Thanksgiving Weekend

For Thanksgiving we had our good friends, the Cheneys' over for the weekend. Jeremy went to high school with Ben and we have kept in touch with them over the years. They now live in Wisconsin. Jeremy started the day by playing football with the other old guys in the ward. I wasn't there, but rumor has it that Jeremy was the star of the game! We had a delicious and huge dinner as usual then stayed up late (1:30 am) playing Settlers of Catan. Then Rachel and I got up to go shopping on Black Friday. We got some great deals and had a blast! On Saturday we kept our tradition of cutting down our Christmas tree. There are not any national forest close enough to go truck through to woods out here so went to a tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree. We saw a real reindeer, and took a hay ride to the field where we cut our tree. It was very muddy, but at least it wasn't a blizzard like last year! We also got to visit Mrs. Claus in her little house and she taught us a few things about Santa. Did you know that his favorite kind of cookies are the colorfull ones? We also got to put the kids names on the "nice" list! All in all it was a wonderful weekend.
As I was cleaning the house to get ready for company and Thanksgiving, Micah came up to me and asked if his hair looked any shorter. Of coarse that question made me stop what I was doing and look. Sure enough he had cut a lot of hair from the top of his head and he cut it SHORT!! So I had to try to even things up by cutting off all of his beautiful golden curls. Very sad, but it will grow back.......eventually.


P.S. I somehow deleted all of the blog addresses for all of my friends. Will you all please leave a comment with your blog for me? Thanks!!

Catch up!!

Kids with the coats we collected.

I'm playing catch-up now.
We had a fun Halloween with the trunk - or - treating and the trick-or-treating! I was able to help out at Savannah and Alex's class parties. Then we went to our friends, the Temples' house for a party. All the kids went trick - or - treating together then we ate and chatted with everyone. When it was over we lugged at least 25 lbs of candy home (ok I'm exaggerating a little but they really got a lot of candy). The candy is now gone.
For our family service project in November we did a coat drive in our neighborhood. We colected over 20 coats along with some hats, snow pants, gloves and boots to donate to a family shelter service. The kids had a great time and learned a lot.

It's getting colder!!

Fall is in full swing around here. We need jackets to go out, the leaves are changing and we're busy with all sorts of fall activities. I've always thought of Halloween as the kickoff of the Holidays. After Halloween it's just a blink of an eye until Thanksgiving and then comes Christmas!!!






We hosted a Halloween party on Friday for Savannah and some of her girlfriends. Alex also had a friend over. The little boys were running around yelling and screaming but they were nothing compared to the girls who were playing a clean version of "Truth or Dare". Jeremy was amazed at how crazy girls can be. They all had a great time.






Saturday we had family pictures taken. Hopefully they turned out well. It was a lot of work to get the kids to cooperate all at the same time. It will be worth it I'm sure!

Tonight we took time to carve the pumpkins that we picked out last Family Home Evening (or Family Out Evening). It always amazes me at how exited the kids all get at the smallest things. It is always such a huge ordeal, I can't imagine not following the tradition. The pumpkins are carved and sitting out on the steps and the mess is finally cleaned up! The kids are in bed and I'm sure they are dreaming of their Trick-or-Treat buckets overflowing with candy!

Other news: Alex lost his second front, bottom tooth. Gray is now in the Nursery at church, but he won't go alone so I'm going with him. He looks like such a baby compared to all the big kids who will be Sunbeams in January. Hopefully he'll do better once they have all moved on.

PS Could someone please tell me how get a cute background for my blog, put slide shows and music on? Thanks!

Conference Weekend

I was planning on updating every week, but............well, you know how it goes. We had a wonderful weekend listening to General Conference. I loved the talk by Elder Wirthlin about how to handle adversity......."try to laugh". I also enjoyed the talk by (??? can't remember now) about living in the here and now and being thankful for what we have. The kids did great and stopped to listen to our Prophet whenever he spoke. They kept entertained with their "Conference Packets" which had lots of fun activities and pictures to color.

I did have to pause the tivo a few times on Saturday to take Savannah to ballet class and pick her up and I had to take Alex to a football game (he made a tackle!!!). A few weeks ago, Jeremy and I went shopping to buy the supplies we needed to put together 72 hour kits. During the break between the Sunday sessions we assembled our kits. I'm amazed at how much stuff we needed for a family of 6!!!! Hopefully if anything happens that we would need those kits, we'd be able to use them at home or use our car because I don't know how far we'd get on foot. Hopefully we'll never have to find out, but it a peacful feeling to get that taken care of. (It only took us 12 1/2 years.)

As for other news for the past few weeks......Savannah has been doing lots of homework. I finally cut Alex's hair. He also lost his first tooth and is $1 richer!!! Micah got his foot caught in the spokes of a bike while getting a ride from a bigger boy. It is gruesome to look at but he's ok. He and Gray have been playing a new game where Gray lays on a blanket and Micah pulls him around on the wood floor. Gray got some new teeth in and has been busy finding pencils and writing all over the walls with them. He also had his first hair cut and is big enough to wear the much loved "cow suit" !! ( I thought you'd like to know that Ben and Megan!) I've been busy cleaning walls (and everything else). I'm also attempting to make "quiet books". Wish me luck!! Jeremy, well, you can guess what he's been doing. Working and crying over the Cubs.

Back to school

Many of our friends and family members have requested that I start a blog. Well, I actually started one last October, but only put one post on. So I guess I'll try this again!!

The kids started school 2 weeks ago and it has bee wonderful! Savannah is in 4th grade, Alex is in 1st and Micah is now in preschool. Savannah likes school and has a friend in her class that has been with her in the previous two years. That is rare considering there are 16 4th grade classes in her school.

Alex is loving PE and could do without the rest. He has fallen asleep in Art class twice already. Maybe it is not a good idea to have him go to lunch/recess, then PE and then off to Art. Can a 1st grader fail Art? Hmmmm.....

Micah had no trouble at all going to preschool. He walked right in and didn't look back! I was a tiny bit late picking him up on the first day but he didn't mind. Now that I think about it, I was late picking Alex up on his first day too.

Alex has started playing flag football. Savannah starts ballet next week. I have started running and lifting weights and ballet classes again. It is fun to be back on schedule and time is once again flying by.