Chase turns 4!

This week we had a birthday celebration for this guy!

There's never a dull moment with Chase around!  He likes to be loud (NOT good at church!!!), talks to anyone and everyone, and is always up to something!

He dresses up in something every single day, usually as superman, spiderman, batman, or a ninja turtle.

Lately he has been obsessed with bubble baths.  The first time we tried to get him to take a bubble bath he was terrified and wouldn't touch the bubbles.  I'm sure it stems from an experience when he was taking a bath and rubbed soap all over his face and in his eyes-- he hasn't enjoyed bath time nearly as much ever since.  But now he loves bath time again, just as long as I don't get water anywhere near his head, ha ha.

I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by.  Next year he'll be in preschool, and he can't wait!  (I just hope his teacher is ready.)

Projects

The past several weeks have been crazy busy. Derek has been super busy at work, we're finishing our basement, and I bought a few projects that I wanted to finish before we have a birthday party for my sister at our house. Our old dining room furniture was fine, but it was lightweight and not super durable. Chase has a way of making me want to keep only things that are going to last! We started with this black set from ikea:

It worked really well in our old house because it's very narrow which we really needed in our old tiny dining area.  But it looked too small in our formal dining room, and I definitely didn't want it getting everday use in the kitchen.

So I found this set on the ksl classifieds, but it really needed to be refinished:

I liked the lines, and could see potential in it.  So I sold our old set and bought this one, not sure when I would get around to actually finishing it.

I've also been on the hunt for a hutch to go in the formal dining room, and I found this just begging to be brought back to life (picture from here because I forgot to take a before picture, but this is basically the same hutch):

When we found out we'd be hosting a big party I knew that I wanted to get everything done asap.  So I got to work. I sanded, primed, painted (I used an oil based enamel paint that seems like it will be really durable, and reduces brush marks), and glazed everything.  These took soooooooo much more time that I had anticipated, but I am really happy with how they turned out.

Hutch after:

Everything after:

What do you think?

Ethan's music video

Ethan has a Tech class in school where they get to work on all kinds of cool projects. They were taught how to use some video editing software and had an assignment to do a music video. His received a cinematography award for his video, and it was played for the entire school! This is it:

   

 

Merry Christmas 2013!

We had such a great Christmas!  We had a great break from work and school, and had family visiting-- it was so much fun!

During the middle of December my sister, Charlotte, had a baby!  Little Zachary is cute as can be, and his big sisters got to come play at our house.  The kids LOVED sledding down the hill in our front yard.  They really wanted to make a snowman, but the snow was a little too powdery to stick together.  But they had lots of fun anyway, and then went inside for some hot chocolate.

The Hendriksen Christmas party was great, as always, and we got to act out the nativity with our very special 10 day old nephew, Zachary, playing the part of the baby Jesus.  It was so sweet!  And so fun finally getting to see Robyn and Eric and their family who were in town from Ohio!

The angels:

We visited temple square right after the party, as we always do:

The cousins had so much fun hanging out together!  Here they are on Christmas Eve at Grandma's house:

And here is our house, presents ready and stockings filled.  

Christmas morning!  

The kids let us sleep in until almost 9, a great Christmas gift!

We opened presents at our house, and then took brunch and more presents to my parents' house.  (Next year I need to take more pictures!!)


On New Year's Eve we got together at my parents' house and had dinner and a fun little party.

We left at 10 after celebrating New York's New Year's Eve, and then celebrated our own with Chase in bed at home.  (But the older kids got to stay up.)

And we were able to snap a few family pictures in front of the tree before we took all the Christmas decorations down.  (Why does it seem to take SO much longer taking everything down?!)

We finished out our Christmas break with a girls' shopping day with my mom and sisters, 

one of our favorite traditions.  

Hope you all had a very merry Christmas too!!

Fall Break

For fall break we had talked about going to Yellowstone. But there was supposed to be a snowstorm up there, and we weren't sure if the government shutdown would be over, so we decided to stay a little closer to home. We spent one night in downtown Salt Lake.

We visited Clark Planetarium, where there was lots more to see than we had expected.

We rode on Trax, which was a definite hightlight for Chase!

The next evening we visited Lagoon.  We were hoping that since it was open only from 5 to 10 that it wouldn't be too crowded.  There were tons of people there, but we didn't have to wait in any long lines, so it must not have been nearly as crowded as our previous trips.

We split up so one of us could go with Ethan and Julia on the big rides, while the other went with Chase on the small rides.  The kids had tons of fun!