Christmas Eve SNOW

It started snowing on Christmas Eve. I had been telling Hailey that it was Christmas Eve and she kept telling me it wasn't. However, when the snow started she goes "Wow, it really IS christmas Eve!"  The kids were very excited since this was the first real snow this year. By the time it was done we had about six inches. They have out sledding and playing in it multiple times since. They were all trying to snowboard. Most of them could do it quite well down the little hill in our backyard..... Caleb loves to sled. He gets mad if his sled goes too slow or we start him partway down the hill instead of at the top. He even figured out a way to carry the sled himself so he could go again and again and again.

Names

Hailey is still learning how to do her name well.... One day I wrote it down for her to copy and she did an awesome mirror rendition of what I wrote :) I hear that's pretty common for this age. It's so interesting to see their brains develop as they age.

Ice skating

Since the kids enjoyed ice skating so much last year we wanted to try it again. This time we went to a full size rink. They all loved it. Caleb wasn't into for very long but he was pretty happy for the first little while. It's hard to skate and keep a little one upright too..... :) There were these tall cones that the littler ones could hold on to and skate around. That helped Hailey a lot. She LOVED the independence. I will see if I can get a video of her skating up on here. Maggie would use a cone off and on but she was actually pretty confident on her skates. Although she had a good sized blister and a sore bum afterwards. Jackson had fun too but I think he might have started to get bored. A hockey stick would have kept him going for a long time :)
Hailey wet her pants this time. So far we are 2 for 2 with ice skating and potty accidents.....  We got her all cleaned up and into dry stuff and she was back at it.
Matt was happy to be on skates again.

Ornaments 2012

Sometimes we wait until after Christmas sales to get the kids ornaments for that year..... but this year we found some good sales early.

Jackson - robot - this boy has loved robots for a long time and plans to own a robotics company when he is older. He got a subscription to Robot magazine from my Dad for his birthday. He loves it.

Maggie - this fairy reminded me of the tooth fairy and that is such a good one for Maggie. Her teeth have been such a big deal this year - and she asked me not too long ago if the tooth fairy was real...... She has swallowed TWO teeth as they came out when she was eating, she recently lost another down the drain of the bathroom sink when she pushed on it to see how loose it was and it popped out...... In face I think the only ones she has been able to keep to pass on to the tooth fairy are the two that I pulled out :)

Hailey - this girl loves dance and princesses and being fancy. She always goes and changes into some sort of costume for dancing if we have good music on.....

Caleb - He loves superheroes. He like to watch Spiderman and Superhero Squad..... One of his favorite games is playing superheo with us. He will pretend to be Hulk, Ironman, Spiderman, Wolverine.... He knows his superheroes like Maggie knew all the Disney princesses :)

Piano?!?

Matt and I have talked about wanting a piano for a long time. Last year I bought a keyboard and Matt had me take it back...... he didn't like the sound....... I thought a keyboard was an excellent idea since it is SO much easier to move. So we went and looked at keyboards that would have the sound quality Matt wanted.... ummm, a little out of our current budget :) So that idea will have to wait. We just happened to check Craigslist again a little while ago and noticed an old player piano for $50. Matt was sold. I was not. However, for $50 I let him go with it. We picked it up the day after Thanksgiving. Luckily the people we got it from still had a lot of family there so they loaded it into the truck for us. The next day Matt brought it up next to the deck and laid out a ramp to roll it off the truck. He and I managed to get it into the house ourselves by rolling it across plywood. Good thing we built a deck...... :) It is really out of tune but Matt doesn't really care since it reminds him of the piano they had growing up. So now we have an old, out of tune, $50 piano that Matt loves...... :) Uh oh.

Thanksgiving 2012

We went to our Bishops house with another family. The one with 6 kids that we spend quite a bit of time with :) It was pretty busy with 10 kids but lots of fun and excellent food. I got off easy and only had to bring a green bean casserole :) It's nice to just be a part of the cooking and clean-up instead of being responsible for all of it. It's always hard to be away from family but at least it helps to be able to spend holidays with friends. Travel is so unpredictable this time of year anyway......

a little SNOW

 

We had some snow flurries the other day - really nothing to get excited about - but the kids disagreed. They dug out snow gear and headed out. Somehow Jackson managed to stay out of the photo op......
It reminded me what a pain it is to get all the kids ready to go out only to have them turn around and come back in....... all those, boots, pants coats, gloves........

Hair days

More pics of Hailey and Caleb since they are home with me for more hours in the day :) Hailey really like this hairdo right now. She will ask me to do the 'lightning bolt'. Caleb really likes mohawks. For a long while he called them 'ho-hawks' but his speech has improved a lot recently. I cut his hair recently so no more mohawks for now..... hopefully, he doesn't grow out of them before I can do them again!
I still need to put together a hair do book for the girls to make hair do of the day decision making a little easier in the mornings......

Sunbathing

One day Hailey decided that they should sunbathe on the deck - it was rather cloudy and not very warm - but that didn't slow her down in the least :) Caleb loves to copy his older siblings. I wish they could understand what an influence their good or bad exmple is to him...... They were pretty cute getting their stuff all laid out and ready to go on the deck!