Christmas Day 2008

Merry Christmas 2008!
Unfortunately Baby K got up just as I was going to bed on Christmas Eve and then she woke up bright and early at about 6:30 a.m. The rest of the kids, with Luke leading the way, were up shortly thereafter. It was snowing pretty good already at this point and we got a phone call from my sister and then my parents saying they were leaving to come over to our house. So I got breakfast in the oven and we waited for my sister and parents to show up and for my husband to get himself up...
Because of the weather it took everyone a little longer than usual to get to our house and then DH decided to torture the kids by getting up and showering beforehand. By the time Marilee and Roger and my parents got to our house we were all pretty hungry so we ate breakfast before we let the kids go down to the presents. They were pretty good-natured about it and we finally headed downstairs around 10:00.



Here is a picture of our best present for the year - isn't it great having older siblings?? I don't even think she realized she had something on her head.



The big present this year was two Nintendo DS systems for the family. Each of the kids got a game for it and they all had fun trying them out as you can see from this picture here.

While we were opening presents it continued to snow pretty good outside and my parents delayed leaving for a couple of hours. They finally left to brave the weather in the early afternoon to go and start the turkey dinner at their house. Then Marilee and Roger left and called and said that roads were fine once they got outside of our neighborhood.
So later in the afternoon we headed over to my parents' house for Christmas dinner and to open more presents over there.
By the time we headed for home the roads had become quite slick and our van almost didn't make it up the hill that my parents live on. After we got out of my parents' neighborhood the roads weren't too bad until we got over closer to our neighborhood. At one point DH and I jumped out of the car to help push another car that had gotten stuck.

We had a great Christmas and were sad that Kevin & JayneAnne and family weren't able to make it down because of the huge amounts of snowfall up in their neck of the woods...

Here are our annual Christmas pictures of the kids:

So close!!

Baby K is so close to crawling! She is slowly but surely putting two and two together!

White Christmas!

We definitely had a White Christmas this year! Did you??
We probably got about 6-8 inches of snow on Christmas day with some of the snow drifts a couple of feet deep...

Christmas cookie time!

We can't let the Christmas season go by without baking and decorating sugar cookies. Blondie amazed me this year with some of her decorating skills...
Kitty was all about lots of sprinkles!!

Christmas Eve 2008

My parents came over to our house for Christmas Eve dinner and activities. We read & acted out the Christmas story from the scriptures and then sang Christmas songs. After that the kids opened their annual Christmas Eve presents of new pajamas.

Baby K was not too interested in opening up her present, but she was not about to give up the ribbon to her older sister...

After that we set up some sleeping bags for M&M and Blondie on the floor in Kitty & Baby K's room so that all of the kids would be upstairs (their idea). Amazingly it was pretty quiet after they all went to bed so we didn't have to send them down to their own room. :)

Sunday best

Here are the kids posing for a picture after church on Sunday:

When Blondie sets her mind to something...

I've wanted to post this blog entry for some time but I have really struggled to come up with a good title for it...

Blondie has been a dedicated 2-finger sucker since she was just a month or two old. It has always been her first two fingers on her left hand and is usually accompanied with a blanket held under her nose. Her first blanket ended up in shreds about a year ago so we found a replacement that she was willing to try out. It took a little while to break the new one in but then she was hooked once again. When Blondie was getting closer to kindergarten age I started gradually trying to get her to not suck her fingers so much - but fingers are harder to take away than a pacifier. Whenever we would sit down to watch some T.V. or to read a book, in would go the fingers. I started getting after her more and more whenever I saw her doing it but I didn't try too hard to get her to break completely before school started.

Then about a month ago the kids were watching T.V. and I realized that Blondie didn't have her fingers in her mouth! I started thinking back a little and realized that I hadn't seen her sucking on her fingers in a while. So I asked her if she sucked her fingers anymore and she said that she had stopped! I asked M&M later if she had seen Blondie sucking her fingers recently and she said, "no". About a week or two after this happened I was at the school and I asked her kindergarten teacher if she had ever seen Blondie sucking on her fingers and she said, "no".

So somehow, on her very own, Blondie stopped sucking her fingers! I was truly amazed when I watched her for a few days after she told me she had stopped and I didn't see her once sticking her fingers in her mouth. When I told DH about this he was also amazed and couldn't remember the last time he had seen her sucking on those fingers. (She did admit to me a couple of days ago that one night when she went to bed she put her fingers into her mouth before she remembered that she had quit doing that!)

This is the most recent picture I can find of Blondie sucking her fingers (and notice the blanket next to her nose). I didn't like to take pictures of her sucking on her fingers. This one was taken on Father's Day in June.

My husband has remarked that he thinks Blondie might have a little bit of his Grandma White's drive in her. From stories that I have heard of Grandma White, whenever she set her mind to something, she got it done. Blondie is like this in more than just this instance of quitting the finger sucking. When it is lunchtime and I'm not quick enough at making her lunch, Blondie will go and try and fix something herself. Also, if she is trying to ask me if she can do something or have something and I am busy and taking my time in responding to her, she will just go and take my non-response as a "yes" and help herself to whatever it is. I think it is awesome that Blondie has this drive in her, but I will definitely have to keep a close eye on her - especially as she gets older...

Post #500!!

My last post was the 500th blog entry that I have published since I started my blog almost 3 years ago, in April of 2006! I can't believe I have been doing this that long!

Band concert

M&M performed in her school band concert last Thursday evening. The school hasn't had a band program for a couple of years so they are just trying to get things started with a new teacher. The kids seem to like him and the band is a good size for it being the first year. M&M is learning to play the flute and enjoys it. They played 3 short Christmas songs.
When we went to parent/teacher conferences last month, the band teacher was there so we went up to talk to him. He had nothing but praise to say about M&M and her flute playing. He also said that she is always offering to help the other flute players that are struggling and she will also get up in front of the class to demonstrate how to play the songs to the rest of the class.

Blondie's turkey drawing

Blondie was recognized on Friday for the Principal's Pride award for her very colorful turkey drawing! It was fun watching her receive the award - she was so excited to be getting it...

Christmas Stockings

I finished sewing Baby K's Christmas stocking on Friday and added some more hooks to our sign. When I made the first few stockings, I decided to make green stockings for the girls and red for the boys - hence we have quite a few more green stockings than red now... We had an extra hook so M&M hung up a little stocking that she had.

Almost Christmas!!

I can't believe that Christmas is almost here! December arrived before I realized that I needed to get started on my Christmas shopping! Needless to say, with 5 kids I have been somewhat busy lately trying to get the things done that I need to - plus with Christmas concerts and parties going on as well! As of today, I have finally mailed off all of my packages and I got most of my Christmas cards done last night - just a few changes of address I am still trying to find. I am almost done with all of my Christmas shopping and just need to start wrapping now.

Unfortunately we had a nice snowstorm this morning which prevented me from getting a few last minute things done - so they will just have to wait for another day... I also haven't been feeling too well these last few days - my back/neck have been acting up - probably from carrying Baby K around...

School choir

Since my parents and I missed M&M's school choir concert due to the dress rehearsal we had to be at, we attended one that the choir did for the school a couple of days later. The group has about 40 kids in it and they sang some cute Christmas songs. It was quite warm in the gym where they were performing and the most eventful part of the performance though came just as the first song was ending and one of the girls on the front row just fell straight back and passed out right there on the risers. Luckily her mom was there and carried her right out to take care of her. She hit her head pretty good on the riser right behind her and came back in a little later with a bag of ice.

She can do it!!

Baby K has finally figured out how to roll from her stomach back to her back! It still takes some effort on her part but I don't think it will be too long before she starts rolling to actually get to places. Plus she's close to crawling as well. Baby K turned 8 months old the day of my Sounds of the Season concert and she's such a happy and delightful baby to have around. She's most happy at home around our family. When there are strangers around or she is in an unfamiliar place, she usually just sits and stares at people with the most serious look on her face.

One of the great things about Baby K taking a little longer to crawl and roll is that I was able to take her to several of my community choir rehearsals. I would just sit her on a blanket on the floor in front of me with a few toys and she would just sit there playing and looking around. Towards the end she was starting to get to be a great reacher and got into trouble once when she made a lunge for my music stand and knocked it right over. The people in the choir loved it when I brought her and loved to watch her during the rehearsals. The only bad part about it was that the rehearsals went until 8:45 p.m. and by that time she was ready for a feeding and bed and would usually cry the whole drive home. :'( I also usually end up taking her to ward choir practice with me because my husband is usually still at church for tithing settlements. I get comments all the time on how she is such a good baby at these practices.
I love this picture! I was trying to take some pictures of Baby K in action without her seeing me or the camera. Whenever she sees the camera or camcorder, she stops whatever she is doing and smiles up at me. In this picture I was lying on the floor behind a box with the camera and Baby K was leaning to the side to see me.

This is how Baby K sucks her thumb - she turns her whole hand around to get the thumb in her mouth.

Baby K has become quite flexible as she gets herself into funny positions while trying to reach for things. And she can usually get herself back up into the sitting position afterwards...

Star Wars Fans

Here is a great YouTube tribute to Star Wars & John Williams:

This is the original group, Moosebutter, singing the song:


This is Corey Vidal lip-synching to the song:


More info on the song:
moosebutter.com

Sounds of the Season

I was asked to play the flute again for our city's community choral Christmas concert (enough c's??) this year. Instead of just 3 numbers like I did last year though, there were flute &/or piccolo parts for 8 of the 13 songs and the director had me write a flute part for a 9th song. It's a pretty big time commitment for the choir members (they practice once a week in September and October and then twice a week in November until the concert the first Saturday in December). This year the director asked me if I would head up the instrumentalists because she was going to have a bigger group than last year. So I was in charge of contacting the instrumentalists and making sure they knew when and where the rehearsals were and what to wear for the concert. This year we had 2 flute players, 1 oboe, 1 trumpet, 2 violins, 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 harp and 2 percussionists. We just had the concert last Saturday and it was AWESOME!! The choir keeps getting bigger and better each year and the instrumentalists really added a lot to the choir pieces.

The time commitment for instrumentalists isn't quite as involved as the choir members, but it still involved most of the choir rehearsals in November as well as a 4 hour dress rehearsal 2 nights before the concert. I was a little concerned with Baby K and if she could be away from me for that long and be alright. I also really debated what to do with the kids for the concert. If it was just me with the kids I don't think I would have been concerned, but since it was going to be DH and the kids, that's a different story. Last year by the end of the concert my husband was ready to take the kids home and string them up by their toes... So this year I debated not even having them come - but then again I was concerned with how Baby K would do since the call time for the concert was 1 1/2 hours before the start time and the concert was going to be about 1 1/2 hours plus travel time.

We ended up having even more fun when we found out that M&M's school choir concert was going to be the same night as my dress rehearsal (which I couldn't miss). That meant that DH had to go to the choir concert with all the kids by himself. Then afterwards he had to head over to the church for tithing settlements. It turned out that there weren't too many appointments set up so they sent DH back home. Meanwhile at the dress rehearsal we were given about a 45 minute break in the middle for some food so I had time to run home, feed Baby K and make it back to the rehearsal before they were ready to start again.

After the dress rehearsal I went home and was laying in bed that night when a brilliant idea came to me on how to help DH out with the kids at the concert. Since I knew the choir songs and the setup for the concert I came up with a 25 question quiz for M&M and Luke to take during the concert. They were questions where they had to be paying attention to get the right answers (and the reward was one reward token for each question answered correctly). For Blondie and Kitty I printed out a bunch of coloring pages for them to color during the concert (princess pages and some music pages as well). Then I had DH get there about a half hour before the concert so I could feed Baby K again before it started. I also had my sister and her husband who were coming to the concert and had agreed to help out with the kids.

During the concert I kept looking back into the audience to see if my husband had to walk out with any of the kids. Amazingly he didn't and at the end of the concert he was still in a good mood and pleased with how the kids behaved. It was a great night! And I'm looking forward to next year!

Christmas background

Why is it that I can't find a decent Christmas background for my blog? There are a couple of websites that offer free backgrounds which I have used in the past, but no one seems to have any cute Christmas ones that I like. There were lots of cute summer themes and fall themes, but nothing for Christmas. So until I find something that I love, I will be using this flowery background that at least has the Christmas colors...

Thanksgiving week waterskiing??

Yes, the week of Thanksgiving my husband and some coworkers went waterskiing on Utah Lake. We had an unseasonably warm November but as you can imagine, it was still fairly cold. My husband said he was fine with the wetsuit on, except for his hands and feet which FROZE. When he was finished with his run it took him a while to get warmed back up again.

My parents came over to my house that morning for me to drive them to the airport and DH mentioned that he was going waterskiing that day. They thought that he was joking until I looked at them and said, "No, he's serious." I think that he and his coworkers were a little bit crazy, but they all survived and I think enjoyed themselves for the most part.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We wish we could have been with more family!
We just had a small Thanksgiving meal with our family this year. My parents went to Michigan to be with my sister's family and my sister that lives nearby had to work Thanksgiving Day - so she and her husband came over the day after for leftovers.

Here is a list of some of the things I am thankful for:
- my wonderful husband who supports our family so I can stay home with the little ones
- 5 beautiful, healthy children
- the house over our heads
- good food
- this free land we live in
- my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Missed...

The other day we were eating dinner and Baby K was sitting in her high chair. I tried feeding her some baby food but she soon lost interest so I gave her a couple of Honey Nut Cheerios to keep her entertained. She would play with them and then they would stick to her hand and she was totally oblivious to the fact that they were there and then resorted to sticking her thumb in her mouth:
As you can see, she wasn't very successful at getting them in her mouth, but they made for some cute pictures!

New calling... again...

Once again I have been given a new calling in our ward. I was in my primary pianist calling for about 9 months - 2 of which I took off when Baby K was born. I was just starting to feel really comfortable playing for the primary and chorister and really enjoying being in the primary. The week before our ward primary program my husband told me in Sacrament meeting that one of the counselors in the bishopric wanted to me with the two of us after church. Since my husband recently got a new calling as the finance clerk in our ward I was fearful that this was going to be a new calling for me. I was totally surprised by the new calling though and right now I have to say that I am having a hard time getting excited about it. And in case you're keeping count, this is my 5th calling since we've been in the ward - a little over 5 years. (They did let me stay as pianist until the primary program was over which was nice.)

My new calling is a den leader for the cub scouts - the bear den, which is 9 year olds. When the calling was extended to me, I was basically told that I was being given this calling because the primary presidency knew that I was dependable and would do my best to get it done. (So I guess my downfall lately is that I am too dependable...) My co-leader is another lady in the ward who has 4 kids and her husband is out of town for work a lot. So between the two of us we have 9 kids with M&M being the oldest at age 10.

There are about 5 boys in our ward that are in the troop and about half of them come. At my first den meeting the old leader wanted to finish up what he was working on with the boys so we could get a feel for how things are run. So the other new leader and I showed up and he was showing us the info that he had and gave us some materials and then he said that he wasn't feeling well and was going to go home and leave us in charge... It definitely would have been nice to know that ahead of time. There were 2 boys that showed up that night and they were finishing up the basketball belt loop. One of the requirements was to play in a basketball game. So we played 2-on-2. The boys against the leaders (that's what they wanted to do). Our biggest advantage was that we were so much taller than the boys. And unfortunately one of those 2 boys was a nonmember who just moved out of the state this week.

Basically the other leader and I are the blind leading the blind and have no experience whatsoever with cub scouts so this should be an interesting learning experience to say the least... Plus most of the other leaders are new, including the Cub Master, so they don't know what we're supposed to be doing either...

YUMMM!!

The three older kids got some coupons at school for a free ice cream cone from Arctic Circle so last Friday I took them out to pick up their free cone. I also got one for Kitty and then got shakes for DH and me. We brought everything home to eat and while I was eating my shake, Baby K seemed really interested in it. So I let her lick off of my spoon, thinking that she wouldn't like how cold it was. Well, to my surprise she didn't react at all to the cold and wanted more. I gave her a little bit more and then decided that she was probably ready to try some baby food. So I put her in the high chair, mixed up some baby rice cereal and tried feeding it to her. She absolutely LOVED IT!! Most of our babies when they try their first solid food make funny faces and seem to get more on their face than in their mouth, but not Baby K. We couldn't feed it to her fast enough. She was making excited noises when we were getting the next spoonful ready and when we weren't fast enough she would stick her thumb in her mouth. M&M loves to feed her the baby food and we tried applesauce the other day which she also loved and went through the whole baby jar in just 2 days. Then last night my husband was drinking some orange juice and Baby K wanted some and loved it once again. So we put some in a sippy cup for her and she guzzled it all down...

Asleep

More photos of the kids sleeping - it's been a while since I've posted any:

This morning I laid Baby K down on the couch for a few minutes so I could help DH and the kids get ready to leave and when I came back downstairs I found her like this.
Kitty fell asleep like this while we were reading scriptures one evening. She was at the tail-end of her recent sickness.
Luke wasn't too happy that I wasn't letting him play GameCube one day after school and this is how I found him right before dinnertime.

Differences

Having 5 kids it is so interesting to see the differences between each of the kids and what motivates each of them. Recently I started up a reward system for the kids. We decided that we didn't just want to give them an allowance every week for chores that they should be expected to do as a member of our family and one of my visiting teachers told me some time ago about a reward system that she does with her kids. It sounded like a good idea to me and so I adapted to fit our family and then bought some gold tokens at the store for the rewards. The way it works is that when the kids do extra chores or do an extra good job at something then they get rewarded with tokens that they collect and can trade in for money or other rewards (i.e. candy, time on the GameCube or computer, getting toys back that were taken away). I can also take tokens away as a form of punishment.

So far we are still getting used to the system and ironing out problems with it. The kids had been bugging me for a while to let them trade in their tokens for other things and finally one Friday after school I agreed to let them trade. Luke immediately counted up his tokens and asked for money for it (he wants to buy some toys at the store) and at the same time Blondie took out a handful of her tokens and wanted candy for hers. M&M traded in 2 of hers for some candy and is saving the rest. Kitty was somewhat oblivious to what we were doing and of course Baby K is a little too young. I just thought that it was interesting to see the differences between the kids' responses. It definitely fits their personalities - Luke is obsessed with "things" and money, Blondie loves treats and snacks, and M&M likes to save up what she has earned. BTW - Blondie was the first to finish her Halloween candy...

I have yet to figure out how to motivate Kitty. I think she is without question my most difficult child. She is 3 1/2 already and I still can't motivate her to get potty-trained even. She was doing great before she got sick and now it feels like we're back at square one. She'll do really good one day and seem excited about it and then the next day she has no interest to use the bathroom. She gets a treat whenever she does something in the potty and we already picked out and bought a toy that she wanted that she gets when she is fully potty-trained, but so far those haven't been motivation enough. (And my older kids don't think it's fair that she gets a treat every time she uses the bathroom and they don't... Ha Ha kids!!)

For your viewing pleasure...

Here are some great YouTube videos that I came across recently:

Frozen Grand Central


Food Court Musical


Twilight trailer spoof
Even more funny if you watch all 3 Twilight trailers first...


The Worst Best Man Ever

Look at me!!

Baby K turned 7 months old last week and is getting much better at sitting by herself. I can leave her for brief periods of time just sitting there on the floor with a few toys in front of her. She does this weird thing with her tongue lately where she twists it sideways and bites down on it with her toothless gums. She can almost get herself up into the crawling position, but she still hasn't figured out how to roll back to her back from her stomach. She still manages to get around the room somehow - I will leave her in one spot for a few minutes and come back to find her several feet away. She has also stopped sleeping through the night which I can't quite figure out - it could be because it is colder at nights now or because she needs those middle of the night feedings to keep up her girly figure...

And she still drools/blows raspberries a ton!!

Does this baby look like a boy to you?!?

The last two days I have had at least 5 people ask if my baby was a boy!! It happened 4 times just this morning while I was at two stores with Blondie, Kitty and Baby K. Baby K was in her car seat the whole time and looked like this:

Isn't she cute?!?
Now I realize that she is wearing green and not wearing a headband, but the outfit is covered in little flowers and frills and she has a pink blanket on her. (I haven't been putting headbands on her lately because she will not leave them on and is constantly playing with them and pulling them down around her neck...)

I think that people just assume that since the two older kids with me (Blondie and Kitty) are girls that odds are that the baby must be a boy. Well, let me tell you what people, the odds of the baby being a boy are the same as the odds of the baby being a girl. It's not like if you have all girls, or all boys, that your odds are somehow greater that the next baby will be the opposite sex. The odds are the same, 50/50, for each child you have!!

Sorry, I just needed to get that off of my chest...

Awesome sight!!

I didn't think that I would ever see this again:
Gas below $2.00!!!!!! Hooray!!!
It's definitely taken a while here in Utah, but I filled up today and was finally able to pay less than $2.00 a gallon again! I've been watching and waiting as the gas prices have been slowly and steadily dropping. Now let's keep it here for a while... And I love Holiday Oil that gives you $.10 off a gallon when you pay using a Sinclair card!!

Fall School Projects

Here are some projects that the kids brought home from school:

Luke's scarecrow
Blondie's haunted house
The story to go along with Blondie's house (they dictated the story to their teacher who then typed them up).
Blondie the spider
And here is a picture of Baby K who I apparently put too close to the stairway banister and she took advantage of my mistake. Look at how pleased she is with herself!!