This week

M2 reading Percy Jackson

This has been a fun and busy week. Three of the boys have had swimming lessons. They are in Hurst, which is a bit of a drive, so we've tried to run other errands, play at the playground, etc to make our time worth it. All of them are really enjoying the time in the pool. The classes are small, which I love. K and P are in classes of four students each, an M2's class has six, but there are two teachers. K has been working on diving. 

The little ones attended a swimming birthday party for their friend Daniella, and we had a swimming play date with some new friends in our stake that I met at cub camp. Lots of wet towels and suits this week! 

D and I have tried to spend lots of time in the garden, too. We decided to take out the narrow triangular shaped bed to make the whole thing more manageable. Yay. Less to try to maintain. I was thrilled to see this water lily yesterday! 

I'm trying the blogger app on my phone, to see if maybe it will make it easier to blog more often. Or maybe what I really mean is motivate me to blog more often. 😉

Peter turns 8!

Peter's birthday was Sunday. The day before had been warm and breezy, but they were predicting colder temps on Sunday and we weren't sure what to expect. It turned out even colder than we thought it would be! While we were at church we got some freezing rain/sleet! We joked with him that it was his "coolest" birthday ever! He opened presents before church and afterwards we worked on dinner and cake. He is such a sweetie and told us how excited he was to have his birthday on a Sunday because he loves going to church. 

Opening presents: 

Crazy weather! 

Trying out the Rainbow Loom: 

Helping with his cake: 

Chocolate Peanut Butter perfection! Our family's favorite birthday cake! 

 

As we ate cake and ice cream (rocky road!) we all went around the table and told our favorite things about Peter. He is such a fun part of our goofy family and we love him so much!

He wanted so badly to have a little party for his birthday. I'm pretty low-key about birthday parties, but I called and invited a few of his friends and he made up his own games and also prepared cute little notes and gifts in little treat bags. They came over yesterday after school and  played outside a lot and we ate cupcakes. At the end they were being quite rowdy so I had them come inside and watch a video. 

Happy Birthday, Peter! Love you! 

Our January, in a nutshell...

David finally got some handhelds for the climbing wall!

Instead of toys, we bought the boys gift cards to Main Event. We all had fun bowling and playing laser tag.

We were so sad to see our Christmas break come to an end. It was one of the best we've had. D was home the whole two weeks, and we had so much fun down-time. This was Sunday night we took the tree down, before we started school again and D left out of town the next day. Reality.

 

We enjoyed our fireplace more in the last month than we have in the last ten years!

We bought (at the Goodwill) and put together another set of bunkbeds, and so we donated the blue car bed to the Boy Scout yardsale. They were a little sad to see it go...

Spelling long, long words with Bananagram tiles at Cub Scouts.

Schoolwork

Mason at deacon's basketball. His team won the tournament! Not bad for a boy who had never played a game in his life.

 

Trying to get back into running:

Schoolwork at TAFA

Kyle and his best friend, E and their lego creation one afternoon

Peter made a shelter at a playground

Early morning date to the temple with my sweetie

Spending birthday money on pokemon cards

D got the old junky mower running again!

I cranked out a baby quilt for a dear friend. And I mean crank. Did the entire thing from idea to hand sewn binding in less than a week. I love how it turned out.

Caleb turned 4

This month, our littlest man turned four years old. It's hard to believe that he is so big already. The cliche is true. Time flies.

He wanted: donuts for breakfast, pizza for dinner, an R2D2 cake, and a Lego firetruck for a present. ♥

These are while we were opening presents. He wanted to do it in the morning, before church since it was a Sunday:

Christmas!

Waiting in the hallway!

Scooters and skateboards!

Peter made little clay creations for all his brothers. It was so sweet!

Mason bought this plasma ball for Kyle with his own money.

Homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast! Although it was lunchtime before they were done!

Christmas jammies!