MJ talk

As MJ was eating some Cheerios the other day she said to me, "Look, they're swimming mama!"

This morning MJ came into my room while I was brushing my teeth and she said, "Are you brushing your teeth?"  I nodded my head that I was and she said, "Oh, very good.  Did you put your toothbrush on your toothpaste?"

Church basketball

M&M has been playing church basketball for the Young Women this year for our ward.  This is her first year doing it so it has been a steep learning curve for her.  I was able to watch part of her game yesterday.  Our ward's biggest problem is that we have a pretty young team and they are all pretty short.  M&M is the oldest and tallest one on the team...  They had some good ball handling skills while I was watching, they just had a hard time getting the ball in the basket and the other team was quite a bit taller.  I did see M&M score one basket though!

Bird sitting

While my parents were out of town for a week I offered to watch their bird (a parakeet) for them at our house.  So they brought Bluebell over on Luke's birthday and then took it back home when they came back last Sunday.  MJ would not leave that poor bird alone and we finally put some twist ties on all of the openings so that she couldn't open the cage and stick her hand or toys inside of it anymore.  After that things went a little more smoothly.  It was fun watching the bird do all kinds of acrobatics in its cage and listen to it sing.  It took Bluebell a few days to finally relax here but then she seemed to be back to her normal self.  The kids, especially Kay, were bummed when Bluebell had to go back home. When I was getting ready to leave for the airport to pick up my parents, Kay came out of her room and asked if I would cuddle with her in bed.  I told her that I had to go pick up Grandma and Grandpa at the airport and when she found out that they were going to take Bluebell back home with them she asked, "You mean Bluebell doesn't get to stay here forever?"  She is my child that would love to have any kind of pet and is constantly asking if we can get a cat or a dog!

Lounging around

Tuesday, February 5

I came downstairs to find the girls laying on the couch like this:

New calling

Sunday, February 4

Last week DH was called into the stake offices to be extended a release from his Ward Finance Clerk calling.  He has been a little bummed because he has really enjoyed that calling.  He has served there for a little over 4 years now.  I guess our new bishop felt that he had served there long enough and wanted to do some switching around.  Today DH was sustained as a family history consultant in the ward.  The bishop would like him to head up family history work in the ward and to teach a class on it during the Sunday School hour.  He is also supposed to help out with our ward Relief Society meeting in April.  The week after DH was sustained he was approached by several people in the ward wanting to know when his class was going to be starting up because they want to take it and are excited to get some help with their family history research.

I am a little bummed because I would love to help him out with that class but I really can't because of my calling in the primary presidency!

Priesthood duties

Sunday, February 3

Luke help collect fast offerings around this ward this morning and then passed the sacrament for the first time during church.  He was a little nervous about doing it but he did just fine.  The girls enjoyed watching him.  It still seems weird that he is 12 and able to participate in these things - and go to YM activities each week!

Sledding!!

Saturday, February 2

I took M&M with me to run a few errands after lunch today and on the way home we saw a couple of people sledding at our neighborhood park.  It was super beautiful weather and so I decided to ask the kids if they wanted to try out the sledding.  I mentioned it to DH and he questioned if it would be good sledding conditions with the temperatures so warm so I decided to take the kids on a walk to the park and we would try it out.  We took one sled with us (the other two were up in the rafters in the garage).  So we put some jackets on and some of the kids wore their boots and we took gloves with us.  Well it was perfect sledding conditions so after going down a few times and having to take turns and wait for the sled I sent Luke and Blondie home to ask DH if he could get the other sleds down for them.  After a little while they came back with the other sleds and said that their dad was coming too.  He came a minute or two later with his camera and took some video and pictures of the kids.  He got some awesome & hilarious pictures!  There were a couple of jumps that people had made towards the bottom of the hill and several of the pictures are taken as the kids are going off the jumps (although most of the time it was unintentional).  It was a lot more fun with the three sleds and the kids didn't have to wait very long at all to take another ride down the hill.  They were fine doubling up on the sleds and also took turns going one at a time.

We had one little mishap when two sleds were going down at once and DH was taking some video of one sled and walked straight into the path of the second sled.  He jumped out of the way just in time and somehow managed to stay on his feet, but when he jumped his knee collided with M&M's face and she had a slightly swollen lip for a day or two.  I think she also bruised her tailbone a little by going off too many jumps.  Luke kept heading for the trees at the bottom of the hill and bumped into one twice (although not very hard).

MJ went down with hill with me and M&M a couple of times and seemed to be having fun.  I even managed to take both MJ and Kay down at the same time once.  MJ got tired and cold towards the end and then Kay needed to use the bathroom so I walked back home with the two little ones while the older kids stayed a bit longer.

We had a lot of fun, which you can probably tell from the pictures!  Whenever I would get to the bottom of the hill with MJ she would hop off the sled and say, "That was fun, huh?"

These first few pictures are with just the one sled before DH came:

The tree that M&M is headed for is the one that Luke bumped into a couple of times.

These last pictures were taken with DH's DSLR camera:

Computers

Friday, February 1

When MJ saw DH and Luke both working on computers in the family room, she did not want to be left out so she went upstairs and came back down with this toy laptop which she setup on the couch next to her dad.  It was pretty cute.

Friday, February 1
I can't believe that Luke has turned 12!!  In our church, at age 12 the boys can receive the Aaronic Priesthood and be ordained to the office of a Deacon.  That means that he can pass the sacrament in church and collect fast offerings, and start going to the Young Men's activities!  It didn't seem quite so strange when M&M turned 12, but I am having a hard time with Luke being 12!
My parents were going to be leaving town early Saturday morning so we got permission from our bishop to ordain him on his birthday and to do it at our house.  So just before 5:30 DH came home from work and we all changed into some dress clothes.  Then our bishop and one of the YM leaders and my parents came over and DH was able to give Luke the priesthood and ordain him to a Deacon.  After that the bishop and YM leader left and we took a few family pictures and then changed back into our casual clothes and then went to pick up some dinner for everyone.   Following that Luke opened his presents and then we had some cake and ice cream (although Luke was still full from dinner and didn't end up eating any of the cake until the following day).

Luke thought that he knew what he was getting for his birthday but he was very wrong and very confused by all of the little gifts that went together.

Luke received a Legend of Zelda Wii game for Christmas that he has loved so he asked for a triforce to be put on his cake.  He also asked for a strawberry cake that I have made several time before that the family all loves.  The frosting is a cream cheese frosting so it isn't very easy to decorate with (plus I didn't have a lot of time to make it super fancy).

Got them all out in one breath!

Luke's big gift from us was a Raspberry Pi.  It is a tiny computer (you can see it on the right in the picture above) that you can hook up to a keyboard and monitor (or T.V.) and a mouse and program on it and run other things on it.  It is meant as a learning tool/hobby for him to start out on computers.  Right now he has a few tutorials and games on it to try and learn his way around.  He is currently learning some basics of programming in Python.  DH has an old monitor in his office that Luke is currently running his Pi on.  

Early morning seminary

M&M's last day of early morning seminary was Thursday, January 17 (the end of the first semester of school).  She enjoyed her class but is looking forward to being able to sleep in a little bit longer in the mornings.  After marching band ended I think I had to wake M&M up every morning except for about 2 times until the end of the semester.  I'm not sure if she was just sleeping deeper or staying up too late or going through a growth spurt.  Now she is taking release time seminary during 7th period.  She says that the class is much smaller and she has several of her friends in it with her.  I also have only had to wake her up for school a handful of times over the last month and she is able to sleep in about 45 minutes longer.

Family calendars 2013

Back in November I finally found a printing company online that would let me customize our family calendars the way that I wanted to for a reasonable price.  So I decided to try this company for my family calendars instead of printing and binding them all myself.  I used the website Vistaprint.com and I was very pleased with how they turned out.  I was able to upload the pictures that I wanted to use and add as many events (birthdays and anniversaries, etc) that I wanted.  It even had some little clipart pictures that could be added for the events.  I was also able to choose my starting month which was big since I have always done our calendars starting in February and ending in January.  I was also really impressed with how quickly they were able to print them and get them out to me - just over a week.  It definitely took a lot of work out of my hands this year and I will definitely use them again!  (We also used this company for our family Christmas cards and I have ordered address labels through them.)  They usually have great sales offered off and on so if you are able to order during a sale you can save quite a bit of money.  We figure that I spent about half of what I usually do to print the calendars myself!

Soccer clinic

January 8-17

A few days after swimming lessons started I got an email from the soccer league that our kids play in announcing an off-track soccer clinic that they were offering on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning.  So I talked to Luke and Kitty about it and asked if they were interested.  Kitty definitely was and Luke was on the fence about it.  I think if he had known someone that was going to participate it he would have jumped at the opportunity.  I decided to sign him up anyways because he is the type of child that would be content to spend his whole time off-track playing video games or computer games and I wanted him to get out and do something physical, especially during these cold winter months.  

So Kitty's class was for an hour in the morning and then Luke's class followed right after that for the next hour.  Kitty really enjoyed herself and Luke didn't care for it so much.  There ended up being only one other boy in his class and then there were 6 girls.  I think he got some good exercise out of it but he did nothing but grumble about it whenever I picked him up from the class!  Thankfully for him there were only 4 classes so it really wasn't that big of a deal.

The classes were offered at our local rec center.  They converted one of their indoor courts into an indoor playing field with artificial turf that looked like grass.  It's a pretty cool court and I think it is fun to play on the smaller field and be able to bounce the ball off of the walls.  Unfortunately I completely forgot to take any pictures of them playing!

Dinosaur Museum

Friday, January 18

After the last session of swimming lessons, we got everyone quickly changed and then drove down to DH's work to have lunch with him.  We stopped and picked up some Subway sandwiches on our way. The kids always enjoy eating lunch with their dad.  After that we decided to drive down to BYU campus to visit the Bean Museum, but apparently that one is undergoing some renovation because it was closed and the whole parking lot was full of construction equipment.  So we decided to drive to the Dinosaur Museum for a few minutes, even though we have been there several times.  They actually had a couple of new things on display and the younger kids don't remember much of the museum.  Here are some pictures from the museum:

Swimming lessons

January 2-18

While the kids were off-track for 2 1/2 weeks after Christmas (except for M&M), I signed the four middle kids up for swimming lessons.  I wanted to get them involved in something to keep them busy while they were off of school so that they wouldn't just sit around bored every day.  Luke and Blondie were in the same level class and I was able to get on the computer early enough on the open registration day so that I could get them both in the class together.  Then Kitty and Kay were in lower classes that were offered at the time slot just after Luke and Blondie.  So we would show up for lessons and Kitty, Kay, MJ and I would usually stay in the kiddie pool until Luke and Blondie's class was finished and then I would take Kitty and Kay to their lessons while the older kids and MJ and I would hang out in the big pool.  The pool has a lazy river and the kids and I would try to walk backwards up the river for some exercise - it really works your legs (especially when I am holding MJ in my arms)!

MJ finally got confident enough on the alligator slide that she would climb up the steps and go down by herself.  It was a little scary for her the first couple of days and I would have to catch her right as she got to the bottom of the slide.  By the end she would go down and get herself right up to standing after she reached the bottom of the slide.

It's fun watching the kids get more competent and confident in their swimming.  It also definitely takes a lot of stress off of me to not have to watch the older ones every second!

It was quite a chore for me to go swimming with them and then afterwards have to get all the girls changed into dry clothes.  The outside temperature never got above freezing during their time off-track so going home in our swimsuits was not really an option.  There was a lady once who saw me with all four of the girls in the locker room getting everyone dressed and she said that I should get mother of the century award for taking 4 young kids swimming in the middle of the winter.  She was quite amazed.  I thought it was funny.  (And the whole time I was thinking that I actually had 5 kids with me - just my son had to use the men's locker room.)

On the last day of lessons, M&M was able to come with us because she was off of school for the end of the semester.  And I finally remembered to bring my camera so I could take a few pictures.

Kay making her flying leap off the steps in the kiddie pool.

MJ's flying leap - she does one step at a time.

M&M, Kitty, Kay and MJ playing in the kiddie pool during Luke and Blondie's lesson.

MJ sitting on the steps.

MJ going down the alligator slide.

Luke and Kitty playing some basketball.

Kay going down the alligator slide.

Kay practicing some swimming.