Our Little Family

Christmas Coast Trip - Day 4

2012-01-31T14:10:00.001-07:00

Yes I'm still blogging Christmas... but hey - it's not February yet...

On the last day at the coast we started the day by celebrating Emily Day for breakfast (aka Emily's birthday). We had all the family over to our house to eat and after that we all hustled to load up and check out of the beach houses. From there we drove down to Depot Bay - where the storm was also still in full effect... Did I mention how fun it was to load the car in the rain? Usually Dan would've done it mostly by himself, but he had to leave this morning at like 4 or 5 to catch a flight to Idaho for work. Luckily he only had to be gone for 1 day, but it was sad he missed out on all our Wednesday fun at the coast. I was grateful for Dad, brothers, and other family who helped me a ton in Dan's absence.

Originally we had planned to crab on Wednesday - Grandpa had even brought his boat out. This was the saddest part for Dan and I. Dan has been hoping to go crabbing for years - ever since he went the first time with my family. The crabbing didn't happen because of the storm, so that was a little less disappointing. Then Grandma & Grandpa made it anyways by buying a bunch of crab anyways and bringing it home. There's nothing quite like eating fresh crab right off the coast. In our family we like to roll up our sleeves and get juicy - it's a huge mess, but so so good.

Anyways - we got down to Depot Bay - and here are some huddlers who were brave enough to leave the car :).

The kids all wanted to get out too - the spouts were going off pretty big. These pictures don't do justice to how wet and windy it was.

Next we went in to the whale watching place. With the ocean this stormy, there wasn't really any chance of seeing whales, but that doesn't put much of a damper on how fun it is to use binoculars :) or spend a few minutes drying off in a warm building.

Next stop - the Marine Science Center - definitely towards the top of the list of coolest free places you can go. The kids love to touch all the marine life.

Elli attached herself to Auntie Em - and spent the entire day with her. So cute.

Auntie Em taught Elli all kinds of things - she was like Elli's very own very knowledgeable personal tour guide :). Elli ate it up too - she's a super curious little girl who asks a lot of good questions. I was glad Auntie Em was there to answer - whereas if she had asked me, I probably would've been saying... "uh... I don't know - let's ask Aunie Em" :).

Kade wasn't quite as gung-ho as Maely, but eventually he also got brave and tried touching a few things.

I know I've said it before, but I LOVE having Maely hang out with such awesome cousins. I love it SO MUCH!! I consider these girls a huge blessing in my life for their influence and example with Maely.

It was fun to watch Grandpa Gary show Teagen cool stuff :)

It cracked me up that Teag never really reached into the water except when Grandpa looked the other way to help Maggie :).

All the kids thought this fish was super ugly. That was cracking me up too.

Kade was hilarious with this jelly fish. He jumped behind the tank so that it looked like he was inside, and said, "Mom - Look! I'm a jellyfish"

I made him do it again so I could video. I guess the video isn't really funny - but I thought it was, so I put the video up anyways.

Yes, this is how I tour things - back to the exhibits, and camera to the kids. I can't help myself.

Little Kylie is just so dang cute!

Now I'm not going to accuse Teag of picking favorites... I'm just gonna say that he LOVES his Uncle Ben... A LOT :). They have a ton of fun together - and Teag just lights up when pictures of Ben come up on our screen saver at home now :).

A few more kids in the jellyfish tank.

The lovely Maely and the lovely Lily.

This was a funny moment. All these fish were captivated by Kylie. They followed her with great attention, and when she left the window, so did they!!

All four kiddos with Auntie Em & Aunt Jenaye

This big sun star seems to have come up for air, so Maely got to touch the bottom of it!

Elli was crazy excited about this walrus. I don't know why :), but it was funny.

After the Science Center, we needed to grab a fast food lunch. It was the wettest fast food lunch I've ever experienced... by at least 10 times! The storm was blowing straight into the car in a continual wall of water. We were SO wet. It was hilarious.

I couldn't read any of the numbers on the dashboard.

There's me with a nice goofy grin and some hair plastered to my face :).

That evening we finished celebrating Emily Day - with the most amazing flourless chocolate cake you could ever imagine. Oh my word - SO GOOD. Definitely the best way to celebrate Emily Day :).

Later in the evening I had the chance to sneak out and work on the biggest puzzle in the world... I kid you not - a few years ago my parents bought the biggest jigsaw puzzle in the world - 24,000 pieces. Grandpa and Dad built a special table to hold it - it fills pretty much the entire RV garage. Dad was sure they would finish it in 6 months.... but I'm pretty sure that was 3 years ago :). We're making progress though.

Working on it was more exciting for me during this visit than it ever has been before. I was able to make some good progress in one teeny little area - but it has left me having puzzle withdrawals ever since I got back. I daydream about working on it :). One of these years when we get it all the way finished, they plan on gluing it all together and donating it to the school.... someday :).

Christmas Coast Trip - Day 2

2012-01-25T23:00:00.001-07:00

Day 2 at the coast was fun - super fun. The day started out low-key. We had lots of lounging and playing going on.

Then before lunch we all pulled ourselves together a little for a family picture. I can't believe our family is this big! I LOVE it. We have the coolest 18 people in our family ever :).

Here are Grandma and Grandpa and their 6 grandkids!

This one is just me wrestling a big happy ball of Teagen.

The Casqueiros

Bryan and Candy took this lovely picture. I wish we had went out and taken one!

After all our pictures, people headed out in little groups for lunch. Dan went out an picked up an amazing burger for me with loads of blue cheese on it - oh man - mouth-watering again. I stayed home with some of the kids, and we worked on our craft - Duct tape rings! We had lots of fun making them with cousin girls of all ages.

Another fun activity on Day 2 was Gingerbread Houses. Candy & Bryan brought all the supplies - and check out this spread!! The kids had a blast making them.

After dinner, more lounging :). I think these pictures were taken when I was babysitting Dad's computer for him.

I don't know the story behind this picture, but I LOVE IT :).

Before bed, the kids had one more fun activity. Grandma & Grandpa had gotten them rocks... I forget what they're called, but you break them and they have crystals inside. Here are a few pictures of that fun.

Once the little kids were settled, it was time for the big kids to set of on some shenanigans. Every adult in the house that doesn't consider themselves an adult yet (that would be everyone from Zach to Dan) headed out on a 'teenage' adventure :).

Here we are piling down the stairs - about to run out into crazy pouring rain and head to the beach!!

Candy's camera took awesome pictures of how the rain and wind were hitting - completely sideways - no up or down at all - just a constant flow of huge raindrops hitting you everywhere.

This picture gives a little bit of an idea of how wet it was.

Visibility was low - I counted heads multiple times. It was crazy fun, but I didn't want to go home with less siblings/cousins than we came with!!

We were playing the most hilarious games - running and frolicking like school children. We would race eachother full-effort at a snails pace into the wind, and then turn around and leap with the wind on the way back - gaining so much momentum that it was scary to stop!

We sang songs and yelled, even just to communicate with people right next to us! Some of us also spent a few minutes running in a circle and yelling, "BEST DAY EVER!!!!" ... At least that's what I was yelling - I really have no idea if everyone else was yelling that or not :).We stayed down on the beach for a lot longer than I thought we would because it was just so crazy fun... slightly perilous at times (like the blind trip down and then back up the slippery rocks)... but SO fun.

Once we were too soaked to tell the difference, we all piled into the hot tub at the house where Grandma Bonnie & Grandpa Dale were staying. Dan and I were the only ones who brought swimsuits, so we had all kinds of hilarious wardrobe in there - including mustard sweats, of course :).

More hilarious games ensued in the hot tub.

When we got back to our beach house we busted out some hot chocolate and congratulated ourselves on a job well done. It was a fabulous adventure. I was so excited that each one of my siblings could be there together. AND I was so glad that Zach could join us - we talked about how he was there in proxy for Ali and Nikki too - who wouldn't have hesitated for a second to join us on our escapade.

Teagen's Favorite Things

2012-01-25T11:18:00.001-07:00

Teagen is currently enjoying my fruit roll-up so much that he's literally giggling each time I start getting him another piece :).

I've been thinking lately that I wanted to post some of the fun things that Teagen loves - and since his first birthday is today - this seems like a perfect chance. Here is a list of Teag's favorites:

The Stairs - he hasn't fallen yet, but he spends a ridiculous percentage of his play time on the stairs. Luckily he seemed to figure out how to go down pretty close to when he learned how to go up them. That was a huge blessing.

Throwing Things - especially down the stairs. I love to pile things on the stairs and grab them when I go up. Teagen loves to watch all the different sizes and shapes tumble and bounce when he chucks them all down the stairs multiple times every day. When he isn't throwing things down the stairs, he's often throwing other things in other places.

Food - this kid never goes hungry - he makes sure of that. His favorite food is probably still milk. He breastfeeds constantly - but it's free, convenient, and it's chocolate - so we're not surprised :).

Words: "Mama" when he is grumpy or wants fed, and "Dada" when he's happy. And the rest of the time, just any noise - often an open yell of "Aahh". He is very vocal.

Hitting Things - He loves to pound on surfaces - especially if they make noise.

Big Things - He loves anything big, especially if he can move it. He also really likes walls. I can't tell you how excited and fascinated he was the first time he crawled a few steps up the stairs and looked up at the wall that goes all the way to the 2nd story ceiling. He just kept looking up and hitting that wall. So funny. He also often causes raucous at church because people will carry him to the back while I'm playing the piano, to help him not be a distraction. When they get him to the back, he can reach the wall - that just makes him more excited and more loud. He often cracks up laughing trying to touch the wall.

Pointing - He figured out pointing a while ago, and uses the skill regularly.

Music & Rhythm - he gets that beat rocking side to side in his hips and there's no stopping him - or his enthusiasm.

Biting - We have known he's been teething for a long time. He has 2 teeth on top, and 2 on bottom. Even before he was teething, his favorite thing to gnaw on has been skin. He doesn't really like any teething toys. So Dan and I both have just let him gnaw on our knuckles pretty freely. We didn't really think this was a problem until the first time he bit Elli! Now we are starting to realize we have a biter on our hands. We've never had a biter before. Elli currently has two big marks on her left cheek from another bite she received the other day. We'll have to work on that :).

Chewing on Socks - I know I've mentioned this before, and it probably sounds silly, but Teagen honestly does love chewing on socks. If there's anything he doesn't chuck down the stairs, it's probably a dirty sock, and it probably didn't go down the stairs because he probably stuck it in his mouth.

Playing Fetch With Himself - Teagen loves to throw things that make noise on the kitchen floor too. Once it finds its final resting place, he crawls there as fast as he can, picks it up, and throws it again. He will go around and around in the kitchen, doing this over and over. I love when a little one can keep themselves entertained sometimes :).

Throwing His Body Weight Around - He likes to move his body aggressively - and has almost launched himself out of my arms many times. He also bangs his head into things - like Dan :). Wrestling him in church can just about render your arms sore - I guess it pretty much is like lifting weights. He provides a lot of resistance :).

Being Happy - He is a really happy kid, as long as he's not uncomfortable or displeased. He cracks up at anything - honestly, it doesn't take much at all. He loves everyone he meets, and doesn't tend to have anxiety about being away from Mom & Dad.

He's a fun kid to be a Mom to, and we love him tons.

Happy First Birthday Teagen!!

Oregon Coast - Day 1

2012-01-20T22:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still blogging our Christmas trip... we've been busy. But my Christmas decorations are down now!

The day after Christmas, we all loaded up and headed out to the coast for lunch at Mo's on the bayfront... and we pretty much took up half the restaurant :). After that we filled Belinda's:

Our rental houses were in Lincoln City, so we stopped in Depot Bay on the way up. Here are Auntie Em & Kade checking out the ocean - no spouting while we were here this time though.

The girls

I wish we had more of the girls' legs in these pictures with those adorable leggings :).

In this picture I was in the car - maybe helping Teag? But I made sure to get in on the group picture they were doing :).

Haha - this picture started some funniness. I told Alex that was a good pose for making his legs look long, and then proceeded to make everyone else do it :) - they were all more-than-willing participants. I also love this shot of Dan - except that his right hand looks like it's about half a second away from flashing some kind of gang sign. Too much coolness to be contained :).

Long-legged Maely

Long-legged Elli

Long-legged Jenaye

Long-legged Amber... sometimes I'm the biggest dork I know :).

Long-legged Dan... putting up a tough fight for biggest dork title :).

After a few more fun stops and shenanigans, we got to our Beach house... and this is it! I'm not even joking! This house was AWESOME!!

Here is our room. There were 5 master suites, ours had a balcony that connected with Candy & Bryan's - you can see it in the above picture on the middle level.

Elli was so excited to spend more time with Baby Kylie - she followed Bryan and Candy around a lot.

The dining room table was AWESOME - it must have seated 16? maybe more? Either way - it was fabulous for meals, fabulous for crafts, and fabulous for game nights. Here are a bunch of cute kiddos eating dinner on the first night. Maggie, Elli, Kade, Luke, Aubrey & Maely... I think Paige, Ethan & Emmie are all on the other side.

There was a sweet game room downstairs. Some of the younger boys (and a few older ones) opted to spend quite a bit of time down here playing together.

Here are Lizzie and Rochelle playing some air hockey.

Dan and Maely verses Ethan, Lizzie & Alex at foosball. There was Ping Pong too. Alex and Lacey and Dan and I had some hilarious couples games going on... We found Dan to be violently competitive. Apparently the rules of doubles are that the team members are supposed to alternate taking shots, so Dan would push me out of the way every time it was his shot, and then yank me back into the zone when it was mine. I don't think he was doing it on purpose - it was like I was just another tool to use in the game. It was dang funny. And every once in a while Lacey and I thoroughly impressed ourselves with our crazy skills :).

Teag was being fussy and not napping the first day when Dan and Grandpa Gary took the kids down to the water, so I missed this part. But I was super glad Lacey went and grabbed a few pictures.

The first night we all gathered together for a big pizza dinner. Grandma Bonnie & Grandpa Dale had rented a house just up the street with Chris & Katie +7, Kelvin & Camille +2, and Laura & Sam, so they all came over. It was fun to have so many of us together, and I'm pretty sure that by the end of that first night, the big storm had rolled in pretty good - which made being at the coast that much more exciting :).

From the Mouth of Babes

2012-01-17T18:21:00.000-07:00

Maely just came out of the bathroom with a sharpie mustache drawn onto a bandaid on her upper lip (a look Elli has been sporting today due to an actual injury - pictures to come). Anyways, Maely danced out with spaghetti arms singing Feliz Navidad in one of the funniest accents I've ever heard :). Too funny :).

From the Mouth of Babes

2012-01-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

Alright - yesterday in church was a little crazy... not totally sure I should publish all this, but I'm sure the kids will think it's funny when they're older.

It started before church. Dan had a meeting with the bishop to get a new calling. While he was gone the phone rang, and I was upstairs getting Teag ready for church. The call was from one of the bishop's counselors, and Maely answered. Apparently she answered with, "Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color?"

In Sacrament Meeting Dan stood up to be sustained (members of the ward raise their hand in support of the calling), and Elli looked up at him like he was crazy for standing and whispered very loudly, "DAD!! WHAT are you DOING?!?"

During primary classes, Kade's class was singing a clean-up song at the end, and Kade blurted out something so appalling that his teacher had to come tell me after class (luckily she thought it was funny). Apparently instead of singing, "everybody do your share", she heard Kade sing, "everybody show your boobies". AAAGGGHH!!!! I was SHOCKED that he had heard that somewhere - very concerned. Luckily when I asked him about saying something inappropriate during class, he reluctantly admitted he had sang, "everybody shake your booty." PHEW!! I can't tell you how relieved I was to hear that - inappropriate still, but so much less threatening to my reality of my kids sheltered-ness :).

The NEXT thing happened after church. We went into the bishop's office to have Dan set apart for his calling. The bishop spent a few minutes explaining to the kids what we were doing. First he told them about Dan's new calling (working with the 14 & 15 year old boys). He showed them the pictures on his wall of the boys Dan would be serving, and told their names and ages. Maely then looked at the bishop like he didn't know a thing in the world and said, "Bishop, Dad's thirty-two!!" We were all cracking up (and to his credit, Dan is only 31).

It was just a few breath's later when the bishop asked Elli if she knew what time it was (probably expecting a 'no' answer). Elli quickly replied, "Time to shake your booty?" NOOOOO!!! Not again!! She hadn't even heard anything about Kade's earlier slip. What's happening to my children?!? Our family has officially regressed to a whole new level of irreverence. MAN!! We try so hard :).

Well, that's all the stories for THIS week at church. I sure hope next week is better (at least I can be grateful that we didn't have Jeannie's shocking-Sunday moment happen :). Apparently her daughter's foot got caught in Jeannie's skirt and pulled it down to the ground in front of hundreds at Stake Conference!! It can always be worse!)

Christmas Day in Oregon

2012-01-11T00:04:00.000-07:00

Christmas morning was pretty funny... we had some crazy scheduling, so we had to get up as early as possible. Our kids haven't started waking up early on Christmas yet... they will still sleep until 7:30 or 8:00 like any other day. So since they didn't wake up, the grownups did... and we all drug ourselves out of bed at 6:00!! How weird is that :).

Teag was chipper right away. He thought this was all pretty funny and exciting :).

Elli's eyes kept looking like this :). She was excited to be awakened by us, but her eye's weren't.

Alex was in the same boat as Elli.

Both Kade & Maely's eyes show that they are not used to getting up so early. But that's not going to hinder their excitement.

Sleepy eyes. Big smiles.

Can't have Christmas morning without rolling Dad out of bed. This was the first year that there was really enough man-power in grandkids to get the job done. I sat over there and put Teag on the bed. In this picture I'm bracing myself because Kade is using me to kick off of.

Time to go downstairs!!

I can't remember who all is at the top up there in that white blur... Candy, Me, Teag, Mom & Dad maybe? And I have no idea where Kade got that pose. He is randomly doing really funny stuff in pictures lately.

Santa had to make use of any floor space he could find. Here are the kids discovering some treasures.

Elli f-r-e-a-k-e-d - - o-u-t when she found a container of glitter and a small necklace with her name on it. "I GOT PIXIE DUST!! I GOT PIXIE DUST!!" She ran around and told everyone. It was so funny.

This shows her with her various forms of 'pixie dust'. The upside down spray bottle is some bubble gum body spray that's all full of glitter. A big mistake. I keep discovering kids (including Teagen) with their hair dowsed in a migraine-inducing-bubble gum scent at the most untimely moments - on the way out the door, right before bed, etc. She doesn't use it as pixie dust anyways. Every kid just aggressively perfumes any kids younger than them :). Oh well. Her excitement about it was still fun. And the rest of the pixie dust was a big success.

Teagen exploring his stocking with Dad.

After Elli finished her rounds of pixie dust announcements, she stopped to chat with Kylie for a minute. Kylie was all smiles - very cute. Elli loves little Kylie.

Mom and Dad opening some presents.

We got to be pretty snuggly in Mom & Dad's living room. And Tash and Ben weren't even there yet! Our family sure is getting big fast!

Jenaye made Mom a ridiculously awesome ... okay - how did she say to spell it? Scoody? After she finished making it, she added the detachable black mouth-warming piece with Beaver teeth. So excellent.

Grandpa Gary & Kylie

After we opened presents for a while, we stopped and got all ready for church. I know it might make the logistics trickier, but I don't think there's any better way to celebrate Christmas than going to church and worshiping on Christmas.

It was raining a little while we took pictures. Elli couldn't quite pull a straight face :). I actually didn't make the kids take more pictures after the family shots, but I told them they could if they wanted, and they all did!

We got everyone out of their Sunday clothes and it turns out all the grandkids were matching - FUN!! We had a little picture moment with Grandma and Grandpa.

This good picture - along with many others from my Christmas blogs - are taken from Candy's selection of great shots (as usual). Thanks Candy!!

When we got out to Grandma's house, Ethan and Emmie were so excited at my Dad's arrival. We had him wear the elf suit again since we didn't have enough time to carol at Grandma's a few nights earlier. Apparently Ethan kept asking him to please not leave (gesturing to the fireplace :) ).

We never have a problem cramming all our bodies into Grandma's living room. I love it.

Alex & Lacey

Zach & Teagen

I think Elli holds a special place in her heart for Auntie Em (who is also the reason Elli had to have an 'E' name). They were buddies during our whole visit.

Three ladies I really love checking chatting with a baby that I also really love :). Grandma, Dalita, Mom, & Olivia - and Mica down below too! (who I also love tons!)

The Stays brought out bright polka-dot leg-warmers that were SO cute :). We had a fun little photo shoot with them. The cousins always love to match. Thanks Stays!!

And where did the boys spend their time? They did other fun things too, but this was probably their favorite activity :).

Christmas Trip 23rd & 24th

2012-01-08T23:39:00.000-07:00

On the 23rd it was time for Lacey & Olivia to head up with Alex & Andy to Salem. We all went over to Grandma's and Alex & Andy stopped by for a little bit to hang out.

I feel a little sad sometimes that my kids don't get to see any of their cousins more often, so the instant friendships like this one - Elli & Emmie, just make me giddy :). They had a ton of fun playing together.

Jenaye and Zach are excellent buddies too :).

Teagen had no lack of entertainment during our trip. There was always someone to hold him and play with him. I think since we have gotten home he's decided that it's too boring around here. He has started making a TON of noise all the time - even in church - DOH!

It brings me an indescribable amount of joy to see Maely running around with all the girl cousins that are a few years older than her. She always wants to be older and more cool - and that can be so scary in today's world. I worry about who she'll admire. It thrills me to no end that there is a GROUP (one alone would've been the greatest blessing ever) - but a group of girls who are righteous, virtuous, have integrity, lovely, praiseworthy, I could go on :) - and my sweet Maely wants to be with them as much as she can and be just like them. YAY!!! Thank you cousins!! (This is just a few of the girls in this age group. We love Courtney, Rochelle, and Kathy too!)

Oh ya - and the pictures here are Maely with Lily, Lizzie, Aubrey & Savannah on the rope swing in Grandma's backyard.

Lizzie

Savannah

Maely

The next day... wait a minute... what did we do on the 24th? I guess our dinner was pretty early, so we spent the morning getting ready. We had a lovely gathering at Mom's with the Johnsons on Christmas Eve. Tiffani, her kids, Jared, and Grandma & Grandpa came out. It was strange not to have any of Larry's family there! I haven't been to Oregon for Christmas since 2007, but this was the first time I've been up and not seen some of his family. We did have a fun get-together though. Tiffani made AWESOME chocolate treats... I can't remember what they were called, but I do remember who ate most of them :) - and some other fun Christmasy treats. Candice made delicious clam chowder (a definite go-to every time I found myself chowing down on junk and realizing I needed some real food :) ).

****I now interrupt this blog post to ramble on and on about quilts - proceed at your own risk! ****

After dinner we exchanged some gifts. Grandma Grahyl made each of my kids a beautiful quilt. I know this may be boring to some people, but I really want to write about them for a minute so that my kids remember in the future. When I was growing up my Grandma constantly made amazing hand-sewn goods for us. I could never list even all the types of things she'd sew. We had dresses, quilts, shorts, pillowcases, blankets, formals, and so much more. As a Mom now, trying to have some lovely things for my children (along with all the cheap-store-bought stuff we have plus the garage-saleing) I have a whole new perspective on these beautiful hand-made things that we always had. The baby blankets we have are prized possessions (and admittedly my cutest show-off blankets that I always carry with me). I often get asked where they came from. I also still have my favorite quilt ever from growing up - it is blue with houses on it; every house is different and has a different cat in a different place, and I treasure it. We've used it for things, but I won't let the kids keep it on their beds because it's just that special to me.

That back-story is part of what makes me love Maely's quilt so much. I don't know my quilt vocabulary very well, but is it 'piece-work' maybe when you take all different fabrics and piece it together to be a picture? Whatever it is, Maely's new quilt is gorgeous quilted houses - but each house is different, and pieced together by my amazing grandmother. The colors are gorgeous - Maely has recently taken a lot of interest in American Girl books, and the color scheme kind of matches those really well - deep reds, browns, tans, creams. Maely also LOVES horses, and has many and keeps them ALL on her bed :) - all in shades of browns, whites and creams. Grandma has no idea of house perfect these colors and themes are for us to treasure... I'm starting to think she has psychic powers :). Just wait until you hear about Elli's!

Elli is our monkey girl. I have no idea why. She just has always loved monkeys, and she's been drawn to them from a very early age. On her bed there is a huge variety of monkeys of all colors - and the pinnacle of them all are her big huge not-girly-at-all black gorilla (inherited from Dan's childhood) and her big dark monkey pillow pet (which she chose to want instead of the lady bug or other cute girly ones that I wanted to talk her into). Anyways (I feel like I should write 'anywho' since I'm talking about Grandma :) ), her quilt is dark - purples, blue, some vibrant prints, and has zebras all over it - kind of a dark, pretty, girlish jungly quilt. I can't tell you how perfect it looks on her bed with all those monkeys :).

I haven't set the boys' beds up yet. We are in the process of moving some rooms around so that Teag's crib can go in with Kade. Once we get the rooms arranged, I'm sure I'll have just as much sentimental rambling to do about how much I love their quilts too :). Kade's is frogs - very cute frogs. I love that because Grandma has been making awesome things out of frog prints for as long as I can remember. She always finds great frog prints. Teagen's is a kid-oriented light-houses theme. I love that too because I still miss the coast regularly - and it flares up worse whenever I get back from Oregon. But I also love it because my Mom loves lighthouses (and has a gorgeous lighthouse quilt from Grandma), so it reminds me of her too.

I know my Grandma isn't a blog-reader so she won't ever see this, but I still have to send my love out to her with all these happy thoughts of quilts and sewn treasures. You're amazing Grandma. I LOVE YOU!!

*****

Oh ya - so back to the Christmas trip... On the night of Christmas Eve we did our traditional nativity, except my Mom had a cool fun surprise this year. She had a whole set of super awesome nativity costumes for us to use. It was SO fun. She worried a little that we might miss all the towels and bathrobes, but it was very cool.

Here is Elli - I think she was a wiseman. The wisemen and shepherds had the same costumes, just different props.

I don't have an explanation for the expression she has. My kids just get goofy around Grandpa Gary :).

Kade was a shepherd. Dan a wiseman. He's also holding Kylie - our sweet baby Jesus - while Candy gets costumed.

Emily - a wiseman, and Jenaye - a super awesome camel... this shot could only be made better if....

The wiseman was riding the camel :). Excellent :).

"Dave is the donkey" "I'm always the donkey." "Can I be the donkey?" "I'm always the donkey." "No, Dave's... Dave's a better donkey." "Can I be Mary?" "No, Randy's Mary." Okay - sidetracked with a little kid history awesomeness there for a minute :). I was going to be something else, but when I saw how cool Jenaye's camel was, I had to be the donkey :). And that meant Candy got to ride me!

Teagen was an awesome shepherd... for the 3 or 4 seconds that he was willing to wear the hat.

Dan took this picture of me. I don't know what I was doing... but I was NOT having donkey feet and rearing up on my hind legs. I only look like I'm doing that :).

Dad always narrates - and never has his head on (family joke - but this post is getting too long. no time for explanations)

Once Teag saw what was on my head, our reverent nativity suddenly got a lot louder. At least they were happy sounds. He thought the donkey head was hilarious.

Maely was an angel. She did a beautiful job. She also honored the family tradition of standing on the piano bench.

Here is Teagen with his favorite characters from the nativity.

We always get to touch the real gold, frankincense and myrrh because of the beautiful gift that Dalita & Tim gave us. I can't remember when they first gave it to my parents, but a few years ago they gave us one too, and we treasure it. It's a good reminder that this completely different world we read about in scriptural times really was real. It's nice to see, touch, and smell something similar to how it would've been back then.

Here is everyone except Dad who was there on Christmas Eve. (Lacey, Alex & Olivia arrived later that night. Tash & Ben flew in on Christmas night.)

After the nativity, Mom (meaning my Mom) let the kids open one present. She had Disney pajamas for all the grandkids. The girls got their favorite princesses. The babies got Mickey. And Kade got these sweet Buzz Lightyear pjs. The pants were so tight on him at first - ballet tight - haha :). We were cracking up. Even after washing them they haven't been that tight since the first night, so I'm glad we have this picture of him. Oh! And btw - there are 3 of the kids quilts in this picture. Elli's is on top - purple, orange & zebras. Teag's is peeking out below hers - tan & lighthouses that you can't see. And Kade's is the bottom - blue and red with dragonflies and frogs.

That's all for the pre-Christmas fun. Much more to come!!

From the Mouth of Babes

2012-01-06T10:43:00.002-07:00

Kade just randomly started telling me about Paul Clay and his abstract art.... WHAT?!? He said he "made one of those at school once, but it wasn't exactly like Paul Clay's, it was however we wanted." That's one more point for Kade's memory (and probably one less for mine :) ).

From the Mouth of Babes

2012-01-05T10:29:00.001-07:00

I called Elli to get her fingernails cut today. She wasn't in any trouble - everything was fine, but it took her a long time - and a lot of calling - for me to get her to come.

Me: "Elli, when Mom calls you, you need to come."
Elli - very matter-of-factly: "You're not my mom. My mom died a long time ago."
Me: "Then how come I feed you and take care of you every day?"
Elli - nonchalantly: "Well... you want to be my mom... but you're not."
Me: "Oh!... Do you need a hug?"
Elli: "No... I'm fine."

Weird. I guess I died and now I've taken the form of a wanna-be me, who isn't really me... or something - ask Elli :).

Oregon Christmas Trip - Day 1 & 2

2012-01-04T23:18:00.000-07:00

Our drive to Oregon a few days before Christmas went quickly and smoothly, so we decided to take a fun stop. We pulled off at the Stonehenge WWI Memorial in Washington.

It was beautiful out there. Dan took out the camera and played around with it a little.

Many of the pictures we took this trip have me looking at one of the kids. I have tired eyes that don't love the camera :).

After a few minutes, we were the only ones left, and the kids got the chance to run around a little - a fabulous thing mid-road trip.

We got to Mom's house that afternoon, and Lacey & Olivia arrived that evening - YAY! It was so great to have Olivia around - and see her playing with my kiddos. She's so funny and cute.

Mom helped the kids paint cookies just like we used to when we were kids. Painting cookies is different than frosting and decorating them. There's a near and dear spot in my heart for painting cookies, and hanging them on the tree with STRING (but that's another story).

Don't know where Kade picked up the gangsta pose. Never saw it before this picture, and haven't seen it since! Funny kid.

Lacey sat down with Olivia to let her give cookie-painting a try. The paintbrush went into the paint, with Lacey's guidance, and then straight into Olivia's mouth, with Olivia's guidance :). It was funny.

Auntie Em and Elli worked together to make tons of thumbprint cookies that were SO GOOD. I can't even explain it - drooling in the keyboard again. Elli was so proud of their work too.

Autie Em has magical kitchen skills - I caught her harnessing them from this strainer!!

Yes - another picture of me looking at Teagen :).

On Thursday night we went caroling - here are me and my sisters practicing with Mom's new chimes that Dan made! Making music with my sisters in one of the most lovely things in the world. I hope Dan and I can carry on the tradition of so much musical bliss with our kids. I was pathetically bad at remembering my chimes parts. I'm going to blame it on the tiredness again.

And another moment beyond awesomeness - my Dad has a new elf costume! YESSSSS!!! We were pretty dang excited to see him bust this out.

Here is his original elf ensemble. He's been claiming for years that he can't sing, and we've given him a pass, but there's just no denying his dancing skills. This old elf has moves :).

We had a fun time caroling. It worked out a little better in Oregon than it did in Idaho. In Oregon we had a big group for singing - a little less awkward than Dan and I singing with our kids :). But the funniest thing that made it work out better was how in Oregon we went to all the right houses....

In Idaho, we showed up at the last house of the night and knocked. As we waited, we could hear someone walking around. We kept thinking they were trying to get to the door (It was close to 8, so it could've been bedtimes.) so we kept waiting a little longer than we normally would've. Finally, we heard the footsteps come to the door and as it opened, we started to sing. The teenage girl with phone stuck to her ear jumped back obviously startled. Apparently she was headed across the street to the neighbors and was not at all expecting a porch full of people there to scare her when she opened the door. Whoops! That was awkward :). It took both of us a minute of confusion to figure out that we thought we were at the next house over. Hahaha - Just another funny story for the Johnson family caroling memories :).

From the Mouth of Babes

2012-01-04T11:27:00.002-07:00

This morning Elli had opinions about what clothes she wanted to wear to dance. I explained how the studio has rules for each class. When she proceeded to complain about it, I said, "You can talk to your teacher about it and see what she says, but don't keep whining to me - that's not nice."

Her thoughtful reply, "Well... it's nice to my teacher."

I love when they're too smart for their own good :).

From the Mouth of Babes

2012-01-03T18:32:00.000-07:00

Maely: Oh! I want some of that!! What is it?
Me: It's hard as a rock.
Maely (in complete seriousness): I could eat a rock....
[brief pause while she waits to see if I'll offer her some]
I'd love to eat a rock.

First Word!!

2011-12-20T22:31:00.000-07:00

Teagen said his first word tonight - "Bye-Bye". It was SO cute. It was his first real waving too - he did them both at the same time. The best part was how excited he was. He would do it, and then laugh uncontrollably... and I have to admit, I was pretty much doing the same thing. The first 3 or 4 times he said it (with the waving), he just laughed and laughed and laughed. He repeated it for Dan and all his siblings, but of course he got serious when the camera came out.

Oh well - it was a great moment. So fun :).

Other new skills: He's been saying Da-Da for a while now - we don't know really when he switched to knowing what he was saying - pretty recently probably. But he also added Momma this week. His momma-ing has turned quickly to being very intentional. He usually uses it only when fussy, and he wants me, NOW. And before I forget - one other new word recognition skill - if I say, "Milk?" when he is hungry, he will turn and bolt across the room in a full speed crawl to get to me... or near me.. and then attempt to get food from whatever the nearest skin source is... even Dan's hand. Funny stuff.

And in case I forget later - we have a very funny family Christmas caroling story that happened on Monday - it definitely needs recorded when I get the chance.

December Fun - mostly Dance

2011-12-15T12:30:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month we went down to the mall to see Santa. It was fun to have all the kids down at the mall - a very rare happening for any of us to be there really - but it was definitely not conducive to shopping :).

The kids visited Santa. He needed a little coaching about his response to Elli saying she wanted pixie dust. He said, "Oh! We have that!" Then I discreetly reminded him how it might not be real pixie dust that can make you fly. Then he caught on and explained to Elli that he can't give her flying pixie dust because it would be dangerous for children to fly.

At first Kade was too scared to go up and see Santa. I forget sometimes how real this all is to kids! So our first picture has the girls and Teagen. Then later, when Teag was sleeping, Kade decided he was ready, so we did it again. Kade was lucky there wasn't a line :).

Here's a little locket I finally put together for Maely. We gave this to her a while ago, but it took me forever to buy colored ink so I could put pictures in.

And NOW the dance! This was Elli's first time with hair and makeup. She completely loved it.

Here she is in rehearsal. In this shot she's on the far left.

Her dance was tap this time, and will be ballet in the Spring. They did the song "Lion Sleeps Tonight" including yelling "ROAR" a few times and other cute things. The rehearsal was concerning for the dance studio people - but hilariously cute for the parents :). The dancers were easily distracted and confused about their dance - but very solid in the adorable department. I love 3 year old dance performances :).

Maely was a pro - even getting woken up at 5:30 in the morning so she could be first for hair and makeup and we could leave at 7am!!

She's getting so grown up!

Elli had all kinds of hilarious pose ideas :).

After they rehearsed, the girls went and saw Santa...

Except Elli was afraid of Santa - so she just saw his elf :).

Some of Elli's friends from our old ward here were also dancing. She enjoyed playing with Hannah & Lucy in between the rehearsal and recital.

Here is Maely during her performance. She is on the right, and she did AWESOME!

Here's Elli's performance

I was sad this shot came out blurry. Teagen loves his Dad SO much :).

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-12-12T16:46:00.000-07:00

I have a few of them saved up for this post :).

#1
First, a few days ago Elli told me about a scary dream she had. There was an ostrich that was trying to bite her hair and she was afraid just remembering it. She said she was trying to run away but she couldn't keep up with the other kids.

An ostrich biting her hair... I guess that's what happens when you let your kids watch scary shows like America's Funniest Home Videos :).

The running part was sad to me though. Her poor little feet. I wish we could help her with them more.

#2
The other day the kids were discussing movies they like - a whole list of movies where either an animal is saved or an animal is the hero. After Kade described how he liked Free Willy, Maely talked about a movie where a dolphin saves a boy. Elli then interjected that she likes "when Cruella Deville has those boys kill that tiger and then she wears it." Her sincerity about it was hilarious, but I think she missed some major cues in that conversation.

One of these things is not like the other :).

#3
Kade keeps telling us that he doesn't want any presents for Christmas - just to spend time with his family. But then every time he tells us this, he explains that it's what he wants to do next year. Very sweet - but also very funny.

#4
This one happened Saturday morning when we woke Elli up very early. We were hurrying around the house quietly because everyone else was asleep, but we were headed out for her dance recital (going early for the rehearsal). I whispered 'the plan' to her about getting her hair and make-up done and then leaving, and then she added on excitedly when I finished, "And then we'll go to TWIN LAKES!!" She was so excited. Poor kid. I guess since we got her up way early she assumed we must be going on a road trip.

Help me out here...

2011-12-07T17:55:00.001-07:00

If I ever tell you I can't find the bread.... tell me to look in the towel drawer. That might help.

Fabulous Thanksgiving and more!

2011-12-04T23:54:00.000-07:00

Here are pictures from early in November when Teagen spent some time enjoying his mirror-self in the mother's lounge at church :). Pretty cute in his little man clothes.

My bigger kids eat sugared cereal... every day. I'm just not that bothered by a sugary breakfast loaded with an artificial attempt at vitamins :). However, I try not to encourage their sweet tooth too early. I love to feed Teagen nasty vegetable baby food when he's the most hungry so that he'll like the veggies. When we give him cereal it's always plain cheerios. However, on this particular morning, I forgot to get them down and the morning was rushed, so I asked Maely to put 6 or 7 Captain Crunch pieces on his tray. She did so, and the next time I looked at Teagen - to see what he thought about his first piece - I was able to quickly conclude that he liked the Captian Crunch quite well.

He had tasted the first piece, and immediately crammed in all the rest of them :). I looked in time to see the last few go in.

If you thought Teagen had squirrely cheeks before... you should see him with his mouth crammed chuck full of Captain Crunch :). When he shut his mouth, we could hear the cereal grinding. It was pretty funny... and I was glad he didn't choke.

The day before Thanksgiving, the kids participated in a Turkey Trot kids' race put on by one of our friends here. It was up at the school near our house and the kids had a blast.

Here is a shot with most of the runners. It was a great turnout - the kids had lots of friends there.

Elli ran with Dan. I don't let her run much on her own anymore because she falls down too often. I hate when her poor little knees and hands get all scraped up. We save running for carpet, grass, soft playground areas, and other places where she's safer from falls.

Emily's husband (Emily put the race together) is a state trooper, so they brought out the police motorcycle for escort - that was pretty fun :).

This picture cracks me up because it looks like Dan's really working hard... I don't think he was :).

Here is Elli after the race. She was pretty proud of herself :).

Kade was exhausted after his 1/2 mile... but if you've ever watched him play video games, then you know this has to just be a ridiculous act :). This kid could jump and dance around FOREVER - hours straight if we let him, of non-stop jumping :). Silly boy.

Maely ran longer with a friend from our ward and her school class, Hannah. They did a mile with the bigger kids.

A lot of my friends gathered together to make cool snacks and necklaces for the runners. (I couldn't go because Dan was working late, but they did an awesome job! The race was SO fun. Afterwards we took the kids over to Kneaders for hot chocolate and soup. Yum :).

Late that night Ben and Tash arrived. We hung out for a while, but were all pretty exhausted. Once the kids were up the next morning, they wasted no time. They played with Ben for pretty much every available second. He was great entertainment for them so that Dan could man the Turkey and Tash and I could cook happily away :). It was so fun to have them up for Thanksgiving, and it really made it feel like a real holiday gathering even though there were just our two little families.

Ben was even patient enough to let his hair get styled by our little fashionistas.

Kade cheated pretty badly in Battleship - but the funny thing is it was completely unintentional. Once Ben had checked the ENTIRE board, I peeked at Kade's board and gave Ben a few ideas of areas that he might re-check, giving Kade a chance to pay a little more attention to where his own ships were when Ben asked the second time around. It was funny stuff.

We thought our Turkey was going to be a while longer (turns out it wasn't, but that's another story), and we were all getting hungry, so we decided just to serve up a first course. We already had a pretty good selection of appetizers out, so we added some incredible salad (pears, gorgonzala, pecans, and balsamic vinaigrette so good you could drink it!) and served our feast in courses!

Just as we were getting set up to eat our first course, the Turkey finished! Whoops! The story on that is that Dan turned on the oven in the morning, but then the turkey prep was taking longer than expected, so we turned it off. When he was ready, he asked me to turn it back on, and I did... to 350, when he was planning on 250. Our turkey cooked much faster than we expected :). It all worked out kind of hilariously well.

For part two, we busted out all the classics...

Happy Thanksgiving!!

The next day Tasha and I made little plans (as opposed to big plans) for Friday, and then we bailed on them. I'm glad we did too. A day with family was so much better. And our big plans we stuck to firmly. The big plans that day were to go to The Muppets, and we did, and it was AWESOME.

We wanted to dress up, but it's really hard to make muppet costumes! After some brainstorming, we settled for making paper plate muppet masks.

We have Maely the Miss Piggy, Kadeson the Kermit, Elli the Janice, and by far our awesomest costume, Tasha the Beaker :). Ben and I carried Animal and Ralph the whole time :).

We had a few shenanigans during the course of our Thanksgiving break - I guess we pretty much expect that when any gathering of our family occurs. One was that we threw away an entire batch of sour cream potatoes!! We make good sour cream potatoes in our family. I love them. I crave them. I expect that unless something pretty crazy goes down, we will be able to have them. Well, something crazy tried, but we conquered it. The 'something crazy' was that I thought it would be super Thanksgiving-y if I used potatoes and onions from our garden harvest to cook with. I haven't made the recipe without hash browns in years, but I remember it to be even creamier and so so yum when Mom makes it that way. We labored extra hard to fill this HUGE baking dish to the brim with fresh-from-the-garden potatoes. Normally I like to lick the bowl when we're done making these, but this year it just tasted strange. We added some extra minced onion, extra cheese, and a few other extras and then stuck it in the oven. Unfortunately, my potatoes (which have seemed to be okay in other recipes...) turned out to be a horrible FAIL in this case. They tasted more like Mom's pork and cabbage than any sour cream or funeral potatoes I've ever tasted. It was very disappointing. (Don't get me wrong, I LOVE pork and cabbage, but not when it looks like sour cream potatoes.) We all ate some at our meal anyways, but the next morning I was still so disappointed that we chucked them all and made a new batch... with frozen hashbrowns :). We still used onions from the garden. That counts for something, right?! Here is our unceremonious dumping of the potatoes. It felt very wrong. But it smelled right.

Other shenanigigans (okay, that's a typo - but I like it) occured regularly throughout our visit with Tasha and Ben, but were highly concentrated during our game night :). Just ask Tasha to show you what an Extraterrestrial Shoe Dance is :). The speed with which she came up with that phrase was mind-boggling and excellent. Good stuff.

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-12-01T18:31:00.001-07:00

Tonight at dinner we were having one of Kade's 'Guess What' conversations, where Kade tells us a very long story, adding much more detail than is necessary or interesting, pausing every sentence or two to say, "and guess what?!" so as to keep the listener involved and/or hold them hostage :).

Tonight when he finally paused the story long enough for someone else to say something besides "what?", Maely started her comments with, "I'm not trying to be rude, but..." That interjection in itself was highly entertaining to me :). Her insight was, "But Kade... well... he seems to talk about football A LOT!" She's right. He talks a lot, and a lot of that time he spends talking about football. He has very little awareness of his audience as long as they have ears and are within hearing range. I don't know how long this phase will last, but I'm entertained by it.

Official Complaint

2011-11-22T19:43:00.001-07:00

Dan worked a 16 1/2 hour day yesterday... and we're going on hour 12 now... expecting 3 more hours before he gets home. I don't want to complain to Dan; it's not his fault... so can I just send a complaint out into the universe?. . . .

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-11-22T09:49:00.001-07:00

In sing-songy annoyance: "Mo-om... You're ruining our precipitation!" - Maely

I always enjoy when my kids surprise me by using big words, but I love it even more when they use them completely wrong :). I honestly don't know what word she intended to use, but I like that she chose 'precipitation' instead.

Whoops - missed one!

2011-11-15T21:16:00.001-07:00

Here is one more picture. This was the Sunday in between our trunk-or-treat and Halloween. Kade came downstairs dressed for church and wearing his Optimus Prime mask :). I don't think he noticed how well it matched, but I did :).

A Little November (okay... and October :) )

2011-11-15T15:52:00.001-07:00

I forgot to put this picture of Teagen with the Halloween pictures. This is when we first tried his costume on him. He had the force :).

Here is a project I did with Dan in September. I found a menu board a lot like this online... and for a long time I really wanted it... but I felt like the price was pushing it, and the shipping was definitely too much. With much reassurance from Dan, we decided we could do it ourselves! It turned out practically perfect (to me). And believe it or not, I keep it updated all the time and it TOTALLY helps my life run more smoothly. I plan my meals ahead. I cook with the foods I need to use up. (I always love something that adds organization to my life.) And, it makes my kitchen cuter! A total win-win on this one ~ and huge thanks to Dan who cut the board perfectly for me, got it on the door for me, and encouraged me so that I had confidence to actually make it.... I only wish I had chosen a week with more exciting meals to take pictures. Sometimes we have really cool stuff on there :).

This one is a little random. There was one day when Teagen kept kissing the dishwasher. He might've been able to see his reflection in it, so maybe this is a little like kissing a mirror :). Cute either way.

A few days ago we had Dan's aunt & uncle, Ron & Erika come and stay with us on their way down to Utah to leave on their mission. Before their arrival we were getting things cleaned up. Once Maely finished her job, she used a rope to set up this course. It let from the front door, around a bend, and then straight to where Maely sat, goofy-faced on her little floor throne. Funny girl.

I guess this is just the price you pay if you're a little guy with two big sisters.

Teagen is starting to do a little climbing. He figured out crawling a few weeks ago, and then the very next day was headed up the stairs. Oh man. Here he is after crawling into the toy basket, trapping himself :).

Here is a funny one from today. "Kade... what's in your mouth?"

Here he is showing me... and it looks like a bandaid. Gross!

Then he took it out - a pretend plastic band aid for a veterinarian kit we have - and his explanation, "I saw some football guys have these in their mouths." ... Well, that's not exactly what they have... but he gets points for creative problem-solving :).

I guess maybe for Christmas he wants a mouth guard?

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-11-15T14:14:00.001-07:00

Here is what Elli says will happen when she gets to heaven and sees all the angels playing their trumpets:

"I will say, "Trumpet Boys, can you play Bay-ba for me?" And they will say, "Okay." "

And yes, she is referring to Justin Beiber's "Baby".... I'm not sure the "trumpet boys" play that song, but I'm not going to tell her that.

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-11-15T08:58:00.001-07:00

Last night during Family Night, we were taking turns sharing things that we were grateful for. We were helping the kids think outside the box by giving them categories - think of a piece of furniture and why you're grateful for it, think of a person you're thankful for, think of an animal you're thankful for. Anyways, it wasn't long before Elli said this:

"I'm thankful for the calapitters... because they're small... and they get freezed'd... and then we can eat them!"

I have no idea what she's thinking of, but I don't think she's ever eaten caterpillars. I guess I could never be positive...!

More Dance

2011-11-08T16:42:00.000-07:00

Here's another fun entry for the dance marathon. I like how Teagen just sleeps through it all. He's so good at sleeping through chaos. Unfortunately that doesn't work out well at night... when the only chaos is him waking up every 45 minutes :).

Dance Marathon

2011-11-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

I've been going through a few videos from the last couple months, and resizing them for storage. In the process, I've come across a few more treasures that I thought it would be fun to post.

Here's one from when Stan and Cherilyn and Lacey and Olivia were all here. The kids had been doing a little fashion show of some cute clothes Grandma got them for school, and then when they requested some music of course a dance party ensued. This video actually shows Maely and Kade dancing to a slower-tempoed song, which I absolutely love. It cracks me up with memories of Bryan and I dancing together as kids.

Post #400!

2011-11-03T23:26:00.000-06:00

Google Reader users might've already seen this. I got a little over-zealous and busted it out, only to find out that it put me at 399. Whoops. Anyways, now that Halloween is up, here is our official 400th post.

For my 400th blog post, I say we celebrate the excellence of hilarious kids dancing with this clip which highlights the newest of member of our dance crew.

When I was in Oregon, a few people mentioned that they'd love more dance videos on the blog. I'm glad other people enjoy them as much as me.

Halloween Fun

2011-11-03T14:23:00.002-06:00

Our Halloween started on Saturday. We had a super fun pumpkin-carving gathering at our neighbor's house, and a dinner and trunk-or-treat down at the church, so we started the day off with a Halloween-y breakfast, done in the cream-of-wheat tradition of my mother.

I remember when Mom did this when I was a kid we'd always be really surprised each time. I think I may be taking some of the fun out of it for my kids since I do it so often - they've come to expect it.

Elli's was the first one I made, and it started melting. I might be using a bit too much sugar... but I have a LOT of orange sugar sprinkles now (thanks Mom, Dan, Emily, and myself!) :).

After carving pumpkins, we got the kids costumed-up. Kade didn't have any trouble jumping into full character - Optimus Prime.

We had two Rapunzels this year.

I think these two pictures show two very opposite and very fun sides of Maely. The top shows how she's just got that tinge of crazy in her :). If this was real life, I'd be feeling a little nervous. She's fearless, and very driven to make things happen :). And then below shows Maely's domestic side. She is AMAZING. Her capabilities are more than anything I'd ever expect from a 7-year-old. She can clean up a whole trashed room in minutes - pretty much as fast as I can. She is detail-oriented in her cleaning - she doesn't just pick it up, she perfects the space. She also organizes like you wouldn't believe, and Elli is learning from her in these skills. I couldn't be more thrilled. As far as the kitchen goes, she can receive detailed directions and then go in and really make things happen with food. She's awesome as a cooking assistant, but there have been at least a few occasions where I haven't been feeling well and she has made lunch for the kids! I'm a lucky mom. My busy-body baby has come a long way.

She thought of this picture idea by herself. I love it. And I guess this can be an illustration of her creative side which is also flourishing.

Here are the girls spinning around the tree, frying pans in hand, and yelling out, "BEST DAY EVER!!"

Teagen was Darth Vader. He LOVED his light saber, and got upset on multiple occasions when someone tried to take it from him :).

Most of the time he had the hat on, he looked like this. He didn't wear his hat much :).

There's that tricky hat again :).

The trunk-or-treat was a blast. We always love those. It was fun to get out and see our ward - but also a disappointing reminder that I really don't know very many people yet. It gave me the chance to introduce myself and our family a few times though - that was good.

Julia's party was awesome. She amazes me - so good about organizing gatherings and making things happen. She made all kinds of fabulous Halloween foods. I was very impressed. The kids loved playing with Jared and carving their pumpkins.

On Monday we went out trick-or-treating. It's the first time we've really done real trick-or-treating that I can think of. In Colorado we stopped at homes of people we knew a few times, but never really went through the neighborhood. In Utah... well we moved to Utah on Halloween Day - that's pretty self-explanatory. We were lucky to make it out to a trunk-or-treat with the Stays. Last year Halloween was on Sunday, so we stayed home and just did a trunk-or-treat then too.

Anyways, this year, right as we were about ready, our fabulous neighbors, the Hunts came over. They waited for us for a minute while we quickly finished up (maybe a little too quickly since Elli made it out the door in flip-flops and no one was really set up to stay warm). But we had a blast going through the neighborhood with them. Our kids were thrilled to be with theirs and it was nice to meander down the road chatting with them.

My plan was to buy candy for one event, pass out all our candy and let the kids collect. Then take their candy from that (after they pick out their favorites) and pass it all back out on Halloween. I thought that way we wouldn't have as much candy, but the kids really came home with tons from door-to-door trick-or-treating too. I didn't think they'd have that much! Now I just wish I could stop eating it!!

Pre-Halloween Post

2011-11-01T23:18:00.000-06:00

Here's everything else I wanted to post from before Halloween so I can get the kids' costume pictures up next. They're fun.

Here is a picture from a while ago when the kids were out of school and Dan was out of town. We had a movie/snuggle time. I normally get busy when the kids watch a movie, so I thoroughly enjoyed sitting down with them and snuggling in. It was lovely.

The kids draw and color constantly - honestly almost every day. Here is one Kade brought over to me the other day that he was especially proud of. It took the place of that colored shirt you can see in the picture above where I hang my kid art. I stole that wire/clothes pin idea from my friend Julie, and I LOVE it. I'm so glad to have such an easy way to get my kids' art up and down from my walls.

Now that Teag is wearing his fall wardrobe - hahaha - I've been taking extra photo shoots of him in all these great outfits he hasn't worn yet. Plus his squishy little face is just cute. Here he is in a new Sunday outfit.

I loved the pictures of Teagen with Dan.

Elli has been begging me for over a year to get her into a dance class, and this fall we did. Recently her costume arrived for her performance of In the Jungle, and this is it. I was cracking up. Aside from the brown on the leotard - the feather pieces have a very orange and black look to them. I'm pretty excited about that. But colors aside, I can't wait to see Elli dance. She loves it so much.

Here is another set of pictures of Teag.

Another Sunday activity we had recently was that the kids prepared a play for Dan and I to watch. They made a detailed background and then explored a plot concocted mostly by Maely that couldn't quite be contained :). It went on and on... and on... and on... and on... We were begging for the opportunity to applaud. Finally Dan helped them wrap it up, and then as an encore, they did a version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Alright - that should bring us up to Halloween - YAY!

Admiration

2011-10-31T23:16:00.000-06:00

Click it to make it bigger and see Teag's cute little face.

Good Idea; Bad Idea

2011-10-31T11:07:00.000-06:00

Good Idea: Help your kids have a fun reverent Sabbath Day activity... We put on youtube, found reverent primary song videos that had beautiful slide shows, and then let the kids sing the songs into the computer microphone.

Bad Idea: Accidentally turn on a techno version of Book of Mormon Stories and have all reverence go out the window.

Here is the hilariousness that happened. I think it's time to talk about appropriate dancing :).

Family Outing

2011-10-31T09:16:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago it was the BYU-OSU game. We dressed up appropriately.

Then we headed out on an outing to ride the paddleboats - very fun :).

This picture was not taken at an angle - it was just the swan that was angling as Dan tried with all his might to be faster than Maely and I. There was no competition, and I enjoyed that very much. Once Dan was thoroughly convinced that he couldn't beat us (he even tried sitting in the middle of the swan and strattling to get his feet on the left side peddles AND the right side peddles - that didn't work either :) ), then we stopped racing and just enjoyed ourselves.

Teagen seemed to enjoy it too. He sat backwards most the time. I think he had a nice little view that way.

All the kids liked steering. Maely was pretty good at it - especially since it was kind of counter-intuitive - steering the opposite way from where you wanted to go.

After paddle boats, we had a seriously delicious lunch at a local sandwich shop. Our lovely well-behaved children were a hit with the owner, one of the employees, and an older couple while we were there. I'm always so relieved when that happens :). I really enjoy it.

Once we finished lunch, we headed up to tour the old penitentiary - a little gory at times for a family field trip, but the kids have been asking to go for a long time. And now they are all quite sure that none of them ever wants to go to jail - so that's good :).

The kids didn't have any trouble at all getting into full character for some mug shots.

Her cute little button nose cracks me up in this shot.

Okay, so maybe Mom looks more like a goofy pirate than a hardened criminal, but I did my best. In my defense, I have a lot of history being a pirate. I guess I need to practice some different faces... and put my hook away :).

You might notice the shirt Dan is wearing in this picture... on game day. I was honestly appalled, and possibly a little hurt when he pulled off his long-sleeve OSU shirt to reveal a BYU shirt underneath. He told me that BYU is just close to his heart. He was in big trouble. Luckily for him, I am reminding myself and my children regularly that even though Mom LOVES OSU, BYU would be a better school for them to go to, and even BYU football is pretty good too :). Kade currently has the goal of playing football for BYU because we've told him about the honor code, Sunday policies, etc. Good kid :)... Husband is still in trouble about this one though.

The guard towers were one of my favorite parts. A few months ago we visited the Idaho Botanical gardens - which border the penitentiary - and it's so cool from the outside, being in gorgeous gardens with these beautiful but kind of scary towers as a backdrop.

A little time in solitary confinement. Had we been inmates, we would've called this Siberia. The conditions sounded pretty wild. This prison was shut down in 1973 after multiple riots and bad press about the living conditions.

The picture above us shows some of the newest cells in the prison. The picture below shows some of the oldest ones. The very oldest ones were all burnt down in rioting. These are pretty scary though. The doorways here are just high enough for me to walk through - but definitely not the average man. The sewage system they had is one of the grossest things I've ever thought about! This older room had cells 4 or 5 levels high too. They would have 4 or more men in rooms smaller than my bathroom!

So that was our lovely family outing.

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-10-30T22:50:00.002-06:00

At lunch the other day, Elli was telling us a very creative aspiration she has for the future - when she's 81. She wants to have a big bicycle (again) that has 63 wheels, and there are 40 bikes like that all attached together with tape. She went on and on describing this bike until Kade was bothered by the nonsensicalness of it all. He decided to be the voice of reason by declaring, in a somewhat annoyed tone, "Elli, the whole world would tip over."
:)
I'm gonna miss these conversations A LOT when the kids are all older.

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-10-26T23:03:00.002-06:00

Yesterday Elli and I were standing in a parking lot waiting for Dan to arrive. He and I were going to switch kids and then finish our errands. To prevent Elli from becoming bored for those few minutes, I tried to engage her in looking for Dan. I was saying things like, "Let's watch for a big black truck."

After I said that, Elli started helping me too. "Now remember... Dad has blue clothes... and gray hair."

Ah hahahaha. Dan asked me if I corrected her. Of course not!! I just made a careful note in my ipod of her exact wording so I wouldn't forget it :).

October Happenings

2011-10-24T22:04:00.001-06:00

October has flown by...as all months seem to do lately. We started with General Conference. I went through all my regular preparations. I'm not posting the family coloring page this time around because it didn't turn out as well as they normally do... next time.

Here is a new one I did. We often have themed cream of wheat, so on Saturday morning before conference, I tried putting a temple on their hot cereal. I thought it turned out fairly well.

Maely is sideways... I don't know why :). She has a habit of doing things her own way :).

Grandma & Grandpa were in town for Kade's birthday and stayed through conference. We were able to go on lots of little fun outings with them and just enjoy a nice laid back week. In this picture Kade is sporting a mask from Family Read Night at the kids' school (which was also very fun).

We've been getting a little Halloween-y here and there. The kids helped me pull out my Fall decorations. I don't really do Halloween decor - but we do have pumpkins and pilgrims out now. I probably need to get a few more things when Fall stuff goes on clearance soon.

Here is an idea I came across that I had to try. They are ghosts (hopefully you knew that!) made of tortillas and nutella - YUM! I couponed 4 containers of nutella a few weeks ago for a great price (doublers and all that). It was pretty smart of them to put out good coupons because I think I'm hooked. I've never bought it before. Since then I bought 4 more super big bottles from Costco (coupons again - can't not use 'em, right?!?). Now we're totally set - and probably hooked for quite a while!

The kids love everything we do with it. I'm finding nutella to be quite versatile! And a great lunch bribe. I put it on their sandwiches with bananas and peanut butter sometimes IF they earn it - sweet!

Teagen set himself up this way the other night and then just watched TV with Dan and I :). The boy knows how to lounge already - I guess some things are just inherent.

Teagen isn't really crawling yet, but he scoots around everywhere all the time. He's getting faster too. AND - I have to officially apologize to all the people who said he's probably teething and then I said I'm sure he's not....

None of the other kids had a tooth until after their first birthday (unless Elli's was right before?), but Teagen got his on Sunday - at just 8 months old! (That's early for us at least). I was definitely wrong about that! With Maely we thought she was teething all the time from like 2 or 3 months on, and she never was until way later. With Kade we always wondered if he was teething, then figured he wasn't. With Elli we didn't even wonder. With Teagen we've been the same way and then before church on Sunday I felt his gums. It seemed like he could be teething, but I didn't feel anything too convincing. Then during Sacrament meeting he bit the side of my hand and DEFINITELY had a tooth! Crazy! Congratulations little man!

Here's a little sample of another photo shoot.

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-10-24T21:35:00.003-06:00

Elli asked me this today: "Mom, when I'm eighty-thirty, can I ride a bike this big [said while jumping with both arms shooting up]... as big as this house?!?"

If she can ride a bike when she's 110, I'll be impressed no matter how big the bike is!

Random Fun

2011-10-21T22:17:00.000-06:00

I always love baby laughs. Here are some from back in September. Teag is a seriously giggle baby. It doesn't take much at all to get him cracking up. I try to remember how his laughing compares to Kade's. I think Kade did a little more of laughing so hard that we were worried he was forgetting to breathe - that he might just pass out. Teagen doesn't usually get quite that hysterical, but I think he might laugh easier. You can just look at him and he'll start to giggle :).

I know I take too many pictures of Teagen, so here I put a bunch into a collage so it wouldn't make for a huge boring post of pictures that all look the same to everyone else. There's a few more collages coming soon from other photo shoots in the last few weeks.

Here's a day that Maely wanted to go skater-chic on us and wear Kade's shoes. She did look pretty cool in them :). I love how fearless she is!

And last - a picture I missed from back in August when Lacey was here. This won't make much sense unless you know about our relationship with our good friend Slow-no-wake. We met her at Twin Lakes and have had many wonderful adventures with her. (See my label on the side for her.) Slow-no-wake faced a sad and untimely death this year at the lake, and we thought she might be gone forever until Lacey and I found her reincarnated in a nice safe front yard in Idaho when we were out garage-saleing! We were so excited. We had to jump out and take a picture to send to Nikki.

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-10-21T08:26:00.000-06:00

Here's a From the Mouth of Babes flashback. This one was back before I had a blog - Maely was 3, and the kids have been quoting it lately, so I had to post it. Trust me, it's a good one :).

Here is how I wrote it back then:
- - - - -
Oh the joys of teaching our children the gospel... The other night we were reading in the Book of Mormon about one of King Noah's wicked priests who, after King Noah was killed, became another wicked king. We read that he killed people who prayed, and Maely apparently didn't like that. After reading, Maely said the family prayer. Dan asked her to make sure she talked loud enough that everyone could hear the prayer, so she was talking a little louder than normal, but still being reverent. She started out with a pretty conventional prayer, but then, in an unexpected twist, she suddenly got a lot louder and a lot angrier in her voice as she declared:

"But the Lamaphites* are BAD!" That gave me a smile, but she didn't stop there. From then on her voice got louder and more intense as she continued, "THEY KILL PEOPLE... I DON'T LOVE THE LAMAPHITES!!" And then she caught us off guard again by practically yelling, "I WILL KILL THEM!!" This was the moment that required intervention. I was laughing hysterically, (usually I can restrain myself at times like these, but this one was too much for me) so Dan had to do the job. He quietly and kindly reminded her, "Maely, use your nice voice." And then, to top it all off, in the sweetest most angelic three-year-old little girl voice Maely continued nice and slow but very deliberate, "I will kill them." And then she went on in a totally conventional prayer again. It was so hilarious... Now we're working on a family night lesson that we never thought we'd need to have: "Thou Shalt Not Kill". All in all, I think Maely will make it through unscathed by the experience, but I can't wait for her to be old enough for us to laugh with her about it.
- - - - -
Well, now Maely is old enough to laugh about the righteous indignation of her 3-year-old self, and the kids have thoroughly enjoyed the story. I could read it over and over all day and just keep on laughing. Maely has been such a fun kid to raise.

*for anyone unfamiliar with Book of Mormon people, this statement is funny in itself because Maely has combined the names of two key groups of people, the Lamanites and the Nephites. I've never heard another kid do that, so I definitely enjoyed it.

Blog Slacker!! - - - Kade's Birthday

2011-10-20T12:31:00.002-06:00

Kade had his birthday... last month :). We've been pretty busy lately. Here's some pictures of it :).

For his breakfast of choice, he wanted oatmeal with frozen berries and chocolate whip cream.

For his party, we went to a bounce place. Grandma & Grandpa came with us and we had lots of fun.

Dan chucked the kids into the foam pit one by one. Here's Elli.

Kade was super excited about all of it :). This boy knows how to be enthusiastic!

Here goes Kade - spinning.

Maely plugged her nose each time she jumped in, which I thought was hilarious.

We had some poppers to explode outside.

I don't know why we took a pictures of everyone with their mouth open, cramming in cake and ice cream, but that's what we did :).

It was a fun birthday. His wish came true when Grandma & Grandpa came to town for it, just like he asked! The funniest thing we got him was a satchel... which means that we went to goodwill (we actually went a bunch of different time looking for the perfect thing) and found a nice-looking brown ladies purse - the manliest looking one they had :). He loves it.

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-10-18T08:43:00.000-06:00

Yesterday our whole family had a hilarious conversation together. It started out just comical when Elli declared, "Dad is always right!" Dan couldn't leave that one alone, "Did you hear that Mom?". Of course I said 'no' and then talked to someone else or made loud kitchen noises the next 3 or 4 times that Dan had her re-declare it. Then I tried to get Elli to switch her wording to Mom is always right. Her next proclamation was, "Mom is NOT always right!" with a huge grin. Then Kade got in on the action, "Mom is always WRONG!" followed by much laughter. "HEY!" I exclaimed, "This is getting WORSE!"

This funny banter went back and forth for a few more minutes before Kade figured out the solution, "You guys should just go wrestle on the bed to decide who's right!" Ahahahaha :).

In our defense, we really did have some hilarious - and fully G rated - wrestling on the bed the other night during reading time with our kids. We were both pushing each other off and it was quite funny. Obviously it left a lasting impression with Kade.

Anyways - Dan liked Kade's idea quite a lot and has brought it up at least 15 times since yesterday afternoon. I'm afraid that Kade has taught him a new conflict resolution skill which he will want to apply to all possible situations. But I have to admit, the words have echoed in my head too, "You guys should just go wrestle on the bed to decide who's right!".... So wrong :).

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-10-08T12:57:00.000-06:00

Mom: "Alright guys, let's bust out some lunch because the game starts in 1/2 an hour, and today... I think we're gonna win."

Kade: "YA, CUZ TODAY, THE BEAVERS ARE PLAYING THE WORST TEAM EVER!!! .... WORSER THAN THEM!!!!"

Oh man, he speaks the truth. The sad, sad, truth.

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-10-08T12:12:00.002-06:00

Kade while we were doing chores today: "For Christmas, I'm gonna ask Santa for Mom to not buy broccoli ever again."

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-10-07T16:36:00.002-06:00

The kids are trying on pieces of Teagen's sweet Halloween costume. When Maely put part on, Kade followed after her saying, "Maely, I think that looks ri-donk-ulous."

Cracking up :).

Lacey's Wedding - Day 3 - The Reception pt. 2

2011-10-06T16:59:00.000-06:00

Lacey had a photobooth at her reception - and she specifically requested that my kids help make sure they get their money's worth. Haha - mission accomplished. My kids were in and out of that booth ALL night. And it was awesome too because in between dancing, they had something to do besides venture down into the pond and surrounding goose poop! YAY!

I'm missing the coolest picture. I hope I find it. I'll get to that later though. Here are some random shots of the fam.

Here is a sampling of Elli's treasures.

Maely was excited to take pictures of her new friends - like Alex's sister Ashley (middle), his cousin Danielle (the next one on the left) and frankly, I have no idea who the girls are on the far left. Maely is NOT shy :).

Here are some of Kade's. I can say with a fair amount of confidence that Kade got more use out of the photobooth than anyone else there. He LOVED it. Funny funny.

Here is the coolest one we did. We had at least 13 cousins in there - but we never did do a head count :). If Kade was in (and he is, I see his head)... so nevermind - that's at least 14 cousins in!!

We were pretty tame with Lacey's car - but that's fine. We were having so much fun at the reception, none of us wanted to stray away to decorate :).

A quick hug to the bride before Alex tucked her in :).

That evening we got to see some of Jenaye's sweet hula-hooping moves. Dan set up our camera for me to take these cool pictures.

And after that, we were just pretty wiped out. I found a nice place to lay - inside Teag's carseat apparently. I probably wanted to be by Mom :) - and then we just started crashing.

Funny idea of the day...

2011-10-05T11:15:00.000-06:00

Here's my new way of getting the table cleared after breakfast. It's a song - to the tune of "Who let the dogs out"

I just rap, "WHO LEFT THEIR BOWL OUT" and then the kids chant, "WHO - WHO - WHO - WHO" or "ELLI - ELLI - ELLI - ELLI" then I rap again, "PUT IT IN THE SINK PLEASE!" and they respond with whatever the feel like, sticking to the rhythm of the song of course. "WHO LEFT THE CEREAL OUT?" "DAD - DAD - DAD - DAD" "I'LL PUT IT AWAY FOR HIM" "THANKS MOM - THANKS -THANKS - THANKS"

Keeps the mood light and gets the work done. Plus I get to think we're funny, and I always love that :)

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-10-05T09:31:00.001-06:00

If Kade ever tells you that he's super excited because we're going to eat Crisco Sandwiches, please don't be concerned. He really means Monte Cristo Sandwiches. We don't normally spread a lot of Crisco on sandwiches.

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-10-05T09:04:00.001-06:00

Elli to Kade: "You know why I want to let you pop that balloon?"

Kade: "Why"

Elli: "Because I want to see it's guts!"

Lacey's Wedding - Day 3 - The Reception pt.1

2011-10-03T20:20:00.000-06:00

We attempted the family picture again :). We keep working on it :). These are definitely the best we've gotten in a while. One of these days we'll try again when they're not exhausted - that will help :).

Maely was still up to the task of making lovely poses.

Elli was not :).

We were telling her to smile (while she was sitting up) and - thought not unhappy, just exhausted - she threw herself back onto the ground in this pose. I loved it :).

A stroller shot was all we even attempted of Teagen.

It's so good to have sisters around :).

A family picture with Grandma Grahyl & Papa Vern.

Kaitlyn, Jenaye, Tiffani, and Seth

Grandpa, Tori, Grandma, and Elli

Tash & Kade

Mom, Olivia (who Mom is having withdrawals from as we speak), and Dad

Amber Nicole & Amber Nicole :) - it was great to see Amber and catch up. We need to have a gathering one of these days with all of our sisters, both of our Moms and all of our kiddos - it would be so fun.

Here is the picture of Ali & Jon that I never took - DOH! Sometimes I really wish I had more clarity of mind so I could remember things every once in a while.

The newlyweds - reunited this weekend in their new home in California!

Dan... probably using the stroller as an excuse to not get drug out on the dance floor with all the rest of us party animals :).

The girls HAD to have a ride in the wagon - and I doubt that they would've settled for anyone pulling them besides Andy :).

Candy, Bryan, and their baby flower :). Hahaha - I love this picture.

Why would anyone sit on a bride?!? Hahaha - I swear she invited me - and I'm always first in line to share a chair with Lacey :).

Andy's cousin took this one- and I stole it from facebook. I love it :). We had so much fun dancing.

First Dance :)

My girls love Jen and the other teenage girl cousins. I wish we lived closer so they could play more often... not to mention we'd be in babysitter heaven :).

I love these dancing action shots :)

I hope someone told Jim about this - we're all doing the 'handsome man' :)

Candy took this awesome shot of Kade on the Beaver Bus -and most of the other pictures in this post as well :). I left my camera on the bus and never made it back to get it. I took a few with Dan's camera - but I couldn't just tote that one around with me. On the drive back home the next day I was almost feeling sick because I hadn't taken any pictures at the reception. I'm so glad other people covered for me.

Kade spent a long time just checking out the awesomeness of the Beaver Bus - a seriously amazing addition to Lacey's wedding :).

Lacey's Wedding day 3 - The Wedding!

2011-09-30T23:57:00.001-06:00

On wedding day we scrambled around to get everyone lovelied up, and then we were picked up in this!! How sweet is that. Riding on the Beaver Bus was such an honor. We felt so privileged.

We brought some books to keep the kiddos busy if they needed it. Come to find out - they probably didn't :).

Elli with her new buddy, Ashley.

Here's Maely cracking us up on the bus - telling people what they should do :).

We rode over to Avery park for pictures. When we got a few minutes, we tried to take a few of our own.

It was a little rushed so we have squinty eyes. We should've taken the time to go find some shade... but we didn't :)

Staying still wasn't our specialty. One of these days we'll get a good family picture...

Getting eyes all looking up for this one was quite a production.

That's why Dan was able to capture such a lovely shot of me. The sounds that you could hear were much more wild than this pictures lets on to.

This was a super fun one. Lacey and I saw a picture like this on the internet and without even speaking, we both knew they had to do it :).

This one was fun to take - but funny to look at since it looks like Lacey is marrying Bryan :). I'm impressed with how thoroughly we scrambled the birth order on this one!

Here's the whole 'party'!

I mentioned it already, but my kids LOVED Andy - really really loved him. He was a good sport about all their attention.

Here we are on the bus, riding over to the park for the wedding. This is where we got the excellent video (on facebook) of Lacey and I rockin' out to Justin Bieber as sang by my kids and Lacey and I - who are apparently louder than my kids :).

Before the wedding, I got to go be a witness for Lace & Alex as they signed their marriage certificate.

When the ceremony started, the Beaver Bus took us in style up to the back of the park for us to walk in.

Dan escorted my Mom, and they both escorted babies.

I think it's funny that we both have our eyes almost all the way closed in this shot. Hopefully the wedding photographer got a better one.

Little Kade was the Ring Bearer.

Elli and Maely were so happy for their special job as flower girls.

And then Alex's cousin's little boys walked Olivia down the aisle. It was SO precious :). She was completely excited - definitely a favorite moment from it all.

Lacey was lovely.

Kade was really good, but also super distracted by a bug on the bow - or something like that. He had to check it out from all sides.

When it was Kade's turn to do his job, he did it well. I was glad to know that Andy was right there behind him in case he decided to do anything goofy.

And, as anticipated, Lacey & Alex got MARRIED!! YAY!

***As a disclaimer, probably 1/2 of these pictures were stolen from kindly folks on facebook who took pictures. Thanks all you kindly folk!!***

Lacey's Wedding - Day 2

2011-09-26T20:37:00.001-06:00

First thing on the agenda for the 2nd day of our trip: JENAYE DAY!! Jenaye's birthday was right in the middle of all the wedding festivities, but that didn't stop us from celebrating thoroughly :). Here we are about to have a lovely birthday breakfast.

Mom and Dad got Jenaye a cool LED hula-hoop for her birthday- sweet pictures of that coming soon!

The next plans for the morning were our official bachelor/bachelorette parties. The men took off golfing. They were excited.

They showed off their excitement by jumping off the porch and doing leprechaun heel clicks (at least that's what I call 'em). "WE'RE OUTTA HERE!!" There goes Bryan.

And Dad... Bryan and Dad both click to the right...

And here come our left-clickers, Alex...

And Dan.

Maybe I'm just a dork, but I've really thought this through. I find it highly interesting that Dad (left-handed) clicked right, while Alex (also left-handed) clicked left, and Bryan (right handed) clicked right, while Dan (also right-handed) clicked left. How weird is that?... Oh... only weird to me?... okay :).

The girls started our bachelorette outing with a trip to the nail salon. Some of us chose pedis and some of us chose manis. Of course the bride needed both :). Grandma and I made sure that no one would wonder who the bride was - Grandma got her a fabulous fancy bridal tiara :) and I made her wear that sweet bling on her wrist. It's a gorgeous necklace with a ring on it... which is apparently big enough to be worn as a bracelet - haha :).

Yay for massaging chairs, hot foot baths, ferocious scrubbing and fabulous conversation. So fun! I think we should do this EVERY time the boys golf.

And of course Candy and I always catch each other like this :). She had photo-endurance though. My camera all but disappeared on the day of the wedding - so sad.

Tasha

Emily

Mom, Kylie, Candy, Grandma

We let Teagen come along on our ladies outing. This is how excited he was about the girly stuff :). Haha - no, once he woke up he was actually quite enthusiastic about getting attention from all of the happy ladies.

Mom, Mary (Alex's Mom) and Ashley (Alex's sister)

Jenaye & Kylie

Grandma & Tasha

Emily and I took this picture 3 times. At first I was leaning way back with Em and we were being super cool, but with my stupid tiredness, I apparently couldn't look cool and keep my eyes open at the same time. Finally I leaned forward and opened my eyes as BIG as I could - and they stayed open :). For those of you who regularly read my blog, you'll remember I had the same silly problem at Disneyland. One of these days I'm really gonna sleep... I hope :).

Hanna (Lacey's friend/bridesmaid) and Jenaye couldn't come with us to lunch, but here are the rest of us. We went to a fun little Italian Deli in downtown Corvallis that had FABULOUS sandwiches (Natalia & Gustaforo's if your interested. They're on facebook).

We were so excited when we got there because we thought we weren't going to have a stripper at Lacey's bachelorette party, and then the restaurant provided one anyways - SWEET!! Luckily for us, she was a lady... (is that an oxymoron :)?). We had a good laugh - as we usually do :).

When we got back home, my girls and I took turns holding Kylie. She's so precious and teeny. It's so hard for me to believe that she was so much smaller when she was first born! Elli & Maely LOVED meeting her.

And so did I :). Plus, we matched.

That night we went back down to the park for the wedding rehearsal. Watching Olivia's two big cousins... second cousins?... walk her down the aisle was about the cutest thing ever :).

She was having a blast (but I think she was even more excited about it in the actual wedding, believe it or not!)

The whole thing was pretty cute - but this was definitely the best part :).

Dad walked Lacey down - and then did some strange and bizarre fist pump/chest bump with Alex. I'm really glad he got that out of his system during the rehearsal :).

At the rehearsal dinner, Grandma presented Dad with this sweet ... dang! I can't remember what Grandma was calling his crown & award. It was a very fancy & official name. I'll have to ask Mom and then update it here.

We enjoyed Andy and Teagen's similar hairdos. Andy is Alex's brother, and by far my kids' favorite Aunt's-brother-in-law ever. They had SO much fun with him over the weekend. Elli was completely sure that he was Andy from Toy Story, and so excited that he was real!

We had a blast doing this is your life. We roasted Lacey first - and thoroughly enjoyed it. Then we had a really fun time hearing more stories about Alex and learning more about his childhood. His family is definitely fun.

That night we worked a little more on wedding prep. Everyone was a little tired, but Dad won for being the most tired :). I came down the stairs hearing all my sisters shrieking about how "DAD IS A HORSE!! HE'S A HORSE!!" I was confused at first, but then quickly figured it out and got my camera :). Sorry Dad, but we just find it hilarious that you can sleep standing up :).

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-09-25T19:20:00.001-06:00

This one's an Elli - while watching Pocahontas:

Pointing to the Pocahontas on the tv screen, Elli said, "Mom, Look! She has nurseries just like you!"

"Nice. So she could be a Mom!"

"Yeah, but she's not a Mom."

I certainly hope we don't start pointing out everyone who we see that has nurseries (also known as breasts). This is the second time today that she's mentioned them. Oh man.

(For the 'nurseries' story, see this post)

Lacey's Wedding - Day 1

2011-09-23T23:37:00.001-06:00

We had a nice relaxed morning on Thursday. Half the reason we came early was so that we could just have those few slow moments before the crazy :). (The other half of the reason was that we were so excited to get to scoop goose poop - Tash & Dalita came early for that too!) The kids played with Mom's instruments, and this fantastic wig that Jenaye bought from the internet with full intention of wearing it as a real wig - haha - awesome.

I don't know what Maely's plan was - or what the tape mustache was all about, but she walked up and down the street for 15 or 20 minutes tapping her Phillipines percussion instrument, wearing this fancy getup, and waiting for Lacey & Alex & Olivia to arrive :).

I have no idea where Maely gets it from :). And she had no idea that her mother had dress-up plans of her own for Lacey's arrival. I was upstairs in our room when I heard one of the kids yelling Alex's name. I knew I had to get to my taco suit fast, but it was in the car! I busted down the stairs and flew out the front door as fast as I could, then came back in the house properly attired. I had no idea where Lacey was when I made my mad dash, but when I came back in I asked for her. Mom said she had gone upstairs...what? How did we miss each other? Apparently she was bookin' it to her room to do something very important :). She was back in a flash and would you believe the giddiness that ensued at that point?!? Hahaha. I love it :).

That's some true taco love :)

Before long we found ourselves down at the park where the wedding would be held. It was time to do some goose-poop-scooping :). Alex couldn't wait! I think he was holding all that manly-tool-stuff in hopes of having a different job besides poop-scoopin'. Haha - no, he jumped right in.

Dalita came prepared with poop-scooping hats for us. They were geese :). Hilarious.

Once we had our hats on, we got down and dirty, but tried really hard not to actually get dirty. Yuck!! But it was fun - everything's fun when you're with your family, right? :).

Lace and I scooped in style.

Teamwork!

Jenaye definitely got the best job :).

Here's a picture after all our hard work (and before the geese all came quickly back over to replenish the poop supply).

When we got back home, Candy, Bryan & Kylie had arrived. Nice timing, guys! It was super fun to introduce Teagen to his new little cousin :).

In the evening we were working together getting things ready for the wedding, the huge brunch party, Jenaye-day, and probably other things too - it's too blurry to remember for sure. BUT, after some aggressive pasta making, we discovered a surplus. Hmmm.... what to do with extra cooked pasta. Well, you could save it... OR you could throw it at Jenaye like confetti in honor of the nearly-arrived Jenaye-day. We were laughing and joking about it, until Dalita grabbed a handful of pasta - and then it was on!!

This picture doesn't do justice to how many noodles were on the floor.

It took 6 people a few minutes to clean it up (and 1 person a few minutes to take pictures and get out of all the cleanup work :) )

Coming soon... JENAYE-DAY!! And an exiting bachelorette outing!!

A Hike and an Excellent Surprise

2011-09-23T00:15:00.002-06:00

On Labor Day we decided to go on a family hike. I had to drive down to the middle of Boise for a dress-fitting (this is back in the pre-wedding day - feels like forever ago). So, since I was going down there anyways, we scrambled to get everyone ready and decided we'd drive past there and up to Lucky Peak Reservoir to check it out and do our hike there. Little did we know, Lucky Peak area isn't really full of lusch beautiful hiking :). So, by then we were half way up the mountain, we decided to keep driving!

We ended up in Idaho City - the biggest town west of the rockies a long time ago - or something like that :). It's an old mining town with some really crazy stories and cool things to see and learn about. The kids had a blast re-living the olden days.

We didn't take a lot of pictures - we weren't really planning on being tourists that day - but we saw all kinds of cool things and definitely busted out the camera at the old penitentiary. The kids were so fascinated by the fact that bad guys used to be here.

Here they are gettin' their bad guy snarls on.

More being bad guys - there really was more to Idaho City (much more) than just the jail, but this is the only place we took pictures :).

After Idaho City, we did drive out to the edge of town and go on a hike. It was a HOT hike on a HOT day. By the end we were barely hanging in there - but it was a good family adventures. We all had to work hard and work together to get out of the crazy hot hike we ended up in :). We had sunscreen and water, but there wasn't enough shade on our trail. It was a fun adventurous (and farely spontaneous) way to spend our Labor Day together. Good memories.

Here's a random picture just to throw in. Elli is getting the hang of our quiet afternoons. She sometimes finds things to do besides pester Teagen. The other day she put together a 63 piece puzzle by herself - and pretty quickly too! I was seriously impressed!

And then the surprise...?!? Lacey texted me this the other day. I was pretty excited. I've seen it before - I made it :) - but I've never had the delightful privilege of seeing it on her before - good stuff :).

A little more with G'mas & G'pas

2011-09-12T14:39:00.002-06:00

Here's some pictures I took while Dan's parents and my parents were here. I'm starting to miss pictures and get things out of order a lot because we have two different cameras. It's not as bad as I thought it would be (for me) but I do keep mixing it all up - so bear with me :). Anyways - rewind. Here we go.

Maely reads to Teagen almost every night while Dan and I put Kade and Elli to bed. When he was younger we would just put him in the bouncer near her, and he would usually be happy if he could just hear her voice reading. Now he sits by her and looks at pictures and reaches for everything. It's very cute to see - and Maely is such a good helper with him - it's crazy how much help she is at just 7 years old. Love that girl!

More Mom and Olivia. They were happy to be reunited.

Teagen got to sit with Grandma too. We're pretty lucky when we have enough Grandma's to share :).

These must've been the next day. Teag was just playing on the floor when he put his hand on, and then leaned on Grandpa's shoe. Too cute.

Here's a picture from later on that week of two carrots I pulled out of our garden. I thought they were cute, but for some reason I thought our carrots tasted totally bad at first - soapy. The next time I had them they weren't quite as bad, but I'd still prefer store-bought. I'll have to try them again soon and see what I think now... maybe I picked them too early?

Here are pictures from one afternoon when the kids came home from school and we played in the sprinklers. The first week of school was seriously so hot. The very first day the kids came home and we went straight to the pool :).

I love this shot of Maely's goofy walk with Kade cracking up. So typical of those two :).

Dan and Maely play so crazy with eachother. I wasn't surprised at all by this one... but the next one made me do a double-take :).

Hahaha - Head First?!? Is that really necessary :)?

Elli didn't want to spin, but she did want to go through with Dad.

Here are the girls before school the next morning with their super cute new school outfits from Grandma! They LOVE these, and have all kinds of fun wearing them.

At the end of the first week of school, Dan flew to Utah for a business trip. He got to go meet baby Kylie, and I'm very jealous. Only a few more days now though and I'll get to hold her :). While there, he also learned a lot about the possibility of his company opening a Utah territory for him! Exciting Stuff!

Here's another collage of Teagen. I just have such a hard time picking just one.He smiles and giggles through his photo shoots (and through the rest of his day too, really). I love it.

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-09-11T09:11:00.001-06:00

Today at breakfast Elli wanted to try some plain corn flakes... I keep them around for topping casseroles, but don't ever feed them to the kids. They are used to sweetened cereals - it's my fault, but not at the top of the list of things that are important to work on in my family right now. Anyways, Elli wanted to eat them so Dan poured her a bowl - and didn't even put sugar on it :). She took her first bite and then in a very sad voice (she wasn't trying to be funny at all - she was just sad) she said, "It smells like cat food."

We were cracking up. Poor Elli. And poor children really, if they think unsweetened cereals smell like cat food :).

From the Mouth of Babes

2011-09-09T19:00:00.000-06:00

Here's Maely's comment of the night - said with Maely-esque enthusiasm :). She was explaining why she was able to find Kade's bike helmet when he had not been successful.

"I have a chunk full of stuff in my head that I renember (she still says renember :) )...and.... I have lots of taste buds."

Needed a Calm Moment Today

2011-09-08T12:02:00.001-06:00

Today I needed a break - a peaceful moment. I wanted to do a project that I could complete quickly, make something lovely, listen to beautiful relaxing peaceful music, and then be done and get back to work. So, I made this....

I took this picture when Stan & Cherilyn were here and I LOVE the original. I don't know why I love it so much. I just think it's such a perfect little moment - baby Teag leaning his head against Grandpa's great big strong shoe. It just looks happy to me.

I wanted to fancy it up a little, so I made it into this. Now I'm blogging it, and then I'm off to make lunch and get down to business.

First Week of School

2011-09-07T10:34:00.001-06:00

Summer went out with a fabulous bang this year. The weekend before school started, the kids had both sets of Grandparents visiting! Grandma Terece & Grandpa Gary just stopped by for the day on their way back to Oregon. They took Lacey and Olivia with them too. And then Grandma & Grandpa Grover were able to visit for a week and they left on Sunday, the day before school.

Here are a few pictures from Grandpa Gary & Grandma Terece's visit.

Mom and Dad were probably in grandkid-la-la-land by the time they got home. Mom had just spent a few weeks with her newest grandbaby, Kylie, and then she got to see the rest of them at our house. It's probably a good thing Olivia went with them, or she would've been having major withdrawals (who knows, maybe she still did :) ).

We went to take a picture of the grandkids together, and we might've gotten carried away with the whole pyramid idea :). How many kids can we stack on Grandpa...? At least the kids enjoyed it. :)

Here's our first ever grandkid pyramid, but it won't be complete until we can get Kylie up there on top.

After all of our fun visitors had to leave, we got down to business and started school. Luckily the kids were pretty excited about that too.

Here's our big 2nd grader.... How is that possible?!?

And as usual, no lack of confidence here :).

It took many lengthy conversations to finally convince Elli that she wasn't starting school. I give her 'schoolwork' at home, but she was appalled at first to not be leaving with the big kids :).

Elli displayed her excitement with a lovely twirl - oh her poor little feet!!

And here's our confident Kade. He started his first day of Kindergarten without a hitch. I was a little nervous after he wouldn't even enter the classroom at the orientation! He did awesome though, and made friends the first day.

My kids crack me up. They're just too cool for school :).

Yep, he was pretty excited.

I love the excitement of the first day of school. Everyone flies out of bed and is totally on the ball. They all know what to do and actually do it... if only that could last past the first week :).

He sure looked a lot smaller once we got him to school and put him in line. The boy on the right of him is Ben, his friend who is literally like a foot taller than him :). I thought that Kade wouldn't seem quite so small since he has to be one of the oldest kids in the class - I was wrong :).

Then I got home and it was just Elli and Teagen. Crazy!! And SO easy :). Almost makes me think we should have another baby... in 4 or 5 years :).

Here's Teagen's face for when I mentioned the idea of having another baby :).

And here's what he does all the time when he's excited about stuff - flapping those arms. They bang into his tray (or whatever else is in his path) with a huge thud, but he doesn't seem to mind! Tough kid.

More August - 2nd and 3rd week now!!

2011-09-04T19:27:00.000-06:00

The kids really did love having Olivia around, but occasionally they wanted to play without her. Their coping mechanisms were hilarious. Maely got this out of the garage by herself and set it up, blocking off the entire living room. I wonder what they'll have to do once Teagen starts getting around. Poor Olivia.

Pictures before church on Sunday.

This was the week that we found out our ward was being split - our little corner got kicked out to be in the ward to the East of us. We'll like it there too though. It feels about the same, except that we don't know very many people again :).

Lacey and I did a little garage-saling. When we came home I had the kids try on some more school clothes. Here is Kade with a 'new' jacket and shoes on. He was pretty excited, as you can tell by the psuedo-break-dancing pose :).

The third week that we were back from Twin Lakes, Grandma & Grandpa came into town to spend the week with us before the kids started school. We were excited to finally have some time with them - we've been waiting all summer for the logistics to work out. Here is Grandma feeding Teagen with a cute frog eating set she got him.

We all went to the Discovery Center together. That was super fun. This table had a fast spinning circle in the middle, and you could take smaller circles of different sizes and densities and try to spin them in the right direction at the right speed to stay on. We played here for quite a while, and Kade was especially enthusiastic about it.

Looking at this picture, I can just hear him yelling, "YEAH!!!" With his excited growly yell he does. Funny kid.

Grandma holding little Teag.

Lacey and Olivia were still staying with us too, so it was a full house. That's the best way to party, right?! :)

I'd tell you what Grandpa is teaching Kade, but I didn't check this one out, so I don't know :). I love how serious Kade is about it though. There were so many different cool stations to learn and try stuff.

They had these two huge echo dishes at either side of a gym-sized room. If you sit in front of one you can talk to the person sitting in front of the other one. Lacey and I quickly started having some hilariously goofy conversation with each other and each one of the kids. They had no idea where the strange voices were coming from, or how that big yellow bowl knew their name :). It wasn't until I wandered through later that I realized every other passerby was hearing each of the bizarre things we were saying. Hahahaha :).

A cool little mirror room.

This was one of our favorites. A huge bubble station. We had fun trying to hit each other with ridiculously massive bubbles.

My other favorite was the play grocery store area where toddlers (and some bigger kids) ran around frantically clearing the shelves like some psycho episode of Extreme Couponing gone wrong. I could have stayed in there for hours racing the kids to see if I could organize all that junk faster than they could clear it again :). It was perfect for me. The other moms in there probably thought I was a compulsive dork - and maybe sometimes I am :).

One last favorite of the center was this veterinary clinic. The kids could do tons of different things to help all the stuffed animals. There were scrubs, real x-rays to look at, big plastic syringes (which also took temperatures according to us), leashes, toys, brushes, wraps, water dishes, beds, veterinary books, models of a kidney and a knee and a jaw/teeth, those big cone things dogs wear... I can't even remember what else was in there - a lot of really cool things to play with. The last thing we did was orchestrate a surgery on one of the big dogs. Maely was the surgeon, Elli was the nurse, and Kade did Dad's job (now that we know it exists in surgeries). It was pretty fun - exciting for all of us. And then the clock hit 5 and they kicked us out. We had a really good time though.

With our trip and our visitors and our day trips, we really had a very busy end of our summer. It was tons of fun - enough so that the kids were sometimes pretty wiped out. Here is an example of that. Maely fell asleep with her head hanging almost completely upside down off the end of our bed. This picture doesn't do justice to how upside down her head is.

One or two more posts and we'll have caught up to when school started...