Got to love this

We went to story time with Santa and Mrs. Claus and McCall wasn't to sure about Mrs. Claus!

Christmas

Well we've been trying to keep busy this holiday season. I've tried to find some fun things for the kids to do. Best of all they have all been free. Earlier this month I helped out with Tanner's class christmas party. It was a Polar Express theme so I made a train to hang on the outside of the classroom. I had a spot for all the kids to color their own picture and I think they really liked it. I let Tanner be in the caboose which he thinks is pretty awesome.

Tanner also had his school Christmas concert that they sang several songs to. Unfortunately my camera didn't get any good pictures. Maybe I'll download a movie of his performance sometime. He did fantastic but told me that no one liked his singing. They only liked the other kids singing. I thought he did awesome considering he won't even sing with the primary kids in our ward on the stand. The Museum here has a free entry to see all of the Gingerbread houses, Santa Clauses and Nativities.

One of the nativities was made out of rocks and this one was made out of gum wrappers and foil.
The kids enjoyed playing in the discovery room there which has a teepee, caves, a log cabin and other fun stuff. I took them back again just to play in this room and they had a blast. They all wanted to ride on this horse named woody.



We also went to see a man's train exhibit. He converted his workshop into a city. It was unreal the detail he had there. Him and a friend have been working on this thing for years and are still not finished. It has a ski hill, with skiers, a working coal mine, an ocean and boat dock, and entire city and they are still adding things to it. (Terry your neighbors trains were pretty impressive but they don't even compare to this thing. It's pretty cool) They ran most of the trains all at once for us! The boys were in heaven. They even had little tiny people swimming in the rivers with little tiny ducks. It was amazing!



And of course we made "GIngerbread Houses". Well we sort of did. We just used things we had at home like graham crackers, pretzels, and cereal. I was quite impressed with mo's work. He had fun building whatever tanner suggested. They even had a 2nd story deck. And then there's McCall. Well she just wanted to eat the frosting!


We had a great Christmas and are enjoying all of the gifts from family. Thank you, we are loving them all. We got a new TV that according to Tanner is "AWESOME BECAUSE IT TAKES UP THE WHOLE SPACE IN THE ENTERTAINMENT CENTER". We also got a ping pong table and let me tell you Mo and I are getting our exercise from chasing the boys balls when they play. I didn't get any pics of the kiddos opening presents only video. But here we are enjoying Christmas breakfast with eggs and Kolaches.
We hope everyone had a great Christmas and has a Happy New Year!

O Christmas Tree O Christmas Tree

So the last couple of years we have gone out to the middle of timbucktoo and we cut down our christmas tree. It's always fun and the kids love it. Well this year when we were packing up to cut our tree down. I saw that Mo had collected everyone's snow pants and the majority of the gloves and hats etc. So I grabbed the remaining gloves and scarfs and we headed out. When we had pulled over and told everyone to start getting their gear on I was surprised when tanner said "I don't have a jacket" which was quickly followed by brayden who didn't have a jacket either. AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! So we improvised and gave Tanner Mo's jacket, brayden wore McCalls jacket and McCall and I stayed in the car since we was feeling a little under the weather anyways. 1 hour later the boys returned triumphant and tired. Mo ended up pulling the boys back on a sled and in the other hand he carried a tree. (He's buff what can I say) So we got a tree... Yeah!!! The kids enjoyed decorating it and enjoyed playing in an oversized stocking! Good Job Mo! (Notice how short the sleeves are on brayden. The bare part of the arms was red and freezing.)



McCall also uses just about anything she can as her purse. She is definitely a girlie girl. Hopefully she will be able to fit in with her cousins alaina and abby!

Candy Calendars

So we have this tradition to make a countdown to Christmas candy calendar every year. As soon as the boys saw my stash of candy I'd purchased they couldn't wait to make them. Unfortunately they don't want to decorate them as much as we did when I was a kid. They just want to candy. Understandable!

So I have helped my mother make jam lots of times growing up but never did I make it on my own just because. Well I had some extra blueberries and so Tanner helped me make some.
I think it turned out ok!
Our school district has this night called Teachers as Parents. Each month they have different activities and a free dinner. This last month we got to play with a bunch of building blocks. The kids had a blast building and knocking things over.

Antibiotics Again.....

Well this little girl is on antibiotics again. I think she has had more antibiotics than brayden has had doctors visits. She's had a cough for a month at least and so the doctors gave her medicine for bronchitis. Thank goodness the cough and snot are going away!Unfortunately our weather is not nice enough to wear swimsuits.

Happy Halloween

Well we had a great halloween with tons of trick or treaters, lots of candy and even puke! Poor little brayden woke up Saturday from his nap and puked twice. He felt and looked better so we decided to take him out for fun and candy. (Unfortunately he stayed home from church today because he was puking again. We have a neighborhood trunk or treat at the park so we decided to participate. I was told to plan for 100 to 150 kids so that's just what I did. We filled 129 candy bags. (all bags donated by my mother in law) and then I had a bunch of individual candies to hand out as well. Well after 7 minutes I was out of bags within the next 5-7 minutes I was totally out of candy and there were still kids coming. Crazy. I could not believe how many kids were there. I know now that 10 pounds of candy to hand out is not enough for this neighborhood. McCall was loving the candy and kept trying to eat it with the wrapper on since we didn't unwrap it for her to eat. Here she is indulging herself and showing off her candy!
We also went to our school carnival for a little while. The class that had the most pretickets sales got to silly string the Principal. The poor guy doesn't even like Halloween but was a good sport about getting attacked.
And here is our lovely carved pumpkin and cute minnie mouse, clifford the big red dog, "Luigi" the clown and some of their friends!!

A little of this and That and a whole lot of pictures

So ya long time since the last post. But we've been doing some fun stuff. We celebrated Mo's 30th Bday the other day and were able to enjoy his Dad, Kay, and Grandma Betty for the special occasion. We are so glad to have mo in the family and grateful for all his hard work. Ok so I just put Mo and his Dad to work on the basement while they were here. But it's almost finished! We got carpet put in and just have little things to finish. The kids love the room. We have put all the toys in there so it's just one big playroom. I have to admit this new carpet makes me want to replace the carpet in the rest of the house, it's so much softer! Anyways while company was in town we went out to the pumpkin patch to find the perfect pumpkin. And through all the tears, kicking, and smiles we were able to find one! We have yet to carve it...hopefully tomorrow night! We went to Tanner's last soccer game and he did great...at playing around with friends! He really enjoyed soccer but I think he mostly just liked being silly on the field! Tanner also brought home his 1st school picture and I loved how it turned out except that he didn't take his jacket off. But I think it's still cute. We got free Coldstone Icecream, free face painting, had a baby shower for a friend, I got to help out in Tanner's classroom, we harvested carrots, zucchini (the size of mccalls leg), spinach, green onions. McCall has also decided that she would rather walk than crawl! It is quite funny to watch her because I think she walks like an old grandma! She is a girly girl and turns most things into bracelets or a necklace! We also got some family pictures that I think turned out pretty good! We have enjoyed our summer and now are awaiting the dreaded freezing cold winter.

Soccer and the Liahona

Well some of you know that Tanner started soccer and he loves it! He does way better than I thought he would. He is actually pretty quick and loves to kick the ball. This last game that he played his team got a little distracted because the other team had two little boys who were a little naughty. I heard them calling some of our kids "fried chicken". And then of course came the response, "No I'm not you are." One of our kids even tried to tackle the other team. Quite entertaining. We weren't very quick at getting some action pictures but here's a little something every kid does. It is so funny.



Last night for home evening we talked about Lehi and the Liahona. For our activity we made Liahonas. And despite the look on braydens face he really had fun. He's upset because I made him take another picture. We have even had to take our Liahonas to Lowes so that we would know which direction we were supposed to go!