The Tuesday before Thanksgiving the boys and I went up to Heber to ride on the Polar Express with some of my aunts and cousins. The boys were so excited to go and ride on the train. They were all wearing their pajamas just like in the book.  The train ride followed the book pretty accurately, they fed us treats, we sang songs and Santa even came to visit and give us bells.  Isaac wanted nothing to do with Santa and the closer Santa got to us the louder he yelled.  But for the most part he enjoyed the ride.

  The best part about the whole trip was how my kids make-believed about the ride the next day.  They carried their bells where ever we went, we sang Christmas carols in the van that was now a train and kept a look out for Santa, the two older boys hoping to see him and Isaac relieved when we never did.  It was a fun was to get ready for the Christmas season.

Well, today Isaac got the staple out of his head.

For those who hadn’t heard, Isaac as bounding a big ball against the wall. Well, it bounced him back hard enough that he hit is head on the corner of a return vent and cut his head. We got the bleeding stopped and got him cleaned up. We noticed that the cut kept oozing blood so we took him to the urgent care. They gave him one staple and sent him home.

The poor guy’s head. Two scars at age two. I hope that correlation doesn’t continue.

On Wednesday Jake went with Emily to pick up his new glasses. Jake is very excited to have his new glasses. When ever he talks about what he has to do each day he mentions that he has to put his glasses on. He also let’s us know that when he goes to bed at night that he needs to take his glasses off so he doesn’t smoosh them.

Well, today is Matt’s due date. That means he is now 6 days old.

For those who haven’t heard, Matthew actually has a twin. Born on the same day was Jake and Lindsey Judd’s baby Zadick (sorry if the spelling is wrong). Jake Judd has been a good friend of mine for many years and it was fun to have a baby on the same day, delivered at the same hospital and by the same doctor. Below are a couple of pictures of the twins.

Today we welcomed Matthew Reed Olsen into the world. He was 8 pounds 15 ounces and 21 inches long. Below are some pictures. I am plan on updating this entry with more information later. Right now I need to get to bed.

Today was Isaac’s birthday, and yes, he turned 2. Over the past few days we have been trying to get Isaac excited about his birthday. In all our attempts we failed. However, when my mom showed up yesterday for his party with a present, Isaac quickly realized that he could end up really liking this birthday thing.

This morning Emily texted me and told me that Isaac woke up and went down stairs this morning and saw the presents on the table. When he saw them he said “Wow! Mine!” Isaac is a funny kid. Emily had to keep Isaac busy today so he wouldn’t try to dive into the presents before I got home from work.

The agenda for today included a trip to the pumpkin patch. Jake had gone with his class last week so Emily thought it would be a good day to take Isaac and Andrew to get their pumpkins. As you can see, pumpkins do funny things to Isaac’s face.

After Jake got home from school, Emily took the boys to McDonald’s for Isaac’s birthday lunch. I am pretty jealous of all the fun they had without me. I’m busy saving up my days of for when the baby comes.

All-in-all, Emily and I decided that Isaac had a good birthday. He was very pleased with all his presents. Isaac was lucky enough to have two parties. Well, all our boys usually get two parties. Last night we had a party with my family and then tonight we had a party with Jeff, Patti and Rose Marie. We had a lot of fun on both nights.

Just to make some of you jealous. I’ll make a list of the gifts Isaac received so you can imagine how much fun he must be having..

• Diego Toys and Movie
• A large Winnie the Pooh that talks
• A bobble head train
• Building stix
• Batman
• Winnie the Pooh backpack
• A reindeer Christmas decoration

See, I knew you would all be jealous!

Well, Jake has just got on the bus and is now off to school, wearing his favorite color, yellow.  Grandma Murphy sent him this back to school shirt. He was wearing his Lightning McQueen shoes from his aunt Patti. He was so excited, I was so nervous.  I was up before six doing the dishes and fretting about his first day of school meanwhile Jake decided to sleep in till after seven, something he never, ever does.  He chose his breakfast of french toast, sausage, eggs and orange juice but he barely ate a bite, I guess it was just nerves or the fact that he wasn’t awake quite yet. Last night he did his first homework assignment which was coloring an apple by following the instructions.  Then he wanted to pack his backpack with the markers that Grandma Olsen gave him with two caps and the computer paper that Grandma Murphy gave him. He wanted to do everything all by himself, I guess he is growing up.

He was so excited to get to school we were out waiting for the bus about a half hour before the bus came, and I thought we were running behind this morning.  Andrew and Isaac were waiting with him all decked out in their backpacks so that they could be like their big brother.  Jake also brought out his Dog and Buzz so that they could watch him get on the bus.  I gave Jake the whole lecture on listen to your teacher and don’t push in line and then he told me that I needed to be gentle to his dog and bunny while he was gone and that I needed to make sure to pet them.  But he doesn’t need to worry because Isaac loves his animals and is thrilled to take care of them while Jake is away.

We have an eight year old neighbor boy named Peter who offered to help Jake get to school and get to his class on his first day so Peter arrived to take Jake off to school.  Jake was so excited he thinks Peter is the greatest thing ever.  Peter’s mom told me that Peter had it all planned out, he was going to teach Jake the rules on the bus like waiting in line and being quiet at the railroad crossings.  He also told his mom that he would take Jake all year if he had to.  I am so glad that Jake has him to help  him out at school. Jake couldn’t wait to get going, as soon as Peter arrived Jake was ready to get in line, and any one who knows Jake knows that went Jake is excited he can hardly control his body.  He was jumping up and down and talking up a storm.

They got in line and for Jake the bus couldn’t get their fast enough.  When the bus did get there Jake got on with out hesitation.  I was a little worried that when the bus finally got there Jake would be too scared to get on but he climbed right in and found a seat in the back (our bus stop is the last one so there aren’t many seats left.  So Jake is a school boy now and the only tears I shed were at 5:50 this morning.  All in all, so far anyway the day has gone really well.

Today we had a back to school party to get Jake excited for school.  The boys all had a lot of fun.  We started the day by playing the classic games of duck, duck, goose and red light green light.  The kids had a lot of fun doing this and they followed the rules pretty well.  Then we had a back pack relay where the kids raced to fill their backpacks with school supplies.  They wanted to play that game twice.  After that we had a scavenger hunt and that is where it really got wild.  The kids all raced to be the first to find the clues.  After that we did some quieter art projects and then we made ice cream.  Making ice cream is a lot more difficult then the instructions made it sound, especially with 10 eager little kindergartners.  We made it in bags that the kids were supposed to shake until ice cream formed but the kids expected it to form like magic.  It is funny because they were all frustrated during the making part but both my boys said that it was their favorite part of the party.  All in all it went well and we are looking forward to starting school tomorrow.

So Dan is insisting that I learn to write in the family blog, so here I am.  He is totally patronizing me so I suggest to anyone out there who doesn’t know how to blog, don’t have a computer scientist teach you.  But now Dan is encouraging me to change the title of my blog entry to something else since I am not talking about the soccer practice and as I don’t know how or want to change the title I guess I had better start talking about Jake’s (and Dan’s) first soccer practice.

Jake had his first soccer practice yesterday and as his soccer coach is in our ward, Dan got suckered into being the assistant coach.  The best part of Jake’s team is that the coaches’ daughter choose the color of the teams uniforms and they are a very manly "salmon."  But I think that Dan and Jake are man enough to pull of the look but I guess you can all decide for yourself.

Jake is really excited about playing soccer especially since his friend Maddox is on his team. Their first practice went well.  They did one activity where all of the kids had to hold hands and then for the rest of the practice the kids thought that they had to hold hands no matter how their coaches tried to dissuade them.  They all had a lot of fun out there never mind the fact that they didn’t know which goal they were supposed to score in and continued kicking the ball regardless of the fact that it was way out of bounds.  But all in all it went well and Jake is excited to have his dad as a coach.

So I will conclude my blog post here and hopefully it will be satisfactory to my computer scientist husband.