April Stamp Day

Hello all!  If you want to join us tomorrow or Thursday just come on over at 7:30.  I’d love to see you!  Here are the cards for this month along with a little Easter Treat holder.

Between Christmas and a baby

For some fun family time while my parents were out Rachel put together this silly game for us.  Two teams with cards that named two body parts: elbow and knee, nose and hand, shoulder and shoulder, etc… the cards were mixed and randomly drawn and you had to hold the card in place with those two body parts.  Pretty fun…..and the nose to nose one we let David and Lisa do.  Your teams’ turn was over when one of the cards fell, then you counted up how many you had done.

Afterwards we played Telestrations, a new game we got for Christmas.  Basically you sit in a big circle and each person has a word that they draw, then you pass to the next person and they guess what you drew, then pass and the next person draws a picture of the guess, then you pass….etc.  It’s a fun game because everyone is guessing or drawing at the same time and then when you get your notebook back you share the drawing and guesses and just have fun with it.  I think you can keep score…but we never have. We celebrated Grandpa’s birthday before he and mom flew home.  Brent and Jill joined us for the evening -  they are so fun!  We made peach cobbler with some peaches off our tree that we had frozen.  YUMMY!  Of course Grandpa had some helpers when it came to blowing out the candles.

Abbie and Mark had been working on weaving the seats for the little benches Grandpa had put together, but alas we discovered the dowels holding them together weren’t strong enough so that project was put on hold for a while.

Randy got us some dice with words to make haikus with and here is one of mine.  "With grace leaves travel, following silly grand rides, to one dancing near." More Christmas break game time. Neil cruising around the house on the scooter Isaac got for Christmas.  Isaac named it “blue”….because it’s blue. Mark cut out the letter J from a piece of wood for Jessie to decorate. Rachel and Becca piled in Ken’s van with us to see the Festival of Lights.  I still can’t believe how many lights they got on this one tree!

BYU’s “Studio C” is a favorite around here.   (A down right obsession for some of us…not mentioning any names…Jessie….wink, wink!)  Our dinner discussions often turn into quoting sessions and I would have to say personally that listening to Jessie quote them is often more funny than watching the real thing.  But after the little kids had been put to bed we pulled up Teddy’s Story Joint to show Ken.  I think this is about my personal favorite.  You can watch it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uHUb2qXVdw Some of the shoulder angel/devil ones are also quite funny.

Abbie got a new drawing book for Christmas.  Here are her owls….so cute!

Dancing in the kitchen on Jessie shoulders.  I love Isaac’s “gloves,”  Spencer’s socks. Grandpa really got Mark interested in the scroll saw again.  He’s made several cut outs and puzzles and they just keep getting better and better.

Taking down the Christmas decorations:  Neil thought the tree skirt made a great cape! The night before I was scheduled to be induced we got to go to a play for Mark’s drama class.  He was the main character in Almost Human, and after spending hours and hours and hours with him helping to memorize lines it was fun to see the play preformed.  He did a fabulous job.  Thanks to Grandma and David and Lisa for joining us.

Christmas

David and Lisa had a gender reveal party the evening my parents got here – which ended up being quite a story all by its self.  (Let’s just say plane delayed because of weather, rent a car with others coming this way…surprise they are here instead of in Salt Lake….quick, finishing picking up the guest room and get the sheets washed fast.)  So Rachel made a cake with a colored center and after some guessing games they cut the cake…..it’s a girl.

While at David’s Spencer found some weights to play with and there was another pair too, so Isaac tried to copy everything Spencer was doing.  It was pretty cute…sometimes you just can’t capture that in a picture. It actually worked out really well that my parents ended up here the first part of their vacation instead of the last part.  They got to go have lunch with Rachel and David who both work at the MTC West.

And they got to go see Jessie play the flute with the band, orchestra and school choir for the Christmas program they did during school. Grandma helped Abbie finish up a Christmas present she’s been working on all year for her daddy.

For part of Christmas break we were able to use our  wood stove to heat the house.  Ahhh…. the front room was a lovely 80 degrees.  It was heavenly, especially since pregnancy makes me so cold!  And if it was too warm for you all you had to do was go hang out in the living room that was on the cooler side of things.

Sundays together.  FHE night: Another fun thing we did with Ken’s family was everyone brought a batch or two of cookies that we redistributed onto plates and then his parents, us and Scott’s family each picked two houses to go caroling to together.  What a fun night.  And the silly picture is for Neil because he smiled so nicely for the first one….but then he didn’t even make it in the second one because he’s being silly. :-) On Christmas Eve we had a talent show at Grandma’s and sang Christmas carols accompanied by the kids.  It was really fun to hear all the kids songs they had been practicing.  Neil even got up to “play” a song for us.  And he kept playing and playing because it was “a long song.”  Little kids are so fun.  Mark decided to play his horn for us.  He played Amazing Grace, one of my favorites.

Christmas morning. My parents had spent Sunday, after listening to Jessie play her Christmas song in sacrament meeting, up in SLC until Christmas Eve which they came down and had dinner with David and Lisa and then back to our place, along with Rachel and Becca who spent the night here to enjoy Christmas morning with us too.  Yea!  We had some fun presents… Jessie’s unwrapping her juggling balls from Mark who also wrapped up a 10 pound weight with them as a decoy.  Aunt Heather got the kids little crabs that skitter around and that entertained Isaac for a long time while Ken tried to keep it on top of a organizer Spencer had gotten to keep his marbles in.  Neil loved handing out the presents.  He’d pick up so many at a time he could barely see where to walk.

Mark got some paracord and a book of things to make with it from Neil, Dad got a fun trellising book from us, Ken opened the pillow Abbie had stitched for him so he’d have something soft to lean up against when he is reading bedtime stories to the kids out in the hallway.  And each of the kids got a mystery present that had to have the tag colored on with a marker to show the white crayon identifying who it belonged to, this has been a fun family tradition. Becca got a purse big enough that Neil was able to snuggle down in it!  Isaac’s new book was fun entertainment.  And Abbie loved her new umbrella that’s clear so you can put your head inside it and see though it to walk….now all we need is some rain.

Mark got the umbrella for Abbie and of course had to do another fun wrapping job.  It was all huge and squishy wrapped in blankets.  Poor Abbie just somehow didn’t get hardly any presents until the very end and then everything that was left was for her.  She was trying so hard to just be happy and then when we realized what had happened all the world was better.  Man look at that mess….that’s what Christmas for 12 will do to you. :-)One other funny memory was that Neil had taken a new truck, with stacking blocks on the back, that he and Isaac  received from Grandma into the dining room so he could play with it and Isaac wouldn’t try to take it from him.  So he was in there playing and we had something for him to open and Ken teasingly said something like, “I guess Neil doesn’t want anymore presents because he’s not in here to open this one.”  And Neil, who we weren’t even sure heard Ken’s comment, came running back into the room full speed, “Here I am!”

After presents we enjoyed some fun brunchy foods, along with some fabulous cinnamon swirl bread our sweet elderly neighbor had brought over for us.  Spencer reading Neil’s new coloring book to him all cozy in Neil’s new “fuzzy blanket.”  Grandma and Mark working on a bracelet from his new book and Neil reading Where’s the Green Sheep, AGAIN!

We played some games, ate more food, worked on some stools for the kids with grandpa, ate more food, played more games. In the afternoon my parents enjoyed dinner at David’s with Rachel and Becca and we headed to Ken’s parents.

The bear singing Jingle Bells is Grandma’s most played with decoration.  Neil adored it this year….it’s a running joke how much Ken’s dad despises that bear.  He even instagramed it’s picture in grey because it “didn’t deserve color”….that just makes this bear even more memorable.  I remember when it was Mark’s favorite and we even borrowed it for a week.  I bet next year we’ll have Isaac’s picture here with it. :-)

We had our gift exchange which included this fun new “pi (pie) plate” for our family, given Ken’s love of numbers and mine to cook…it was a great gift!  This year we had Steph and McKay’s family and I made them a scrapbook of all the photos Steph had instagramed that year. Dinner was heavenly!  And Isaac was totally copying Ken trying to use both his knife and fork to eat and not only did he do a pretty amazing job for a one year old, it was so cute to watch.

December here we come

The two little boys are definitely daddy’s boys right now, Isaac even more so than Neil. They were so excited to see dad when we meet him at Mark and Jessie’s band concert and sit on his lap.

This was Jessie’s last band concert because she decided not to play the flute next semester.  Sad, because she’s so dang good at it and I’ll miss listening to her practice, but okay because there are so many other fun things to learn and try.

For one of our Christmas presents we took the older kids to “Christmas Around the World” at BYU.  Some of the kids had gone before as a school field trip, but neither Ken and I had been before.  It wasn’t much what I was expecting, so I was a little disappointed, but the dancing was totally amazing and so were the cool costumes.  It was so fun to be with the kids too. I love this picture capturing Neil and Isaac’s wonder as they watch this top spin around.  Some toys never go out of style, I guess.

What do you get when you mix 1 box of noodles with rubbing alcohol and 4 colors of food coloring?  Fun, fun, fun.  The boys and I made some colored noodles to play with and make necklaces.  I think it was a tablespoon or so of alcohol, 20ish drops of coloring and a quarter box of big noodles.  But be careful to seal the ziplock tightly when you start to shake up the bags….the purple one popped open on us and that was kind of messy!!  Then we spread them out on paper towels to dry while we ate lunch and then they were dry by the time we were done.  After we had filled up some shoe strings we used pipe cleaners to string them on because they are much stiffer than string.  We also took noodles to church to make necklaces in nursery and it was a huge hit!

Isaac loves to help Mark practice his horn. We went to run errands and get some Christmas presents and Neil brought along the kangaroo, but it had to be buckled up too. The kids received “Caught Ya being good” papers this year as money to spend in our Christmas store.  When ever we caught someone we’d write what they did on the paper and put it on their pillow.  Then everyone had a chance to go shopping at the mommy store and pick out a present for each of their siblings that they wanted to spend their “caught ya’s” on.  The store was open to buy one present a day per kid so we could spread the fun of Christmas over the whole month and wouldn’t have to do all the wrapping a day or two before Christmas.  Neil was the first one to buy a present, wrap it, and put it under the tree.  He was so excited to color the tag himself.  Neil and I practiced saying, “it’s a surprise” many times when the kids would try to guess what he had wrapped.

Grandma did so many fun tradition things this year.  This was after the Christmas party for the little kids.  (Abbie was lucky being right in the middle, she went to the little kid and the big kid party.)  They had decorated gingerbread men, played some games and made these awesome reindeer.  Only Isaac was really tired by this time of night and didn’t want to take any pictures! So his reindeer got put on the tree.

Don’t ask me for details about this picture, it was just on the camera when I downloaded everything to the computer… For family time with my brother and sisters in December we made kool-aid play dough and then did a kind of Pictionary.  Everyone helped write down either a gospel word or a Christmas one and then we mixed up the words and passed them out.  Then we had a sculpting time and a guessing round.  It was a ton of fun.

We got to go hear Abbie’s chime choir perform some Christmas songs including Carol of the Bells.  She was one of only two kids who got to play 4 chimes – two with each hand at the same time.  It was really fun to listen to her.  Great job Abbie! I took a group picture of us after the concert and right when I said “three” Neil tossed his coat up in the air and caught it….little sneaky guy.  Then someone else leaving volunteered to take a picture for us so I could be in it too.  This time he just smiled.

Poor Neil had a tummy bug. He got Instagramed in gray, cuz that's his favorite! From Ken: Taking the train to SLC for a meeting today. I love traveling this way - I get so much done instead of driving! Neil wanted me to take a picture for him. Hi Neil!