Family History bug...

I have been catching the family history bug a little bit here and there lately.  There were a couple of nights in a row right before Christmas where I was staying up until 2 in the morning doing some research on the computer.  And then even when I forced myself to go to bed I stayed awake for way too long just thinking.  There are some cool things that I have been able to find just doing research online, especially from some of the census records.  In one case I was able to find a whole family that is a sibling of one of my ancestors who it appears has not had any temple work done for them.  Luke is turning 12 this Friday and DH made a comment that it would be neat to be able to take him to the temple to do baptisms for the dead shortly after his birthday.  So we have set a goal to try and find family names that we can take with us that he can be baptized for and have M&M come and do the female names.  The main reason that I have slowed down the last few weeks is that there are a few family lines where I need to go to the family history library to look up records for and I am afraid that if I do that with too many lines at once I will get too confused on what info I need to look up when I finally make it there.  It is pretty neat the records that have been made available through the church's website and I am slowly getting used to using the new common family tree format and how to make changes with that.

(One comment that I have about the research that I have done so far is that there are way too many people with the same or similar names in England back in the 1700-1900s!!  That is another reason why I am afraid that I am going to get super confused if I do too much at once.  Sometimes it is hard to tell who is who in the records!  And most of my family lines come through England.)

DH has also been working a little on my paternal line and has found some records farther back than we have ever been able to follow the family before.  Right now I have about 12 names that need baptisms done for them that I have reserved.  When I started research on the line where I found the family that needs work done, I went through the steps to reserve the names for the temple work and my eyes just started tearing up.  I really got a strong impression that there is someone there who has been waiting a long time for their work to be done.  (I still tear up every time I think about it.)

Unfortunately I haven't been able to index lately because my computer that I use at home is too old now to run the program on...  I am grateful for the indexing that I did do though because I find that I have a much easier time deciphering the info that is recorded on the family records that I have found and it has been a neat experience.  

I had a strange dream a few weeks ago that DH and I and some other people were sleeping overnight in the temple for some reason.  After everyone else was asleep, I couldn't sleep so I got up and started walking around the temple.  Pretty soon I started seeing spirits of deceased people all around me and I could hear and interact with them.  I also saw spirits outside of the temple who couldn't come in.  I went back to wake DH up and had him walk with me.  At first I thought that he could see the spirits as well but after a little while I realized that he was not able to see or hear them - it was just me.  (I wish that I could say that it was a super spiritual dream, but the spirits that were in the temple with me didn't seem particularly worthy to be there and some of them were doing some pretty strange things...  Maybe I'm not supposed to remember that part though!)

MJ talk

Today when MJ finished her lunch she handed her cup to me and asked if I could put it in the sink.  I said "yes" and then I looked at her hands and noticed that they needed washing so I asked her if I could wash her hands too.  She said, "Sure."  After I finished washing her hands she said, "thank you" and then I put her down on the floor and she ran off to play.  After a few seconds she came back to me and said, "Thank you very much for washing my hands."

Kid talk

Luke came home from school on Tuesday and somehow we got on the topic of the inauguration that had been the previous day.  He mentioned that he heard at school that someone had been "lip singing" the National Anthem at the inauguration.  I wasn't sure if I understood what he had said so I asked him to repeat it.  I then corrected him and said that it was "lip syncing" not "lip singing".

Christmas Eve 2012

Monday, December 24

We just had our family for Christmas Eve so we read the story of Jesus' birth from the scriptures, watched a few bible videos from the church and then the kids opened up their Christmas pajamas.

Kay was very excited about her Rapunzel/Tangled pajamas.

This is how Kay poses for pictures lately!

I was really excited to find these cute pajamas for Blondie and Kitty that came with matching pajamas for their dolls.  They love them!  I also discovered that I love Kitty in the color red.

MJ in her Dora jammies - they are super warm and fuzzy!

I apparently didn't get any pictures of M&M or Luke in their pajamas, but you can see theirs in the Christmas day pictures when they are opening gifts.

Our outdoor Christmas tree

Saturday, December 15

We have a blue spruce tree in our front yard that is a short, little squat thing.  About 2 years ago I bought a string of lights to put on it at Christmas time and so we strung some extension cords out to it and put the lights on it.  The tree has grown quite a bit in the last 2 years and when we went to put the strand of lights on it this year it looked pretty silly.  So I found the same type of lights and bought 2 more strings that we put on the tree.  When we came home from our ward Christmas party, we thought that the tree looked really cool with the lights shining through all of the snow that had fallen on it.  DH took a few pictures of it.

Christmas concerts

M&M's band concert was Wednesday, December 12th.

Blondie's school orchestra concert was the following evening, Thursday, December 13th.

They both performed well.  We are a little disappointed in M&M's band this year.  There are not a lot of 9th graders that are in the band program so the top band is a very small group and they have moved up some of the 8th graders to make the group a little bigger, but that means they are not quite as good.  M&M is definitely looking forward to moving up to the high school next year.  Blondie's school orchestra is amazing!  Her teacher has been teaching there for several years and has an excellent program going at the school.

Sounds of the Season 2012

December 7-8

Our Friday night performance went pretty well, although I had a huge headache that whole day.  I was a little nervous on a couple of the songs starting out, but once we got into it I did alright.  It was fun having M&M participate with me this year.  We'll have to see what her schedule is like for next year's performances!

I think that our second night went a little bit better than the first, but I struggled a little on the piccolo part!  For the last song there was a section where I needed to play really high on then piccolo and by that point in the concert I am pretty worn out.  I didn't get it all out on the first run through but I was able to get the part out for the encore (which was just the last half of the last song).  So playing that high part twice on the piccolo at the very end of the night is asking a bit much for someone at my level!  DH and Kay to the Saturday night performance as well as my sister and her family.  DH was wondering if this is the first time there has been 3 generations of performers in the group - my parents, me and M&M.

Decorating Christmas cookies

Monday, December 24

On Sunday I had the kids help me cut out the Christmas cookies and cook them.  The kids had a lot of fun taking turns cutting out the dough.  I had them each take a turn rolling out the dough and then cutting out the cookies for the next pan.  Then we decorated them on Christmas Eve in the afternoon.  Kay did an amazing job decorating cookies!  We made several different colors of frosting and without any help, Kay decorated her cookies like she was an artist!  She used several colors on each of her cookies and even put sprinkles in specific places to make features on the cookies, such as eyes or buttons.  I was really impressed with her!

Look at that concentration!

The angel here was Kay's first cookie that she decorated.  She also did the candy cane and the gingerbread man.

Kay also decorated this snowman.

Ward Christmas Party

Saturday, December 15

For our ward Christmas party this year we had a dinner which consisted of breakfast foods (breakfast casserole, muffins, fruit and hot chocolate).  The kids were allowed to wear their pajamas if they wanted to (and Kitty was the only one from our family that wanted to).  After the dinner there were a few musical numbers (including the bishopric playing kazoos) and then a video put together of the primary kids answering questions about Christmas.  DH got to participate with the bishopric (he is an assistant ward clerk).  This is the best picture that I got of the group:

Lots of hair!!

December 13

M&M came into my room after showering and blow-drying her hair to show me the result:

She has a ton of super-thick, long hair!  Unfortunately this wasn't quite the look she was going for! :)

Trampoline fun

November 24

I love watching these two girls jump on the trampoline together.  MJ looks so tiny jumping around out there!  Here are some pictures from one of their last times jumping before the weather turned really cold!

More snow pictures

November 10

I have finally gotten around to editing the pictures from DH's camera that I took of the kids playing in the snow.  There weren't any great ones, but here are a few:

 Kay posing for the camera!

Blondie sitting on the middle section of their snowman.

Tower builder

Thursday, November 22

On Thanksgiving Day we were over at my parents' house cleaning up after dinner when we looked over and saw MJ doing this:

The only reason she stopped putting blocks on top was because she couldn't reach to the top of the stack anymore!  Once she realized she wasn't tall enough to add any more, she started removing them from the top and starting a new tower next to this one!

Kid talk

I am not the type of parent that makes a big deal out of my kids staying up for New Year's Eve.  My feeling is that if they want to stay up, they are more than welcome to, there is no special age required for our kids.  Apparently Kitty does not remember/know why we stay up on New Year's Eve because when we were getting ready to play some games this year I asked Kitty if she was going to stay up and her response was, "What for?"

Kay talk

DH was out of town for a week right after Christmas, visiting his parents.  The day that he was coming home, the kids had swimming lessons.  The girls and I were in the locker room changing afterwards and I was talking to Kay about picking up her dad later that day and she was really excited about it.  She was talking about why she was excited that he was coming home and she said, "He's really good... and he's so good, and he's handsome!"  (That just sounded so funny coming from a 4 year old!)

Then a couple of days ago Kay came into my bedroom while she was in the middle of getting dressed to show me something.  She had a line going down the middle of her stomach, probably from how she slept that night, and she said to me, "See this line? It's just like yours!"  (It looked a little like the scar that I have going down my abdomen!)

MJ talk

A couple of mornings ago I opened my bedroom door to find MJ quietly playing outside of my door.  When she saw me she looked at my pajamas (which have penguins on them) and she said, "You got penguins.  And I pooped."  Yes, she needed her diaper changed!