Christmas Day

I decided I really need to post about Christmas Day before the new year came.

We had a good Christmas. I loved that it was a beautiful sunny day. The previous two days were really foggy, so I really enjoyed the sun and blue sky. We had a low key Christmas Day. We spent the day hanging out at home. We got up at 7am to go out and see what Santa left. We have cut back quite a bit the last couple of years on the amount of gifts the kids get. They get three gifts from Santa and then have a few wrapped gifts under the tree. (I've decided it's better to get a few more thought out gifts that really end up getting used than spending way too much on junk that only gets used a few times and then ends up at goodwill or in the garbage can.)
Whitney discovering her Santa gifts. She was kind of afraid at first and would not sit in her wagon for awhile. Now she loves it. She sits in it all the time and pulls her dolls around in it. We've only taken it outside once, but had to clean the wheels because she wanted to bring it back in the house.
I didn't do a very good job taking pictures on Christmas. The above photo is the only one I took of Evan.

After playing with the Santa toys for awhile, we opened the wrapped gifts. Whitney has anxiously awaited the day she could unwrap the presents that have been under the tree.


The picture below is my favorite one from the day. This was the last gift that was opened and it was for the whole family. I love the look on Lauren's face. She was so excited.
The rest of the day was spent playing with the new toys and relaxing. We had our traditional ham dinner with Kirk's Mom and Dad and just spent some fun time as a family.

Christmas Eve

We had a fun Christmas Eve at our house. Usually Christmas Eve is our busier day and then Christmas day we just stay home and have a nice relaxing day.
We always get together with my sister and her family on Christmas Eve. This year the gathering was at our house. We had our traditional pizza and pop for dinner with lots of Christmas goodies for dessert.
After dinner we had a little program. Some of the kids read Christmas stories and some sang a Christmas song.
The program always ends with the Christmas story. Tyler read the story in Luke 2, while the little kids did the puppets. It always ends up being a little chaotic, but hopefully they are learning something from it.
After the program everybody opens up one present.
After we got the kids in bed Kirk and I visited with Kirk's Mom. We got so involved in the chatting that we almost forgot to get the Santa gifts out for the kids.

Our Christmas Surprise!

At about 3pm on the afternoon of Christmas Eve day we got a fun surprise. Kirk's Mom showed up unexpectedly to spend Christmas with us.
Kirk's sister and family were driving out this way from Idaho and were planning to stop by and visit us on their way to spend Christmas with her husband's family. They talked Kirk's Mom into coming with them at the last minute and decided to surprise us. We were definitely surprised when the kids opened the door and there was Grandma.

We enjoyed having her with us for Christmas Eve and most of Christmas day. The visit was short but was lots of fun.


Kirk's Mom brought these glasses with her and Whitney had to try them out.

A Visit with the Big Guy in Red!

Last Saturday Santa made an appearance at our ward Christmas party. The little kids (except Whitney) were excited to see him. They had anxiously been awaiting this moment.
Evan told Santa that he wanted some Legos

Shannon was a little embarrassed to sit on Santa's lap, but she told Santa she wanted a camera, DS case and bracelets.

Lauren told him she wanted a coloring book (such a simple request).

Whitney didn't want to have anything to do with Santa this year. This is the first year she wouldn't sit on his lap. She wouldn't even stand next to him for a picture. Even after we went into the other room she kept saying "I don't want to sit on Santa's lap". She is pretty observant because when "Santa" came back to the party dressed in his regular clothes, she said "Santa's undressed now." There is no fooling her.

8th grade Basketball

Tyler played on the 8th grade basketball team this year. He was on the B team again. His coach is a member of our ward. I think he enjoyed playing, even though it took a lot of his time with practices and games. Some of the away games were about a two hour drive away. That's a long way to ride on a school bus.

I was able to go to most of his home games. It was fun to watch him play. He had his last game this past week. The season went by really quickly. I enjoy basketball because it is indoors where it is warm and dry.




Lauren and Whitney enjoyed attending a couple of games with me. Lauren liked playing on the bleachers. She even found a friend from her kinder class at one of the games and they had fun hanging out together.

Evan's Baptism

December 5th was a big day at our house. It was the day of Evan's baptism. He has been excited for this day to come. He has been anxiously awaiting his turn all year. He has a big primary class and I think he was the last one to turn 8 and to be baptized.
Evan and I started off his baptism day by helping collect the food for Scouting for Food. It was very cold out, but fun to do some service. Evan was not afraid at all to go knock on people's doors and tell them what he was doing. Afterward we headed home to get the house ready for company.
That evening we gathered at the church for Evan's baptism. Grandma and Grandpa gave the talks and he was baptized and confirmed by his Dad. Were glad to be able to have family come for his baptism. My parents, Kirk's Dad, and my sister's family all came. After the baptism the family all come over to our house for dinner.
Congratulations Evan! We are proud of the decision you made to be baptized.

The Trimming of the Tree

Friday, December 4th, we made our annual trek out to the Christmas tree farm to find our Christmas tree for this year. It was nice that we were having dry weather so the trees were all nice and dry. It was really cold, though. We had to travel in two vehicles, so Kirk and Shannon left first and had a tree all scouted out for us. By the time the rest of us arrived we just walked over looked at the tree they had picked out and then we cut it down.
This year we had Grandma and Grandpa with us. They were in town for Evan's baptism the next day. Whitney stuck close to Grandma the whole time.

The four older kids all tried to help cut down the tree. Then Kirk did the final cutting down and hauled the tree to the truck. He looked funny carrying the huge tree on his back. What a strong guy he is.
Later that evening we decorated the tree. Evan and I put the lights on and then the kids all put the decorations on. It was a fun evening and helped to put us in the Christmas spirit.

This Cute Little Girl is Now . . .

(I think I'm finally ready to say it)

. . . Officially Potty Trained.

I've been afraid to say it - afraid that maybe she would regress.

Whitney was my quickest and easiest one to potty train. She had it down in basically 3 days. I guess she decided to go easy on her Mom, seeing as she is #5.

A couple of months ago I decided that Thanksgiving weekend would be it - the weekend that potty training boot camp would be held. Wednesday, November 25th, was D-day. The day boot camp officially began. (It was also Evan's 8th birthday and the day to bake Thanksgiving pies). She did fairly well that day. She had four accidents and three successes. She spent lots of time sitting on the little potty in the kitchen watching movies on the portable DVD player and playing with play doh.

Thursday we didn't work on the potty training too much because we went to my sister's house for Thanksgiving and were gone for a good portion of the day. Friday potty training boot camp resumed and she only had one accident the whole day. Whoo hoo! I think were making progress. Saturday she had no accidents. Since then she has had a couple of accidents here and there, but she is now wearing underwear all day long - even at nap time. (She still wears a diaper at night.) We have been all over the place and so far no accidents out in public. We have even braved many public restrooms.

I am so proud of this cute little girl.

My Mom & Dad always buy the grandkids a present for learning to use the potty. This weekend while they were here they took Whitney out to buy her potty present. She didn't understand at first - she thought they were going to buy here a new potty. She picked out the cute baby below. She calls her "my potty baby". She loves her potty baby.

On another unrelated subject, Whitney loves to carry bags and purses around. Ever since Evan's birthday she has latched onto this blue gift bag. She loads it up with stuff and carries it around all the time. I have had to tape and re-tape the bag as it has ripped and gotten holes in it. One of these days it is going to be unrepairable. I am sure that will be a sad day at our house.

Thanksgiving Week

We always have a busy week on Thanksgiving week at our house. We have two birthdays that week plus Thanksgiving, which makes for an eventful week. Luckily I didn't have to host Thanksgiving at our house (I just had to make some of the food).

This year for Thanksgiving we went to my sister's house. She lives about an hour away and it is always fun to get together. The kids love to play with their cousins. They don't really see that much of each other because my sister and I usually get together while the older kids are in school. They hadn't seen each other since right before school started, so it was fun for them to get together again. We had a yummy dinner. I didn't bring my camera, so no pictures.

I always enjoy Thanksgiving - the great food, family to visit, and a chance to slow down and think about what I am Thankful for.

I think the best part of the week was I only had to babysit for two days during the week. It was so nice to have five days in a row of just my family in our home. It was nice to sleep in a little and be able to just enjoy my kids. I miss just having my kids to take care of.

We also had a few other things going on during the week. Friday morning I went and did a little shopping - just here in town. I waited until about 9:30am after all the crazy shoppers were gone and was able to get most of what I wanted. We also worked on potty training with Whitney, which she is doing great with (that deserves it's own post). Last week we started working on teaching Lauren to read. She knows all her letter sounds and is always trying to sound out words. She is doing great and is already on the second book.

Here is just a random photo, since I didn't take any at Thanksgiving.

Fourteen!

Yesterday was Tyler's birthday. It is hard to believe that he is 14 now. He will be ordained a teacher next Sunday. He is excited to move up with the older boys again. We are definitely well entrenched into the teenage years. Hopefully we will all make it through unscathed. He is currently playing basketball on the 8th grade team.
He started his birthday off with a trip to the barber. We let him grow his hair out a little longer for awhile, but it was time for it to come off. After his haircut he came home and opened his presents. Later that evening we had his ice cream cake that he wanted.

Eight is Great!

Yesterday was Evan's birthday. He has been anxiously counting down the days until his birthday. He thought it was terrible that we made him wait until evening to open his presents. The kids had the day off from school but Kirk had to work, so we made him wait.

After dinner we had a small family party. He got some fun presents (star wars stuff, a bionicle and a boombox).


Evan has been wanting his own set of scriptures, so he was very excited when he opened his gift from Grandma and Grandpa S. and found a set of scriptures with his name on them. He has already used them a couple of times for our family scripture reading.

This is a special birthday for Evan since he turned eight. Now he is anxiously awaiting his baptism, which is coming up in just over a week.

Crafting

Lately we have been doing a lot of crafting at our house. The kids have had lots of fun and interest in doing crafts lately. They had a couple of days off from school for parent teacher conferences and we needed something to do to help fill the rainy afternoons.

The first day they got on a kick making puppets out of lunch bags. Lauren started and pretty soon the others joined in. They made some pretty creative puppets and used half my package of lunch sacks.

The next day we got the paint out and did a Thanksgiving craftt. I found some cute kid friendly crafts on a blog called Ramblings of a Crazy Woman. (I am not very creative, so I have to find ideas from others.) We made turkeys using cheap paper plates. You finger paint several colors on the plate for the turkey feathers and then you cut out a head and put a beak and eyes & a gobble on it. I thought they turned out pretty cute. We hung them in the kitchen. (I didn't take any photos of the whole group painting.)

I have been trying to spend some time each day doing something with Lauren when the little kids are napping. Some days we do her homework and other days we color or do crafts together. One day last week she wanted to do some painting, so we made another turkey and some Indian corn with her fingerprints. I think they turned out pretty cute.

You can see her finished products in the photo collage above. They are the two bottom photos.

Evan's Soccer Season

Evan started playing soccer again the end of August. He was excited to start, but soon lost his enthusiasm for it. This was the first year that he played on a full length field, which meant a lot of running. Something that Evan isn't that good at. He is a really slow runner. When they run laps or run back and forth at practice he is always at the end of the pack. Sometimes lagging way behind.
He didn't have the best coach this year. Last year the coach worked really hard at improving their skills and Evan improved a lot over the course of the season, but not this year. One time at practice they played kickball. I'm sure that improved their soccer skills.
It was really hot the day of their first game. I think it was in the high 80's and there is no shade at the field. Evan played hard and was tired and hot by the end. Part way through the season he got tired of it and we had to force him to go to games and practices. We made him go though, because he made the commitment that he was going to play so we needed to stick to it.
I think this will probably be the last year he plays, though. If that's the case then no more sitting along side soccer fields for practices and games, yeah. He wasn't able to go to his end of season game because Kirk and I both had other commitments. It didn't seem to bother him, though, as long as he got his trophy.