December 2019

Gideon's birthday

Austin's gingerbread house

Betsy's gingerbread house

Samuel's first band concert

Christmas Eve gift called Comfy

Gideon's birthday cake

My piano students (3 are missing)

Betsy got a golden snitch drone

Gideon loves his new swing

boys playing on the stairs in the new comfy clothes

Caleb opening Christmas presents

Samuel and his gingerbread house

Our "tree of life" tree and Christmas stockings and presents all ready to open Christmas morning

Gideon opening Christmas presents

At the ward Christmas party, Gideon was being a stinker, so Travis put him in the garbage (nothing else was in there)

This is the first quilt that Betsy made, and donated to our ministering family who just had a baby girl.  This is the dad, and Betsy after he opened it for his daughter who was sleeping in the car, with her mom.  

Playing our new Jenga with Joseph and Travis, it was pretty fun, we played until there were no more easy pieces to take out!

Gideon and his friend Lucy on our hike of Aiea Loop

the girls holding up their comfy hoodies (they wouldn't show their faces)

Gideon sliding down his dirt slide

December was a crazy busy month, as it usually is, with all the different Christmas traditions.  We got everything decorated the day after Thanksgiving, and went with a "tree of life" theme this year, and talked to the kids about how it represents God's gift to us, and to remind us that Christ is the reason we celebrate, and to try and be more like him.  I also bought a manger that can also be used as a bookshelf when we are done with it, for everyone to put "straw" into it after all the good deeds they have done.  Some of the kids were good at doing nice things, but a lot of them didn't do a lot of good deeds that I could see, so that made me a little sad.  Gideon kept dumping a ton of "straw" in the manger or taking a bunch out, so he kinda messed up that part of it.  But, I just told the kids to keep doing acts of kindness.  Travis and I were both sick for the first few weeks of December, the cold we got made me lose my voice, and made it hard to sing in the stake Christmas Choir, the two rehershals before the performance I could barely sing at all, but luckily by the performance I was able to sing some.  I had a solo, and it was still quiet, but did manage to get it out.  The music was really nice, and Austin and I enjoyed the performance, but are really happy to have our Sundays back.  The rehersals took up a lot of time.  Austin(Orchestra) and Samuel(Band) had Concerts, that took a long time, but I enjoyed their music.  I took Gideon on a hike and we invited a friend.  The little kids liked the mud a lot, and the two hour hike took about 4 hours.  But it was really nice to get out on a hike again, after being sick for so long.  Travis decided that all his soldiers needed a gift from him this year, so I started out making cookies and individually packaging them, and ended up doing 1000, with my friend making 125 of them.  It was a lot of work, and I was sure glad when it was done.  My piano recital went really well, and I was proud of how hard my students have worked.  Betsy decided to help me with the 12 days of Christmas this year, for one of her YW projects.  She did a lot of the planning, shopping, wrapping, printing out cards to go with each day, and helping to deliver. We started with doing the family we had been taking to church, but they ended up having moved, so on the 3rd day, we delivered to another family in our ward, with 4 little boys.  On the 4th day, Betsy and I almost got caught, the entire family came pouring out of the house, screaming and running to try and find us.  We barely hid in time, and lucked out that they didn't look for us, in our hiding spot behind the bushes at the next house.  Betsy even cut her hand trying to run and hide, when she went to peek to see if they were coming, and they started coming right then.  We had to change things up every night, and the little boys seemed determined to catch us, but we managed to just be sneaky enough.  The final night, they left a card for us, thanking us for the added excitement and Christmas spirit.  The card said that the little boys stayed up each night at "stations" and walkie-talkies trying to catch us.   Betsy also had a follow up dr. appointment that turned out she needed more iron stores, but her blood count was good, so they ended up doing two iron infusions for her, each about a week apart.  I'm kinda glad Joseph didn't end up getting a job, it was so incredibly helpful to have him around watching kids and helping me around the house!  After the cookies for Travis' soldiers were made, we took a day for a break, then made cookies for our neighbors and friends.  On Christmas Eve we delivered all the cookies, and had our Christmas Eve devotional and opened our comfy presents.  Betsy started Physical Therapy this month as well, and is working on strengthening her muscles that have gotten pretty weak, with all of her bed rest.  Joseph received the Melcezedik Priesthood and joined the Elders Quorum.  He also has been gathering up everything he needs for his mission.  He received his temple recommend and is going through the temple for the first time tomorrow!  Gideon had his 4th birthday and was super excited that the Christmas tree would be his birthday tree for the day.  He had to have his presents under the tree and open them next to the Christmas tree.  He loved his presents, especially the dinosaur track from Grandma and Grandpa Hardy (he played with it for 6 hours straight).  Then that night Travis took Gideon and Betsy to Dave and Busters to play.  Travis had been there all day for a single soldier event, and had left his laptop there.  He had extra play cards so he took Gideon and Betsy back with him to play and pick up his laptop.  They earned lots of tickets earning a few jackpots, and brought back all the prizes for me to wrap for Christmas presents.  I had to take Joseph into the Verizon store to fix his phone, that was glitching a lot.  They said they would send a replacement since it was under warranty, then Travis and I ended up getting new phones since they were having a buy one get one free sale, and they showed us how we would actually be saving money in the long run with a new plan.  So we ended up giving Samuel Betsy's old phone, and Betsy got Travis' old phone, and we both got new phones, and I'm trading mine in.  So Joseph's phone arrived Christmas Eve, but instead of giving it to him, I wrapped it and put it under the Christmas tree for him to open the next morning.  I thought it was hilarious! (he didn't think it was so funny).  Anyway Christmas morning I woke up at 5am to make the cinnamon roll tree, and Samuel was already awake.  I had told all the kids we would open presents at 7am, so Samuel and Caleb who woke up shortly after had to watch cartoons until it was time.  At 7am, we woke everyone else up, and came down to open presents.  Everyone loved their stocking stuffers and presents.  We didn't give as many presents this year, but everyone was still happy with what they got.  We also got a family present of a trampoline and a bunk bed for Samuel and Caleb to sleep on.  We switched the boys around so now, Gideon and Malachi are sharing a room with twin bunk beds, and Caleb and Samuel are sharing a room with a twin over a full bunk bed.  We spent the better part of the day Dec. 23rd putting everything together and switching everything around.  Gideon is no longer in the closet, and the closet is now the craft room.  My parents also got their mission call this month and are going to New Jersey.  They go to the MTC the end of January, so they should be there the same time as Joseph!  

November 2019

Joseph fell asleep on the bean bag, so Austin thought it was funny to place ice cubes on his bare back.  He didn't wake up, so I had pity on him and took the ice cubes off, but the kids sure thought it was funny.  

Malachi practicing his surfing

So in November we had a couple beach days, with friends.  The kids had a lot of fun playing at the beach.  Joseph came back home November 14th, after spending a month and a half taking care of his Grandpa Kirkman, and his wife Bonnie when she wasn't in the hospital.  I'm sure they would have liked his help longer, but it was not a good situation (alcohol and drug use, and verbal abuse from his Grandpa).  We were happy to have him back home, but was disappointed when he was unable to get his job back, since he couldn't give them two weeks notice due to the family emergency.  He tried getting another temporary job, but was unable to.  He got his mission call to the North Dakota Bismarck mission, and even though a little disappointed he didn't get somewhere foreign, he is happy and excited to go on his mission.  He leaves January 14th, 2020.  Samuel had his birthday November 17th, and officially became a teenager, I now have 4 teenagers in the house.  He had a fun birthday, and he and Joseph went and saw a movie together.  He also had cake and ice cream, and had a few friends from church over to celebrate.  A family that we have helped give rides to church, had a few of their kids get baptized, so that was really nice to attend the baptisms and I played the music for them.  Caleb and Malachi were sick a little bit, and each had to stay home from school for one day with a fever.  Then we had Thanksgiving coming up.  Betsy and I went to a build a Thanksgiving meal program, and volunteered for an hour and a half putting together bags of food for soldiers.  We also went to an advent wreath chapel night, and had a good time there as well.  The 4 little boys all had dentist appointments and all needed work, so I cancelled taking them to the trampoline park since I needed the money from that to pay their dentist bills.  Austin had her driver's license test the day before Thanksgiving, we had been practicing, but when she took her test, they were so strict, that she failed for tiny, little things.  She was devastated and cried, but I cheered her up with Jamba Juice and Subway, and she was feeling better by the time we got home.  We set an appointment for her to take her driver's test about a week later at a different place, but she failed that one too, she was so close!!!  The driver's test is super hard here in Hawaii!  She still hasn't taken another test yet, but we hope she will soon.  We got our family pictures done as part of the YW fundraiser, so that was awesome!  Thanksgiving day was full of baking, and we had another family and one of Travis' soldier's over for dinner.  It was delicious and we had lots of yummy pies for dessert, and played games with the family.  Unfortunately Gideon wasn't feeling good, and fell asleep for an afternoon nap, and when he woke up he was wheezing and having a really hard time breathing, so Travis and I took him to the emergency room.  They were able to give him an oral steroid to help open up his throat so he could breathe.  He was a sad little boy, but was able to feel a little better, and even though he sounded horrible still, he was breathing better and they sent us home.  Travis set up a little bed for Gideon next to me in our room, and he slept there for the next several nights, until his breathing improved.  We kept Gideon home for about a week, not taking him to church or on other outings.  We did take him with us to get our Christmas tree, from the Helemano Christmas Tree Farm and had fun picking out our Hawaiian Christmas Tree!