It was a very, Merry Christmas at our house!

We had SUCH a wonderful Christmas! Both of my sib's were in town and we did so many fun things! The festivities started last Wednesday night when we all went out to eat at Tepanyaki. The kids LOVE going there because they like to watch the "show" and the fire. Those cooks are pretty entertaining!

Thursday was Christmas Eve and we went to my parents house. There were a lot of people and a lot of fun was had by all! There was my parents, Dane, Kelly, Roger, Aunt Deb, Uncle Wayne, Katie, Jessie, Cory and their 5 kids. Jessie (my cousin) has a girl 6 months older than Caleb, a girl born within a few days of Brynley and a girl born within a few days of Aubrey. My kids are in friend heaven when we are with them! They love hanging out with the "second cousins" (yes, that's what they call them). We had a nice dinner:

The traditional program (I played a duet with Rog and Jess and Caleb and accompanied Kelly - I didn't really mean for it to be the Lindsey show - oops)




A gift exchange (ok, this was way fun. We all brought under $3 gifts. We sat in a circle and someone read the story "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and everytime they read the word 'and' you pass your gift around in the circle. When the story is over you get to keep your gift. Everytime 'and' was said everyone screamed and threw their gift. It was really funny.)

And we used the nativity puppets Angie (my sis in law) gave me for the Nativity story. These puppets are amazing. Nice and easy. No dress up involved. The kids all start sitting and when they come into the story they stand up and hold up their puppet. The kids actually LISTEN to the story to see when they stand. They're awesome.

After dessert and lots of playing:




we came home to wait for Santa! Here's what he brought:





My kids slept in until 7:30am! Amazing!

My family came over around 10:30 and we had breakfast and played all day.



In the afternoon we went sledding up Hobble Creek Canyon.




I LOVE Christmas and this year did not dissapoint! I hope you all had a fabulous holiday and thank you all for the Christmas cards. I'm going to do them next year. Here's your promise. To make up for it I'll share some Christmas cheer (ha, ha):



Am I the only one who thinks their baby is so cute when they cry? Poor baby. She has such a mean mom.

Change of subject...

Now, I feel like I have SO much to do in the next 10 days! We are leaving for our Southern Caribbean cruise on Jan 10. In that time I have to get Christmas decorations put away and do a ton of work for my online clients (I've got over 50 next month!), in addition to packing and getting everything ready for us to be gone. It's going to be a crazy week but we are SO excited for our trip!

Caleb's First Piano Recital

Check out Caleb's first piano recital. This video doesn't quite capture the frustration demonstrated when he threw his music on the floor and stormed off. We're going to have to work on how to handle messing up.

Back by popular demand...

Here are some more videos back by popular demand!

This is Caleb's Christmas concert on the piano


This is Aubrey walking, all of the good stuff is in the first half so you don't have to keep watching after she starts looking at the book

Bye, bye baby tooth!

A couple weeks ago we noticed that Caleb had a tooth growing in behind his bottom middle two baby teeth. The tooth in front of it was barely loose so we called the dentist and they said to just work on trying to get it wiggly and eventually pull it out. I called yesterday because it wasn't even close to coming out but his phantom tooth was really coming in! It was almost as big as his front baby teeth!

The dentist said to come in and he was going to pull it. Caleb was so scared and it took us a good while to even get him to come into the room with the chair. The dentist didn't even need to give him a shot. He just put the topical numbing stuff around the tooth and wiggled it pretty hard and pulled it right out! He was tense but I think just because he was nervous. He said he didn't even feel a thing!

He has been so proud of himself! He said, "I feel like such an adult! Well, at least an 8th grader..." He loves the fact that he lost a tooth. He was a little concerned though because he didn't know where the permanent tooth would go since there is already a tooth in there. He was REALLY excited when I told him that WAS his permanent tooth!

The tooth fairy came to our house for the first time last night. It won't be the last either! These kiddos are growing up!

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Ok, one more funny Caleb quote. This happened the other day when they were playing with the doctor kit. He was filling out a patient information sheet about her that came with the set.

Caleb: Mom, what does sex mean?
Me: What?!
Caleb: On this paper, what does sex mean?
Me: (phew) It means gender, like if the patient is a boy or a girl.
Caleb: Oh, ok. (A minute later) I don't know what blood type means so I'll just put 'red'.

Ha, ha.

All Aboard!

We went with my parents and Jeremy and Angie and their kids on the Polar Express last week. It was a lot of fun! Very possibly overpriced, but still fun.

We went up to Heber to catch the train. Unfortunately there was no snow in the North Pole yet this year. Aboard the train we were served hot cocoa and cookies, sang Christmas carols and read from the Polar Express book. When we got to the North Pole, Mrs Claus and Santa got on! They walked up and down the aisles talking to all the kids and giving everyone "the first gift of Christmas", a bell.



Caleb and Brynley loved it. Aubrey, not so much. Being cooped up in a bench seat for an hour and a half is not a 14 month old's idea of fun apparently.

(And yes, I'm wearing my jammies. We all are. I wear my jammies every chance I can get!)

My pretty girls in their Christmas Dresses

Just a typical evening in the Mathews' home

We broke out the video camera last night because we haven't been capturing enough of what Aubrey is like these days. On this video you will hear her first word (a whispered "Wow!") and other funny things she does. It is about 3 min so it may bore you if you're not an Aunt or Grandma. There's your fair warning.

Punch Cards are Now ON SALE!

Punch Cards for my Holiday Boot Camp Classes are NOW ON SALE!!! Go over to Lean Bodies Health and Fitness and click on boot camps for more information.

These prices are CHEAP people! I promise you won't want to miss this!

Telos Turkey Tri

I competed in the Telos Turkey Triathlon today! It was a really fun race and the weather was PERFECT! I had some ups and downs along the way but it all turned out great.

Saundra and I rode together and got there about 45 min before the race was supposed to start. We hadn't picked up our packets yet so we went straight to do that. We ended up being behind some boy scout troop or something and we waited in line for like 20 minutes. It was really obnoxious and started to stress us out. Then we got our bikes, found a spot in the transition area and went to get our chip timers and our numbers written on us. There was a huge line for the chips, too. Which again stressed us out a little. We ended up getting to the starting line right as the race was starting. So, we weren't late ... just a little too close for comfort.

Only those of you with Garmin Forerunners will understand the utter horror of what I am about to tell you. After charging all day yesterday (I was thinking ahead) my Garmin WOULD NOT TURN ON!!! I was freaking out. Garmin Forerunner is to Lindsey as the magic feather is to Dumbo. That garmin keeps me going. It motivates me to push harder. I can't do a race blind without knowing my pace and the remaining distance, etc. I was horrified. But there was nothing I could do. So, I thought, it's ok. I also brought a stop watch and I can look at that and go by the mile markers. Everything will be ok.

RUN

My run goal was a 9.15 min/mile pace. Which would have had me finishing in about 28 1/2 minutes. I did not have the constant reminder of my pace from my Garmin so I would just have to rely on the stop watch. We start the run. I looked at the wrist of every one I passed or that passed me for a Garmin. I tapped probobly five people throughout the run and asked for the pace. I know, I was so annoying. After about 10 minutes I still hadn't seen a mile marker so I figured there weren't going to be any. Talk about frustrating! The course wasn't marked at all. This made the run really hard mentally. But whatever. It ended with a long uphill too. Which made it even harder. Cut to the chase, I finished in 27:24 minutes. Which is about an 8.52 min/mile pace. Which cut a minute off my goal time. My transition time was also a minute shorter than I planned.

BIKE

The bike is what I was most excited for. Biking isn't as "total body exhausting" as running is to me. You don't get that "I'm going to barf" feeling. Yeah, your legs are on fire but it's not as encompassing. My goal time on the bike was 37 minutes and I finished in 35.5 minutes! Which is about 17 mph. The bike was a two loop course with a big downhill and a short but crazy steep up hill. I had it in the easiest gear and it was a big struggle to stay on the bike. A lot of people were walking but I was NOT about to walk! Anyway, the bike was the most fun out of all three, I thought. My next transition took me about 3 minutes shorter than I thought because I thought the transition area was a lot farther away from the pool than it ended up being.



SWIM

My swim was AWEFUL. I walked into the too warm pool building and my googles immediately fogged like crazy. I couldn't get them very clear so I couldn't see very well the whole time. Through pretty much the entire swim I was on top of people. There would be one person walking in the pool and someone who swam barely faster than the walker trying to pass them and I couldn't pass either of them because there was no room. That was the case for probobly half the swim. I would finally pass them and it would take about a lap for me to get to the next annoying group of 3-4 people that were all on top of each other. I even had to completely stop a few times. It took me 3 minutes longer than it did in my training. My goal was 7 minutes and it took me closer to 10. It was so frustrating!


In the end it was a really fun race and I feel really proud of myself. I got ninth in my age group and I beat my goal by 7 minutes. I didn't drink enough water and got pretty dehydrated though so when I got home I felt light headed and had a bad head ache. But I'm feeling better now as I type this.

Anyway, that was my race recap! Hope you all enjoyed! Have a great weekend!

Fun with Cousins

We met Jeremy and Angie and Jordan at the park on Halloween day. It is always fun to let the kids get together and go crazy!



The other day Brandon and I were commenting on how Aubrey is pretty much a girl version of Caleb. They look exactly alike. We were wondering what a boy version of Brynley would look like. Well, on Saturday we found it. I didn't realize that these two cute cousins could easily pass for siblings if not twins. What do you guys think?

Happy Halloween!

Our Halloween consisted of:

Naked children carving pumpkins


Trunk or treat with Caleb as a "light up mummy" (not just a mummy... but a 'light up mummy'), Brynley as Sleeping Beauty, Aubrey as a pink poodle, me as a witch and Brandon as ... a super hot dad! :-)




After trunk or treating (which I think is SO lame by the way but I don't have time right now to post that rant)we went around the neighborhood for some double dipping because Trunk or Treating does NOT take the place of Trick or Treating. I don't have any pictures unfortunately. But the kids had a great time.

I don't feel like I have anything fun or witty to say and I think this is kind of boring so I'll end now.

THE END.

Preschool Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

On Monday Brynley's class took a trip to the Pumpkin Patch. We went to one up in Orem and it was a lot of fun. It was small so it wasn't very crowded. We got to go through the corn maze, which proved to be a bumpy ride for Aubrey in the stroller, play at a pumpkin themed play ground and pick a pumpkin. I loved that it only took an hour and was not crowded. I know, I'm no fun.

FYI, this was one of the only times that Brynley let me do her hair and actually kept it cute. Usually when I curl her hair she decides she doesn't like it 5 minutes later and wets her fingers and runs her hands through her hair until it's not curled anymore. I know, right. Stinker.


When the kids were playing on the playground I felt like it all looked really familiar. And then it hit me! I came to this pumpkin patch with Caleb when he was just 3 months old! Wow, how time flies!