It's Here!

My Birthday, Christmas, Anniversary, Mother's Day for the next few years present finally arrived a few days ago! And I LOVE IT!!!!

Chuck and I are savers - we're frugal - okay most of the time we're just pretty darn cheap so this purchase was hard for me to swallow. I have a hard time spending money on myself. Photography is just a hobby for me, I love to photograph my kids, it's something I love to do for myself, but I had technically outgrown my camera quite awhile ago and decided instead of taking a step up I'd take a jump. This thing is so much bigger than my last camera it's been like going from a Hyundai to a Ferrari in terms of speed, focus, clarity, and digital noise. But a lot of things are different so it's going to take me quite sometime to get comfortable with using this new gadget. Too bad it won't automatically make me a better photographer - that would be sweet!

I have to write down this funny conversation I had with the kids the day I knew my camera was going to be delivered. The kids and I were sitting at the kitchen table and I excitedly told them my present was coming today. Samuel asked what it was and I told them to take a guess.

Bella: "Um, pink pants".

Samuel: "Well, of course it's not that Bella!"

Me: "Why do you say that"

Samuel : "Because you don't even like pink". "It must be love because love is the best present" (Not sure where he heard that line)

Me: "That's right Samuel, but actually this is something I really like to do."

Samuel: "A game, you like to play games with us"

Bella: "Eat, something to eat" (I guess Bella knows I really like to eat!)

Me: "Nope, it's something I can use on you guys"

Samuel: "You love to keep an eye on us. It must be spy gear"

They were just cracking me up with their little conversation. I finally just had to tell them it was a camera. Then they weren't that excited. They were much more excited about me possibly getting spy gear!

Christmas

I just love seeing the magic of Christmas through my kids eyes!

Looking at the beautiful lights on my not so perfectly decorated tree reminds me of how great Christmas is with kids. Chuck and I had plenty of years with a perfectly decorated tree and lots of presents for each other, but those years were not nearly as exciting and fun. How wonderful it is to be a parent!

We had a really wonderful Christmas! It was calm this year. No one fought over toys and there was no crying. We did not go crazy with gifts as we have some years. We've just come to realize that the kids just don't need so much stuff. We have a hard time managing all the toys we currently have and 3/4 of them are locked in the basement closet where we rotate them every so often.

It was just fun and relaxing to watch the kids open their toys and get so excited over everything. We had a yummy turkey dinner and just played the whole day.

This was one of my favorite pictures from the day. It's just so sweet!

Christmas Eve

We had a wonderful day before Christmas. We spent the morning out enjoying the glorious warm sun! Oh how I'd missed the sun during that never ending week of rain and really I don't need a white Christmas I just need the sun!

We went on a family bike ride along the trail in Snow Canyon and it was so much fun. Bella and Samuel have turned into great little bike riders and Isaac and Jenna ride in the trailer. Jenna occasionally gets a little upset with Isaac when he starts to crowd her, but overall they are great riding along behind Chuck. There were lots of dips and the kids had a great time speeding down as fast as they could. The funniest part of the adventure occurred when Samuel, Bella and I were leaving the park to wait for Chuck to come pick us up. Samuel and I had stopped and Bella came full speed ahead and couldn’t stop but ran right into Samuel. She pushed Samuel forward and her bike did a wheel-e up on his bike. Luckily, neither one of them got hurt and I just laughed and laughed at the sight. Bella really is a crazy bike rider - kind of her norm with everything she does!

Other fun memories:
* The kids bought each other presents at the Dollar Store and opened them that afternoon. It was fun to watch them get so excited about wrapping and buying each other gifts.
* Grandma and Grandpa joined us in our festivities.
* We had a yummy dinner and great dessert.
* The kids opened their new game we get them and had fun playing it. It was a Toy Story shooting game so it was an especially big hit with the boys!


The kids opened their pj's.

We had a lively rendition of Jingle Bells and each of the kids sang a solo.

We had our traditional Christmas Eve smore roast. It was lovely weather so the kids didn't even have to get bundled up. Then off to bed the little ones went while we stayed up late wrapping away. Such a fun day!

Service

The kids in their nativity attire on Christmas Eve.

We had such a great experience with our gratitude tree last month that I decided we needed to do something service oriented this month. My original idea was to have the kids tell us each night what service they had done that day and then we would have a wall nativity and add pieces each night. After the first few nights I could see this wasn't going to work very well so I just opted to go with the not so original idea of having the kids add "straw" to the manager each time they did something of service. Chuck and the kids had a great time building this little manager. I kept a spool of yarn in the kitchen and each time the kids did something of service they would come and ask me for a piece of yarn. It really helped us focus more on our Savior and helping others each day. Granted I was cutting a lot of string every day, but it was wonderful to watch them start to notice little things they could do for each other and me without even being asked. This was such a wonderful thing for our family!

Bella is really good about noticing things she can help with. One night she wanted another piece of yarn so I told her to find something she could do to help. The next thing I knew she had dragged the garbage can out of the pantry and over to the table and was cleaning up the corn Isaac had dumped all over the table during dinner.

Yesterday I was scrubbing my bathroom floor and left the mop and water out. I walked into the living room and Bella was scrubbing the floor. I love how she's dressed in one of her costumes just quietly scrubbing away. Again she came up with this on her own.

Samuel loves to help take care of Jenna and Isaac is the first to jump on taking Jenna's diapers out to the garage a lot of the time without me asking. I just feel like this really helped our kids focus on being more kind and helpful to one another. Definitely something we're going to do every year!

When Christmas Pictures Go Awry!

A couple of years ago Trina and I took Christmas pictures of Isaac and Kambree when they were the same age as Jenna and Bronson. We got some really cute ones of the two of them together and so we were really excited to try the same ideas on these babies.

But let's just say that the cute pictures we had concocted in our minds were very different from the reality that occurred! These two weren't very cooperative and we really wanted to take the pictures outside, but it was raining and raining and raining. Trina and I groaned and lamented, but we also laughed plenty at these attempts. In fact I was laughing so hard a few times I was getting blurry pictures - which I hate!

First of all Jenna just refused to wear the cute little pink Santa hat. She was having none of it! Second she kept trying to climb out of the box. Third Jenna really isn't that interested in interacting with Bronson even if they're stuffed in a box together. He's so big he doesn't move much and she's a busy body always on the go so she just ignores his presence most of the time. At least Bronson thought she was funny in this picture.

I decided to do away with the hat and use this giant Christmas bow instead. She's a little better at keeping bows on. We then decided they needed a little bribery. Yes, we gave the babies little bits of chocolate from the candy we made the night before. Only problem, they looked like this! Tongues sticking out wanting more. But at least Jenna wasn't trying to escape.

Then Bronson had enough and looked like he was going to explode. Just look at Jenna it's as if she's thinking, "Dude, what's wrong with you!"

And this is the best we could get after all our hard work!

I'm really amazed I got this picture of Bronson laughing. It's next to impossible to get any sort of reaction out of this guy. I'm not kidding - he's a tough one! He just gives you the same blank stare no matter how hard you're working to get a smile out of him. Trina was banging things, shaking toys, jumping up and down, the other kids were dancing around - nothing just the same blank stare. But at least he didn't move.

Again the hat was a no go. As fast as Trina would put it on Jenna would rip it right back off.

We just kept trying.

Finally changed to the flower and then she was trying to climb out.

Then Trina wanted to get the kids sitting together eating candy sticks. Again cute pictures in our minds did not match the reality. Trina said Jenna was like a wild cat trying to scratch her way out of her clothes. She was trying to rip the leggings and the hat off. She was just onery! But we figured if we could quickly get her the candy stick she would be alright.

Wrong! She hated the taste of the candy.

We switched to the headband and thought maybe she would try the candy stick again if the hat wasn't bugging her. She tried it again, but got mad and hit it on the concrete floor causing it to break in tons of little pieces. So much for trying to get a shot with the two of them together!

Pure disgust! That's all she was giving us!

Now Bronson on the other hand LOVED his candy stick. In fact he loved it so much I didn't even have time to get a picture before the whole scene turned really disgusting. I was laughing so hard I couldn't even take pictures. Trina was just watching lamenting on how gross he looked. And really doesn't he look like a wild animal that has just devoured something. Chuck took one look at this picture and laughing said, "It looks like Bronson bit a squirrels head off." Yeah, that about sums up the look we weren't going for!

I'll end this fiasco with a cute one of little Jenna!

Rain Rain Go Away!

It has been raining for the past 4 days! I need the sun, it's why I live here. A little rain is okay every so often, but not for days at a time. We had a few crazy things happen this week and I'm blaming it on the rain.


Our ward had the opportunity to be the cast for the Tuacahn live nativity one evening this week. The kids and I were so excited. It had been sunny and nice for weeks, but that day the rain started and it drizzled and drizzled all day. We got bundled up in what warm clothes we happen to own because they said the show was still on. Everyone was dressed in their nativity attire and as we headed out on stage for the dress rehearsal they told us they were canceling for the evening! We were all so disappointed! Samuel was really upset and lamented that he really wanted to perform for all of the people. At least they let us line up on stage and get a few pictures. I decided I would have been really homely looking if I would have lived during this time. But my mom bought a few cute nativity outfits and my friend Kristen helped me sew outfits for the girls so we will just have our own little nativity on Christmas Eve.

It was also my birthday this week. I'm officially "one year older and wiser too". While I'm at it, I'll blame this on the rain too - up until a few weeks ago I was mistaken on how old I was going to be this year. Yep, I officially forgot a whole year of my life and boy was I bummed out when I realized how old I was really going to be!

But I did feel better when the waitress at the restaurant Chuck took me to for dinner took our credit card, saw the picture of our 4 kids on the front and exclaimed, "You have 4 kids? You don't look like you have 4 kids. You look great!" Well, thanks for making my evening! Then I went into the office at Samuel's school and one of the ladies there said, "Oh, you just looked like one of the students." (Note: they do have jr. high age kids there). Thanks again for making my day all you sweet people!

And thanks to Chuck who after choking a few times let me get a really super great birthday, Christmas, Mother's Day, Anniversary what ever other holiday I need to count present. It probably won't get here until after Christmas, but I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. I had a hard time falling asleep the night we ordered it. It's that good!

Trina and I really wanted to take the babies to get their picture taken with the Santa at the Dickens Festival because he is really the best Santa I've ever seen, but since they were both covered with a horrible rash that didn't happen. So we had to settle for the mall version. Maybe something good I can blame on the rain - Bella and Isaac actually sat on Santa's lap! Bella and Isaac have both refused this yearly escaped for the past few years. But for some reason they both climbed right on up. Granted they do look a little unsure, but I'll take what I can get.

Before we left the house I was telling Bella that she needed to sit on Santa's lap and tell him what she wanted for Christmas or she might not get what she wanted. Now in our home Samuel is our deep thinker, but Bella really surprised me when she said something to the effect of why did she need to tell Santa what she wanted when he was watching them all the time to see if they are being good. If he knows what they're doing shouldn't he know what she wants. I wish I could remember her exact words because it was really cute, but it caught me too off guard.

And poor baby Jenna had to get her picture alone with Santa. All the kids have to have a picture with Santa for their first Christmas. I've got to give credit to that mall photographer because somehow she managed to catch this shot. You would never know that a minute prior Jenna had been screaming and frantically clinging to me. I finally pried her loose from me and turned her over to big scary Santa where she continued twisting, screaming and trying to get away. We were all hollering at her and amazingly enough she quite screaming for one second and the photographer caught it.

Trina and I made our traditional Christmas candy this weekend. Now I'd like to blame what happened on the yucky rain, but really we're just not great cooks! Hate to say it, but about the only person I know that messes up cooking more than I do is my sister.

Problem number 1: I was using great new pans my mother-in-law got us for Christmas. This pan is deeper than the pan I usually use and I could not get the candy thermometer to stay in place. I pulled it out of the boiling mixture to try and fix it and for some crazy reason that's too hard to explain I managed to burn myself on the belly. Then I had to try and hold it in place because candy making is a very precise art and it was so hot I was dying!

Last year we made this same mistake of trying to make the chocolate turtles on wax paper so we didn't have as big of mess to clean up afterwards, but I thought the problem was Trina hadn't gotten enough butter on the paper to make the carmel not stick. Well that was not the problem because we had plenty of butter this year and we still had a disaster on our hands. We ended up with a giant mess, even worse than last year and ended up eating a lot of carmel ourselves and throwing a lot away. Trina insisted I make another note in the cook book (I'm always making notes to myself about what didn't work) so hopefully we don't make this mistake yet again. Not counting on it though! One thing about it, cooking with us is never boring!

We had Chuck's work party this weekend and he received a nice clock for 5 years of service. I really can't believe we've been here 5 years. It's longer than we've lived anywhere.

And since we just have rain and not snow (thank goodness for that) the kids made their own mess that looked like snow in Bella's room. We got a little toddler bed to put underneath Bella's bed so Isaac could start sleeping there by himself since the other two are in Samuel's room. Then maybe Jenna will finally get to sleep in the crib! The kids "helped" Chuck put the bed together and had a great time crushing up all styrofoam in the package.

The Joys of December

I LOVE December weather when it's gorgeous like this! How lucky am I to be living in such a beautiful place! What's better than being surrounded by natural beauty and watching your kids run and play. When we built our home I wondered if I would ever look out my window and take for granted the stunning vista that is mine to behold each day. I can honestly say that each morning as I pull up the blinds I'm still amazed at what I see. (I'm dreading the day when we actually have someone build next to us).

Other Things I Love about December:

The Christmas tree again is fun entertainment for the kids. Isaac especially is finding great joy in disassembling the tree on a daily basis. Just look at this cow perched in the tree. How crazy that it would land on this decoration and stay there. The other day he was whacking decorations off with the swimming noodle we fashioned into a light saber.



Instead of the traditional gingerbread house we did a gingerbread choo choo train. Isaac was especially thrilled. It was pretty sorry looking even though Chuck the master builder put it together. The kids were extra excited about dad decorating their hands with frosting and treats.

And we had to make our yearly Christmas stockings. Aren't they adorable. Samuel took the building of his snowman very seriously this year. He wanted to make sure everything looked exactly right. Bella's had to have plenty of bows and purple eyebrows. And Isaac, the kids were just laughing that the eyes didn't make it on the face. He was having such a great time just adding pieces here and there. Then he realized his didn't look like a snowman like the other kids and got pretty upset. He actually ripped off the hat and was trying to tear off other parts as well.

We still have a few other fun activities planned before Christmas. And I can't wait for Samuel to be out of school for a couple of weeks!

Kids

Jenna is 10 months - and getting so big (well, as big as can be expected for one of my kids)!

* She can stand by herself

* She crawls up and down the stairs like a pro. She used to crawl up the stairs and then sit at the edge and squawk until someone came and helped her down, but now she goes up and down with ease.

* She is like her sister - very independent. She wonders the house in search of entertainment or scraps of food.

* She loves attention. She will do something over and over just to hear us cheer for her.

* She is a wiggly worm constantly wanting to be on the go.

* We all love to hear her laugh.

* She's getting close to sleeping through the night. Maybe one of these days she'll quit waking up at 5 a.m.

* I feel blessed every day to have this little one in our home. I'm not sure where the past 10 months have gone! I've said this before, but I can't believe we debated and thought so hard about having another baby - oh the joys we would have missed without this little girl!

This is my sad picture. Poor little thing had a reaction to the medicine she was taking and broke out in this horrible rash. It's crazy, but the same thing happened to Trina's baby. I'm telling you the bug we got during Thanksgiving was not fun!

Samuel had another Karate promotion. He is now a white belt with an orange stripe. Karate has been such a good thing for him.

Chuck, Samuel and some random girl that looks like she's part of the picture. Samuel has been wanting to run a race with Chuck for a long time so they ran the 1 mile run run reindeer race together. At one point Samuel saw some other kids walking and told Chuck that looked like a good idea. Chuck told Samuel there was no walking, but they could slow down their pace. Samuel was a trooper and ran the whole way.

Today was our Primary program and I must say Samuel did an amazing job! He had a cute little speaking part and he sang a solo verse about Samuel the Prophet in the primary song Follow the Prophet. I was super proud of him because until he started kindergarten we were hard pressed to get him to sing. Now he enjoys singing and the kid has no qualms about performing or talking to any size audience.

Bella and I had a fun date night this weekend. I needed to get some 4 year pictures of her so since the weather was so beautiful we went and took pictures. I got some cute ones, but more importantly I got some really great candid shots that capture her crazy personality. We then went grocery shopping and to Marv's for fries and ice cream. I love taking the kids out individually. It's just great to be able to spend a little one on one time.

Every day Bella does something that I just have to shake my head and laugh at. For some reason she has decided that it is great fun to comb her hair with her toothbrush.

When we were riding bikes the other day Bella showed me that she had broken her pedal. I asked her how she did that and she said, "I was going super, super fast!" Doesn't surprise me.

So I'm dreading this new trend I've been seeing. Bella has taken it upon herself to dress or more accurately undress and redress Jenna. This is no easy task since I have trouble dressing Jenna myself since she won't hold still. Bella already goes through numberless outfits a day now it looks like she may be helping Jenna do the same! I love how she had to put a pink shirt and pink pants on Jenna. I'm sure if Jenna had hair she would be helping her style it with a toothbrush!