Puzzled

My Grandma Stuart is an avid catalog-reader and always finds the coolest presents from them. This year, she sent us a puzzle of Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night. Emily, Gerrit, my mom and I thought it would be a fun Christmas Day activity to put it together, and we figured that with only 389 pieces, we would be done in no time.

It quickly became apparent that this was no ordinary puzzle. First, the pieces were made of polished wood instead of cardboard, so we knew this puzzle meant business. Second, these were not your typical puzzle pieces. They were a special variety I like to call "impossible." Some of the special pieces joined together to make larger special shapes, like you can see with this apple.


Since this wasn't a typical puzzle, it also didn't have typical sides. You couldn't just put together the outside pieces because they didn't actually stick together. Also, because of the special shapes, not every straight edge actually belonged on the outside. You really had to put it together by color.

We learned an important lesson. Impressionists: good art, very difficult puzzles. You can kind of see if you look at the pieces that there are a lot of pieces with multi-colored brush strokes. It can be hard to figure out exactly which colors go where.

It took us 10 hours to put this puzzle together! It was pretty fun and we felt pretty triumphant. The puzzle stayed put together on the table for a few days because none of us could bear to take it apart.

Victory!

A Stuart Family Christmas

My family has a few Christmas traditions that I really love participating in. We have our big dinner on Christmas Eve and my dad usually grills steak or tri-tip. Yum! On Christmas Eve, we read the Christmas story from the Bible and sing Christmas carols. We have a book that has all the Bible verses with accompanying illustrations, and Miles really loved looking at the illustrations. After the story, we enjoy our traditional root beer floats and sugar cookies.

The moose is in honor of my missionary brother, John, who we call "Moose Boy"

Christmas morning, we wake up early (now, that means around 7:30. I can remember waking up and having to wait until 6 in the past). Santa leaves presents for everyone on the couch, and we go to those first. Next, we head to the fireplace to check out our filled stockings. When everything from Santa has been opened, we go to the tree for family presents. We hand those out one at a time, alternating family members. When we're all done, we have pancakes and spend the day enjoying each other and our new presents.

This Christmas, we had an extra-special present. We got to talk to this guy!

My brother John is on a mission in Paraguay and we all got to talk to him on Christmas! He was homesick, but it was really nice to talk to him and hear that he is doing well. He has been living in a bunch of small apartments and is losing a lot of weight, but he enjoys his work and I'm really proud of him.

Miles loved his first Christmas! He got some fun new toys and cute new clothes and he had a blast playing with all of his toys. I hope all of you had a merry Christmas!

At the Park

For a while, we've been thinking Miles would enjoy the park, but it's just been way too cold to consider it. Swings and slides are a lot less fun when they're filled with six inches of snow. We decided to take advantage of the beautiful California weather and bring Miles to the playground down the street from my parent's house. Of course, every other kid we saw there was wearing thick winter coats and hats. It was 55 degrees!

Miles loved the swings! We probably could have kept him in there all day! He was a little hesitant about the springy horse and the slide, but eventually warmed up to them. He was also a big fan of the spinning tic-tac-toe board and the walkie-talkie speakers. We all enjoyed the playground, and I wish it was a little warmer here so it was something we could do more often.

Jelly Belly Factory

If you visit the Bay Area, I highly recommend a visit to the Jelly Belly factory. If you have never tried a Jelly Belly, they come in a wide variety of flavors and are made with real fruit and other tasty flavorings. They give free tours of their factory, and since Gerrit had never been and I hadn't been in a very long time, we decided to go.

They start out the tour by giving everyone paper hats to minimize hair falling onto the production floor. They even gave one to Miles, which was cute, but not particularly necessary for my bald, bald child.

From there, you get to see the jelly beans in production from beginning to end and watch some movies about the history of the company. You also get to try samples of the candy in various stages of production. You can try just the center and one that hasn't been polished yet. They also show you a bunch of pictures made with jelly beans. Gerrit and Miles both loved looking at all the different machines. At the end of the tour, they give you a free bag of Jelly Bellys (including one for the "future fan," which was promptly taken by said fan's father) and then they take you down to the Sample Bar, where you can try any of the flavors as well as the company's other products like candy corn or chocolate-covered raisins. You can also buy Belly Flops, which are not-quite-perfect candies for about half-price. All in all, it's a great tour!

Miles's Personal Paparazzi

We just got back from a wonderful week visiting my family in San Jose. It was so great to see my family again and introduce Miles to sunny (well, maybe not particularly sunny, but definitely warmer) California. While we were there, my little sister decided to take tons of pictures of Miles and she caught some really cute moments. Here are some of my favorites:
With Uncle James
Eating the sheep from my mom's crocheted nativity
Being cute
Apparently, carrots are too tasty to be eaten neatly
The nice people at the airplane gave Miles an early Christmas present: his very own gate claim ticket to play with
With Aunt Emily
This kid loves being upside down!
Playing piano
A stuffed animal bigger than he is!
Everything goes in his mouth.

In the Christmas Spirit

I was just telling Gerrit the other day that this year felt more Christmassy for some reason and we finally realized why: this is our first December in years with no finals. It's amazing how much more I can enjoy things without having final papers, projects, exams, and looming prospectus defenses hanging over my head. Christmas without deadlines...what a thought! We've been able to do lots of fun Christmas things and it's made for a very cheerful season so far.

-Gerrit got to hang Christmas lights for his grandma, which is much more fun with a house than with a tiny third floor apartment.
-I've been singing and/or playing the flute at the church Christmas party and at various retirement homes with Gerrit, his grandma, and his cousins. It's always fun to get to share the Christmas spirit through music.
-Gerrit's grandma took me with her to see the Nutcracker downtown and it was great!
-We actually have Christmas decorations up! My mom sent me two little nativities and then I made this tree at a church activity. It's only a foot tall and it's made of 6 coat hangers, a jillion twisty ties, lights, and garland, but I like it. It's the perfect size tree for our apartment.

-I love Christmas baking. We made a bunch of gingerbread cookies yesterday for friends and family. Now, I don't exactly have the most traditional Christmas cookie cutters...My grandma had an extensive cookie cutter collection (500+) and she decided to downsize and give some away to her grandchildren. They aren't what you might expect, but they are awesome.


Normal cookies

The gingerbread zoo (Bears, bunnies, ducks, penguins, and little dogs)

Cars and trucks and things that go

Dinosaurs


Rudolph the mammoth reindeer.

I'm looking forward to upcoming traditions in California! Caroling, sugar cookies, root beer floats, and reading the nativity story, here we come!

Tasty Food

Miles really loves his solid food. I've tried to make a lot of it myself and it's luckily worked out pretty well so far. The green beans were kind of a disaster because it was apparently too small of a batch for my food processor, so I salted them and let Gerrit eat them instead. I've had more success with things that have smoother textures to start with like fruits, avocados, sweet potatoes, squash, and carrots.

Miles loves my home-canned applesauce (which is good, because there's a lot of it), oatmeal, any fruit except for peaches, and all of vegetables, especially sweet potatoes and peas. I'm not a big fan of peas and the smell of the peas when I feed it to him kind of makes me sick, so I have no idea where he got this from.

This video is Miles eating peas in his booster chair. (Gerrit and I sound silly, just watch the baby) Much to my relief, he finally decided he liked his booster chair. The first time involved a lot of fussing and crying, so we put it away for a few weeks and then let him try it again to much happier reviews.

Visiting Virginia

We had lots of fun visiting Gerrit's family in Virginia! We all loved seeing Gerrit's parents and sisters and Miles loved having so many friends to play with. We didn't think we'd be able to see them over the holidays, so it was definitely a pleasant surprise. Some of the fun things we did over the trip included:

-Lots of fun chats and games with the family
-Meeting Gerrit's cousin Nathanael for lunch at a Greek restaurant. I love Greek food and it was fun for Gerrit to catch up with his cousin.
-We joined the ward choir for the weekend and got to sing some beautiful Christmas music.
-Christmas shopping with Gerrit's mom and sister. Some Nestle representatives were giving away free chocolate chip cookies and coupons at the mall. Yum!
-Introducing Miles to friends in the Harrisonburg 2nd Ward.
-Seeing Marinda's choir concert. You sounded great!
-While Gerrit had his job interview in downtown Charlottesville, Miles and I went with Gerrit's parents and his sister Brooke to Monticello. I love history and the tour of the house and grounds was great! Miles was being pretty charming and the tour guide kept winking at him and telling him how cute he was. Jefferson is a pretty fascinating individual, and I enjoyed hearing about his life.


Monticello


I love history!


Brooke, Miles, Allison ,and me at Monticello


Miles on Jefferson's bed (not the real one. They have a replica at the children's center)


Dressed in slave clothes

The Dog Lover

Miles adores Pacu, Gerrit's family's dog. Whenever he saw Pacu he would smile, laugh, and squeal. We tried to keep him from touching the dog as much as possible because we didn't want him to pull his fur, but the few times we let him pet the dog he was completely ecstatic. Pacu licked Miles's feet and head and I thought my little boy was going to explode from happiness. Here's a cute video of Miles and Pacu (the cute girl in the background is my sister-in-law Brooke).

Frequent Flier

Gerrit had a job interview in Charlottesville, Virginia last week. This is about an hour away from my in-laws, so Miles and I tagged along so we could have fun with the family. Luckily for us, my aunt works for Jet Blue and got us Buddy Passes. You have to fly stand-by, but we got round-trip fare for 2 people for 190 dollars from Salt Lake to Dulles! Wow! Stand-by can be a problem when they're busy, but early December is apparently a low-traffic time for airlines so we got on pretty easily and usually had an empty seat next to us for Miles to play in.

Our first flight was a red-eye from Salt Lake to New York and Miles slept through most of it. When we landed at JFK, they had a little children's play area with some toys and Miles loved it! We had to drag him away to get on the flight by tempting him with his favorite book. (which I somehow managed to lose on our plane flight home. Sad.)



It was a huge relief that Miles behaved so well on the plane. He managed to nap pretty well and not be *too* fussy and he had fun attacking the TV controls in the armrest, staring out the window, and trying to pull our headphones out. It definitely eased my mind about our upcoming trip to California...if he can handle a cross-country red-eye flight, he can certainly handle a short trip!

Keeping Busy

During the day, both of us work for Gerrit's grandma doing odd jobs to pay for our rent. Since we unfortunately have more bills than just the rent, Gerrit has also been substitute teaching to help cover expenses. He had his first two substitute teaching jobs this week and it was an adventure!

Job 1: High School P.E.

Gerrit taught three periods of kickball and one period of bowling. Bowling was particularly fun because all he had to do was get the kids on a bus, go to a bowling alley, and bowl for an hour while the students just pretty much took care of themselves. He also played kickball for an hour, jogged, and played basketball and realized that he is no longer a high school student because he has been sore ever since. All in all, not that bad.

Job 2: Kindergarten

Gerrit was a little more nervous about this one. A masters degree in engineering doesn't do too much to prepare you for kindergarten. Luckily, his classes had a lot of aides, which was a big help. He got to help lead a science lesson, sing songs, read stories and supervise coloring. Here's a funny story involving the afternoon class:

Setting: Afternoon kindergarten. The students are practicing " Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for their upcoming Christmas program.

Little girl: Mr. Larsen, can we stand up for this one?

Gerrit: Sure, why not? (He assumes that this should be no big deal)

Kids: Yay!!!!

The class starts singing "You know Dasher and Dancer, etc."

"Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer had a very shiny nose"

And when the chorus hits, chaos strikes with it. Half the little girls in the class join hands and start bouncing up and down like crazy. Encouraged by this, a group of five little boys run to the corner and start doing handstands. Other kids start dancing

Gerrit: Oh man...

Kindergarten was definitely more eventful than PE, but I think Gerrit did a pretty good job.

Picture Day

We took Miles to JCPenney to get pictures taken last week for the holidays and they turned out so cute! He wasn't in the smiliest of moods during the session because he was too busy being curious about the camera, but we still got a good picture anyways. Here's our cute little boy!

 

Craters of the Moon

Fun Historical Fact:
One Oregon pioneer described Craters of the Moon as "The Devil's Vomit"

Why, may you ask, would we want to go somewhere with such a lovely nickname? Well, basically because A) I am a sucker for national parks B) It's only 2 hours from Idaho Falls and C) because it involves volcanoes so Gerrit was excited about it.

I checked out the national parks website, got information on some hikes we wanted to do, and we were all set. We picked up a little pamphlet on it at the Potato Museum and headed on our way. When we were about twenty minutes away, I noticed this lovely piece of information on the pamphlet "Scenic loop closed November-April." The scenic loop contains all of the hikes and all of the cool stuff. Hmmm....You would think that would be important to put somewhere very, very visible on your website. (Technically, it was in the operating hours section. I failed to notice it.) One of these days I will learn that outside of California, there is this little thing called winter and it involves snow and ice and makes national parks a little less fun to go to...

Since we were close, we decided to at least go see the visitor's center. When we got there, we found out that super-duper-luckily, November to April closure is more like a suggestion, and since the roads weren't that bad, we could actually see the whole park! Yay! As an added bonus, the fact that it was supposed to be closed meant that we were literally the only people in the park. When we stepped out of the car it was completely silent. It was so neat to be there in the volcanic area by ourselves. We walked around big volcanic rocks, saw creepy dead trees (Devil's Broom), hiked up a cinder cone and looked into lava tubes. It may not be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, but it was pretty neat and definitely unique.




Inside a lava tube


Inferno Cone


Devil's Broom

Devil's Orchard

Cinder cones (little mini-volcanoes)

Craters of the Moon

Idaho Potatoes

The Idaho Potato Museum is about half an hour from our house. I love museums and I thought it would be fun, so we piled into the car and headed off to learn more about our favorite starchy side dish. The museum had some historical information about potatoes, old potato harvesting equipment (Gerrit's favorite part), and some awesome potato-related memorabilia. They had a letter that the governor of Idaho sent to Dan Quayle, telling him that no matter how he spelled potato, he should enjoy the ones from Idaho and reminding him that there is also no "e" in Idaho. There was also an enormous potato masher collection and a Mr. Potato Head collection. I can tell that I am a huge dork because I immediately walked in, saw the map of how the potato came to Idaho, and said "Hey Gerrit, it's the Columbian exchange!" I might need to get out more. As an added bonus, we each got a handy box of dehydrated hash browns. Yum!



The world's largest potato chip