the Windex while I was in the shower and poured it all over my bed (i had just washed the sheets of course)
*tells me to stand in the corner, that I'm being nasty and in big trouble and can't play with my friends (sound familiar)
*last but not least, grabbed a gallon of water and dumped it on the floor of the living room because he wanted to go swimming (he was stripped down to his soggy diaper when I found him and he was working hard getting Ryan's clothes off too)

Aside from daily instances such as those, he's a real gem!

Halloween week brought me a whole ton of HYDE too. I catered 2 events back to back, a 16Th birthday party Thursday night and then made all the treats for a large Halloween bash Friday. Lucky for me, we were able to drop off all the food and not have to stay for the events. However, making hundreds of sugar cookies, mini quiche, meatballs, chocolate spiders, peanut butter eyeballs and the like left my house and life a disaster just in time for trunk or treat to begin. So we pulled off a half hearted attempt at Halloween this year. Jason wanted anything having to do with Lightning McQueen and Ryan was a little vampire. Actually he came down with croup (another fantastic addition to an already INSANE weekend) and kept crying and drooling so his makeup wouldn't stay on and his black hair dye got smeared everywhere. Jason was in a "mood" so we got one photo of him dressed up and it is basically him throwing a fit on the stairs of a friends house after taking all the kiddies around the neighborhood for trick or treating--and by the way, just to top it off--he thought it was funny to blow out the candles in the jack o lanterns and then try to kick them off the steps of the houses we went to. I found myself apologizing for his behavior more than I got to say thank you for the candy he was given. He picked up on the fact that if he was charming then he got treats--more if he stuck with his friend Garrett who has the cutest voice and strategically charmed the pants off any old lady with chocolate. They became a deadly duo getting 2 and 3 helpings at each door. It was only after the door closed that he tried squishing the life out of already wrinkled and withered pumpkins.

Last but not least, it is Sunday morning and Scott is with Jason at church. I am at home with Ryan who can't sleep longer than 15 minutes before coughing, crying, and usually puking because he gets so worked up. I just keep telling myself (while running on 2 hours of sleep the last 2 nights) someday I'll be rich, with a maid and my kids will be grown up with 2 year olds of their own and I'll be on a cruise somewhere warm with a surgically remastered body :) sipping frozen fruity drinks, reading a book of my choosing (or maybe even finding time to write one) without being interrupted by "mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy"--you get the picture! And now I get it, this is what my mother was doing and thinking and dreaming 25 years ago when I was 2. Shame on you mother...this is all your fault! WHY DIDN'T YOU WARN ME???

Jason with the purple bucket and Garrett the football player--Ryan in the way!


Ryan the not-so-scary vampire


Mr. Hyde on the stairs...


16th b-day cakes (there were 2 16 year olds both with names that started with M so this is what they wanted--M&M cakes--get it?)