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!!

Snow days & sick days

Sunday afternoon Kitty started acting very tired. We took dinner over to my sister's house and Kitty just pretty much laid out on their couch the whole time we were there. She ate a little bit of dinner, but not the amount she usually does. Then for the next 3 days she was pretty much out of it. She spent most of the days sleeping, had a slight fever off and on and didn't eat very much. The few times she did try eating she would throw up about half the time right after she had eaten. Thankfully today she woke up with noticeably more energy than she has had this whole week and she has been eating and drinking without it coming back up. Hopefully she is over it and that none of the rest of us will get whatever it was...

Yesterday we woke up to snow! We probably got about 4-5 inches that stuck to the ground and it was a really wet, heavy snow. So, while Kitty was inside doing this:

the older kids were outside doing this:

Alpine Loop

October 30
On Thursday we went for a drive with DH's parents around the Alpine Loop and saw some pretty scenery. Unfortunately we were a couple of weeks late for the really pretty fall leaves, but we still had a good time and got some pretty pictures. I think that because of the warmer fall weather this year we have had much prettier fall leaves than I remember in previous years. It has been really beautiful watching the trees slowly change this year.

Fall zoo trip

Wednesday, October 29
This was the perfect day to go to the zoo. The weather was in the upper 60s to low 70s and there were very few people there. A lot of the animals were active, especially the tiger and quite a few of the monkeys. All of the kids, even Baby K had fun on the train ride. The kids also enjoyed watching the 3 baby meerkats. We also watched some trainers trying to get one of the camels on a slightly raised platform so they could weigh it - and Mabel was not cooperating! She reminded me of my kids sometimes. The trainers were trying to bribe her with treats and goodies and she would get her front two feet on the platform and then she would get down and go around to get to the treats. After several tries they decided that she would have to work harder to earn her treats and they were refusing to give any to her until she cooperated more. I got some cute pictures of the kids there as well - it's so hard to get all 5 of them looking at the camera and looking cute at the same time!

Funeral

My husband had an uncle pass away on Sunday, October 26. DH's parents came into town Wednesday evening through Saturday morning to attend the funeral. The viewing was Thursday evening and then we all went to the funeral on Friday. He was only 59 and died of complications from diabetes. It was a really good funeral and it was neat to hear each of his six kids talk about him and share some things that we didn't know before.

Here is the obituary that was written about him:

Kenneth Robert White
You are Loved
Our loving father, papa, and friend returned to his Heavenly Father on October 26, 2008. Kenneth was born February 7, 1949 to Boyd and Janice White. He married his sweetheart, Linda Bangerter, in the Salt Lake Temple. They had six children and were later divorced. Kenneth Loved the Lord and his family. He will be greatly missed. He is survived by his children: Kimberly (Nathan) White, Aaron (Alee), Jason (Camila), Jennifer (Shane) Goudswaard, Steven, and Michelle. Brothers: Boyd and Brett and sister Alana. Preceded in death by his parents. A viewing will be held at Jenkins-Soffe South Valley, 1007 W South Jordan Parkway (10600 S.), Thurs. October 30, 2008 from 6-8 p.m. Funeral Services will be at the Garden Grove LDS Chapel, 1925 W. 9000 S., Friday, Oct. 31, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. with a viewing one hour prior to services. Interment will be in Brigham City, UT. Condolences may be shared online at www.Jenkins-Soffe.com

Halloween 2008

We've had a lot happen over the past week and a half so bear with me as I try to catch up.

Halloween was kind of crazy this year. Since my kids were going to be out of school for Halloween, Luke and Blondie's classes had Halloween/costume parties almost 2 1/2 weeks before Halloween. Luke's I only found out about the day before the event so he just wore an old costume that we had around the house. Blondie wanted to be a witch so she wore M&M's costume from a few years ago.

Then our ward had a Trunk-or-Treat a week-and-a-half before Halloween so I had to get the rest of the costumes ready by then. Luckily, the only costume I made this year was M&M's. I found Luke a Transformers costume (Bumblebee) at the store, Kitty wore a Piglet costume that I made a few years ago for M&M and then Baby K wore a bunny costume that I made for Kitty when she was a baby (the hat was a little tight around her chubby cheeks, but it worked). M&M has been somewhat difficult lately to come up with costume ideas for but this year I suggested an M&M costume and she thought that would be a fun idea. We went to the fabric store and picked out some fabric and then I just made it from scratch with no patterns or anything. She decided on green and I wanted it to be warm so I bought some fleece, cut it out in the shape of a circle with a hole cut out for her head. Then I covered it with some green light cotton fabric and sewed the sides together, leaving it open at the bottom and holes on the sides for her arms. I gave M&M the task of designing the "m" for the front and cutting it out of some fusible fleece that we could iron on the front. She just used an M&M wrapper for reference and then drew the shape onto a piece of paper and then cut it out to use as a pattern. I think she did a great job! Unfortunately we were only able to make it to the very end of the trunk-or-treat because M&M had her last soccer practice that evening as well.
The week of Halloween was absolutely beautiful this year! Since the kids were off-track from school we spent the week doing some fun things. On Tuesday I took the kids to Gardner Village to get some Halloween pictures and then on Wednesday we went to the zoo. The temperatures were perfect for these activities and the zoo was practically empty.

After dinner on Wednesday we carved and painted pumpkins. Kitty and Blondie decided to get small pumpkins this year and paint them. Kitty just had fun painting her pumpkin all blue (and even got some on her pajamas). Blondie had a really cute face painted on hers and then she got carried away and painted over it. Luckily the paint on top was still wet and the face underneath was dry so I was able to save it somewhat by wiping off the top paint. M&M, Luke and I got big pumpkins and we each designed and carved our own. Luke and M&M's jack-o-lanterns turned out really cute. The only help they had from DH and me was some help with getting out some of the pumpkin innards. M&M has done her own before, but this was Luke's first time carving his own.

(left to right: M&M, me, Luke, Blondie, Kitty)

On Thursday the kids and I finished decorating our Halloween cookies.

My husband and Grandma N took the kids trick-or-treating on Friday while Grandpa N gave out candy at our house for us. I had to make a visit to the hospital to see my sister who had some surgery earlier in the day. It was by far our warmest Halloween since we have lived here in Utah and the kids went farther than they ever have while trick-or-treating. They all enjoyed themselves and didn't even need to wear jackets!

Scary

This is probably the scariest thing from our Halloween week:

I was trying to get a picture of Luke's braces that he got a couple of weeks ago and this is one of the pictures that I took. He was trying to keep his mouth open wide while at the same time trying not to close his eyes when the camera flashed. I just couldn't quit laughing when I saw this picture.

**Warning - Don't look at it for too long, it might give you nightmares!