So long January

Typically I don't like January very much it seems long and cold, but this year wasn't too bad.  The weather was pretty nice, almost spring like some days, and it made the month much more enjoyable.  Here are just a few of the undocumented event of the the month.

Madison ran for class secretary and won.  Her class has been learning about government and how it all works, and about the election process.  So there were nominations and campaigns and parties and all the fun stuff that goes along with it.  So many nights it was mom I need a slogan, or I need to give a speech, or what qualities does a good leader possess.  We would figure something out and apparently it worked.  She is loving 5th grade, her teacher and her friends.  She attends an early morning math class for accelerated students and still hates the weekends because she would rather be at school.  We sure do love this girl.

Allie has decided that coookees are her new favorite food.  She asks for one as soon as she wakes up in the morning and periodically throughout the day, and how can you resist a plea from this cute thing.  I have found the best sugar cookie recipe and also a ten year old who loves to bake, so it makes it much less work for me. (notice her necklace and bracelet, those are her daily accessories)

The snow, I had almost given up on it this year.  I am of the mindset that if there isn't any snow for Christmas then don't bother, but I also don't want it to snow in May, so along with the cold we got about 6 inches of the white stuff and the kids, and their dad, loved it

We bought this new sled after our old one broke, and the kids loved it, Tom on the other hand said it made it way to hard to dump the kids out.

Allie loves babies.  She is always packing one around and giving it kisses or hugs.  She will often bring me her doll and say that she is stinky.  She love to change their clothes and name all the body parts.  She is going to be a great mom one day.

Emma earned her Liberty Kids badge at school.  It is a service oriented program the teach the kids about giving and about our country.  She had to memorize some quotes and explain what they mean to her, as well and learning more about our country's flag.  She also had to have her teacher sign off that she was a good student and was kind to others.  She is such an amazing girl and we are so proud of the time she spent earning her award.

C.J. has been so busy playing with friends this month.  He is such a fun boy, and oh so smart.  He is reading everything in sight and playing really hard.  He loves to play the i-pad or on Tom's phone all the time.  If it were up to him he would spend is day doing just that.  I can play all these games that I don't even get.  Kid are so smart it is amazing to me.  So now we move on to the month of February.  I just told C.J. it is the month of love, and he told me I am weird! The truth hurts I guess, here is to a new month.

Lego Saturday

I think we have gotten spoiled by the nice weather that we were having.  We had planned to do some projects outside that were long overdue, but mother nature had a different idea.  When we woke up to crazy wind, we decided to stay indoors.  C.J. got out his lego's and for a few hours we were all in building mode.

There were legos all over the family room. Everyone was working on building something.

 

Tom build this space ship which ended up being the best creation of the day.  I am sure my pencil holder was a close second, haha, you know just a square with a hole in the middle, creative huh.  Emma was working on an elephant, which proved to be much more difficult than she thought and Madison quickly became bored with the whole activity.

Allie couldn't resist putting just a few of the tiny legos in her mouth.

Our final project was to see how tall we could make a tower.  I think it was about 8 feet tall and standing on it's own for a few minutes before it toppled to the ground.  It was a good time on a bad weather Saturday.

Sweet Girl

This little lady is so much fun.  She is crazy and silly and has her moments of the encroaching terrible 2's, I actually think 2 year old's are pretty fun, it's those 3 year old's you have to watch out for...

 

She went to nursery without screaming bloody murder on Sunday, it was wonderful.  I watched her through the window while they were having singing time and she changed into a toddler immediately.  Watching her sit on her little square of carpet using her tiny chubby fingers to mimic the actions of the music leader, it was priceless. 

In our nursery Allie is the only girl, we are so blessed to have 'grandpa' in our nursery.  He is an amazing 80 year old, who told me on Sunday that he will be there until he dies, he just loves those kids so much.  Allie loves 'grandpa' so much she gave him a kiss as she was leaving nursery.  I hope this is a new trend.

 

I love this stage that she is in right now. She is big into jewelry. When I do her hair in the morning she sits on the counter and plays with baskets of necklaces and bracelets.  She picks one of each to wear.  She calls them her "nek-us and basebuts", and everything is cute.  Her clothes, her shoes, she socks, even her diapers are "tute". 

As always she is trying to keep up with her big sisters and brother.  This picture above is proof of that.  We always have a house full of animals, or children acting like animals, and she is not about to be left out.  She crawls around with her tongue hanging out pretending to be a dog.  She even caused quite a stir in the store when she was crawling down the isles barking and panting.  She is so full of it and I just can't get enough.

I Belong

 Emma was so excited for this day.  Everyday of the week she kept saying "I just wish it was Saturday". She was so ready for this day, and luckily she only had to wait for 6 days to be baptized, which was actually Our 12th wedding Anniversary.  I can't think of a better way to spend that day.

 Prior to her baptism we had talked a lot about the priesthood and the blessings that come from it and how the Holy Ghost is a gift to us.  I also wanted all of our kids to realize how blessed they are to have a father who honors that priesthood and, because if that, is able to baptize them and perform blessings when needed. 

 Emma made such a great choice to be baptized and is so grateful that she did.  That day she told me it was the best day of her life, one that she will never forget.  She is such a blessing in our family and we love her so much.

 I was excited to get some pictures of her in her baptism dress, she on the other hand was not excited.  This is how it went... I told her that we would only take a few pictures, she agreed to one,  I said 20 she said 2... anyway when we got ready was was giving me a very sad face, until i put the camera to my eye then it was a cheesy smile, but as soon as the camera left my eye in was a sad face again.  That is how it was the entire time.

 She was fine with the pictures that didn't have her face in them, because she wasn't in the 'mood', silly girl.

 This one was fine, she looked at me and said, "I am actually reading, you know".  That is one thing about this girl she loves to read.  She has been reading her scriptures every night since she got them.  I know that she uses it as an excuse to stay up later, but how can you refuse when she says she needs to read her scriptures?

 

We love this girl and are so happy with the decision that she made to be baptized.

These are just a few pictures from the luncheon that we had afterwards.  We are so blessed to have such great families that are so supportive of us and our children.  It was a wonderful day.  Afterwards I asked Emma if it was as wonderful as she had hoped.  She told me no.  When I asked what would have made it better she said, " nothing, it was even better than I thought it would be". As with most things pertaining to the Gospel, they usually are better than we think they will be.  Emma sure is excited to BELONG to the only true church, and we are excited for her.

Birthday girl

Our sweet Emma turned 8 years old.  As I say with every birthday, where did the time go.  She has been so excited to turn 8 so that she can be baptized and be the newest member of the church.

We celebrated with a unicorn cake that had blue hair.  I have become pretty good at making this cake.  I think this was the 4th time she picked this cake.  Just ignore the miss matched candles, I was just glad we found 8 of them.

If you look close at this picture on the left she actually started her hair on fire while blowing out the candles.  The tall skinny pink ones are sparkler candles so she got really close to blow them out.  She was holding her hair out the way while she kept blowing.

For her birthday she wanted blue scriptures with her name on them, and a motor scooter.  The scriptures were opened and she was thrilled.  I then asked Tom to go get her other present.  Tom brought in Madison's old pink scooter.  She is so sweet and tried really hard to be happy with it, but I could see the tears welling up behind her eyes and couldn't keep us the charade any more and told Tom go her her real present.

A lime green motor scooter.  She was so excited and ready to ride it, but it had to charge for 14 hours, so she had to wait.  The next morning she ran upstairs and got on her scooter and ran into about 3 walls before we told her to take it outside.  This scooter is really pretty fast, so I am so glad she is a cautious girl.

Happy Birthday Emma, We love you to bits!
p.s. you may notice that in every picture the kids are in their pajamas, that is because we pretty much spent the entire Christmas break in our pajamas, and it was wonderful!

Happy Birthday Emma

 A few days after Christmas we celebrated Emma's upcoming birthday with a friend party.  We had so much fun.  We celebrated with a pajama and pancake party.  It was so much fun.  We ate chocolate chip pancakes in our P.J.'s and played a lot of fun games.

 Allie acted as if she was just as big as the other girls, it is so sad for me that she really isn't a baby anymore :(

We also decorated pillowcases.  Emma has such sweet friends and they all had so much fun, especially Emma.  I can't believe that this girl is really 8 years old!

Christmas Day 2011

Christmas morning, What could be more exciting?  We had to get the kids up at about 7:45 so that they could have a little time to enjoy what Santa brought them before we went to 9 o'clock church.  Here they are waiting on the stairs to come up.  We always go from youngest to oldest.

Emma was so excited to get her Kaya doll and Allie was thrilled with her new baby.

The remote controlled monster truck was the exact one C.J. asked for, isn't it amazing how Santa always know?..

Madison was excited and surprised and excited to get a Kindle.  I think she spent much of her Christmas break reading.

 

Here they are in their new Christmas church clothes.  I love this tradition.  It is about the only time I can get all of the kids to match, without a fight anyway. After church we got back into our jammies and opened gifts from each other and ate cinnamon rolls. The rest of the day was spent enjoying and relaxing the wonderful holiday.  That evening we went to G&G Thalmans house for more gifts and yummy food.

 

All the kids received a new pair of pajamas.  All of the girls had cupcake jammies.  That is an amazing feat to find 12 pairs of cupcake pajamas ranging in size from 12 years-12 months.  They all looked so cute, if only I had gotten a picture of all of them together. It was a great day, and I actually loved having it on Sunday this year.  We had a great sacrament program that filled my heart with the spirit of Christmas and a greater love for my Savior.  Until next year  Merry Christmas!