Christmas

                                            Joseph and Austin in their new  church clothes

                                                Betsy and Austin's new church dresses

                                             Betsy loves her new doll

                                            Joseph is ready to rock-n-roll with his new guitar

                                               The snow fort!!!

                                           Samuel and the Snowman, and playing in the snow

The Tuesday before Christmas we got almost a foot of snow over 2 days of constant snowing.  So Travis decided we needed a snow fort.  He spent hours making this big snow fort in the front yard, with occasional help from various family members.  I don't have a picture of the finished product, but it was really tall.  The snow was perfect for packing and building, and we all had a blast playing outside and building a snowman and a fort.  It was a wonderful snow day, full of hot chocolate and going in and out of the house playing in the snow.  Since Travis has been out of school, we've been working on lots of projects getting ready for the baby, and we're almost there.  Christmas Eve we went to Travis' Uncle Nick and Aunt Nora's house in Salt Lake City, with his sister Maia's family and had a nice early dinner, and then went to see the nativity at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, the lights were amazing, and the nativity was really neat.  It was cold, and crowded and we we're having a hard time getting the kids to behave appropriately so we didn't stay too long.  We decided to cross the street to see if we could use the bathrooms in the conference center (we couldn't find anything open on temple square) and then head to the car where we parked to go home.  Travis stopped to give a homeless man some Christmas cookies, and didn't see us cross the street, and we didn't realize he wasn't with us until after we had crossed the street.  So the kids and I waited at the water fountain by the conference center for Travis to come across, but he never did.  His sister made it over, and told us Travis was looking for us on the other side of the street, so we went and crossed the street again.  After looking for a moment, I realized it was silly of me to try to walk around and find him with four kids, when he knew we were going to the car, so we turned around, and crossed the street again, and went to go look for a bathroom in the conference center.  We finally found a door to go in, as someone came out, and then went through another set of doors, that we hoped would lead to a bathroom, unfortunately it lead to a stairwell, with only roof access, and the doors locked behind us so we couldn't go back the way we came.  After climbing around for 15-20 minutes we finally found an exit door, and made it out.  We still hadn't found a bathroom, but decided to go to the car first, to see if Daddy was still there.  Thankfully he was, and we drove to a McDonalds, and took all the kids to the bathroom.  After coming home and putting kids to bed, Travis and I stayed up until almost midnight, putting together a 3-in-1 game table that he got a really good deal on.  Then at 4am the kids were up and ready to open presents, I quickly sent them back to bed, and then a little after 6am, we allowed them to come into our room, and we had scripture study, and then went downstairs to open presents.  The kids were so happy and excited to open their presents, they loved them all.  We spent the rest of the morning putting together the girl's new barbie mansion, the boys train table/Lego table, and opening up and figuring out new toys.  I made cinnamon roll Christmas tree, bacon, and scrambled eggs for breakfast, which we're very yummy.  A little after 2pm, Travis and I finally went upstairs to shower and dress for the day, and just as I finished my shower, Austin came pounding on the door, saying that her cousins we're here.  Sure enough after dressing quickly and coming downstairs, our house was full of Travis' Sister and her family of 6 kids.  It was a fun surprise, as the kids got to play with their cousins, and show off their new toys.  They had tried calling us, but had the wrong phone number.  Anyway, they stayed for a few hours, and then left to go to their in-laws for dinner.  We had a nice ham for dinner, and had a wonderful Christmas day. 

Christmas Caroling

Last night we did our Christmas Caroling.  The kids and I have spent the last two weeks baking cookies and Christmas treats, to put on our plates.  We had homemade Oreo cookies, peppermint patties, carmels, chocolate dipped carmels,  peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate, sugar cookies, peanut butter blossoms, monster cookies, peanut butter fudgy buttons, chocolate scotcharoos, raspberry brownies, and mint brownies.  We made up 20 plates.  I should have taken a picture of us in the kitchen with all the cookies and plates, and us and the kitchen covered in flour, sugar, frosting, and sprinkles, it was quite the mess.  It still is actually, I have to finish cleaning up this morning, and I'm not looking forward to it.  Anyway we got ready to go, and managed to get all the plates out to the car, with the kids only dropping two (it's a good thing I made extras).  We brought our bells, Santa hats, and Christmas music for the three songs we've been practicing with the bells (away in a manger, jingle bells, and Christmas bells)  It was snowing outside, and had been all day long, so everything was a bit slippery, but we managed to have a good time, with only a few children getting in trouble here and there.  The kids loved playing the bells, and giving away our goodies, and we're always very disappointed when someone wasn't home.  We finally finished about 8:30pm, and since we hadn't had dinner yet, and with a messy kitchen and an exhausted Mommy, we went to the olive garden for dinner.  It was delicious and the kids had fun playing and coloring in the kids menus, and we had a good dinner.  We didn't get home until 10pm, everyone was so tired we practically fell into bed.  Which is why I still have a messy kitchen to clean up this morning, and I'm stalling by writing this blog.  : )  The kids have a half day at school today, and then they're out for Christmas, everyone is excited for Christmas to come.  We love having Travis getting a break from school, he is busy moving things around, and helping us get the house ready for the baby coming in 2 months. 

Christmas Performances

The kids all had performances at school for Christmas, and all did a wonderful job.  Here is a picture of Austin and Betsy all dressed and ready to go.  I took my camera, but we were sitting so far away,  I couldn't get any good quality pictures or videos.  Travis has finished all his finals, and we are so happy to have time with him, where he doesn't have to study all the time.  I have a whole list of projects of things we need to get done to get ready for the baby, and other things that have fallen behind.  So hopefully with Travis around during the next two weeks we can get it all done. 

Peppermint Patties and Samuel

 Samuel is very happy licking the bowl of peppermint pattie dough

York Peppermint Patties, are my favorite candy, so this year I decided to find a recipe and make them as part of my Christmas baking.  Oh my, they are delicious, I think I like them even better than the store bought ones.  Samuel and I had a lot of fun making them, and I keep snacking on them, if I can't control myself I'm not going to have enough to give away on Christmas plates.
I realized that I didn't write much about Samuel around his birthday, so I'll tell a little about him now.  One thing he does extremely well is clean his room, and put away his laundry.  He is better about it, than any of the other kids.  When his laundry cart has any clean laundry in it from downstairs, he will drag it up the stairs, and put everything in their proper drawers (now it isn't always folded very nice, but it's where it's supposed to go), he will have me help him hang up his church clothes, but the rest he prefers to do by himself.  Then he will throw the empty laundry cart back downstairs for when the next load is clean.  When he cleans his room, he puts all his toys where they go, and makes his bed, and will ask me to bring him the vacuum upstairs, so he can vacuum it before he is done.  I love this about Samuel, his room is cleaned almost every day, sometimes he is a little OCD about it, and the way things are done.  Like for instance he has a cubby for his cars, but he insists on putting them all in his backpack, so he is ready to go to Grandma's house, he also keeps play money and some finger puppets in it.  I try to tell him we're not going to Grandma's house any time soon, and he can keep his toys out in their cubbies, but he insists that he needs to be ready.  He won't sleep with a blanket anymore, he has to have a sleeping bag.  He also has to keep his Lightning McQueen water bottle on his dresser, so he can get a drink at night.  He is my sweet little boy, who loves to read books with me, watch movies, play games (his favorite right now is called "zingo" he got it from his Grandma for his birthday), and help me bake and clean, and go through my daily routine.  He is very interested in learning his letters right now, and finally knows his colors, and can count to 20 (he still skips 16).  Samuel is very good at giving hugs and kisses, and needs lots of cuddles when he is upset (or I'm upset with him).  He is also very stubborn, and I usually need to pick my battles with him, because he can be most unreasonable if something is important to him, and I don't give in.  I love my Samuel, and I can't wait to see how he continues to grow up.

Some updates

 We went to a BYU graduate Christmas Party, and they were taking pictures and giving out suckers, and Samuel wanted a sucker, so I took and picture with him, and I'm sure Joseph got his picture for the same reason.  They had a good dinner, and an awesome ice cream bar full of tons of different kinds of candy all laid out in glass jars, the kids were in heaven, I think most of them had more candy than ice cream in their bowls.  They had fun craft activities for the kids too, Samuel loves his countdown rings that he made and is counting the days down until Christmas.

 I thought for Thanksgiving it would be fun to make some chocolate bowls, and put chocolate pudding and fresh berries and whip cream on the top, so the kids and I blew up some water balloons and melted some chocolate.  After letting the chocolate cool off a little we tried dipping the balloons into the chocolate to form the bowls. The balloons kept popping, so we'd wait a while and try again, until we had popped 4 balloons, and chocolate splattering us and the kitchen all over.  We kept laughing every time the chocolate flew all over, cuz we looked pretty silly.  I finally determined that we needed thicker balloons, and not having any gave up on the idea, and just poured the chocolate into some heart molds I have.  It was quite the messy clean-up job, but the kids and I had fun, and we had baths to get chocolate out of hair etc..  So anyway the kids were happy to play with all the balloons we had blown up and had fun with the static they create when rubbing them on your head, and played for a long time with them.  We ended up having a wonderful Thanksgiving with Travis' sister Maia and her family and his uncle Nick and Aunt Nora. 

 Samuel turned 4 on November 17th, he is turning into such a big boy.  He wanted a car cake, with marshmallows, so I just baked a cake mix, and frosted it with the pre-made stuff, and used M & Ms to make the road, and used marshmallows for the snow on the side of the road, and stuck a car on the road. It was the easiest cake I've made yet, and Samuel loved it, although he was a bit worried about his car being "dirty". 

 For Samuel's birthday we went to Chuck-e-Cheese to play, the kids had a blast as usual, and loved every minute of it. 

 For Halloween the kids and Travis and I all went out around the neighborhood Saturday night.  It was cold and pretty rainy at first, and we ended up just going around the cul-de-sac and coming home, then Travis took Joseph to do more, since he didn't care about the rain and cold.  Then when the rain cleared up, I took the other three kids out to Trick-or-Treat some more.  This is really a great neighborhood for Trick-or-Treating.  Betsy was always polite and asked how many pieces of candy she could have and Samuel had fun with his costume.  As a soccer ball he has lots of padding, and some of the house, were up a hill, and was quite a hike to climb up there driveway and then up stairs to their door, Samuel would always need my help to get all the way up there, then would flop down on the door step, until the door was answered and then pop up and say "trick-or-treat" then I would help him back down the stairs, but when we would get to the driveway, he would let go of my hand and start running, then rolling down the driveway.  When he would get to the bottom he would laugh and giggle and say how much fun that was, while I was trying to catch my breath, and keep him from rolling into the street.  It must have been quite a sight to see this little boy rolling down the driveway in a soccer ball costume.  Anyway it was exhausting for the both of us, and we soon headed home.  Samuel was so tired that when we got home, I gave him his one chocolate bar, and took him out of his costume, and helped the others kids get their piece of candy and put the rest away.  I realized I couldn't see Samuel, so I looked around and finally found him asleep in bed, still gripping his candy bar I had given him.  The poor boy was so exhausted he didn't even have the energy to eat any of his candy before falling asleep. 

 Joseph went as a solider, Austin as Snow White, Betsy as a Princess, Samuel as a soccer ball, and Travis wore his high school Letterman's jacket.  It was a good Halloween.

Now that I've explained the pictures, I'll give a few more updates.  I had my ultrasound at 24 weeks, and we're going to be having a boy.  I was shocked at first, I was so sure we were going to be having a girl, but I've adjusted and I'm happy to have another boy.  Austin was devastated as well, especially since that means the boys will out number the girls, but we had a talk and we're both happy about it now.  I'm now 30 weeks pregnant, and still not in perfect health, but much better then I was before.  I'm currently having trouble with itchy rashes on my hands, restless leg syndrome, and insomnia, which may just be something I need to deal with until after the baby is born.  Travis has been extremely busy with school work, but just has one last week for finals, and he'll get a nice two week Christmas break, which we are all looking forward too.  The kids and I love the Christmas season, and having been baking our Christmas cookies in preparation for Christmas Caroling in about a week.