End of the Year 2012

2012 has really flown by.  It's amazing how time flies by faster the older you get!  this year we were able to take a big family trip to Northern and Southern California and Arizona.  We drove across northern Nevada to visit Jenna's older brother, then down the California coast to Southern California to celebrate the birthday of Corey's mom and visit family there, then across to Mesa, Arizona to visit Jenna's parents.  We enjoyed visiting with friends in northern Nevada, a day in San Francisco, driving down the California coast highway, a party with Corey's family, a day at Knott's Berry Farm, a day at the beach in San Diego, and swimming in Grandpa and Grandma's pool in Arizona.  It was a lot of driving but it was a fun trip for us.

Corey spent this year trying to get his store running smoothly.  It's still a fairly new store, only open three years, and settling in has been difficult, dealing with major road construction near the store.  It's been a challenge but things seem to be running smoothly.  He's hoping for a great year next year for business.  When he hasn't been working, he's spent time playing with the kids and working on projects around the house.  He has a new calling at church, teaching the fourteen and fifteen-year-olds in Sunday School, which he seems to enjoy.

Jenna has been busy keeping the household running.  As the kids keep growing older, she spends more time as a taxi driver, carting them to and from their activities.  This school year, she signed up to help out with PTA and was assigned to be the art commissioner.  Once a month she spends a whole day and teaches the whole school an art lesson from a program called "The Great Artist Program".  She is teaching Eliza preschool this year.  Also, a new baby is due on March 20, 2013, another girl!

Westley is nine and is in fourth grade.  He joined school band and plays the trumpet.  That keeps him pretty busy as band is two early mornings a week.  He is also busy with cub scouts and has almost earned his Bear.  Westley also takes piano lessons.  He seems to be enjoying school this year and likes his teacher.

Caleb is in second grade.  A big milestone for him was turning eight and being baptized this past October and November.  He is looking forward to starting cub scouts but hasn't had the chance yet as our ward does not have den leaders for his age group.  He also takes piano lessons.  He continues to be a soft-hearted gentleman and a good helper around the house.

Travis is six and started kindergarten this year.  He is also taking piano lessons.  He seems to really enjoy school and making new friends.  We started him in gymnastics in the summer and he seems to love it.  He also loves to play with Legos and draw.

Eliza just turned five and is still our very girlie little girl.  She is still taking dance, from a different studio this year.  She also takes gymnastics with Travis.  She has been learning to read in preschool and is very good with numbers.

Jonah is a little ball of energy at twenty-one months.  His great love is balls of all sorts and he seems to be a natural when it comes to handling them.  He likes to watch sports on TV.  He also loves cars and bikes and doing everything his older brothers do.

Our family wishes yours a happy holiday season!

Christmas 2012

For Christmas this year, we made the traditional trek to Temple Square to see the lights.

Christmas morning brought the usual tradition of opening the stockings first.  We kept the stockings really simple this year and I think I really liked it.  Of course, we had to include the usual mini box of cereal, which were really hard to find this year.  Thanks to my cousin who picked some up for me or we wouldn't have had them!  Next year, as soon as I see them hit shelves I will buy them!

After opening presents, Dad spent some time enjoying his present, a hunting game on the Wii.

After a few hours of playing Wii and watching a movie, we took the kids to the nearby park for some tubing. 

It was a nice Christmas Day.  While it's nice to see extended family and spend time on the holidays with them when possible, I do enjoy a good Christmas at home with just our little clan.

Making Lunch

A quick, easy meal for us that my kids just love is mini pizzas.  We use hamburger or hot dog buns.  Then we add pizza sauce and cheese and whatever toppings we want, usually pepperoni or ham.  I like it because it's fast and easy and tasty and the kids love to help make it.

Last Saturday we had mini pizzas for lunch and the three younger kids helped make them.  Jonah actually just watched and ate the buns.  He loves to feel like he's helping. 

Mini Pizzas:

Any hamburger or hot dog buns
pizza sauce, cheese, toppings

Preheat oven to 400.  Open buns and face them up.  Put sauce, cheese, toppings on buns.  Place on cookie sheet in oven for 4-6 minutes, till cheese is melted.

Seeing Santa

At our ward Christmas party, the kids all got to see Santa.  This was Jonah's first time to sit on Santa's lap and he seemed pretty excited about it at first.  After a few minutes, though, he was done.  Since  he can't talk yet (not to anyone else's understanding but ours) he mostly just sat there, speaking gibberish.  It was pretty cute.  I think his excitement came from the fact that his older siblings were excited about it.

First Band Concert

Westley had his first band concert in December.  He started playing trumpet at the beginning of the school year.  We were fortunate that he was able to get a trumpet for free from one of my brothers, who played the trumpet through junior high school.  It seems like he enjoys band and playing the trumpet. 

Westley had four school concerts in one day.  He was able to get out of regular class and play a concert for his school, two concerts for another elementary school and one for another school.  It was a busy day with all the concerts but we were able to arrange a carpool for some of it.  Then, the following Monday night (that was on a Thursday), Westley had an evening concert for parents. 

I'm glad that he has found something he likes and hope he will choose to stay with it.

Zoo Trip From October

I found these pictures on my phone from a zoo trip we took with the younger kids in October.  we had a pretty nice, mild fall and early winter and it's been nice to use our zoo pass.  Hopefully we can use it a few more times before it expires next spring.

Eliza is FIVE!!!

I cannot believe that my little girl is FIVE years old! Corey and I were going to be gone on her birthday, so we celebrated early. We took the whole family out to breakfast at IHOP (Eliza had been asking to go to IHOP for her birthday breakfast for months). We spent the day at home, just hanging out and being together. She requested Italian-style chicken for dinner and I made her a Hello Kitty cake.

Waiting for presents

opening the first one--a new leotard

She also got a princess stamp set, I took the picture too soon.

She got a doll house and was quite excited about it

Hello Kitty cake

Blowing out candles

It's amazing how fast time goes by that she is already five and starting school next fall.  She certainly brings a touch of femininity to our family that would otherwise be missing.  Very girlie little girl we have here. 

Jonah in a Big Boy Bed

Jonah stopped sleeping through the night right around Caleb's baptism, the beginning of November.  It was painful because he'd only just started sleeping all night around the beginning of July, after our big family trip.  Because we had house guests, we didn't want to let him cry, which I think was our big mistake.  He started crying every night after that, expecting us to come in and cuddle and eventually take him back to our bed because we were so tired.  So, after a visit to the doctor for his 18-month checkup (a couple months late), we decided to really start sticking to our guns and only go in once to comfort him without taking him out of the crib and then letting him cry.  The only problem was that the week of Thanksgiving (a couple of weeks into this), he started climbing out of his crib.  So when he'd wake up, he would cry, then climb (fall) out of the crib and then cry some more.  It didn't help him learn to fall back to sleep and I was constantly worried he'd break a limb or his neck falling out of the crib.

So...just after Thanksgiving and our guests left, I took the side off the crib and made it a toddler bed.  The problem was that we had gotten rid of the low side that made it a toddler bed--the rail.  We hadn't ever used this crib as a toddler bed because we had a baby who needed the crib and an actual toddler bed.  We got rid of the toddler bed a couple of years ago because Eliza transitioned straight from her crib to the bottom bunk (she was almost three) and we didn't have room for the toddler bed for storing it.  The first couple of nights Jonah was in this "bed", he would roll off the side and wake up and cry.  I started looking at toddler bed railings online, trying to find the best one for the best price.  Then Corey came up with an idea.

He got a big piece of PVC pipe, about two inches in diameter, and glued the pieces together so they would be the length of the bed.  Then he tied a rope through the pipe and sealed the ends with holes for the rope.  Then I covered the pipe with batting and fabric.  He tied in on the slats at the ends of the bed and we created a bumper to keep Jonah from falling out.  It's low enough that Jonah can climb in and out of the bed on his own but high enough that it keeps him from rolling off while he sleeps.  And Jonah LOVES the ball theme of the fabric I happened to have!

And it was much cheaper than any of the toddler railings I was looking at!  Since I already had the batting and fabric and we already had the rope, it was the cost of the PVC pipe, which was about $6.  Better than the $29 I was looking at!

Since then, Jonah has actually done quite well at night.  He goes to bed without a fuss and sleeps all night.  The first few nights were rough because he would get out and cry and one night he fell asleep on the floor, but for the last week, he's done well.  Now it's naptime battles that we're dealing with.  He eventually falls asleep after crying at naptime, but then he rarely sleeps longer than an hour and previous to this sleep refusal stage, he was sleeping 2-3 hours at naptime.  I am trying to get his naps back because at 20 months, he is not ready to stop napping and I'm not ready for him to stop napping.  We're working on it.  One hour is better than nothing!

Thanksgiving 2012

For Thanksgiving, we were able to get together with most of Jenna's side of the family. The only ones who couldn't come were the ones who live back east, in Virginia. It was quite the change from the past few years of Thanksgiving when it was just us.

Waiting in line for face painting from Aunt Kaori

Aunt Kaori painting a cousin's face

Some of the cousins at Thanksgiving dinner

Another cousins table

Another cousins table

I think my camera battery died and I wasn't able to get a shot of the adult table.  We had twelve adults and eighteen kids at Thanksgiving dinner this year.  It was good, chaotic fun!

Caleb's Baptism

Caleb was baptized the first weekend of November.  My parents were able to come up from Arizona, as well as Corey's mom from California.  We also had some of my extended family (cousins, aunts & uncles, siblings) who live locally attend.  It was a small service and we were lucky that we had the baptism all to ourselves as we were the only ones from our ward doing a baptism that day.  We had a brunch at the house afterward and it was very nice to chat with relatives. 

Chores

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, we had another snowstorm come through.  Before the coming snow, I sent the kids out to rake leaves and pick up poop.  As you can see, our yard is looking pretty bad.  The sprinklers were not working all summer and the grass died, except for a few patches here and there, which got really long as nobody took care to mow them down.  Anyway, the kids raked all the leaves and bagged them and then the snow came, literally later that morning.  But at least it fell on a clean yard! 

First Snow of the Season

The first snow of the season came a couple of weeks before Halloween, then it warmed up and stayed pretty warm for a while. The kids were very excited to go play in it, although Jonah was a bit hesitant about it all. Once he learned about snowballs, though, snow became all the rage for him.  That boy just loves balls!

Halloween 2012

Halloween this year wasn't as big of a thing as last year when I put together Wizard of Ox costumes for the family.  We encouraged the kids to come up with costumes of things we already had and this is what they came up with:

Caleb was an In-N-Out store manager (note: he was NOT an associate--we did that in 2006--he was the manager.  Store managers wear black pants and a big red apron, associates wear white pants and a half apron with an apron pin in the back); Westley was a spy; Travis was a baseball player; Eliza was Strawberry Shortcake; and Jonah was a frog.

 Our Jack-o-Lantern.  We don't get real creative around here and the kids are lucky that Dad is willing to help carve just one pumpkin (Dad really doesn't like Halloween!) 

At the school parade waiting for the big kids to come around.  Travis' afternoon kindergarten had their own little parade too, later in the day.  It was gorgeous outside, like in the 60's for Halloween, very unusual for Utah.

Caleb marching by

Westley changed his mind last minute to be a ninja.  Here he is helping another student carry part of his costume.