Christmas Downers and Procrastinated Work

I hope everyone enjoyed the Christmas time! My family certainly did! We started out the week by waiting for Clint to get home. He worked an overtime shift on Monday before he started his week off. Because of the way his company schedules things, everyone gets a week off every three weeks. Of course it rotates between groups. So he was one of the lucky one that were able to take the entire Christmas week off! It was fun! On Tuesday we went to his parents' house to do pre-Christmas celebrating. We really just opened some presents and ended up watching movies. Although Haden did have a lot of fun playing in the snow with his cousin, Jess. We got home late that night and started to clean the house for Christmas Eve.

On Wednesday we went to my parents' house for constant fun! We started out by making a gingerbread house and a train. Now don't go thinking we were that creative! Mom is really good at finding kits for these kind of things. The kits this year even had a little tray for the walls to stand up in. No falling walls at our house! Afterward, Mom had a great book called "Snowmen at Night". She got white hats and gloves for the kids and Clint to wear and to pretend to be snowmen. They then acted out the book while Mom read to all of us. The best part was definitely the snowball fight! We had socks that were balled up and we all threw them at each other. Haden is really good at dying when he gets hit! Of course we had to do the nativity. Where I was the only one able to come (Kim is on her mission in Ohio and Phil and his family opted to make this their first Christmas at home in Boston), my kids got the role of Mary and Joseph. I tell you, Shay loved holding the little doll we had for Baby Jesus! Enough so that she would leave that night without it!

We had a great dinner and a fun treasure hunt to find the stockings and wound down for the night. After leaving the Santa key on the door (we don't have a chimney, so we have a magic key that only works for Santa), the kids were finally willing to go to bed. It really didn't take them long to fall asleep, making it better for "Santa" to get the presents out and get to bed early. The kids woke up at about seven and immediately woke us up. It was so much fun to watch them open up their presents and see how excited they were for everything! I later make my first turkey and Christmas dinner for my parents, Clint's parents, and my little family.

Friday got to be the "put all the toys together at Nana's house" day. Clint and I spend the day putting together a Bowflex for my dad, a doll house for my mom, and cleaning out one of the bedrooms to make it an exercise room. So again, nothing was done at my house. Today is our sixth anniversary, and Clint had a typical high school marathon date planned. Thank you, Clint! Now everything is over, and that kind of makes me sad! I guess all of the 'go go go' can make me crash when it is all done.

It was a lot of fun, but no laundry got done. So that is what I am doing today: 15 loads of laundry! I hope everyone else's' weeks have been great and fun, and thank you for listening to me ramble about my week. Love to all!

This is really great!

My brother found this for all of your listening pleasures. You will love it!Be sure to pause the playlist first. It is awesome!

Little Pleasures

I'm not sure why, but I have really enjoyed looking at the little pleasures in life today. We are having quite the snow downfall today (it has been snowing for about five hours and 'doesn't show signs of stopping')! After I shoveled out the first foot of snow, I got the kids ready to play outside. They had a lot of fun with the neighbor kids throwing snow (the snow is too dry for snowballs) and making snow angels. Of course Shay wanted to come in quite a bit sooner than Haden, and I put her in the bath to warm her up. She was so cold! Haden came in about ten minutes later and was just as cold, so I got him into a bath. As soon as he got out of the bath he said he needed a cup of hot chocolate to warm up his hair. What that has to do with his hair, I don't know, but I was quick to oblige his need for a warm treat! I then started to take out the garbage. It seems that the garbage gets full so fast that we wait until we can't stuff anything else into it before we take it out. I just now realized how much I love an empty garbage can! I know! What is really going through my mind right now? What really happened to make me look at the trash in such a way? I'm not sure, but I am glad that I have an empty garbage can right now. So here is to the little things in life that make it worth living: to hot chocolate and warm baths when we are cold, to empty garbage cans, to a loving family, shelter from the elements, a call or e-mail from a friend we haven't seen in a while, and anything else anyone can think of. Love it all!

Did someone ask for a dull week?

This week has been quite uneventful. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not. On one hand it means that nothing bad happened, and on the other it says that nothing exciting happened. I guess you can decide for yourself. Anyway, finals are over for the semester! I actually got done on Monday only because I took one final early, one was a take home final, and the third was held on Monday. It makes it really nice when you get done about a week before everyone else. I highly suggest it to anyone considering taking finals! This now means that I have one semester left in my school going career. I guess I can handle having a final on Friday for my last semester. I just have a feeling that things are really going to drag because I am so excited.

Clint came home from drill this last weekend and informed me that he has gotten all of the needed paperwork to volunteer to go overseas. All he needs now is the right signatures and he is golden. He claims that if he can't find a teaching job this next school year, then he will be leaving for a year to serve. We will have to hold our breath and see what happens. I have a feeling he will be going no matter what. He stated that he would like to volunteer as much as possible in addition to his required deployment. I think his cousin Mark (who is in the Marines) has some sort of influence on his decision.

Anyway, the kids are great and I am adjusting to being a stay-at-home mom for the next few weeks. I forget, what do you do with kids all day? Mine are old enough that they play fairly well together. I guess we will see how it goes, and I will try to keep everyone updated! Until next time.

Picture a Christmas

Every year my mom does the twelve days of Christmas to a Christmas song. This year the song is from the primary book. It is called "Picture a Christmas". She links her gifts to the phrases of this song. Needless to say, one of the first gifts my children received was kid cameras. So here I am showing you the pictures my kids have taken. Haden has a lot of fun with it, but knows how to delete the pictures. So most of his pictures are deemed "bad" and, unfortunately, deleted. He had a lot of good pictures from the park that he got rid of. The ones closer to the end were pictures he took from the car of the Christmas lights outside. Shay isn't real sure about the whole thing, and took a lot of pictures of her eye (holding the camera backwards). So a lot of her pictures we helped her with and took ourselves.

These are not the greatest quality cameras, but it is really fun to see what the kids see. I hope you enjoy them as much as we have!

Haden's slideshow

Shay's slideshow

Oh, Christmas Tree!

Okay, so I was quite anxious to get the tree and decorations up this year. Everything was up the Saturday after Thanksgiving. That is actually still November! But now I am done and the rest of you aren't! Hahahaha! It also gives me more time to enjoy the season without worrying too much about my home. My mom made a comment I have to say is very true: In order to get the decorations up, you have to make a bigger mess! Of course then it gets cleaned up, but Clint and I brought up enough decoration boxes from the basement to fill up Mom's entire front room! I don't know how she was able to get through. The kids had a blast decorating the tree. I would give them ornaments and they would put them on the tree. The only issue is that they insisted on putting most of the ornaments on the same branch. So Shay would put five on one branch, and Haden put five on another branch, and so on. Needless to say, they kept falling off! Seeing as some of them could have broken, as the kids put the ornaments on, Clint moved the ones that doubled up. I don't think they really noticed, but we did keep mentioning to them to spread it out. It is an old proverb (or another Mother comment) that the kids grow by where they put the ornaments on the tree. When they are little, all of the decorations are near the bottom. As they get bigger, the bottom gets ignored. Thanks, Mom, for all of your wisdom. We did have an issue with the lights for the tree. We only had blue lights leftover from outside, and we didn't really want blue on the tree. So Clint went to reliable Wal-Mart and got some red and green strands. He came home and realized that although the box said there were 300 lights in each box, they were the garland style and didn't even make it all the way around the tree! So he continued back to Wal-Mart and exchanged them for more boxes of fewer lights. We now have six strands of lights on our tree and it looks great! Thank you Clint for your efforts! The kids were able to get new Chirstmas clothes for church and they looked great! I just hope they always want to look that good. Of course, I don't look near that good all of the time, so why should I expect them to? Have a wonderful holiday season and a great New Year!

Happy Birthday, Haden!

We had a lot of fun celebrating Haden's birthday this week. He loved all of the toys he got and even quite enjoyed the cake! He asked for a bug cake this year and Nana came through! It was a great cake with ants crawling over hills and bridges. When Phillip (my brother) and Marede (Clint's sister) called, Haden was very nice and asked them to come over for cake and presents. Unfortunatly, they were both unable to jump on a plane or the freeway to make it here. Haden was kind of sad, but not for long! He loved all of the attention and gifts so thank you everyone for your thoughfulness and the love you have shown us!

Disney on Ice

We took the kids to Disney on Ice this week and they were in awe! It was great to look at their faces when it started. You would think it was the coolest thing in the world! Shay really enjoyed the princesses (of course) and named everyone when they came out. Well, except Pocahontas, but let's face it, I don't think she really counts. Some could argue that point with me, but that is where I stand. Haden love all of it really, but if I had to pick one, I would say it is a toss up between Incredibles or Finding Nemo. This is Haden showing off his souvenir cup that came with a snow cone inside. Unfortunately, Shays ended up on the floor more than in her mouth. Clint was the only one that was not able to come. He had to work. We told him he really missed out on that. It was worth it to go just to watch the kids in the audience. I recommend it to everyone!

To Phillip and Tiffany

A special prayer for my brother and his family in this time of need. We all love you and wish you well!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I must say I think my family is guilty of skipping Thanksgiving. Haden, Shay, and I went shopping yesterday for their Christmas church clothes. I must say, Shay is a fun little shopper, and Haden is already a man! The whole time Haden was asking if it was time to go, yet, and Shay kept wanting more and more. It was really fun! We have also been listening to Christmas music for about six weeks now, and I have been dieing to get the decorations up! I just have to be patient for another two weeks and I have license to commence the Christmas project!

Don't get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving! I love being with family and friends and eating to my heart's desire. I love the treats, the noise, and the mess. I just love Christmas more, and I am very excited to get the holidays started!

Good luck to all of you!

Happy Halloween!!!!

We had quite the fun time on Halloween. We first started the week with a carnival at the kids' daycare. They had fun, but Shay was quite hesitant about all of her teachers looking like witches and such. I do have to say, the best costume was Shay's teacher who took I Dream of Jeanie and turned her into a diaper genie! It was great. She had an empty diaper genie container on her head with her hair through it and diapers taped around her waist. I will always remember that one! I guess you really have to be a parent to understand the true value of that. Haden loved seeing all of the different costumes that his friends came up with. He was also very quick to point out all of the Spiderman costumes as that is what he was last year.

On Halloween day we got out of school early (okay, we do every Friday. My classes don't go as long), and Clint took them to lunch while I went to a post-op appointment. When we got home, we all got ready for dinner with Grandma, Grandpa, Nana, and Papa. Okay, really I got things ready while the kids got really excited to trick-or-treating. After we all ate dinner Clint and his mom took the kids around to get candy. I also discovered no one really wants to come to our house. Last year we went to my parents' neighborhood so we didn't buy any candy. This year I got two bags of candy and about ten people at my door. We had a couple of teenagers come by and I gave them a couple of handfulls a piece, then encouraged them to come back for the rest of the bucket. I guess I won't be doing that again next year!

All in all, everyone enjoyed themselves and had a good time relaxing. I hope everyone else had a good and safe time! Now we get to look forward to Thanksgiving!

Pumpkins Pumpkins everywhere!

So we went to a pumpkin walk that was being held in North Logan and the kids really loved it. I was amazed at the kind of scenes people came up with! The theme was 'Greatest American Hero' and the diversity was great. Of course there was the typical sports and TV heroes, but there was also science, math, history, local, and military. It was great! There were all sorts of different gourds in each of the scenes. They ranged from pumpkins of all sizes, all varieties of squash, and as many additions as was possible to come up with. This picture is the kids with the classic Nightmare Before Christmas which my kids have seen and really enjoy!

After we did the whole Pumpkin Walk, we went to First Dam up the canyon and fed the ducks. It was very obvious what fowl was the most comfortable around humans. They were the biggest! And I tell you, they were huge! The others that were not too friendly stayed in the back. I also noticed most of those were the females. There were only a few that ventured onto the shoreline. The sun was setting and we were having a hard time of getting angles of pictures with the kids, so Mom took advantage of the sun and became very artistic. Of course she always has been.

Clint didn't get home from work until about eight, so I kept the kids up so we could carve pumpkins. A perfect time to do that after all of the great pumpkins we saw earlier that day! The kids would not touch the inside of the pumpkin! They wouldn't even put their hands in it without a spoon! Then again, I wouldn't either. I think last night was the first night I cleaned out a pumpkin. And I got to do two! Lucky me. The kids knew just what they wanted, so we drew on the pumpkins with marker, and they got what they asked for. It was a lot of fun and when Haden got pumpkin guts on his hand, Shay was laughing hysterically at him trying to get it off! They were cute! That is the events for our weekend. I hope everyone has a safe and happy Halloween!

OUCH!!!

When I got to the daycare to pick up the kids, Shay was sitting on a table holding a piece of paper to her head. I laughed and asked her what she was doing. When I got closer I realized it was not a piece of paper, it was an ice pack (in the shape of a yellow duck). Her teacher felt so bad! Shay was playing on the edge of the play area and fell hard! She took off the ice pack for me to look at her head and revealed a goose egg about 1/8th of an inch tall! I couldn't believe it. So here is a picture for you all to feel bad for her. This was taken after her nap, so the goose egg has gone down quite a bit.

Picking Pumpkins

The kids had fun picking out their Halloween pumpkins inGrandma and Grandpa's garden in American Fork.

Mid-terms

So mid-terms are over, and I know that everyone in the family is very happy about it! Not only are the tests over, but I have successfully finished two classes. Of course it really is hard to study and identify flowers when there has already been a frost! Therefore, my Annuals and Perenials class is over as well as my last Landscape Architecture class. I am incredibly relieved! Before the semester started I said that if I could make it through this semester, I would be just fine. Well, the worst is over! The only problem is that I kind of crash when I hit mid-semester. I get all pumped up for the first of the semester, and then kind of give up. But I am almost done! I just hope it goes by quickly!