Simple Things

Sometimes it is the tiny little things we get to do as a family that I love so much and end up meaning the most. Like sitting here with Jacob making finger puppets of the Nativity that he got from church today. Or like making a gingerbread house together for our ward party. They gave us the house and we just had to put it together. It was the one from Costco (which is the one we buy every year so it ended up being free for us this year. Yay!). David had the idea to make the little men look like missionaries. Everybody loved that :). David really came up with all the ideas. The neccos for the shingles, Andees mints for the door and shingles (on the side windows), Andees mints and tootsie rolls for presents. The icicles were the "topping on the cake" - in my opinion. I thought it turned out really cute. They were using the houses as centerpieces for the tables at our ward party. We ended up sitting at the table with ours so it really didn't get viewed by that many people. But we can tell you, it was one of the best :).
See the shingles... so cute!

Another fun thing we do a lot is the science museum. No matter how many times we go we love it. The boys had a blast in the chemistry lab this time. Anything with goggles and test tubes is fun. They were learning about vitamin C and how it works in our bodies.

Then of course it is always fun to play in the water.

Grandma and Grandpa had I-Max tickets they got with their membership that they hadn't got to use yet so they sent them to us to use for Christmas. It was Awesome! We went and saw "Tornado Alley." It wasn't quite what David and I expected but it was super fun just the same. Now Emma is terrified to ever live in Tornado Alley :).

Katie kept saying she was "Freaking Out" because of how the seats have no wall or railing in front of you and it is such a sharp decline. It was pretty funny. She (and most of the other kids) really were freaking out about the drop. That is all part of the experience, right?

That night David dropped me off at Domino's to order some take out pizza and took the kids down to Krispy Kreme while we were waiting. They LOVE Krispy Kreme. We got a bunch of Christmas shaped doughnuts. It was a very fun and simple day of just being together.

This was just a random picture Jacob or Katie took of Samson, but I thought it was cute and decided to throw it in.Our little fake tree we tried to use this year ended up dying so the kids and David went to Home depot and picked out a beautiful, big, real tree (cheap since we live here where most the real trees come from :). We love it. I am glad our fake one finally gave out so we can go back to real ones. I have missed that (though I love fake ones for the ease of putting them up whenever you want and no watering :). Hopefully next year my back won't be out so that I will be able to go with them all to get our tree. Again, it is those little things we do together as a family that mean so much.

Thanksgiving 2011

This was a great Thanksgiving. David and I got to spend a lot of quality time together ALONE in the kitchen thanks to Grandma and Grandpa (and Grandpa's iPad). It was so fun to see the kids so happy playing with them. Most of the day was spent playing games (thank you again Grandma and Grandpa). Even David and I got to play a game or two :). I love to watch David cook. He has such a way with food. Everything he touches turns out so good. It must be nice to be so talented.
I don't know which was played more, games or Grandpa's iPad. Jacob and Joelle especially loved it. It is definitely handy to have around.Katie and Grandpa were the best of friends. She took a great nap on Grandpa's lap that day.These pics are so similar, but I love Katie's face in the first one and Grandpa's the second one, so I had to put them both on. I love how much the kids adore Grandma and Grandpa. I am so glad they live close enough to have holidays together.This was my favorite part of the day. Playing "Ticket To Ride" with David, Grandma, and the girls. It was a great game, although I just realized we never figured out who won because the food got done, and David and I had to rush to it at the end of the game. Oh well, it's all about having fun and being grateful. I am so thankful for everything that I have been blessed with. I am so grateful to have such wonderful family members and that David is so blessed with a good job and we are able to support our family. There is always so much to be Thankful for!

Our new house!

Here are some pics of our new house. This first pic is a little dark, but I love that Katie was in it, so I threw it in. This is the living room (obviously). Right behind me is our dinning/school room which I forgot to take a picture of :). I love that room. They left a big long table there which we use for school and we love it.
I love having a gas fireplace. We still have to light it with a match, but it lights up so easily and there is nothing to clean afterwards. It is pretty great.

This is the family room. The door in back leads to David's office. I didn't get a picture in there because it just wouldn't work for some reason.

The kitchen is a little smaller than our last house, but it still works pretty well. I am just so happy to have a gas stove again. Not to mention how handy double ovens are :).

This is my favorite shelf you see when you are standing at the top of the staircase. It is such a fun shelf to decorate!

This is our huge toy room. This was a big seller for the kids. They love that the roof is lowered, so that David and I never want to be in it. They spend a lot of time in this room.

This is the boys room. In this picture the paint looks almost purple to me, but it is actually a very pretty blue. It is a perfect little boy room.And finally a bathroom that can hold all five children. Brushing teeth at night is no longer a big issue.

There is even this great vanity for the girls to get ready at, and not be in the way.

This is the girls room. I was amazed that it took them a whole week to get their Harry Potter posters up. They are quite pleased with this room.

The master bedroom and bathroom are just the right size (not too big and not too small), the only thing missing is a walk-in closet. We do have his and hers closets though, and that works well. Although the house is pretty old it has been well taken care of and we love it. We hope we never have to move from it :).

Getting ready for the Holidays

So, once again it has been FOREVER since I blogged. I am so happy that we had stake conference today and I was able to have the afternoon to rest and now I am ready to blog :). Since we have afternoon church and I have recently been put in YW I was thrown off my normal routine of Sunday night blogging. We will be going to 9:00 church in Jan. so I am hoping that will help. I have missed it. I just spent the last 2 hours looking at all of our families' blogs. It has been a couple of months for me and it was great. I was going to comment on them all, but I got so excited to blog again that I am going to forgo that for now. Just know that all of your blogs were wonderful and I had a blast reading everything you all have been up to.

As most of you know, we moved this month. We were blessed with the opportunity to rent a home from a couple we know who were going on a mission. They were so good to give us this opportunity. At first they thought they might want to do a rent to own, but then they changed their minds because they thought they might want to come back. We decided to go ahead with the deal hoping in the end they will want to sell it to us. If not, we are going to have a very fun two years. We have been in the house for almost a month and we LOVE it! I will take pictures in a couple of days (since every room will be clean because Grandma and Grandpa are coming for Thanksgiving :).

This has been a very busy couple of months for us. David got called to the Elders quorum and I am now the 2nd counselor in YW. John and Tim (and their wonderful families) came to visit, the YW were in charge of a bi-ward Halloween party, we moved, and David and I went to our good friend Kim's wedding all in a matter of a month. It was a crazy, hectic, wonderful month!

Weird, I just went to add pictures and apparently I took no pictures of when Tim and Katy and John and Tiffany were here. I also apparently took none when we were in Boston either. I am so sorry to all you wonderful people. We loved being with you all so much and had such a blast. I know Dave took some pics, so if I can find them and figure out how to put them on here I will :-). I will however post the few Halloween and misc. pictures I did take. Sorry - kind of boring compared to all that other stuff.

Halloween was a blast this year, although it was very cold. We went trick or treating with a few friends which is always fun. The kids all figured out their own costumes. Joelle made hers. She was "Ribbon Girl" (a superhero of her own creation). She got a bunch of different ribbons and pinned them all over her clothes. She also got a cape and pinned ribbons on it for Samson and he was "Ribbon Dog". It was pretty funny. Ben has had this Superman costume for 3 years but this is the first year it actually fit. He was so excited. Our friend's little boy also came as superman. When he showed up at the door both boys looked at each other almost like "how dare you!", and then Ben said "you look awesome!" They were both happy after that and Ed never left Ben alone for the rest of the night. So cute! Emma was cold and decided she didn't want to dress up, but Joelle told her she couldn't trick or treat without a costume so they made some cat ears and put on some face paint and called it good. I think it worked out well.

David found Jacob's costume after Haloween last year. I think we payed around 3 bucks for it. AWESOME! I love good deals. He had been asking to go as Boba Fett for a few years so he was so excited (although you wouldn't guess that from this picture :).
Katie changed her costume at least 5 times that day and ended up in this dress up that I have had since Joelle was 5 years old. It has held up well and it was cute to see it on her since I think we will be getting rid of it this year. She loves to trick or treat and is always the last one asking to keep going. Emma and Joelle had done this kind of eye makeup for a bunch of the different Halloween parties we went to and Katie loves it. So even though she was a pretty princess she wanted the "dark eyes".

It ended up being really cold after we were out for a while. So even though I told Ben to take a jacket (which he didn't) he ended up with David's. Dave said he wasn't freezing but I could tell he was cold. He is such a good dad.

The kids loved having a graveyard last year so we stuck with the same thing this year. The pumpkin in back is Ben's. He designed and cut it out himself. He was pretty proud of it.

The girls did this whole pumpkin by themselves. They were proud of this one too. They named it Mrs. Norris (Filch's cat from Harry Potter - of course).

2 weeks after we moved in to our new house Emma's best friend Mikeala came to play. All the kids were outside when she said "hey, we should rake up all your leaves into a big pile and jump into them." -I love this girl :). So they all got out rakes and made a fantastic pile. They played for hours out there. (This is about a quarter of the leaves our tree has lost, and it still has a ton of leaves on it - crazy!)

They would all take turns running to the pile while everyone else would throw leaves up as soon as they jumped.

I don't think anyone loved it as much as Jake. He would have kept going all night.

They really had a blast. I love this girl. She is a great friend to all of my kids.

We were super early with our Christmas decorations this year. We just didn't want to move the Christmas tubs twice. So we emptied them, put up all our stuff and then stored the empty tubs. The kids were so happy. We even went out and bought some new fun decorations for this house. Since we are on the corner of a pretty major street, we really wanted to make it look good. I will try and get a picture of the outside to put up with the other ones, since I apparently forgot to do that when I was taking these pics. I seem to be forgetting a lot lately :).
David really got into decorating this year. I loved it! It was easy too, since there were already hooks everywhere we needed them. It is a very fun house to decorate. This is my David. I love his smile here, it is very "David".
This was an hour later because we ran out of lights and had to run to Costco to get some more :). Believe it or not it is 5:30pm at this point. I hate that dang time change thing (although I get that people like to have light in the morning when they get up for work or school - one of the best perks of homeschooling is not having to deal with that :). We did end up meeting a lot of neighbors this way. So many of them stopped to talk to us about how early we were getting started. They all said they loved it - I hope that is true :).