Getting ready for the Holidays

The bad thing is all this happened so long ago that I don't remember the details!  The good thing is that the camera catches the spirit of what happened, and (wonderfully) all the digital pictures have the date taken as part of the data saved in each picture.  That is how I know that:

 

On Sunday November 18th we decided to make Christmas decorations.  I had seen a few fun ideas on Pinterest and the kids are always ready to get out the glue sticks and scissors.  Even if what they came up with was different than my idea they still had good times.   Felicity cut out the words on some of my Christmas paper and glued it onto various projects,

 



Joseph liked the stars from Popsicle sticks and the folded-into-a-fan-then-stick-the-top-end-together-to-form-an-accordion-Christmas-tree,

 



Abigail enjoyed the spectacle from her perch.  She loves the glue sticks so we had to be very careful to keep them out of her chimpanzee reach.  Yes, it might sound mean to compare my cute little girl to a chimp, but she has the longest reach ever in a human baby. 

Seth concentrating very hard.  He gets very intense about arts and crafts.  Well, he gets very intense about life.

Overview.  I was making those 3-D folded stars that have been popping up everywhere.  They turned out cute, but not as cute as my kids because I didn't get any pictures of them but lots of the kids.

Caleb hamming for the camera.  He can be so quiet in public I don;t think people realize how goofy his personality really is.  He makes us laugh with his fun sense of humor.  Thankfully, he has and most boys do move past the "anything with a banana in it is hysterical" stage. 

Now we're skipping forward a few weeks past Thanksgiving.  I don't have any pictures, but we did have lots of fun.  On the day after Thanksgiving Farris went with my dad and mom and sisters up north to cut Christmas trees.  It was pretty cold so all the kids stayed behind with Tasha and me.  Chada and Tarilynn's family went to Twin Falls to see friends from before they moved to Nephi.  We are still selfishly glad they moved closer to us.  Anyway, back to the picture above, we came home on Sunday and put the tree up on Monday, and decorated it for FHE.  The kids love diving through the boxes to find ornaments.  This year I only brought up some of the ornaments and kept the even somewhat breakable ones packed up out of sight.  One year olds and four year olds will do that to you.  Someday I'll have beautiful artistic trees...but now we just have a ball with the fun ones they get every year that have memories attached to them.  Which I really do love, too.

 



Abigail's first Tree Decorating Experience.  I have to say, she's much better at the UnDecorating.  By Christmas Day, all but a few ornaments were as high up as we could squeeze them in, and there was a constant pile that we were finding all over the house.  She loved every second.

 



Calebs favorite ornament:  signed by Cosmo the Cougar himself.  All the boys have one now, they love them.

 



My mom has given us several pairs of theose glasses that change every light you see through them into tiny snowflakes, stars, or santas.  Once the lights are on the trees it's fun to see it.  I keep forgetting, but they would be awesome to have at the Festival of Lights.

 



Abby with one of my favorite ornaments.  We got it on the Rez, a navajo lady was selling these tiny navajo ladys in traditional costumes made from yarn at a gas station.  I've wished many times that we had bought more than just one.

 



All done!  Except for the re-decorating we had to do every day after Whirlwind Abby went by the tree.



Felicity is busy!

As I was looking through pictures so I could figure out what I needed to catch up on, I found lots of pictures of Felicity!  Busy girl, she's been taking piano lessons, school choir, an after school 4-H theater class, plus Activity Day for church.  Basically, she has something every day before or after school, plus lots of homework. I don't remember this when I was in fifth grade!  But she does like to be going and doing and learning.  So the end of November/beginning of December she had some fun things.

 The fifth grade at our school does a DARE program that's pretty extensive.  They have activities with the DARE officer, learn all kinds of things, write papers, and eventually have a graduation.  

 

 Felicity was excited about choir and sang, sang, sang for the weeks before her concert.Her teacher from last year is the director for the choir this year and she's done a great job with the kids. 

 

Before the concert.  She really was very excited.

 Felicity was very excited when her 4-H class chose to do Tangled.  And when she got the part of Maximus she could hardly contain herself.  As she said, "I don't have any lines to memorize!" She did a great job and had lots of fun.  She's even signed up for the theater class this semester--they're doing Sleeping Beauty, she's hoping for a part as a fairy.

Maximus with a her friend, the Thug. 

Over all she had a blast in her busy few weeks.  She's started up again, and now she's singing songs for her upcoming America concert and getting ready to practice for the next play.  She's our busy girl and I have a feeling it's just beginning. Oh, high school, what are we going to do!

Family Pictues, 2012

We are blessed with an amazing neighbor who is the owner extraordinaire of CheapShots! Photography.  And she helps us by taking wonderful pictures.  Family pictures to a mama's heart are priceless and I love, love, love them.  I've posted some of the fav's already on here, but these are some of my favorite outtakes, extras, and ones that I don't have space on here to display all the time.  They make me smile!

 Abigail was not pleased with the idea of this picture and has a stinky face in all of them.

 I love my boys!

Favorite picture of the boys EVER.

 Beautiful girls!  Abby's scrunchy nose makes me laugh.

 Oh, these kids personalities!

 

 Does he look like an angel, or what!

 



 Joseph's cheeser grin.

 



My sweet Lis!

Caleb was so silly the whole shoot, but his grin is wonderful.

 Too many cute pictures of Abigail to choose from, we might have to print up all of them!

Abby was not happy at this point, that's when we knew we better start handing out the

secret weapon---fruit snacks.

Look at those faces!

My girls!

 I love this picture.  12 years, people!

 



This is the dramatic walking away from the camera picture with only the baby looking back...

And this is when Joseph gets too curious and has to look back, too!

Felicity was excited about all of us girls painting our toenails blue to match our color scheme and then getting pictures of all our matchy toes.  I think it turned out pretty cute, too.  Those cute little baby toes!

 

It's always a little crazy trying to get everything ready for pictures, I tend to stress out for awhile about the color scheme ( I know, I know it's not that important to have it all planned out perfect.  But I do it anyway) and getting cute outfits for everyone (especially since we shop mostly at yard sales and the DI!) And then getting everyone with a clean face and hair fixed.  Whew.  But it's all worth it in the end!  Thank you so much Christy!  You're amazing!



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.