Ethan's birthday.... a couple of months later....

So I'm the best mom in the world and realized that I forgot to blog about this amazing boy's birthday!! Ethan turned 11 (!!!) at the end of March and had a fun day. I can't believe next year he'll be turning 12.... maybe a law will be passed before then that says parents can boycott birthdays to keep their kids from growing up. :) Lol

Birthday morning!

Ethan had to go on a treasure hunt and found all these presents.....

....that all added up to the Lego Harry Potter Hogwarts castle set!! Which he promptly put together in about three days time.... and didn't play with again. Haha :) 

Izzy...isms

A conversation with Izzy today whilst folding laundry:


Izzy: "School is not the most important thing, you know."
Me: "Oh really? What is?"
Izzy: "Jesus. And family. But not the Grinch. Cuz he's a brat and he steals stuff."


Very true. Don't be a Grinch.


Later on she saw that I was feeling a little blue so she said she would do a dance for me that was half Chinese, half Handy-Manny. How can you not be happy after that? And really, nothing blends better than a Chinese handiman with a Spanish accent. Really. 


:) 

Happy happy birthday!

The girls celebrated their birthdays back in January. Abby turned 13.... 13!!! And Livi turned 9. I can't believe they're so old!! They woke up on their birthday mornings covered in balloons and then we celebrated with family later that week. The kids all helped decorate the house for the party and we had a blast!

December part 2 :)

December fun!! One of our favorite new traditions is to make and decorate gingerbread houses and trains. I love seeing how creative everyone can be! Word of advice, though. Don't eat the frosting. Bleh bleh bleh.

Apparently our frosting was not up to building standards... an hour later they looked like they'd been through an earthquake. Haha :)

This is what the kids left out for Santa and his reindeer. Popcorn, carrots, goldfish, pistachios, a snickerdoodle cookie, a mug of milk, and a cup of apple juice. Surrounding the plate of goodies were notes from the kids explaining the snacks and asking Santa questions about how reindeer fly, what he does during the summer, and how old he is. :)

Christmas Day. All dressed in their finery for church :) and then back in jammies after church to open presents.

The three older kids got Kindles from my parents. As you can tell, this was a MAJOR excitement factor. Haha!

A few days after Christmas we went down to see the lights at Temple Square. They were absolutely amazing!! My favorite were the blue ones. They made everything pop!!

We hope your Christmas was just as fun! Here's to 2012!!

December craziness part 1. Probably to be continued :)

The craziness of December - in parts. And probably to be continued. :)

Isabelle turned six at the beginning of December. Wow that went by fast!! She got some crazy leggings, a Belle wig, and a Tangled barbie that sings just enough of the song from the movie to get it stuck in your head for the rest of the day. :D

This gorgeous girl got her Christmas, birthday and graduation presents for the next several years all wrapped into the gift that will just keep giving - braces!! Yay!! She only had four put on top and four on the bottom - the ortho said he wants some teeth to move around first to give a little more room. She looks so grown up and teenagerish with them!!

Wade was part of the "Pay-it-Forward" committee this year at work. It has another, more professional title, but I can't remember it for the life of me. He and some co-workers each took separate groups to help out at Christmas time, and Autoliv gave them the money to help. Like one lady took a battered woman's shelter in Kaysville, one guy helped out with Christmas box house, places like that. Wade had two groups - one group that takes non-perishable food items into people that need food, and the other group is the Frodsham family in Farmington that have been helping homeless people at Christmas time for over 20 years. They set up their backyard with campfires, trees decorated with hats, gloves, socks, and scarves. Last year there was over 700 homeless people that they helped. They feed them soup, give them a coat, let them pick stuff off the trees, and give them a gift. And all of it is donated. It was amazing. The two pictures at the top were 40 pairs of sweats, wrapping paper, boxes, and toys that we donated. The pic on the left bottom is the food, and the pic on the right is their warehouse full of donated items. Toys, clothing, blankets, hats, scarves, etc. I wish we could have been there to hand out items, but we had other engagements. We decided next year we want to spend the year making blankets to hand out, and raise even more money to help out somehow. It was awesome!

These are my new three dancing queens. :) They had their first dance recital and did awesome!!! I was so super proud of them and my new calling in life is that of "crazy dance mom". My new goal in life is to get them into Miss Dede's advanced dance class when they're in highschool. They were so good!!

To be continued I'm sure!!!

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween this year! The kids carved pumpkins for the first time EVER and had a blast. Wade took them to Black Island Farms on Halloween Day because I had school that day. Then lots of fun trick-or-treating! Hope yours was just as fun!

Stop the day, I wanna get off!

Oh my lands. It started out with me getting sassed at by the 12 year old daughter, then the 8 year old decided she was still sick from the day before and wasn't going to school. I have literally- LITERALLY, FOLKS- been on the computer ALL DAY LONG doing homework for my EMT class, therefore sadly ignoring the Quote, Unquote sick child, who has been complaining that it's too boring to stay home and be sick cuz there's nothing to do. What, did you think we were going to the movies?

I pick up the other two elementary children at the end of the day only to find out that the 10 year old was apparently stung by a bee, and that the 5 year old, brand new kindergartener has not eaten anything since breakfast because her teacher couldn't find her lunch box, thus forcing her to attend school lunch where all she ate was a piece of cheese because she is so damn picky.

The afternoon ends with a resounding fight again with the 12 year old because I have the audacity to inform her nicely and with much tact that it's probably not best to wear a blue bra and patterened underwear to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. I don't know.... call it personal experience.

Not my personal experience, of course. ;)