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Allergies

So this post is about to become pointless, but sometimes I can't help myself. For the curious who wonder what kind of thoughts spend their time circulating through the mind of McKelle, here is the thought that I fell asleep to two nights ago.

There are a lot of movies that have that one awful scene, or that one obnoxious character that make it so a movie I would love otherwise I suddenly do not. But I have a perhaps more peculiar issue with Sleepless in Seattle. Oh it's a movie I've always liked pretty well (although watching it recently I had to think Whoa, Meg Ryan's character is really rather creepy: spying on him, sending a private investigator, snooping through a backpack left behind...yep she sounds like the perfect match for any guy, but hey, she can peel an apple in one long curly strip). Well before I was able to realize the scary stalker nature of the romance I had my other qualm. The allergies.

Whenever a movie has one character choosing one good guy over another good guy they always try to include some details to make sure the audience doesn't feel too bad for the other guy. Either he finds somebody else too, or in this case he has a quirk that almost justifies it. Poor old Walter has allergies. I remember watching this movie when I was in middle school and in the scene where she is passing him tissues and he's sneezing and whoa baby has this man got allergy problems, but all I thought was uh-oh, that's gonna be me.

When I was a little girl people often commented on my cute dainty sneezes. Little did they understand that that daintiness was the result of suppressing sneezes and the awkward quirky destiny they seemed to move toward. There was a boy in my middle school who had no sense of the social awkwardness of sneezing. He'd walk to the front of class, grab a kleenex and blow so that whole quarter of the building could hear. He was either oblivious to the grossed out sneers around him, or he'd grown up much quicker than the rest of us and wasn't haunted by visions of Walter in Sleepless in Seattle.

These days I finally let myself sneeze a bit less suppressed. But I look over at the kleenex box beside my bed and think well, at least I won't set up a humidifier, and we had strawberries at our reception, I'm not that bad.
Luckily for me, my dear Trustin who has never had bad allergies, married me and got them! So he can hardly hate this allergetic woman, for he's sneezing right beside me. Oh blessed day!

A tiny bit of Christmas

Well I thought I ought to post about Christmas with the family and then I realized that, as is typical with us when on vacation, we hardly took any pictures. So here are just a tiny few cute ones.


Zeke (the snowball) and Syri (the strawberry).

At Gramma and Paca's house Zeke found this table and quickly took to it as his own personal office.

Zeke was very business like with the pinata. When it was his turn he'd calmly walk up to it and tap it and then pass it to the next cousin in line. He didn't seem excited, or confused about why we were telling him to hit this bag with a stick.

Some of our other favorite times were just hanging out, playing games, and Kareoke night.

The Little Things

Well, I still haven't gotten around to finishing up Christmas posts or anything since then, but we took away Zeke's binkie this week and that has meant that naps are practically non-existent. So those posts will have to wait.

Today I just wanted to write about, or to, my little Zeke.One of my cousins recently posted individual posts about all of her kids and the "little things" saying that those are the things she really wants to remember. I feel just the same way and so I've decided to try to write a letter to each of my kids each year just to remind our little ones how much we love them and to help them and us remember the little things that make up our days and bring so many smiles to us over the years. So this post is just the letter Trustin and I wrote to Zeke, because we thought grandparents might like to reminise too. It is long, but it is mostly for me, and for Zeke when he's older.


To our little Ezekiel Gene,

This year has been one of the most wonderful years, and you’ve played a huge role in that. You’ve been such a gift from heaven in Momma and Daddy’s life. On countless occasions we have looked at each other after watching you play, or sleep, or do something silly and we’ve said to each other “wow, we are so lucky to have this little guy.”

Some fun memories of what you’ve been up to in 2010 and 2009 too. These are just little things we want to remember about you forever.

When you were a newborn you hated having your arms confined and usually slept with your arms raised up next to your ears.

When you were really little you loved to sit in your swing. You would just sit in it and stare at one spot and Mommy always wondered if you were seeing angels.
You rolled over for the first time when you were 3 weeks old. We thought it must be a fluke but you did it two more times just moments later! True you didn’t really master it for a couple months, but you were sure determined!

You started doing a worm/army crawl at about 5 months and really started crawling at 6-1/2.

After you learned how to crawl you used to follow bigger kids around, completely oblivious to the fact that they were trying not to play with you. By the time you’d get to where they were they’d run off somewhere else, but you didn’t mind. You thought you were just having so much fun together.

For some reason when you learned to crawl you always tried to climb over the rungs on the bottom of our kitchen chairs. This inevitable resulted in you getting stuck/high centered. But you didn’t worry too much, you’d just keep going, dragging the chair along with you, until the whole chair got stuck and then you would get very frustrated.

You started walking at 10-1/2 months

Some of your first words were “ball,” “Da”(Dad), “roar,” “lookit”(while pointing) and “please” which you pronounce “shhh.”

You love looking at books and playing with balls. Some days you convince Mom to read about 20 or more books to you, and you’d request more if we’d let you!
You love to climb and have no fear. When we go to the park you climb right up things that look impossible for you to scale, but you do it. The only real danger is when you get distracted. If you are midway up some stairs or other climbing thing and see something interesting you may just sit down or turn around and completely forget to climb or hold on! It is pretty hilarious. We also see your climbing skills around the house when I find you in the sink or “washing dishes” while standing with only your tip toes on the 1 inch wide handle of your little walker cars. You also love to climb on our couch run along it and then dive onto the lovesac, headfirst. It looks like it ought to be painful, but you just crack up and do it again.

You love water: bath time, sprinklers, swimming pools, sinks, rain, water bottles (which you pour down your tummy), water in gutter—it’s wet then you love it!

When you were about 1 year old we decided to teach you the sign language for “more.” You caught on that very day, but altered the sign to be pointing at the palm of your hand. You do this all the time to indicate “more,” “again,” or “I want.”

You recently started loving Toy Story and will run ecstatically to the TV saying “bzz, bzz!”(Buzz, Buzz). You rediscovered the joy of your bouncer seat from when you were a baby and have to sit in it to watch “bzz.” You also like to cart your toy Woody all over the house: read with him under your arm, beg to take him in the bath, get frustrated that his hat just will not stay on, make Woody clap and give you high fives. Your latest game I to put him inside daddy’s dog slipper and have us chase you with it around the house. It’s adorable.

You also LOVE to watch basketball with Daddy. If Daddy is watch
ing it you will climb up on his lap, say “ball” and just sit and watch avidly.

You love to sing and dance too. You like to sing along when we sing especially if we just sing “la la la” instead of words and you love to dance. You’re dancing style is standing in one place and alternately lifting your bent arms.
We are crazy about your facial expressions! I’ve never seen a kid so little make such crazy faces. They are impossible to describe (and impossible to catch on camera) but they are so cute to see.

You love airplanes, buses, and the garbage truck but all three frustrate you. Why do they keep driving or flying by after you see them?

You don’t cry very much or easily, you’re a tough kid; yet you are so sweet and tenderhearted. When somebody goes away you often burst into tears because you miss them. And when anybody else cries you feel sad for them and start crying too. If Daddy tickles Mommy too much you get very worried that Mommy is hurt and start crying.

You love Jesus and you love to pray. You are so good about folding your arms these last couple months. Somedays after the prayer you will make your signal for “again” and make us pray again and again. You are also so reverent, usually. As much as you love Toy Story, just the other night we turned off the TV to say the prayer for dinner and you just folded your arms and were silent through the prayer and only made noise after the prayer was over. You get so excited about pictures of Jesus. When you see one unexpectedly, like in the hall at church you sometimes start dancing with excitement and saying “Jee, Jee.” When we ask if you love Jesus you vigorously nod your head yes. We are so grateful for the faith you already show and the way you help Mommy and Daddy to feel the love of our Savior.

We hope you know what a blessing you are to us. We love you so much more than we can find ways to express. Thanks for being our little crazy nut and bringing us so many smiles.

We love you!
Love, Momma and Daddy

Christmas in Vegas

We had a wonderful Christmas on our own this year. We certainly missed family and the traditions we've been used to, but since we knew we would be seeing family in a week we just loved being able to do our own Christmas. On Christmas Eve we went walking around some nearby neighborhoods to see Christmas lights. Zeke is crazy about Christmas lights and leaving a couple of the really fancy ones almost brought tears! We had a "fancy" Christmas dinner of homemade ham and potatoes...well, actually is was a recipe from my 15 minute cookbook with sausage and canned potatoes. But that saved a lot of stress and was honestly just as delish. Plus I did splurge on my energy output by making homemade rolls...ok, sort of homemade, the dough was made by the bread machine! I love simplicity! I got out our nice crystal and fabric napkins and made a Christmas centerpiece but we decided instead to just watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"(cartoon) and use paper napkins and a giant plastic superman cup. It was perfect. After putting Zeke to bed we had a wrapping party with our couch dividing our living room and effectively hiding each others presents. It's kind of a tradition to wrap our gifts sneakily in the same room. (Although this year was rather easy for me since one of Trustin's gifts was in Utah and the other big one was a tree that was certainly not coming into the living room. But I was oh so discreet at wrapping his soccer socks and mango juice!

These pictures are from earlier on Christmas Eve or maybe the day before. Trustin decided to hide from Zeke behind the couch. Silly Daddy, didn't he know that could only end one way? Squash!

Here we are Christmas morning. The Anderson crew always used to eat Christmas breakfast up in their parents room before going down to see the presents. I love the idea and so we started the tradition at our house too. The only thing I want to change from this year is I want to buy a waffle iron and make real waffles (see, I'm not always lazy...just in case you were skeptical or my holiday culinations *culinary creations*).

And so began our Christmas. We didn't get a crazy reaction out of Zeke when he saw the presents, although he did beeline it to the present in the bag with the basketball and soccer ball on it (shocker there!).

Here Zeke is in his new playhut. He loves it, but has decided that it always requires one specific piece of furniture: Mama!



Here is my live reaction to Trustin's awesome gift to me: A Willow Tree Nativity set. A few seconds later I teared up.

Toys, need I say more?

A kiss for his new turtle light.

Daddy's pomegranate tree--picked especially by Zeke. It not much of a sight to behold in the winter, but it actually had two pomegranates growing on it and we're exciting to have anything that we can grow and eat in Vegas!

Zeke's drill. He is going to fly through the batteries on this one fast.

This is later that night, but what a cute little toolman!

On Christmas afternoon Uncle K and Aunt E came over to make gingerbread men. As you can see, Zeke did an excellent job making sure none of the candies went to waste.

We drew names to see who had to make who. This is us holding the one that looks like us. (Notice that Zeke's gingerbread man has a mouth full of candy). Trustin was present for all of this but as cameraman didn't make it into a single picture. Zeke made the one that looked like Daddy so we can at least know that it tasted good.

More to come of our trip to Utah later.