Deep Freeze

Such a sweet, happy baby

Travis found this hat on our front lawn, and has been having fun with it. 

Caleb taking over Malachi's seat, and enjoying helping me bake. 

Travis shoveling snow ( I love that man)

Caleb, sleeping off all the sugar

Samuel got some dinosaurs for his birthday from Grandma Kathy

Bringing his dinosaurs in out of the cold

Samuel got this remote control car, after earning 1000 pts, for good behavior

Okay this week has been super cold, the weather people are calling it a deep freeze, it has been below 0 degrees ever since Tuesday.  It is supposed to start warming up tomorrow to 21 degrees, yeah, finally.  On Saturday I boiled a ham bone with some carrots and celery to make some delicious stock for soup. I look forward to this soup every thanksgiving or Christmas with leftover ham. I turned off the stove and got ready for bed while it cooled down. I asked Travis to go downstairs and stick it in the refrigerator for me, and he went downstairs so I had assumed he had put it away. When I came downstairs this morning, it was still on the stove. I was so disappointed. Travis said he had gone downstairs and checked to make sure the doors were locked, and forgot about the stock. He said sorry, and said we could take out the ham bone and re boil it while we are at church, and that would kill the bacteria. So we went to church and left the pot of stock on low. When we got home, there was smoke in our house and it smelled horrible. I put the blackened stock pot and put it outside and opened all the Windows and doors. Apparently all the stock had evaporated. That should not have happened with the pot on low and being full of stock, so the only explanation is God didn't want us to die from eating the stock, so he made it evaporate faster. I feel grateful Heavenly Father was watching out for us.  We got a ton of snow, and the roads have been bad all week, so I have not driven anywhere.  So, little bit of a boring week.  But, still not too boring around our house.  On Monday,Caleb wanted to make hot chocolate while I was feeding the baby. He went into the kitchen and got out two containers of rice milk and a container of coconut water and dumped them on the floor. Next he threw six packets of hot chocolate mix on the mess. He came upstairs and told me he made a big mess. When he showed me his mess he said " I tried to make you hot chocolate". We cleaned up the mess, and Caleb said "yeah we get to mop!"  As you can see by the pictures above, that I've been baking with Caleb, he loves helping me bake, and eating and licking lots of bowls and beaters.  We are still on track to buying our house by Christmas, but the repairs have been delayed due to the weather, but we are still working on it. Travis had Wednesday off from work, due to the weather, and the kids had Thursday off of school due to the weather.  Tuesday morning before the storm hit, I did go to a friends house to exercise, and had a tire low on air on the way there, so I had to stop and get it filled up, then after the workout, the car wouldn't start at first, so when I finally got it started, I drove to an auto shop, and found out the battery needed replacing, so we waiting for them to replace it.  Caleb really liked watching the monster trucks driving through the mud on the t.v. while we were waiting.  He kept saying how the trucks needed a bath, he was cute.  Joseph went Christmas caroling at an old folks home with the youth, and said he felt the spirit really strong.  We had the missionaires over for dinner on Thursday night, and the kids were good during dinner, but after dinner they were being stinkers, so I sent them to bed as soon as the missionaries left. Caleb has been sick with a bad cold, the past couple of days, and I have not been getting much sleep.   Friday night, I got a ride with a friend to our Relief Society Christmas dinner, it was so nice to get away for a little bit, and have a nice relaxing dinner.  Yesterday we spent the day cleaning and packing.  Austin is a superstar for getting all her chores done.  Today My poor sweet Caleb, is home sick, so I was letting him watch Mickey's Christmas on t.v., and he was watching the part where Mickey loses his dog Pluto, and is sad, because he can't find him. Caleb turns to me, so sad, and says "I need you" and buries his head into me and starts sobbing and crying huge crocodile tears, and says "Mickey needs to find his dog, can you help him?" I told him it would be okay, and cuddled him, and when Mickey and Pluto were reunited in the movie, Caleb jumped for joy, and said "thanks Mom, I knew you would help" I love my little boy