Grandma book pages

Each year we do a page of pictures for my mom for her "Grandma memory book" Lucky for me Angelic does all of my work for me!

My Pink gift came today!

My Pink Christmas gift came today from a lovely lady in Washington named Stacey Sykes.

My kids get just as excited about these swaps as I do (maybe even more) they loved it when our grouchy mail man brought a box to our door and, as they so cutely put it, "ding-dong ditched us" leaving us a gift that they have been watching and waiting for. So much fun! I have to say, I don't remember what I put in the sign-up about myself but Stacey somehow nailed it with the darling poky-dotty ribbon and that one teeny wee package! What a great opportunity to get to know other people and teach my children the joy of giving.

Thank you to Stacey for your thoughtfulness and time.I can't wait to open it on Christmas. My kids are making sure I don't peek (that is really hard!). We truly appreciate and enjoy each and every morsel of the fun as a family.

What Child IS THIS???

The Princess saw the partially shoveled sidewalks as a perfect opportunity to ride her bike!!!

Crazy girl. If they aren't shoveled enough, she grabs the big shovel and gets to work. It is a miracle she stayed upright. 20 degrees and I am frozen in the time it takes to stand outside to take my silly girl's picture.

Meet "BILLY BOB BARKER" the newest member of our family!

Sawyer gave him a "wet willy", very unpleasant even for a snowman.

Oh that reminds me of the new ridiculous rule at our house, no one is aloud to eat anybody else's snowman. They made this one together- I guess when the time comes, they can each eat half.
My silly kids will spend all day outside making sledding hills and various games in the COLD. No idea where the are getting it from but I am glad they are enjoying it!

JOY!

Pink Christmas on it's way!

My gift to my new "Pink Girlfriend" is on it's way!

I am so thankful to have been a part of this wonderful opportunity to be included with lots of other silly ladies and do just a little something for others in need.

I am so Thankful to my Father in Heaven for my family and for the Gospel in our lives. I am so touched that there are those out there that give sooo much time and energy and make it so FUN for us to enjoy doing service. What an incredible example they are. As I read these stories of the families that these benefits are set up for, I an so inspired by their strength. A strength that comes from a testimony of the Plan of Salvation. I am also now even more aware of my daily blessings all around me. Every moment with my children and wonderful husband is precious and I need to work harder to cherish them , not take one moment for granted and filter out the things that don't point us toward our Eternal goal.

This swap has been such a fun one. From sign up, to waiting for the pink envelope, planning, making, and sending the pink package.

Come what may & love it!

Joel needs a new mom.

After having his cast put on today, my first thought was...

I can decorate it! It is green, it works!

He is a very good sport.

(plus I bribed him)

At least we made the best of it. Right?

UPDATE

Just hours after posting about our ornaments, specifically Joel's......

"Some are custom made, like the monster in the leg cast for Joel (seriously this child can't stay out of a cast!)"

I find myself at kidscare with him and his wrist is broken!

Oh, and bad mommie moment of the day:

after he injured it (skating) and before we knew it was broken, we made him finish raking and cleaning the carport. nice huh?

Sigh.

Christmas Traditions!

Christmas decorating came early at our house. We have had our decorations up for a couple of weeks YAY! One of our family's favorite traditions is the ornaments. Every year each child gets an ornament that represents their past year. This started the year our oldest was born with the "Santa holding the baby ornament" and goes on still. They start trying to guess their ornament weeks before they get them & I start shopping months before Thanksgiving (Thanks Ebay). After all of the decorations are up, we put up the tree. The last thing is the ornaments. We all sit and unwrap each year's ornament and talk about the memories that go along with them. This year Joel got his Temple ornament ( a beautiful coin of Jordan River Temple), his year of attending to do baptisms. Alec got his guitar, which snaps into a case when not in use. Sawyer's skateboarder is even wearing a red baseball cap! The Giselle ornament is now the largest on the tree. It can also be a tree topper, the picture hardly does it justice.

We love these ornament so much and carefully choose them each year. Some are custom made, like the monster in the leg cast for Joel (seriously this child can't stay out of a cast!), and the monster in the tent from camp for Alec- for his first year at camp. These monster's teeth and eyes all glow in the dark.

Savannah's looks a little like a Disney collection- hee hee.

Some of my favorites of Sawyer's are his piano from last year that he made us photograph the tiny music and blow it up so that he could play it -and- his "Horton the Elephant & baby elephant bird", to me this says everything about my boy,

"I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant is faithful 100 percent".

We have an eagle for Alec from the year he achieved the rank of Eagle in Scouts and a sugar glider in a stocking for our animal loving Joel who couldn't forget our tiny pets.

As they grow up it occurs to me that they will take these ornaments to their homes and place them on their own trees. I will miss them, but I feel so blessed that they will have happy Christmas memories to take with them. Think of Savannah's poor hubby someday, with a tree full of Disney princesses and a huge Giselle on top! Oh it just makes me giggle! I pray that she will find a very special guy!

Because I have been given much, I too must give...

The benefit auction to help with medical expenses for little Josephine's family.

Click HERE to read their courageous and uplifting story.

Cick on the cute little picture of Josephine to go to the benefit blog.

Homeschool lesson today- voting

I wish there was a "WE voted today" picture.

I took the 3 ~at home~ kids. They learned about the voting process (disrupted/livened it up a bit), got stickers to proudly wear, saw a bunch of neighbors including our Stake President who works at the City bldg. The poll workers were cute with the kids and all of their questions and semi-quiet whispers didn't seem to bother anyone. I want to teach them that voting is important and worth my time. I want them to form their own opinions. I am so glad we voted early, it was a fun experience! YAY us!

Happy Halloween!

A friend and I got talking about adults dressing for Halloween, I had to pull this one out of Halloween past to share.

Ok, here is how it went down. A couple of years ago just a few days before Halloween, Marshall asks me to make him a costume because he wants to win a costume contest a work. So, anyone who knows me knows that I plan all holidays 4-6 months in advance. Mostly to avoid this very situation. So, with a little bit of evil in my heart, I agreed to make him a costume that would win as long as I got to choose it- no questions asked. He agreed. I went to Walmart for supplies, he went to bed and woke up the next morning to his Tooth Fairy costume. It was complete with a pouch full of chocolate coins (in case anyone had teeth for trading) and a tooth wand, wings, fluffy pink slippers, oh and a tiara! He wore it. He won.

He did say that he was a little nervous when he went into the men's room to change and then came out in a dress. Best part was walking behind him and watching his skirt swish!

I know what you are thinking.... but sorry ladies he is mine all mine!

Anything tastes good wrapped in carmel!

We made carmel apples for Mutual night with the Young Women and had such yummy, sticky fun that the kids and I decided to do it at home the next day. Baking, Cooking and Crafting with the youth can teach you a lot! These girls are super silly and super artistic. We couldn't wait to make our own. It was sooo much fun, we decided to make it a new tradition for our family.

We will make carmel apples once a week!

~just kidding~

Yes, in our house we all sit ON the counter while baking/preparing food.

You may want to consider this when eating at our counter next time you visit. ;>

Sawyer preferred to cover his in white chocolate, then crushed Oreo's

Savannah, well...you can see for yourself.

She doesn't eat them, so she puts a little bit of everything pretty on them.

If it is pretty, it will taste good, right?

Ta Da!

Our finished Apples!

Oh, and some darling witch hats we made with friends/fellow homeschoolers. They are cookies and ice cream cone, frosted in melted chocolate and the cone is full of candy. Yummm!

aren't they pretty?

Savannah could hardly wait to give hers away. She stalked our neighbors, until they took some apples from her. Creepy huh! Next year she should dress as the evil old lady from snow white.

Oh, by the way, any mommies out there want to take a guess on whether or not my daughter needed to potty in this picture? Arggh!

Easy Bake Par-tay!

The Little Princess had an easy bake birthday party this year. Aprons, pizza making, cousins, cake decorating, baking, presents, eating, licking fingers, giggling, friends...

They each easy baked their own pizza yummmm! They also decorated a tiny cake that they then boxed up, tied with a pretty ribbon to take home to show off their skills to daddy. Special thanks to Kimber the tallest of the "6 year old's", such a great sport. I hope she never realizes that you are a grown-up. You are, aren't you? Each cutie took home an apron and an Easy-Bake cookbook. It was the best party I've (I mean she's) ever had!

I loved when the girls were peeking into their ovens and watching the pizzas cook.

Pretty little easy bakes all in a row.

Visting the ~Man Child~ in his natural habitat

During the Summer we visited the teenager up in the Uintah Mountains at the Scout Camp where he works in the summer.

This is a view of his front yard.

I LOVE this picture of "the princess".

Her daddy caught the alternate personality on film! Very hard to do!

She IS royalty and was not tolerating the bugs extremely well. Of course the next picture she looked perfect, but this one was TOO much fun- couldn't help myself.

Giselle

Savannah is dressing as "Giselle" from Enchanted for Halloween.

We love playing dress-up and this pint-sized bridal portrait was a little different from the bridal portraits that we normally shoot.

Usually we don't have pictures of the tiny bride doing the potty dance followed by a quick potty trip to McD's. We typically don't have brides spin and spin until they fall down in fits of giggles, isn't that a shame. The other brides watching her were visibly jealous of the spinning.

She is pretty sure that the Capital was a castle built for her. She was not the least bit intimidated by it.

She will live there some day.

Thanks Amy (the "hair teacher") for the amazing hair -and for the 62 bobbypins :)

Sassy apron

My fabulous apron swap partner made me this apron for the fall apron swap.

Also, the darling hot pad shown in the picture. I love it! The fabric is awesome and soo soft.

My sweet son took this picture of me with his camera.

I always think it is silly that in the apron pictures the women always crop their heads off.

No way am I going to post a picture of just my hips!

The year of the bird?

Joel found a baby humming bird that had fallen from it's nest. Turned out it only had one leg. We named it Nemo - because of the gimpy leg, so cute. Anyway, Joel kept putting it back up in it's tree and it's momma kept feeding it. But he kept finding on the ground. My mom showed the kids how to feed him and help make a safe place for him. To save it from the cats, Joel made a little container/house up in the tree and placed it there. Two days later it was gone. Then, after two days, there he was again!

We brought him in and again fed him. The kids loved feeding him because you could see his long tongue go all the way up into the dropper to get the sugar water. Then all of a sudden he started to fly! It sounded like a teeny tiny helicopter taking off. He could fly- but not land. He would just drop.




We called the Ogden nature Center and told them about little "Nemo". They told us to get him to Tracy Aviary asap and they would send a volunteer from Ogden to pick him up (of course we are assuming it is a "he"- the birdie wasn't wearing a dress- so....).
The little kids and I put him in tupperware and ran to the car and back out of the driveway WAY too FAST!!!



The girls said that he "tweeped" the whole way there. Until that ride I had never heard a humming bird make a noise, but he didn't like the car.
He made it the in time and he will live.

My gate died, unfortunately, for the cause. Good thing there wasn't a kid behind me!

Three days later we came home and found a baby robin in our driveway. Alec caught him hand-fed him a juicy worm from our new sod and made him a birdie "house" up in the tree.

No fences were harmed in the saving of THIS baby bird.



Moral to this story- we love the Ogden nature Center. Please always support wonderful places like these!

Family Camping

When camping, it is ALL about the Braids!

Savannah and I needed matching braids and headbands.

This is us taking a break from camp cooking (my favorite) to save a butterfly.Also, not many people know that when you are camping

it is OK to drink milk like a kitty.

Has anyone seen Sawyer?

I have seen a lot of his hat, and sometimes I see his sweet lips, but all summer I have been missing his eyes.

Someday the hat will come off and will unveil my beautiful boy.

For now, I guess the hat is helping to hold all of his big brains in, while he is thinking and studying this crazy world he is trying to figure out.