Christmas Break and Back

Prepare yourselves, this is a doosie, a really long doosie.

We took Will on his second trip for Christmas break. This time it was to Salt Lake, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. He told me last night when we got home that he really enjoyed all three.

It was a pretty hectic Christmas break: one week in Utah, one week in Los Angeles and a quick road trip over to Arizona for Emily's grandma's 90th birthday party.

With all of that we still had time to...

... 1) bless Will at my parent's home ward. It was great because so many of our aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents were able to make it. Here's a shot of four generations of Frandsens.

... 2) Pose for a J. Crew advertisement,

... 3) launch my brother Nick's modeling career,

... 4) pose for a Frandsen family Christmas card,

... 5) expose Will to his first dose of cold Utah winter while chilling with our nephews,

... 6) bond with Grandmas and Grandpas,

Here's another four generation shot on my mom's side:

... 7) make gingerbread houses for FHE,

and this was even all before Christmas. Not to mention the extended Frandsen/Ushio annual Christmas parties and all the associated revelry...

On Christmas, the kiddos got just what they asked for. I guess they were nice and not naughty. This is our nephew Zach and his new skates.

Will wasn't quite sure what to think of all the hoopla, but I'm sure he'll figure it all out soon enough.

Uncle Nick decided 2 months old is old enough to start the indoctrination of little ones and so it began...

With Christmas over and done, it was time to head to LA to hang out with Emily's family.

That meant more sibling bonding time.

More presents from Santa, like this rad sumo stocking stuffer that mesmerized Will pretty well.

He also got some more uncle bonding time in.

And met his new buddy/cousin Weston.

Plus we schlepped him all over LA and all the way to Phoenix to meet more relatives, which meant plenty of car seat time. Thankfully he loves his car seat and his buddy the swinging owl.

All in all, it was a really fun 2 weeks. We've decided that we could totally just hang out with our families all the time and be totally happy. Of course friends are great, but there is nothing quite like staying up late and goofing around with your siblings and parents, even if that means beating them in pictionary in the greatest come back ever known to the game of pictionary or any other game for that matter...

Oh yeah. And Happy New Year to everybody too.

2nd annual frandsen family christmas party

merry christmas y'all! friday night peter and i hosted our second annual frandsen family christmas party, southern style. will was a good sport running errands with peter to get all of the necessary ingredients for our treats. here he is, our little christmas bear:

we raided the goodwill and got ourselves some sweet christmas sweaters--the way i look at it, you can never have enough french horn-decorated oversized sweatshirts. and a festive holiday house is always an ideal adornment.

we invited a bunch of friends from peter's residency and our ward. we had a great time drinking wassail, having a lively white elephant gift exchange, and listening to 'n sync and mariah carey serenade us some holiday cheer.

the white elephant gift exchange was full of surprises. josh and jo were lucky enough to get an EPT. because you just never know . . .

dave was super excited for his superman lingerie, however, peter and i just couldn't resist snatching it away from him!

and then of course, the bobble head of some athlete that i've never even heard of. apparently it's worth a lot of money, so even though paula brought it, she made sure to steal it back . . .

all in all it was a very fun night. now that we've celebrated with our mississippi-resident-family, we're excited to go home and celebrate with our real families! just one more week until we're on that plane!!!

big shout out for a little city guy.

one thing i love is when good old salt lake city gets a shout out from the grey lady. it doesn't happen that often, but when it does, i giggle inside.

this time when i read this article, i giggled out loud, a.k.a. i LOL'd.

i'm not sure how many of you have heard the honorable mr. hatch's foray into musical creation. i have and it's hilarious. so the idea of him expanding his reach into the Jewish musical lexicon (if there is such a thing) adding to the likes of Matisyahu (link included to:) makes me laugh out loud. i just hope that it's as beautiful as some of the other lyrical wonders he has previously engineered.

i can't wait to hear what he's done and what else he has in store.

make us salt lakians proud, mr. hatch make us proud...!

short, but totally worth it.

we had a whirl-wind thanksgiving weekend, all crunched down into a quick trip up to north carolina to visit the wonderful fehlbergs and my also wonderful cousin stevey. our flights didn't really hook us up much, so we had to pack a full weekend's worth into about a day and a half.

i won't bore you with the details, but it went a little something like this:

Will took his first plane ride.

we had a lot of baby action; stevey with little sydney and max.

we ate delicious food prepared by kaedi and stevey tag teaming the kitchen.

we watched the man of the house carve his first turkey.

we did this. (click here for more)

we posed for too many pictures.

and spent a lot of time sitting around laughing at ridiculous things.

oh yeah. and my wife all of sudden became the quintessential hipster traveling mother.

black friday y'all!

what's more american than black friday?? (don't answer that, b/c we all know there are many.)

so to celebrate our americanness, my cousin stevey, our buddy marc and i decided to hit up walmart at 5:00 am to relish in the crazy.

check this documentarian digital short that we made:

(be sure to turn up the volume to catch all the dialogue, intended and otherwise...)

also be sure to ask emily about her near-run-in-waiting-on-line-brawl with an ornery old lady as she black friday-ed at Jo-Ann's...

happy anniversary!

what a year.

got married.

got pregnant.

graduated dental school.

moved to mississippi.

and had Will.

like i said, what a year . . . but it's been the best year ever.

i love you, babe.

good thing my mouth was closed . . .

i had somewhat of a pungent awakening this morning around 7:30. i had fed will about an hour before, but he was fussy and having trouble going back to sleep. i soon found out why . . . i'd been holding him and trying to soothe him when i realized he had a messy diaper. so, sitting on my bed with peter still asleep next to me, i decided to change his diaper. i didn't use a changing pad because he had a blanket and his pj's underneath him, and i also had the clean diaper ready just in case. i thought i had covered my bases. how wrong i was. with his legs up in the air in my left hand, and a wipe in my right, i was unprepared for what came at me next.

and what came at me was a whole bunch of poop shooting right out of will's bum.

it came at me with such force i was stunned. i hurried to stop it with my right hand, but i was too late. it hit my chin, my foreheard, and splattered down the whole front of me. it covered my hand, the sheets, his blanket, and his pj's. i was stunned. it even woke peter up. i asked peter for help, and so he grabbed a wipe and asked me what i needed. i told him, "my face, my face, get it off of my face!" peter started wiping my cheek--he wasn't even close to where the poo actually was and so i exclaimed, "no, my chin--right by my mouth!" "sorry," he said (as he was trying to wake up), "my eyes are still blurry, i can't really focus." then, as we were trying to clean up the massive mass, we looked up and saw this:

a look of complete innocence and relaxation. oh will, if only you knew what had just happened. if only you knew that now all of your clothes, blanket, my garments, our sheets, and mattress pad are soaking in oxy clean with hopes that your pungent, mustard colored feces won't stain them! luckily you're so dang cute that we just can't be mad. in fact, it was a really hilarious way to start off our day!

and just in case you're wondering what the crime scene looked like, here are a couple of photos; unfortunately, because of my garments, and because we didn't want to expose our baby on the internet, these photos really don't even show the least of the mess:

and here's a shot of our "straight shooter" after everyone was cleaned up. isn't he just adorable???

giddy-up!

we're about to ride our first hurricane.

apparently, there's a hurricane watch warning for hurricane ida, who is creeping up the gulf tonight... you can see we live smack in the middle of hurricane alley. (click to enlarge)

so we did what we were told and took Will down to the gulf coast to watch the hurricane. (check out those gulls. don't they say that animals start to wig out before the impending doom of natural diasters...?)

but don't freak out y'all. our bags are packed, the gas tank is full, and we're ready to bounce if the order is given...

last night.

This is how William felt about last night's win and particularly about his fellow asian-american super star, Mr. RBI: Hideki Matsui getting named MVP.