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.

Weird Science #2

With Mommy and the older kids at Mutual, the opportunity was ripe for more science fun...

...with the microwave!

The first test subjects were some Tootsie-rolls. We tested the microwave for hot spots by spreading out the candy from the center of rotation towards the outside of the microwave.



The non-mobile Tootsie Roll was the first to succumb to the microwaves.



Trevor wasn't too impressed with the looks of our product.



We next compared the melting temperatures of two different candies: a lemon Tootsie Roll and a gummy something.



It didn't take long for the gummy candy to start bubbling.



This product was so beautiful that we saved it and gave it to Mommy when she got home.

Cutting out of the middle

The other day I walked into the dining room as Anthony was just finishing a project. He had wanted to make a bat to hang up, and folded a sheet of black construction paper in half in order to make a symmetrical bat. He was quite pleased with the result and was about to discard the paper from which he had cut the bat when I asked him if he could cut out a second bat.

"No, there's no more room."

"Why is that?"

He thought and looked at the paper, of which there was initially enough to make four or five bats.

"Because... I cut the first bat out of the middle of the paper."

I gave Anthony his reminder about wisely using resources available to him. I try to do the same.

Just a little reminder for you:
How are you doing with conserving your resources?