Major catchup

I know, I know. It's been awhile. (sorry, Tarilynn, about the last post, when I came back from Thanksgiving, I just couldn't help myself.  :))
 I missed some pretty big things, so I'll abbreviate now:

SETH TURNED FOUR!  My crazy angel boy had his birthday on October 5th.  Farris was out of town at a National College Advisor convention (he actually taught one of the breakout sessions and did a fabulous job.  "Fabulous" is my word, he said he "felt really good about how it turned out" and all the comments that were left said it was very good.  So I say "fabulous". Anyway.) So we celebrated his birthday when Farris got back.  But he'd been so excited about his birthday coming that he didn't care when it happened, as long as it did happen.  For his cake, I cut a sheet cake in pieces and arranged them in the shape of a number four, then decorated it to look like a race track, complete with little hot wheels.  As usual, it didn't look quite like I pictured it, but he loooved it. He's our car boy.  My camera was still broke, so no pictures, sad day.  He's been growing and changing so much lately--which I am very glad of!  When Farris was called to the Bishopric, my main worry was how Seth would be during Sacrament meeting and boy did he live up to my worries!  He's doing better now, last week wasn't awesome, but for the three weeks before that (a new record!) I didn't have to take him out of the chapel.  And his primary teachers occasionally say, in a surprised tone, that he was good.  So he is getting older.  Luckily, he still has his super sweet times and is still the best hugger ever.  He even hugged a stranger that came to our door.  We did know the people she came with, so it's ok.  His snuggle times are great, and his grin is adorable.  We love our Sethy Boy!

HALLOWEEN!  I did manage to get a new camera for Halloween, hurrah!  I'm liking it. 

Felicity has been asking to dress up as a horse for awhile, but I was pretty sure a decent horse costume was beyond my abilities.  Ever resourceful, Felicity forced my hand by joining the 4-H theater group, which was doing Tangled, and she happily got the part of Maximus.  She did have an old costume that was made to look like she was riding a unicorn.  So I cut off the head (evil laugh) attached it to a white hoodie and then replaced the rainbow mane with off white yarn, and cut off the horn.  Then I attached a saddle with a blanket and reins and more yarn for a tail to look like Maximus.  The final piece was a Flynn Rider wanted poster.  She was pretty excited. 

Caleb really wanted to be...well, lots of things.  Last year he just dressed up in his soccer uniform, so I felt like it was his turn to get a cool homemade costume.  When he finally decided on being Luke Skywalker (we had spent the last several, several Friday movie nights watching the Star Wars movies) I thought that it shouldn't be too hard.  Farris had a white button down shirt that had ripped at the elbow, so I figured I could turn it into the tunic Luke wears.  Caleb has khaki pants and I thought I could wrap some brown felt around his calves to look like those bootie things.  For his birthday Grandma Child gave him a light saber, so we'd be good.  The problem was the tunic.  My scissors got a little out of control and it ended up being too small. Do you ever have that problem when you make or get something for your kid, and then realize that they are not as small as you keep thinking? Yup. But it was still really long because I hadn't hemmed it.  In fact when he tried it on it looked a little like a lab coat.  Being the good sport that he is, we decided he could be Dr. Doofensmirch from Phineas and Ferb.  We even made a "Halloweeninator" so he could carry out his evil plan to make it always Halloween in the Tri-State area.  So my oopsy turned out ok. 

Joseph wanted to wear the ghost costume I made him last year.  Whew.  He did let me paint black circles around his eyes but they bugged him, so he washed them off before the costume parade at school.  He does make a cute little ghostie, though.

Seth wanted to wear his dinosaur costume.  Which was great for me, but the problem was that he had grown since we bought it: it showed about three inches of his calves and...hmmm...how do I put this delicately...it looked a little too tight around his derriere to be comfortable.  I managed to convince him to wear Caleb's old dinosaur costume and he was happy with it.

Last year after Halloween I went to Kmart to see what costumes they had on clearance.  I found a cute flower costume for Abby, but the biggest size was 9 months.  But it looked big so I got it and since Abigail's on the small side, it fit perfect.  She was a cute little flower.  In the picture, Farris is holding her, because most pictures of her end up looking like this:

(doesn't she look like Seth in this picture?) or this:

 

She likes the camera and runs for it whenever I pull it out.

 

It was the warmest Halloween I ever remember, trick or treating was pretty good.  When we headed out we met our neighbor who was taking her daughter around, so we joined forces.  Little Mckinley is Seth's age by the calendar but much older in personality, she makes me smile.  And she has a little crush on Joseph, we laughed at how she would tail him and do whatever he did the whole time.  The kids were pretty happy with their haul.  Which means the Daddy Tax and the Mommy tax were pretty high this year (you know, higher tax rates for the rich), so we enjoyed it, too.

The warm weather continued and one Saturday Farris had the kids outside getting everything ready for snow by moving all the leaves into the garden to compost and picking up branches, organizing outside toys in the shed, etc.  Some friends came over to play and had a blast in the pile of leaves our tree creates.

Once all the leaves were out of our big tree, the boys noticed two big balls of...something... up there.  I zoomed the camera lens so we could see what it was.  I was pretty sure they were wasp nests, but my scientific boy Caleb was all fired up with a million possibilities. This summer we noticed that there was hardly any new nests on our eves, which we were grateful for, but I don't like the idea of two large nests in our tree, either.  Luckily they came down in the snow and hopefully there won't be any next year.

What snow did they come down in?  Less than a week later we woke up to this:

It dumped about a foot on us in about 24 hours time, I have to admit, I was pretty excited!  Look at how gorgeous the trees around us look!  I did have to quickly find boots, gloves, mittens, hats, scarves for everyone which can be a challenge. Right now it's back to crazy warm weather for a December in Utah, weird year for weather.

Thanksgiving was wonderful, but I didn't get any pictures, too busy just enjoying family and food. And pies! At my family party we had 23 people and 21 pies. Very tasty.

I love this.  Caleb was on another chair, reading, too.  I love that the kids enjoy to read and it doesn't hurt that the noise level drops significantly when their noses are in books.  Can you see the large knob and cut on Joseph's head?  Him and his friend Hyrum were goofing off at 4H and somehow a bench met his head.  He told me he doesn't think he'll play with the benches anymore.  I think that's a good idea, he's got a good scar on his head from it.  Oh, that boy.

And to finish off this post, a sad, sad face from Seth.  He was caught with my eyeliner.  He wasn't very happy at getting caught, but I'm not sure how he thought he was going to get away with it. 

 We have decorated our Christmas Tree and other things, but I'll have to put that off for another post.  Thanks for re-motivating me Tarilynn!

A New Post!

Hi, Tarilynn.

Our snippets

Whoosh, it's been a busy month!  Nothing like three kids in soccer, three in 4-H, one in choir and one in piano to keep a whole family busy.  Plus, Abigail and Seth are always busy, in an unorganized sense.  My camera is still broken, I think we may have to replace it, but that might be awhile.  Sigh.  But with five kids there's always something to make me giggle. 

We love the Kid History videos, and they put out what they call Kid Snippets:

So here is our snippets:

Today Seth told me that I'm a "good maker."  Love the compliment, but it isn't quite as high praise when he told me that because I gave him a bowl of Top Ramen.

Abby loves to dance.  Any music comes on, whether car commercial or Joseph humming and she'll start to shake her hips.  She loves the magnet toy we got her for her birthday.  It's shaped like a barn with animals that you match front and back to make it say the animal sound.  It also plays little ditties that Abigail will listen to over and over again.  Today she was dancing to it and Farris said "She dances like a penguin!"  And, you know, she really does.

Primary program today!  Always love that.  Highlights:  Seth forgot to go up with his class (so did another girl.  Those unpredictable sunbeams).  So his teacher led the class up, they all did their parts, they sat down and then the pianist leaned over, whispered to the teacher, and she looked around, grabbed Seth and the other little girl and they gave their parts. I thought he was too nervous to stand up, but no, just off in Sethy Boy Land.  Another one:  Joseph turning around to give his friend a high five when the friend sat down after delivering his part.  Another one that didn't happen on the stand:  Abigail taking off from our pew and making it across the isle.  She was picked up  and snuggled and then she ran back to me with her "I'm so brave!" grin. 

We also went to the Piano Guys concert last weekend. It was free at the park, and it was Holy Cow stuffed with people. I haven't heard an official number, but I'm sure it was at least 4500. We got there plenty early (like three hours early) and saved good seats and the kids are still talking about it. This is one of my favorite songs they do:

All their stuff on Youtube is amazing.  The kids love Cello Wars. 

Our Regional area for church had a 5K or 1 Mile fun run a couple weekends ago.  Chad and Tarilynn and a couple of their kids came down to run it with us.  Caleb was so excited to do the mile, he wants to be an Olympic runner.  He's pretty determined, so I guess we'll see in about 15 years.  Joseph was excited too, he ran with Farris and talked the whole way.  When I told him that his dad told me that, he said, "Yep, I'm a talker."  Boy howdy.  I did the 5K with Tarilynn.  I almost died.  OK, not really, but I was very, very tired.  I haven't been running much since the 4th of July, but I've been doing other things, including Zumba.  I guess that doesn't cut it.  Farris took first place, though, and Chad, Reid and Tarilynn all placed well.  I beat the grandpa that was running with his 5 year old grandson.  YESSSS!

Our garden kicked in and we've been doing lots of tomatoes and beans, and pears and apples from neighbors and the Farmer's Market.  Yummy.  We got three watermelons from our garden this year!! We've never been able to get any to turn out, but two of the them were really good, one so-so.  Yum. Our raspberries did better this year than ever before.  Abby was fun to watch pick the berries.  She just goes out leans under a branch with her mouth and chews it right off the vine.  We're still working on her picking only the red ones, not the white ones.  We also got a lot of grapes.  The birds ate about half of the them, but we still had plenty.  So good. 

On Wednesday night we were cleaning up the kitchen after dinner when a cop car raced by and stopped in front of a house a couple doors down and across.  Then a fire engine.  Then another one, and a few minutes later another one.  Luckily, everything turned out well, it was a grease fire in the kitchen and a few neighbors all came together to help put it out and comfort the couple that lives there.  Caleb, so sweet, was standing in the front yard before we really knew what was going on, and he says, "Mom, I'm going to say a prayer for them."  and he turns around and walks into the house to do that.  Those are the best mom moments.

One Big Party for Two Big Girls

(This is the third blog post for today.  And I still have another one I need to do to catch up. Craziness)

48 hours of party!  Well, we didn't hit that exactly, but we did have a lot of fun.  Like I said in Felicity's post, we left for Idaho on her birthday, Friday.  We spent the night at Grandma's house and then on Saturday we went to the park at the Twin Falls for a picnic/birthday party/photo shoot spectacular. Lots of cameras going off.  Which led to an unfortunate accident with our camera: Seth's head:1, our camera: 0.  Seth was fine, he has a hard head, but my camera is out. 
But back to the party.

My family brought 11 balloons, 10 for Felicity and 1 for Abigail.  Abby loved them, until she got all tangled up in the balloon strings.  But she loves the squishiness of balloons and would giggle and squeeze and kiss the balloons.  Very cute. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Joseph and Michael!!  So happy together.
 





 We had pizza and then PRESENTS.  Felicity's birthday is first so she opened first.  Surrounded by cousins who tried to help.  Thank you to all you who gave her wonderful things. She was very excited and couldn't wait to get home to try everything out.

 

 

Abby had fun opening presents, she did get a little bugged by Seth trying to help.  That rubber ducky was so cute. 

 Playground ball was a hit, at the party and after.  That is one of the words she says now.  (the list includes Daddy, doggy, ball, and bye-bye.  She doesn't get all of the sounds in the words, but enough that you know what she means)

Lots of fun things!

 Abby loved the little doll grandma got her and had to give it a good squeeze.

 



More presents!

 

Felicity's cake.  She wanted to decorate it this year, so we made fondant in a lot of bright colors, and her and her cousin cut out shapes.  Then we frosted it (with good frosting, not fondant) green to look like grass and she put in as many animals as she could.

 

For Abby's cake Lissy helped me make flowers out of fondant. 

Lighting the candles.

 The first bite Abigail got was the fondant.  That was a mistake 'cause she wasn't about to eat any more of that cake.

She kept looking at us like, "You really want me to eat this stuff??"

I love this expression.  She does it all the time and makes a funny little whoo sound to go with it.

At this point, she knew she didn't want to eat it even though we kept trying to get her to taste it, but she thought she'd play in it a little.

 

 Now she's getting bored and wants to finish this thing that her parents are forcing her to do.

 



 Now we're done.  Now they won't make me eat it.

 

Finishing it with style.

 Ohhhh, look at mom, she's all clean...

 Do you think I should...

 

Ohhh, yeah, here I come!

 Getting my game face on.

 

 

All over mom's clean shorts...hee-hee!

 

Ha ha, I got her!

Abby, Abby, Abby.  My dirty little girl who doesn't like cake.  But she did love the ice cream.  And she got her first box of Grandpa Milk.

Not a lampshade, but a corky kind of hat.

Happy with the party.

But I don't think she's a big fan of cake.

 

We had a great party for the girls and lots of fun.  Then on Monday we went to Hagerman.  Hagerman is this great little town that has lots of (the sign says thousands, but...) hot springs so a couple hot spring pools are around town.  There's even a place that raises alligators.  Not sure why you would want to raise alligators in Idaho, but to each his own.  We were going to go to Sligers, but they are closed on Monday--who knew?-so we went to Banberrys, which is called Thousand Springs now.  We were in the pool for three hours and all the kids had a blast and were so tired on the way home. 

 

We stayed in Idaho the next week (mostly) and came home on Saturday.  We had a wonderful time.  I really like going to my home ward, it's so good to see so many people I grew up with.  Farris spent Monday and Tuesday up in the mountains with my Dad getting wood for the winter and I helped mom clean out an area in the basement so she could get down some new carpet and start rearranging.  By the way, if anyone wants a pool table with a ping pong tabletop, let me know my Mom wants to get rid of one.  But you might have to go to Idaho to pick it up.  Anyway, we headed over to Burley to spend time with farris' family on Wednesday, including going to the county fair.  Fun!  Then on Friday Farris' nephew got married to a sweet girl in the Salt Lake temple.  We went to the sealing and the wedding brunch and then back to Idaho for the reception.  It was wonderful to spend time with so much of our family and now we've got our Family Fix until the holidays when we get out of school  Unless anyone wants to come visit...we're always open!