Our first snow day

The kids were so excited to wake up this morning and find out that school was canceled. Our first official snow day of the season. My first thought was "What are we going to do all day?" It's a good thing we had Grandpa Roy and Grandma Cindy here to help keep kids occupied and help keep my sane!

After playing in the snow for a few hours in the morning we had very wet snow clothes, boots, hats, and gloves hanging up all over trying to get dry. The kids kept asking to go out again but the snow had turned to rain and it was a soggy mess outside.

Thankfully the kids sat quietly and listened to The Chronicles of Narnia CD's my dad brought to share with us. The kids have loved the stories and it was a great inside activity.

We survived the long day and even did a little Christmas craft and made some cookies.

Path of destruction

How much mess can one little baby make in a totally baby proof room in less than one hour?

That's quite a work of art!

Poor Natalie. It's always her clothes that get pulled out of the drawers because those are the ones Emersynne can reach.

Our tree is up

With Thanksgiving over and Natalie's birthday over we packed up the fall decorations and put away the balloons and streamers. We actually had Thanksgiving decorations, birthday decorations, and the Christmas tree up (but not decorated) for a day while we made the transition.


Sunday night for Family Home Evening we decorated the tree. The tree had been sitting in it's place with just the lights on for a few days and Abigail had informed me that it was missing something. I thought she was going to tell me that it needed decorations but she told me how the tree was missing a star and how daddy was going to lift her up so she could put the star on the top of the tree. So that's what we did. The kids had a great time putting the decorations on and Jeremiah and I had a good laugh later when we saw all the clusters of ornaments that we knew Abigail had put on. She liked to put them all on the same branch but didn't mind when we spread them out a bit more.




So far Emersynne has left the tree alone. It helps that it is tucked away in the corner and I'm hoping that she won't venture over there to check things out but I'm sure it is only a matter of time!

My little helper

Recently Abigail has turned into the best little helper. She wants to do it all and we usually let her try but I think she is finding that some jobs are a little too difficult for her to handle. Just the other day Abigail was rather insistent on feeding Emersynne her yogurt. Thanks to Anthony for capturing these priceless shots. It's a good thing Emersynne was so patient with Abigail.

It's great to be eight!

Happy Birthday Natalie!

Can't believe my little girl is already eight years old. Natalie has pretty much partied all week with her birthday party last week and now the real day. She started off her birthday by going out to breakfast with daddy while the rest of us wrapped presents and finished up the cake.



Natalie was so excited to get her favorite crackers. She is the only one that likes them so I never buy them.

Trevor took this action shot of Natalie trying out her new basketball. The ball has been glued to her hand since she opened it! She is excited to get some extra practicing in now that she plays basketball at school.

Natalie is looking forward to her baptism next month and being a part of the Activity Days group. She will now join the older two kids in being up at the church Tuesday nights.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The kids and I spent the day before cleaning, organizing, and cooking so we were more than ready for the big day.

The kids all had food assignments and had a lot of fun helping with the cooking. Michaela made the cranberry jello salad, Anthony helped Jeremiah with the turkey, (wish I had a video of Anthony freaking out over stuffing the turkey. He thought it was pretty gross) Trevor helped with the sweet potatoes and Natalie did the pumpkin pies this year complete with her turkey hand print.

Dessert seemed to be the main focus this year. We had pumpkin pies, apple pie, cherry pie, and cheesecake. I left lots of room for dessert so I could try some of each.

The kids were all good sports about eating around the coffee table. We even had a pilgrim visitor (Anthony) and an indian visitor. (Abigail)


Jessica, Caleb, Thomas, Lydia, and our neighbor Maura came to join us and we had a great time visiting and being wild.




I think Caleb is in there somewhere. The kids all thought he was a jungle gym. He had five kids climbing on him all at once. Abigail is in there too you just can't see her either. Thomas was a good sport to share his daddy with the other kids.

UP UP and AWAY!

This year Natalie got to have a friend birthday party. She wanted to have a specific theme and I was having a hard time finding something that would work out with our limited space. We finally decided on a "UP" theme from the recent Disney/Pixar movie. We did different activities with balloons and even had a few science experiments. The party seemed to go off well and we had a pretty good turnout. Natalie had a great time and was so excited for the day.




It was a fun time with helium balloons, balloon swords, hats, and flowers, balloon cupcakes, and balloon games. Since I forgot to hand out the helium balloons to the party guests, (oops!) Natalie and her siblings got to have lots of fun with the balloons while they lasted.

Abigail loved her balloon hat and was sad to discover that it wouldn't keep forever!

Threes I'm old!

Abigail is a little chatter box and is pretty easy to be understood. She does have some phrases that catch us by surprise and make us laugh. She loves birthdays and is constantly talking about how her birthday is coming. (her birthday is in June) We assure her that of course it is coming but it is going to take awhile to get here.

The other day I heard Trevor and Abigail arguing and had a hard time not laughing as I realized what was being said. Trevor was yelling, "NO YOU'RE NOT!" and Abigail yelling just as loud as Trevor was saying, "YES I'M ARE! They went back and forth like that several times before I realized they were not going to resolve it on their own so I stepped in. Not fun to listen to the kids arguing but it was so funny to hear Abigail trying so hard to be a big kid!

I think my very favorite phrase is what you hear when Abigail is asked how old she is.

Halloween

I lost track of how many times the kids changed their minds about costumes. I should have kept a list and maybe we could have used it next year for ideas. In the end everybody was happy with their costumes and they all looked great.

Michaela went as Taylor Swift. Pretty easy costume but it took over 30 minutes for me to curl her hair!



Michaela got to attend a Halloween party with the youth in the ward and the other kids got to go to the primary Halloween party. Even before Halloween night we had tons of candy at our house but the kids wouldn't even think about skipping out on the trick-or-treating. Our neighborhood seemed rather quiet this year and we only got 21 trick-or-treaters (4 of which were my own chidren) so Jeremiah took the kids to our friends neighborhood while Michaela, Emersynne, and I help down the fort here at home.

The serious spock

This is the picture I like best of all! Love that smile!


Emersynne wasn't so sure about the whole event. I'm sure next year she will really get into it!

Webelos Track

At the most recent pack meeting (October 9th) Anthony received his Bear award and his Religions knot award. He was very excited to advance to the Webelos Track and has been proudly wearing his Webelos hat, neckerchief, and neckerchief slide. Now I just need to get on the ball and get those new badges on his uniform.

Good job Anthony!

A blast to the past

I'm realizing that I've let my blogging slip away but don't want to let those precious memorizes slip away. The next few posts will hopefully get things caught up with all our various activities.

To start off with here are some photos of the healing finger and the healed finger. Anthony was so glad to get the stitches out and rather proud to be the one to take them out!





Now we all know to stay away from glass!

Young Women in Excellence

Tuesday night was Young Women in Excellence--an opportunity for the young women of the ward to talk about what progress they have made in the Personal Progress program.

The presidency kicked off the sports theme with a cheer.



Michaela got up later and talked about her Good Works value project, which was centered heavily around assisting the Primary with it's annual Halloween party.