Catch Of The Day

Wednesday night we huddled around a fire on the beach and roasted hot dogs and had hot chocolate. It was a chilly night but lots of fun. Jackson took the pictures of Steve and me and kept cutting off our heads. He finally got a decent one after about 6 tries. Justin and Audrey and I came home a little earlier than everyone after Justin had enough. He's still a little young for so much wind blowing in his face I guess. Jackson, Steve and Gordon went fishing with Bishop Webb on Friday about 30 miles off the coast. They came home stinking of fish guts but loved every minute of it. I was a little worried about Jackson getting seasick but it seems he has sea legs. They caught several fish, including Snapper, Grouper, Cobia and Sea Bass. Bishop Webb anchored Jackson at the waste while he reeled in a couple of big ones. We're going to cook up some of the bounty today. Yum!

Merry Christmas!

We had a great day! We got the kids too many presents (same thing we say every year). One indication would be that 1 hour after opening presents the girls were in the garage playing "campout" with their sleeping bags. No, not new sleeping bags for Christmas or anything, just old ones. Santa brought fun stuff for everyone and Christmas dinner was delish so it was a great day. I don't know what Santa was thinking bringing Jackson a BB gun but according to Grandpa, who practiced with him in the backyard, he is a good shot. Last night we read the Christmas story and the kids gave Grandma and Grandpa a little concert with their handbells. They also opened their traditional Christmas book present and read them.







I just love the sleepy-face pictures of Christmas morning. They're so cute!
We've been having a great time with Steve's parents. They arrived in style from Houston in their new RV. Gordon is newly retired from Continental Airlines and they are testing out their tolerance for long-term road travel. When they said they got an RV we were picturing something like this



Or maybe even something like this



But this is what they rolled into town on



Just kidding...THIS is the home away from home



They were quite the sight and we got a good laugh out of seeing them pulling that bad boy. It is really nice and comfortable for them and we hope they don't mind that it doesn't fit in our driveway and they have to stay at the KOA. Actually, they probably like being able to get away from us at night for some relief from the chaos.
On Saturday, we took a drive down to visit my family for a birthday bash for some of the December birthdays. We had fun visiting with everyone. We did some 4-wheeling on the property Brent is developing.



Jackson and Sadie disappeared somewhere in the 30 acres, but here's Audrey sliding down one of the dirt piles. We decided to forget the million dollar homes and call it RedNeck Land and open for business.




And here's Justin having a snack. We really do feed him, I promise.

Happy Birthday Jackson!

My firstborn is 10 years old today! He and a couple of his cousins went to Daytona Lagoon on Saturday for an afternoon of fun racing cars, playing laser tag, rock wall climbing and whatever else you do there. This morning he received the traditional birthday breakfast in bed. (Even if it was only a bowl of Golden Grahams that he had to almost inhale because we woke a little late for a school morning.) He's such a good kid and I'm really proud of him. He does so well in school and chooses good friends to hang out with. It's alot of fun having a kid who is really into sports because I love to watch and play the same stuff he does. We arm wrestled a couple of days ago and he ALMOST beat me. Next year I won't stand a chance. He loves to play board games so it's been fun to include him in our Scrabble face-offs. (He gets to use the book, we don't.) Okay, enough bragging, I just wanted to share how much I love him and appreciate what a good boy he is. Happy Birthday Jacks! We love you so much!
BTW, I'm pretty much all talk. I never went back to Wendy's to file my lawsuit about the lipstick thing but I don't know if I'll ever eat at that particular location again.
P.S. That is a picture of Jackson. I was just telling Steve if in 10 years you showed me pictures of Jackson and Justin as babies, I wouldn't be able to tell you who was who.

You Want Lipstick With That?

On the way home from the doctor today, I stopped at Wendy's to get Audrey her promised frosty for being such a good sport about her shots. You probably had to be there to appreciate this but I ordered and then pulled around to the window where you pay. The girl did the transaction and then ran around to the second window to give me my food. I was cracking up because it seemed like something you would see in a Seinfeld episode. Anyway, here's the disgusting part. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich and opened it when I got home. I took a bite before I realized there was lipstick on the inside of the wrapper! If you know me, you know I did not mistake it for MY lipstick since I don't even own one tube of lipstick. I haven't gone in to complain - YET, so to be continued on that one...
I HAVE to post yet another good one from Audrey. It's funny because she has only become really hilarious in the last year, I guess. Most kids are at the peak of their funny-ness around 3 or 4. Anyway, she was telling me that when I have the next girl baby that she's going to share her play makeup with her. (BTW, there is no girl baby and it's not even up for discussion right now, so I don't know where that came from.) She asked if I was going to have one and I said, "I guess if Heavenly Father puts one in my belly, I will." Next obvious question, "How does he put it in there?" Since she's 5 and "The Talk" is a long way off, I said, "Heavenly Father can do anything he wants to do." She just kind of chuckled at the image in her head and said, "Yeah right. Not a back flip." :)

Jiggle, Jiggle

I have all these funny stories about the kids swirling through my head that I've been meaning to write down before they get forgotten. So, I'll do a couple of them today. About a month or so after Justin was born Audrey (then, age 4.5) and I were walking through Walmart and she starts smacking my behind as we walked. I said, "Why are you smacking my booty." She said, "Because it jiggles when I do it." Short pause while we keep walking. "Actually(favorite word these days), it jiggles when you walk." Another short pause, still walking, trying to ignore her. "Actually, your arms jiggle too." I'm wanting to say, "Cut me some slack! I just had a baby!" not that she would see my point, but I was just cracking up. So, then she starts chanting, "Jiggle-jiggle. Jiggle-jiggle." At which point I put her in someone's grocery cart and walked away. Just kidding. She's a funny girl. That story actually reminds me of about this time last year when Steve was jogging through a neighborhood and chewed out a bunch of kids that were laughing and pointing out his "Man Boobs" bouncing up and down as he jogged. They used a less tasteful word but the insult was the same. We have had a good laugh about that one many times!
One more from Audrey. She is blessed with some of the same little "beauty marks", aka moles, on her face around her mouth that I have. We were standing in line at Chipotle on Saturday, paying for our food when she whispered in my ear, "How come some people have silver moles?" I couldn't figure it out until I saw her staring at the cashier, who had her lip pierced with a tiny little diamond. I love all of her questions, like "What does, 'No time to lose' mean?" (from her obsession with Scooby-Doo) She is just a treat to have around and I miss her while she's at preschool. I'm really going to miss her next year when she's gone every day to kindergarten.

Smoothies, Sentences, Secrets & Sales

This week has been extremely busy with home improvement projects, Enrichment, classroom party planning and more Christmas shopping. But there is always time for a smoothie just about every day. We're addicted! The kids love it when I open the Smoothie Shop after school and pick what they want. I must say, my smoothies rock. Credit is probably due to my Hogi Yogi days but I have even come a long way since then. I guess if you have one EVERY DAY you are bound to get it perfect! My 2 faves are blueberry, peach, banana blended in rice milk (no dairy for me right now) and mango, kiwi, banana blended in orange juice. Both with a little sprinkle of Splenda.
We are back to tough love in our house. Periodically we have to get mean and make the kids write sentences as a form of punishment for whatever. We had a nice Family Home Evening lesson about lowering our voices and speaking kinder words. There are slips of paper with kind words written on them taped all over the house to remind us. Anyway, the sentence thing works. They hate it especially during the school year when they already have callouses on their fingers from writing so much. So far the kids have learned how to shorten "I will obey my parents" to "I'll obey." 150 of those is much easier than the longer version. We like to scare them by telling them they have to write "I will obey my parents always because if I don't then I will have to pay the consequences, and I don't want to do that because I want to be able to play with my friends outside" or something like that - 200 times. :) And after all that they still love us...
Justin is growing way too fast for me. The newborn phase has come and gone and he has quite the personality. He's very energetic. He does, however, like to snuggle with me sometimes if I whisper secrets in his ear. He'll sit very still for a very long time and even fall asleep occasionally if I whisper anything in his ear.
I hope to get our Christmas cards done this weekend and in the mail on Monday. Basketball season for Jackson and Sadie has started and we are gone 2 practice nights a week and the games start up next weekend. I wish they would wait until after Christmas to start up the season but they don't. Sadie is the only girl on the team and she has much to say about that, as you can imagine. I hope she doesn't get too discouraged because she likes to play.
The kids want to have a garage sale to make some extra money for Christmas. I don't want to and we've thought about just giving them the money for donating everything to Goodwill but also want to teach them the value of work. They do all the work for the sale and reap the rewards. We recently got new carpet (still a pleasant surprise every morning when I step out of bed) so we de-junked a little before we put everything back, so there's a little money to be made but garage sales are a pain. If we don't do it next Saturday, it's all going, going, gone!
I know, a lengthy post, but it's easier for me to do it once or twice a week, rather than every day. I think it's time for a smoothie!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

but it sure doesn't feel like it. We're still waiting on that cold snap to kill all the bugs. Clark Griswold, I mean Steve, was up on the roof finishing off the Christmas lights last night and got eaten alive by mosquitoes. I'm on top of the shopping this year with only a few purchases left. Hopefully we can swing a date night one of these weekends to finish it all off. I've become a pretty good online shopper. I only worry that when the packages are delivered, my nosy kids might open them up but so far I've been home to get them. Jackson says he still believes in Santa but I think that's only because I always tell the kids if they don't believe then they don't receive. :) A couple of websites I've recently become aware of for good deals are slickdeals and babycheapskate for baby deals, obviously. I once got a jillion jars of baby food for pennies each because of a coupon I got off that site. Now, of course, my baby refuses to eat baby food.

Thanksgiving

No pics to post because my camera battery was dead and I never got out to get another one. We spent several days in Rockledge hanging out with family. Thanksgiving day was nice. We had dinner at Brian and Bridget's house, all 42 of us. All siblings were there minus Marilyn and Paul and all grandchildren were there minus Abbie, Adam, Matthew and Kelsie. The kids LOVE hanging out with their cousins. Who wouldn't? There are so many to choose from. :) My mom planned a "While You Were Out" kind of thing for my dad while he was working at the temple on Friday and Saturday. She had Dan and Paul redo the computer room. Dad got home a little earlier than expected and the work wasn't done but he was still pleasantly surprised. Since I don't have any pics of Thanksgiving, I posted some random favorites from this year.

Pumpkins

I couldn't resist doing these pictures of Justin, especially after looking all over creation for a pumpkin big enough to do it and finally finding it in my friend, Julie's front yard. They turned out so cute. Jill's baby, Ian, who is a month younger than Justin did not appreciate being woken up from a warm nap to be squeezed into a cold pumpkin.

Halloween

Here we go! I'll be honest about this whole thing. I decided to blog for our little family because I'm not very good at journal writing and because I wanted to preserve some history in a safe place that won't blow away in a hurricane or burn in a fire. I'm not doing it because of peer pressure so I hope you don't expect too much out of this blog. :) So here goes nothin'. These pics are obviously of Halloween. The kids costumes were easy this year. There was just too much going on to put too much effort into them. When Jackson said he wanted to be a basketball player I said "Okay" right away before he could change his mind. EASY! Nothing like the alien costume we did last year. The kids had a great time at the church Fall Festival and trick-or-treating. Once again, the candy overfloweth. I can't eat any of the chocolate because of Justin's milk allergy so I just smell it and wish I could eat it. This is the second Halloween in a row I've missed out on the candy. Last year I was pregnant and sugar made me sick. Check out Steve's chain. It's like an industrial strength (and weight) one you get at Home Depot, spray-painted gold. It's all we had around the house. :)