Author: McAdmin

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Chase

King of the Ice

                                   

Chase finished his first ice skating lessons a couple weeks ago. For the record, his ultimate goal is not to be a graceful figure skater, but rather a rough & tough hockey player. He had a good time at his lessons, most importantly, but also he was good at it! He could skate quickly, even if he fell on his butt a lot… His teacher remarked that he has great speed, just needs to bend his knees more and not flail his arms (makes him lose his balance). He passed both Level 1&2, so he gets to be in Level 3 next time! We’re so proud of Chase.

I was going to post a really cute video of him in action, but of course I accidentally deleted it. Sorry!

P.S. Today is our 6th Anniversary! Yay!

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Charlotte

Happy Birthday, Charlotte!

Charlotte Noel turned two today! We love, love, love this girl.

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Flashback to the day she was born… Charlotte & I were alone in our hospital room that first night after I had had her, so we were able to have some blissful bonding time. I took her blankets off and held her close, skin-to-skin, while I touched her soft hair and inhaled her sweet newborn baby scent. I was so happy to have her! I should have been sleeping, but I just loved how close I felt with Charlotte right from the start. And we adore her more and more every day. So sappy, but so true!

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Back to present day: We were able to celebrate Charlotte’s birthday with some family that’s in town. You can tell that she’s a second child (or that we were just burnt out from the holidays) because everything was just kinda thrown together. We were up at the McGrandparents’ house for the weekend, so GG provided a dinosaur tablecloth and I decorated the cake with some frosting squeezed from a plastic bag. But the thing was, Charlotte didn’t care one bit about the décor, and she got tons of presents which is what matters most (hahah!).

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This is her classic “smile for the camera!” smile. It makes us laugh! We really love Charlotte and her sweet, laid-back, happy personality.

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Family Fun Personal

A December Update!

We’ve been enjoying this Christmas season! It was nice to get all the shopping done early this year, because we’ve been able to just relax. Luckily, I had nowhere I needed to go today, because we had a very large dumping of snow, probably the most snow that’s come at once, since I’ve lived in Utah! When it comes to the freezing white stuff, the tricky thing is that Chase LOVES being out there, whereas Charlotte HATES it. I’m not a huge fan either, so I generally just tell Chase he can go out and play while Charlotte & I peer out the window at him from inside the warm house. Lame of us, I know! But as soon as Pace is off work in a few days, we’ll all have to go sledding somewhere so our poor little boy can have some real snowy fun! Luckily, he has a blast when neighbor kids are out there (like this afternoon) & he joins in their adventures.

We’ve had lots of family adventures lately, despite my lack of photos. I’m bad at remembering to take pictures!!! Lately, I am feeling comfortable “managing” our two kids and I’m enjoying how much fun they are. Last night, we saw the movie Tangled, which was great, especially because it was the first movie Charlotte has sat through (it was only her 2nd time going to a theater). We have a great time with our kids. I am working on my patience and trying to get down and play with them more. Today I had some Little People “oohing & ahhing” at all of Chase’s awesome stunts with his boats & planes… For about an hour. Chase LOVED it!

Over the weekend, we went to a UVU basketball home game (vs. Utah State), where Grandaddy Jim was doing the radio announcing. We saw a few people that we knew which is always great, the atmosphere was exciting, and the game would have been enjoyable… But 3 rows behind us was a group of rowdy/loud/crude USU fans that were indirectly teaching Chase some naughty words… So we left to put the kids to bed up at Pace’s parents’ house, where we spent the night.

Pace & I went to the Conference Center Sunday morning sans kids (thanks to GG)! Despite the pouring rain and the long lines, we got to experience the David Archuleta + Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert. The Gardners had given us their tickets (thank you!). Words can’t describe the magnificence of all the lights, choreography, music, etc. of the show. And who doesn’t love cute little David, who is about to turn 20, but still looks like he’s like 14!?! His version of Silent Night was the best I’ve ever heard (and apparently it will be on his Christmas album next year). Afterwards, he talked about how he came a few years ago to the MoTab Christmas concert, not thinking that in a million years he could be up there on the stage. And yet, there he was! Lesson learned: Pursue your dreams/goals and work to make them a reality.

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Charlotte McVideos

Gaining Guts

Charlotte has been watching Chase very closely, and she’s done the math. Chase has lots more fun jumping off things with only a small percentage ending up in painful tears. So she has decided to join the circus and loves to jump off things and try other tricks. Usually she’ll let Chase test it out first, but sometimes, like this one, she sets it up all on her own. (Check out the face plant at 22 secs)

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Charlotte McVideos

Charlotte Kamikaze

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Personal

Provo Tabernacle

Apparently, the beautiful Provo Tabernacle burned down today. Sad news. Glad I was able to go in there and see it a few times!

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/article_616dbab4-09db-11e0-972b-001cc4c03286.html

Categories
Family Fun

Fun ‘n’ Games!

Can anyone please tell me how to get used to my house looking like this all the time (see photo below)? I know that being a mom means lots of messes, but I am a bit of a perfectionist in some things, and just can’t seem to let the house look like this for long… Advice from anyone, especially other perfectionists??

But at the same time, Chase & Charlotte are adorable and keep us laughing. We love these two!!

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Categories
Family Fun

California Thanksgiving Highlights

It was warmer there. No snow.

What a beautiful plot of land my parents have. And they have lots of trees! We had the privilege of learning how to harvest the olives, out in the rain. You put a net under an olive tree, comb the branches with little hand rakes, olives fall down into the net, carefully empty net into a bucket. So cool! Then Pace, Chase, & Casey took the goods to the olive press to be made into oil. You could say that this year we earned our Terribilini EVOO. And learned something new!

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Sumptuous feast below whipped up by my mother, with a little bit of assistance by the rest of us (including the men, who could have been slumped on the couch, watching football! Winners, in my book!!). A neighbor came and joined in on the feast as well. I’ve always been impressed by my parents noticing someone (or a few) who might be lonely on Thanksgiving and inviting them to join us for dinner.

Pretty ladies! (My sister Rachel and our Grandma T.)

Lots of sitting around, eating, and hanging out – gotta love it!

(Perhaps my Mom, Jess & I got up at 3:30 a.m. Black Friday and joined in the madness at Target and a few other places. Perhaps we scored some sweet deals and decided that it was just a little too crazy.)

Annnnnd the Jelly Belly Factory tour! Some of us went and saw how the machines work. It’s the same as I remember from back in 1st grade when we went there on a field trip. Of course, Chase was in heaven! It was almost as much fun for him as playing with his California friends, Michael & Ben (which he was able to do twice).

I had to include these two “amazing” Jelly Belly photos for posterity…

We enjoy looking into the sunlight.

A few of us also tried to go to Mrs. Grossman’s sticker factory, but it was closed, so we went through Petaluma and stumbled upon a See’s Discount store! Sweet– Literally!! My mom got the jackpot (her favorite, limited-time only, dark chocolate truffles). Then we stopped and got some donkey food for Pepper at the stinky large animal store. Chase liked that. And we got to have our teeth cleaned at Grandpa’s office. No cavities!

Mom showed me how to make her divine cinnamon rolls, and Rachel taught me how to curl my hair. I will have to do it again sometime soon, when I want to spend an hour doing my hair….

Thanks so much, fam and especially my parents!

Categories
Reviews Tech

Gamers Behold

WOW! I think I’ve mentioned this on McBlog before, but now I’ve tried gaming service OnLive, and WOW, wowzers, hello. A long time ago I told everyone about this cool idea of rendering video games remotely and piping the video back to the user. Well the time is here! I tried this out last night, on my macbook pro. Normally, if I want to play a game, I have to find a mac compatible game, decide if I like it, look at the video requirements, then never buy it b/c my mac wouldn’t play it very well anyway.

Last night I sat down, logged into OnLive, clicked Batman Arkham, and watched as 3D rendered gameplay flowed into my computer. My jaw dropped. First I didn’t have to worry about if the game was PC or Mac, I didn’t have to worry about if my hardware would run it very well, and I didn’t really think about anything except which button threw my batarang.
I could’ve picked from any game that was on the OnLive game list and play for free for 10 minutes. After that I’d need to pay to keep playing. They also just announced for $9.99 a month you can play all their games online as much as you want. Like Netflix for video games. This is amazing people! I mean as revolutionary as Google was for search. If I get the chance, I’d be investing in OnLive, b/c they will either be purchased by Microsoft or other game makers will be doing the same thing soon, it really was THAT good. They also have a little itty bitty box that you can buy to hook up to your tv if you prefer playing on a tv screen. A good internet connection is required. Check it out for free if you want.

Categories
Charlotte Family Fun

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Well, the snow has finally come. Day after tomorrow is predicted to have a high of 13 degrees. bleh!! Sorry, but I just don’t like it much. (Except for the fact that I don’t have to shave my legs very often now.) SOOooo we’ve been playing inside most of the time! But we’re having fun.

Chase & Charlotte like to play with things that aren’t toys, especially kitchen things, and they use their imagination a lot. I think in the photo below they were floating on little boats in the ocean. They’re fun kids! Chase is a great older brother and he takes the lead with all their pretend play (usually “dogs” is what they like to play). I’m so glad they have each other!

Pilgrim headed toward Plymouth Rock, perhaps??

See that dented wood on the banister thing to the right of Chase? Well, he decided to pound it with a spoon, thus creating those marks. Yeah, we have one of THOSE crazy kid houses with dents and stains and such. I can’t quite keep up!

Charlotte has all of a sudden been pushing and hitting Chase for no apparent reason, so she’s been frequenting the time-out chair. (After committing the crime, she immediately shouts “Sah-ee!!” to apologize and try to get out of doing the time-out, but it doesn’t work that way.) It’s been going well, and Chase has been amused to find that sweet, innocent little sister has been visiting the infamous time-out chair!  She didn’t have a naughty bone in her body ‘til about a week ago, but even so, she’s still quite the sweetie pie. IMG_1291

Charlotte really enjoys the song “No One” by Alicia Keys. She requests it quite often, including the other night on our way out to the car for our own little girls night (an Old Navy trip—she’s really fun to shop with!). So we often get to listen to “No One” over & over again in the car! I guess the simple lyrics are a hit with toddlers, because I remember Chase loving that song at about the same age. Even though Charlotte’s hitting the rambunctious age, I’m loving it because she can talk a lot more now and is more entertaining then ever.  Smile

We need to break Charlotte of the binky soon, but I just love when she has it and she nuzzles her blankie under her nose. Binky + blankie = instant tranquilizers => bliss.