Happy New Year!

Before we talk about New Years Eve, let's talk about my favorite Christmas tradition. Painting our ornaments is by far my favorite tradition. I love that the ornaments they pick to paint are so personality oriented. Like little miss M. She picked a heart with ribbons on the front of it. Of course she would pick the heart. Not only is she so sweet and loving(most of the time :) ), but she is all girl. She loves things to smell good and look good, with the exception of her room; which she doesn't care about at all! But generally speaking she likes things to look, smell and just be pretty and nice. I love this picture! Not only does it show them painting their ornaments, but it also shows that she's left handed! I think it's so awesome that she's left handed. I long to be left handed so much that all I'll say is that the mirrors in this house aren't used only for dancing and singing in front of anymore! They also fulfill my desire to be left handed! Or, at least to appear that way.  

Now, moving on to New Years. We were all pretty healthy through New Years Eve. M did have a weird fever, but no other symptom except she was tired. But it seems that as soon as Midnight stuck, our healthy streak ended.

Here's proof that four of the five of us made it all the way to midnight! This is the first year these two have been awake when the ball dropped. Can I just ask a question? What's with the ball dropping? Isn't dropping the ball in anything in life a bad thing? So, why on New Years Eve do so many people pack into Time Square to watch a huge ball drop? What an odd thing to call a tradition. Anyway, Yay for making it to midnight and being able to welcome in the New Year! B woke up Thursday with a small back spasm. Meaning, he could hardly move because some muscles in his back had freaked out. He's gone to the Dr about it in the past and they say sorry, ride it out. He had his back issues, M's fever was higher and she was even more tired and then K was starting to complain about his tummy hurting. The inevitable happened. Bodily fluid started springing forth and out. Not great! K was so kind to share with me. Cleaning up after a sick kid when you yourself don't feel good should be against the laws of nature! The stomach bug hung around until Saturday night. I am happy to report that everyone was able to report back to school and work today. I was even able to use my new padded sports bra that I found on sale, in my size at Maurices! It's bright orange and I love it! Can I just say that I love Maurices?! Truth, if there was a t-shirt that said, "I love Maurices", I'm pretty sure I would but it and wear it a lot! Their jeans are usually on sale and their sizing makes me feel so good about myself. Their clearance racks are great! Last time I was in there I found a pair of capris on the clearance rack for $6.49! I would have rounded up to $6.50, but they didn't cost that much!!! I truly love that store! Anyway, where was I, oh yeah, we're all healthy and happy! 

What else, what else.... I don't have anything to say really, so I'll just put some pictures on and call it good.

AH yes, the infamous clothes on the floor picture. That can only mean one thing. There's a kid around our house somewhere that had clothing on a few minutes ago, but no longer does.

Here sits the culprit. He loves to take his clothes off. Honestly there have been days when he removes his clothing in the wee hours of the morning and the lazy side of me takes over and he stays in just a diaper all day. Thankfully the diaper stays in place. It's so annoying once they find out how to take that off. He had stripped, found a chip on the counter and was so happy sitting on the chair, eating his snack and watching that cars go by.

This act is what causes us to tie the fridge shut. He opens it, climbs in and gets yogurt. Which is fine except for the nasty diapers eating five+ yogurts a day causes. At least he had his clothes on still!

We'll end with this one. The fellas in this house got new BYU shirt's from grandma B for Christmas. I got little B dressed first one morning. K saw him and said he wanted to match. He came down from getting dressed and said he didn't have a white shirt to wear under, so he just put on his blue one. But, "It still matches because we both have long sleeves on and grey pants. Well, I didn't have grey pants, I only had my blue fuzzy pants so I'm wearing those instead, but we still look the same." Imagine hearing all this while K is running and jumping and doing somersaults and causing mayhem, that's just how it goes when he's telling you something. If you didn't imagine him doing such things as you read his quote the first time, you must go read it again thinking such things. He's wild and crazy to say the least!

We had an amazing 2014. We were able to do such fun things as a family and make some awesome memories! We are so thankful that my sister, E, still has her foot after an awful motorcycle accident that very easily could have left her with only one foot. Speaking of feet, we're also thankful that my brother, A, still has his foot and toes after a 3000 pound trailer fell on it and crushed it. Let's not forget my nephew, R, that thankfully still has his eyesight after a wood chip went in it and risked leaving him blind. Little, M, we are so thankful that even though you fell in the fire, you are still here and that your burns aren't worse. L, hang in there dude! We're praying that you get to leave the hospital soon and that you and your mom will be able to go back to Texas with your dad and S! I love coming from a huge family, but sometimes it feels like because there are so many of us, there's always at least one major medical event each year. This year there was just more than one! We truly are so thankful that all of these people are still here and that they are still part of our lives. We hope and pray that this new year is full of happy memories and that we will be able to stay close to family, maybe even get a little closer! To 2014 we say farewell and to 2015 we say, bring it!

Christmas lights

This last weekend we went to see my older brother in DC. He and his lovely wife, K, have eight kids. We hadn't even met two of them, so we were excited to go see them. The plan was to leave as soon as B got off work on Friday. It's a six hour drive so we didn't want to leave too late. Of course Friday was the one day of the week that B didn't get done early at work. Not only did he not get done early, he was an hour late! Why is life like that? I don't have an answer. All I can say is that it's so annoying. We didn't leave our house until 4:30. We were able to make good time and got to their house at 11:00.

Of course little B slept almost the whole way there. When we put him in the car he found the strap on the bag and latched onto it. Please don't judge us because he's already forward facing and he's not two. The angle of our seats is really annoying and when we had it put in rear facing we had to take it to the fire department to have the fire fighters put it in. I took it out one day when I was riding in my friend's car. I couldn't figure out how to put it in backwards, so forward facing he went. Now he's been forward facing long enough that I fear if we turned him around he would lash out irrationally. And we all know there's no rational talking when a 21 month old is lashing out!

We called to tell them that we had left late and were told that two of their kids were sick. We were already packed, in the car and eating the Little Caesars we had just gotten for dinner. Can we talk about that for a minute? I love that they have pizza for five bucks! I had made the awful mistake of going to get snacks for the drive when I was hungry. Needless to say, we had enough chocolate, licorice and crackers to last, well, a long time. So we were able to get one pizza for five bucks and it fed us dinner. We just topped ourselves off with the junk we had! If that's not living the dream I don't know what is! Anyway, since we were already en route, we decided to take our chances and go mingle with sick children. Unbeknownst to us, as we drove their kids started falling sick like snow in a blizzard, fast and a lot of them! We felt so bad for the littles that were feeling under the weather. Six of their eight kids were six by Saturday afternoon.

Poor A wanted to play, but he couldn't be too far away from his bucket. I heard my brother say more than once to more than one of their sicko's, "Always have your bucket with you!" 

This was taken before M, (The M on the right,) got whatever was in the air. These two played together all morning, but then she said that her stomach was starting to hurt, she was out for the rest of the day.

V got sick in waves. She would be fine for a little while and then she wouldn't be. When she felt good, these two played a lot. She had cars! K didn't care that they were pink and purple, he just loved that she would play cars with him! We just hung out on Saturday. And by hanging out I mean that we cleaned up throw up, disinfected surfaces and tried to make sure that little B didn't play in whatever fluid he found. My brother and his wife are an amazing team and they cleaned up bodily fluid like machines! B and I felt so helpless. We tried to help, but sick kids don't want an uncle or aunt, they want their parents. Even though kids were sick, it was good to visit. Our niece, S, asked for funny stories about her dad. I told her about the time her dad was coming home from school, and ran over a duck, but not with the tires. He looked in his rear view mirror and saw the stunned duck standing there. He put his car in reverse, ran over the duck again, stopped, leaned out of his car, grabbed the duck and brought it home. When he walked in the house the duck's body was in his backpack with the zipper zipped up to it's neck. He walked into the bathroom, filled the tub with water and put the duck in. It swam around the bathtub so happily; simply because it didn't know it's fate. If it had known that it was going to become dinner, it would have tried to bust out of there. Instead it swam it's last laps in the bathtub of the only bathroom in the house. When I got done telling the story, he tried to deny it. Thankfully my parents had come for the weekend and my mom was able to vouch for me. He then told the story of when he hit a deer on the way home from church. He looked in his mirror and noticed it wasn't dead. He told K they had to go back. They turned around and he got out. He picked the deer up and walked to their car. At the time they didn't have their 12 passenger van that they have now. No, they had a Toyota Echo. In my opinion that car is basically a roller skate. It's tiny. He made it back to the car and told K that she needed to drive. She moved over, he got in the passenger side while holding the deer. He said he was holding it like you do a baby when the baby needs to burp. The deer's head was on his shoulder and he was patting the deer's back. All the sudden, the deer opens it's eyes and starts freaking out! Deer legs, fur and body are going everywhere. A is telling K to stop the car! She stops, he opens the door and the deer bounds out and across the street. As I listened to him tell the story, I was laughing so hard! Why oh why would you pick up a deer and put it on your lap in the car? Good times! He's really funny and should write a book!

Sunday after church we went to see the lights on the temple grounds at the DC temple. We were so excited to see them! I had heard they are beautiful, and they are. Our camera isn't the best and so most of these are blurry, but we tried!

That truly is incredible! The spirit of the temple is one of the greatest feelings on earth!

We were checking to see if taking pictures with the flash on worked very good. It did unless you want to see the lights behind you. He's a cheese ball and loves to say "cheeeeeeese" when he sees the camera.

So we turned the flash off but if the picture taker or the subjects in the picture move, it's blurry. This one worked ok, so we went for the family shot.

We actually got a good one with my dad's Ipad, but I can't figure out how to get it off email and put it on here, so just imagine this one really clear and beautiful!

There was a camel next to the manger scene. Our niece, S, really wanted to take a picture of us on the camel. K loved it and wanted to play on the camel for longer than our freezing body parts would allow.

K also wanted to take a picture of us. He did pretty good, but we wanted to try it without the flash on.

Fireworks at the temple! Not really, this is just what happens when you let a six year old take your picture when the flash is turned off. I think it's actually a pretty cool picture!

We went inside the visitor's center to thaw. How awesome to have the statue of Christ with Christmas tree's behind him! I wish that the flash hadn't gone off so that you could see how beautiful it really was, just use your imagination!

We had a great weekend even though the cousin's were sick. We laughed and talked and ate really good food. We made it home with only one case of pink eye and one case of yucky diapers for a day. It was totally worth it to be able to see/meet family and go see the lights at the temple! 

Visitor's from the east-ish

My parents came for a visit. I would have said that we had more visitor's from the west since they live in Utah and I'm no geography whiz but I'm pretty sure Utah is considered the west. However, they have been staying at my brother's house in DC for a while to help with child care whilst he and his wife are doing classes at the same time or something like that. Clearly, the details that I have are a little vague. All I know is that one night it was 11:00 here and I thought it was safe to call my parents because in Utah it was only 9:00. I woke my mom up because they were already in DC helping with A's kids. That was in September I think, so they've taken up semi-permanent residency out here in the east. That's why we had visitor's from the
east-ish. Not that you needed to know, noticed or even care why I titled this here post that. They came, they slept (twice) and then they were gone again. It was a short visit, but our offspring loved having grandma and grandpa K come. We got them from the airport early Saturday afternoon. We went and tried out a different children's museum. I don't know who liked it better, the kids or me. It was really awesome! Not to mention K only got lost once, so that's amazing! (He went on the elevator, the doors closed before the rest of us could get on. M and I ran down the stairs to try to beat him there. The elevator came, the doors opened and there was no K. We ran to another elevator, still no K. We ran up a different set of stairs, no K. Finally we saw B waving at us. K has stayed on the elevator. Some mom's got on and rode with him until he got back to the floor where B was waiting for him. That kid and getting lost are going to send me to an early grave!)

There was a 3D movie about penguins that people thought looked interesting. I knew how long little B would last, about ten seconds. So I took one for the team and stayed out with him while everyone else went in. We went exploring while they were gone. We found this really cool fish tank with no one around. He loved to stand on the steps and watch all the fish. There was one in there that looked like tie-dyed cotton candy. He loved that one and the bright yellow one. The fish were so active that he didn't have time to finish saying "Whoa! What's that?" Before the fish he was originally talking about was long gone and another one or five were whizzing past. We saw other tanks with sea horses, jelly fish and these nasty worm things that would poke their heads out of the sand and then slide back down into the hole where they came from. I hate worms and I hate holes so to see a worm in a hole gives me full body chills. Little B thought the worms were hysterical and laughed and laughed at them. He also loves minion's and when we found out that there's going to be a movie on just the Minion's that comes out next summer; we watched the trailer and little B laughed really hard at it. I digress, the tanks full of sea life were really cool.

Once the movie ended we went upstairs and found some really cool things! The tube blows air, so you drop the ball and it floats. The tube moves and so you can move the ball in the stream of air. We spent a lot of time there. We all had fun with this one!

There was a bed of nails. Once grandpa figured out that you have to push and hold the red button, he was in business. It's so cool to lay on one of these things! It doesn't hurt, it's just awesome! Grandpa is nice and would have let every kid in the museum go in front of him, but enough's enough and we told the little kid in blue and orange that "grandpa's next." No, he's no relation to us but my dad is old enough that when we say,"grandpa's next" everyone knows who we're talking about. True story.

We were waiting while M was pulling a ball back really far and letting it go so it would launch a tennis ball into the air. The tennis ball would then fly sky high trying to hit the red target. She's amazing and hit the target over and over again. He must have gotten tired of waiting for her because he laid down on the floor to wait for her to finish. People walked by and laughed at him. Truthfully he was only down there for about 15 seconds, it was funny while it lasted!

There were the cool lift yourself up using your own body weight chairs. All that tried these chairs really liked them. I tried to get pictures of everyone at the top, but they were too fast, our camera is too slow and there were people waiting so no do overs. At least I got pictures of them on the chairs, that counts for something right?

This was taken on Monday before M and K had to go to school. I had thought that mom and dad were staying until Monday evening. I was wrong, they were leaving early afternoon. It was a short visit, but it was fun and now when little B walks under the picture we have of the grandparents on our wall he wants me to pick him up so he can point to grandma and grandpa K. He rattles on about something but he has a smile on his face the whole time, so he must have had a great time while they were here! M and K thought they were funny especially when grandma came downstairs and asked if anyone had seen grandpa's teeth, he took them out and couldn't find them. They about died laughing. Good times! Thankfully he found them and popped them back in his mouth. Grandpa's are so funny! They and his teeth are welcome back any time!

Family pictures

Our wonderful and amazing friend took our family pictures this year. We really wanted to wait until the leaves had changed colors. We picked out the park we thought would be perfect. We waited until we were sure the leaves would be a lovely color. We pulled into the park one Thursday afternoon and to our utter disappointment, the trees were mostly green still. Well, some trees were totally void of any leaves at all. But the trees that were lining the field that we were going to use were still a beautiful shade of green. We walked around the park and did find some fall foliage and a cool wooden door. So, without further ado, here are our family pictures.

This one had such potential, but I feel like M is holding her arm as if it was broken and little B isn't looking at the camera. We tried to take several shots of this one, but none of them were blow up to a 16x20, hang on the wall kind of picture.

So, we did a funny one instead. I totally love this picture! It makes me feel so happy inside!

This one is B's favorite. I like this one, but my smile is wonky and I don't love that. I feel like everyone else looks good and it would have been awesome if little B was smiling, but oh well. I do love the lighting and the trees in the background. 

This is my favorite. K and little B are a little washed out, but of everyone I feel like this one is the best overall.

This goes without saying, but this is my absolute favorite picture of the day. I am so thankful that J was willing and able to take our family pictures. 

Camping

This last weekend we went camping one last time. I love camping, but I don't love camping when I know that we're all going to freeze at night. When I was packing blanket after blanket and every piece of winter clothing that we own, you can imagine how much we have since we came from Florida and it's not like we live in Minnesota or some other frozen tundra. Anyway I was trying to think and be prepared like a good outdoors person would be and B was telling me that it wasn't going to be that cold. He thought that we would be fine. When I rattled off that I had planned on having little B sleep in five or six layers he told me that he would probably get hot with all that stuff on. As I have mentioned before, I'm pretty sure that my blood only runs at luke warm. I feel like I am usually cold, so to hear that we were going to be fine sleeping outside in a tent when it was only going to be in the high 40's did not ring truth to my heart. We got there just before dark on Friday. We set up camp and joined the two other families that were going to be freezing camping with us for the evening. Truthfully I didn't get too cold until about 8:00. I had on a ski hat, gloves and a sweatshirt. I don't own a winter coat so that's as bundled as I have. If I stood right next to the fire it wasn't too bad. I did wish there was some way to move the hot coals over just a little so that I could sit in the fire pit for just a minute or two.

This was taken right before little B went to bed. M and K loved it and almost didn't notice how cold it was.

I was on little B duty when it came time to get him ready for bed. I left his onesie on, put on a pair of fuzzy footie pajamas. Put his shirt and pants back on him, then his sweatshirt, his winter coat and a ski hat. Our friend had let us borrow these little bootie things to cover his feet. I put a thick baby quilt over him and then after brilliant J suggested it,  put a quilt over his pack-n-play to turn it into a little igloo for him.

Thankfully he was tired enough that he fell asleep pretty fast. We just prayed that he would be warm enough that he would stay asleep all night. We didn't know how we would warm him up and get him back to sleep without waking up the entire camp ground. Prayers are heard and answered! He stayed asleep until 7:00 the next morning! K wanted to go to bed not too long after little B was asleep. K isn't cold very often so when I told him that I thought he should sleep with his hat on he said no, that he would be warm enough with his jammies, fuzzy pants and sweatshirt inside his sleeping bag with two blankets.

When I felt his face to see if he was cold when we went to bed, he felt warm and cozy. M on the other hand was freezing! Before she went to bed she climbed in my lap and tried to curl up in a ball. She said that her feet were so cold they hurt. That made me feel bad. She slept with her jammies, fuzzy pants, sweatshirt, coat, mittens and hat on. I shoved a thick blanket in her sleeping bag with her.

Clearly her hat didn't stay on, but in the morning when I asked her if she had been able to stay warm she said yes except her feet had stayed cold for a long time. B was colder than he thought he would be. We both broke our cardinal rule of no socks in bed. We kept our socks and and still froze. I feel like our sweatshirts, gloves and hats didn't do as much as we thought they would. We did sleep a little and woke up to little B standing up in his pack-n-play waving and saying hi to all of us.

He slept until 7, but it was still dark outside. We tried to hang out in the tent until it got a little lighter outside. He was ok for a while, but pretty soon, taking pictures didn't work anymore. 

So sad! He kept walking to the door and saying,"out out"  I am glad that we all survived the night! Not that we would want to be camping when it was that cold again, but we know that we can if we're crazy enough to do it again! The plan for Saturday was to pack everything up and go hiking. The camp ground was beautiful and we had heard that the hike to the waterfall was pretty cool and easy. Since there was a whole lot of little ones we wanted an easy hike. Thankfully the sun came out and warmed almost everyone up.

This is all the little kids that were at the camp out with us. M and K loved having so many kids to play and hike with. This was at the trail head to the waterfall.

The trail was beautiful! We got to hike along water for a lot of the time. It was shaded almost the whole time. We loved that we weren't melting as we hiked.

We had stopped here to take pictures and throw leaves in the water and watch them float under the bridge and come out the other side. The water was moving so slow! It took the leaf at least two minutes to come out the other side and the bridge was probably only five feet wide.

This was just on the side of the trail. I don't think I will ever get tired of waterfalls. They are so beautiful!

I feel like this was a secret spot. In order to get here we had to duck under some really big rocks and squeeze through some tight spots. Maybe it was only tight to me since I had little B hooked onto the front of me. I didn't actually see this little piece of waterfall. They had to hike over some moss covered boulders to get there and I didn't want to slip and fall with little B so I just waited with J and J while the dads took the kids that wanted to, to go see the water.

This is the end waterfall that we hiked to. If I remember correctly, it's and 80 foot waterfall. The wind coming off of it was really cold. We didn't stay super long just because it was so cold. It was beautiful and I loved that we got to hike to it.

B is a way better photographer than I am. The other families had asked him to take their pictures. Little B and I sat down to wait. He held my hands almost the whole time because his hands were so cold. Thankfully he doesn't mind being in the baby carrier. He loved to wave at the people we passed and say hi. He had said hi to an older lady that was hiking up. She stopped hiking, walked over to him, pinched his cheeks and said with a foreign accent, "Hello baby! Look at your cheeks!" Then she backed away waving the whole time. He kind of smiled at her, but mostly he just stared at her wondering what was going on. 

Of course the picture doesn't do the colors justice. It was beautiful! Red leaves are my favorite fall leaves so to see these red tree's made my heart so happy!

Right at the end of the hike I took him out of the carrier and let him walk around. He was so happy to be out and to be able to explore things. Standing on the bridge was one of his favorite things to do. He would walk from one side of the bridge to the other to see both sides of the river. Besides freezing at night, we really did have a good time. To be able to go on a hike that is so beautiful almost made the freezing night worth it! We loved being with the other families and staying up late talking about things we wish we could do and not feel guilty about. I'll let you use your imaginations on that one, but I'll tell you that some of the answers were awesome! Yay for fall camping that's only one night and a beautiful hike to a gorgeous waterfall! 

Cute kid

Little B is old enough to go to nursery. That is a blessed Sunday in our lives and we truly count down the weeks until it can happen starting at about a year old. M and K had no problem going into nursery. The first Sunday both of them could go, they ran in and didn't look back. There were no tears. They were just excited to play with the toys and eat the snacks. It sounds like a really sweet set up if you ask me. Well, little B HATES nursery. He screams until he's red in the face. He doesn't even have to be in the actual room. If we walk down the hall towards nursery he starts crying and running the other way. Yesterday B dropped him off and about ten minutes later I had him in primary with me. Not great! I had left the primary room to go collect the rolls. I had to go to nursery to pick up the roll, he started to whimper as we walked down the hall. As we got to the door he started to scream and ran as fast as his little legs would take him into the Chapel. Thankfully it was empty, but he was not having anything to do with nursery. I don't know how to help him stay. Hopefully one Sunday he'll just fall in love with it and be ok. Anyway, I'm lazy and I hadn't bought him real Sunday clothes until just before he went to nursery. I don't like shopping and so to go find Sunday clothes for an almost 18 month old was not something I wanted to do. I found him some at a consignment store that was having a huge sale. It was cheap, it was cute and so we bought it and left.

Sunday arrived and I tried to take a picture of him standing up before we went to church, but there was a car on the floor (it seems like there are always cars on our floor) and so he sat down to play.

I did manage to get the car from him and get a smile. Cheesy as it is, at least he's smiling! I pray for the day that he will wear this cute little outfit in nursery without crying. Someday right?!

Pumpkins

It's that time of year again. When we make our ghosts out of suckers and color our pumpkins. I wish that I had remembered to take pictures of us making our ghosts, but I forgot. Let's just blame it on me being so focused on the task at hand that it just slipped my mind. Just imagine in your mind little Tootsie sucker ghosts hanging from the kitchen light. The ghost's have been colored with marker so now they have faces and some have hair and clothes on. They are pretty awesome and I love that we make them every year. Once our ghosts are done and hung the next week calls for pumpkin coloring. I love that we don't carve our pumpkins. Carving them not only stinks so bad that it makes me throw up a little in my mouth, but cleaning out the guts is truly disgusting. I don't like having long nails so I try to keep mine short at all times and it seems like no matter how short my nails are, if I am cleaning the guts out of a pumpkin, the slimy nastyness gets under my nails. Yuck! Even thinking about that happening gives me full body chills. Coloring a pumpkin is the way to go at our house! We in no way profess to be artist's around these parts, well, at least four out of the five of us don't profess to be artist's. There is however one among us that finishes long after the rest of us are done because their pumpkin is good enough that it could win us some money if it were entered into a pumpkin coloring contest.

Here is the master pumpkin color-er at work!

To say that mine pales in comparison is a huge understatement. I was happy and excited to draw a ghost and put glittery paint on it! I love glitter, it's so sparkly!

They just love to color with Sharpie's. K did a volcano with red hot lave running down the cracks of the pumpkin and M colored a jack-o-lantern on the front of hers. Maybe one of these years she'll actually carve hers out. Not gonna lie, it'll have to wait until she's old enough to do it 100% all by herself! 

He lasted about thirty seconds and then he wanted to get down and play with cars. 

Yay for all the pumpkins being done! Don't panic, B loved his pumpkin so much that we took a close up of it. 

Pretty awesome right?! He's an inspiration to us all!