Olive the other reindeer

The other day Bryson asked, "Is Rudolph's dad's name Olive?" I said, "No, what made you think that?" He said, "Because Olive the other reindeer is in the song." I couldn't help but laugh out loud. He definitely brightens up our days. What a cutie!

All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth

I wish I could say that ALL Jacob wanted for Christmas was his 2 front teeth, but he is pretty excited to have lost his 2nd tooth.!

He lost the bottom left of his front teeth and now the top left. It's left a pretty good size gap. His other front teeth are loose too. I'm sure they'd already be out if wasn't too "busy" to wiggle them. If you look close in the picture, his gums have a pointy part where his tooth used to be. After examining his tooth and seeing the huge hole inside it, I realized that his gums had pushed down inside the tooth since it was probably ready to be out a long time ago. I'll have to make sure he wiggles his other teeth to get them out soon too.

Here he's stuck in the corner after having slid down the back side of 3 bean bags. You can see the hole on top and bottom good in this picture. Plus, this is just typical Jacob being crazy. We heard him saying, "Can someone help me?", but couldn't see him until we went right up to the bean bags. He's always up to something!

It's finally done!!!

Some of you know that we started a remodel of our master bathroom in mid Sept. It was supposed to be fairly quick, but as any of you who have done any construction or remodeling may know, it's never that easy. The vanity took several weeks to come in, and so did the glass for the shower and when that came in, one piece was cut wrong and needed to be reordered. Well, we finally got everything finished just before Thanksgiving. Thank goodness we didn't have company coming for Thanksgiving, because we still had to use the shower in the kid's bathroom until Fri. to let all the silicone set. Six people sharing a shower is plenty! Luckily the kids bathe at night, so there wasn't too much overlap, but it was a pain none the less.

Here are some pictures of our bathroom "before" the remodel. This is what it looked like when you walked in. The door swung into the bathroom. We had vinyl flooring.

Here was our bathtub/shower. It was all just plastic stuff.
The door to the left was a linen closet.
Here's a look inside the closet. The hole in the wall is because we had to check that there was no vents or pipes in the space between the closet wall and the bedroom wall.
Now for the "After" shots.

Here is the bathroom from the doorway. We haven't hung any towel rods or done any decorating yet. The door now swings into the bedroom. The floor is now tile.
Here is our new air tub. It is WONDERFUL!!!! If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see the tiny holes that shoot out warm air. It feels better than a hot tub and is cleaner than a typical jetted tub because it doesn't run water through the tubes. About 15 mins. after it runs or senses humidity, it blows air out of the holes for another min. to make sure no mildew grows in there.
Here is a shot of our new walk in shower. Yay, no more climbing in and out of the tub!
Here is another shot of our new vanity to show that the medicine cabinet has been removed. The new vanity is 2.5 feet longer than our old one, and we have an extra bank of drawers.
"Where did we put all that stuff that was in the linen closet?" you may ask .... Well, Travis built some shelves in our walk-in closet behind the door. There was a bout 2 feet of space between where the door was and the wall. Now I have even more space than before!

Major catch up

It's been forever since I last posted and so much has happened. I guess I need to be more diligent about downloading the pictures from the camera so that I'll post more often even when it's busy. I keep thinking, oh I don't have enough time right now, and then I never do it. Here's a quick run down of all that's been going on at our house for the last few weeks.

Jacob got to show off his awesome jump roping skills at a school assembly. It was also Pajama day, so he wore his pajamas to school and put on his jump rope shirt for the assembly.

Here is Bryson watching the assembly with his Dad. I just thought it was a cute picture.

The soccer season came to an end. Here are the boys after soccerfest with their trophies. Someone on Bryson's team brought green hair paint for the player's hair and he's got a bit of his cupcake on him. I guess you can tell they had a good time!

I helped throw a goodbye / baby shower for a neighbor from our ward who just moved. After having 4 boys she was finally having a girl and we were all too excited for her to let her move without a shower. In their family we lost Jacob's best friend, Bryson's good friend, Maddy's ballroom dance partner and a great friend for me to trade babysitting with. Here is a picture of the cake I made for her shower. I never do as good as my mom, but for my level of talent, I think it turned out really good. Thanks for all the pointers mom!

We also had a ward Christmas party last Fri. Santa even made it to our party. How lucky are we?! Ally likes to look at Santa and say "Santa, Santa", but when Travis tried to put her on his lap she freaked out - hence the red eyes and sad face in the picture. I think for this year we'll just appreciate Santa at a distance.

This past Wed. Maddy had a Christmas concert at school. She LOVES to sing and to perform. They all did a great job.

Well, I think that about catches you all up on our goings on. We also finally completed our master bathroom remodel, but I'll do that on a separate post so I can show before and after pictures. The time I allotted myself to blog is up, so I'll have to post the remodel later.

Merry Christmas!

You should always be prepared!

I found out on Sunday that you should ALWAYS be prepared, and it doesn't hurt to follow the promptings of the spirit either. ;-)

I'm the Education counselor in Relief Society, which means that I'm over the teachers and music. I know I should ALWAYS read the lessons ahead of time and really try to remember. I skimmed over it on Sat. night, but nothing in depth. During sacrament the teacher for that day was released and called to Primary. I got nervous and asked her after sacrament if she was still teaching. She looked at me wide-eyed and surprised and said, "No, I was released." Apparently, the bishopric member who released her told her not to worry about teaching yesterday. That would have been fine if he had told me or the RS president so that we could have gotten a substitute!!! Great! Guess who gets to cover things like that? Yep, it's me!!! So, off to my car during Sunday School for a quick lesson preparation before RS. Fortunately it was a lesson from the Joseph Smith manual where there are study/teaching questions at the end of each lesson.

The lesson went fine and everyone was sooo good to participate. I am soooooo glad that it is over! Now I know that if I have any question about the lesson, I'm going to call the teacher and double check things. Also, if the spirit is nagging at me to read the lesson, I ought to read it more thoroughly and definitely call the teacher!

It's also my turn to teach Dec. 7, so unfortunately for the sisters, they get me again in just a couple of weeks. Oh well. Hopefully it will be another 3 months before I have to teach again!

I knew we had too much Halloween candy!

I knew all that Halloween candy would rot the kids' teeth. ;-)

Tonight Jacob finally lost his first tooth. My kids got their teeth late, they grew in extremely slowly, and they lose them late. It's hard being the only one of your friends who hasn't lost a tooth yet. His tooth has been pretty loose for a while. (In fact all of his front teeth are loose. I feel a certain Christmas song being sung a lot in our future.) Travis worked on his tooth last night, but it just wouldn't quite come out. Tonight Travis pulled and almost got it. He told Jacob to work on it just a little more and Jacob pulled it right out. He was sooooo excited. He wants to show his tooth to his best friend Kyle tomorrow, so we're waiting to put it under his pillow. I love how you can see the excitement in his eyes.

Way to go Jacob!

Which Twilight Female Are You?

Take the Quiz and Share Your Results!

I took the short little quiz and found out I'm most like Esme. I really like Esme and I guess since she's the mom, that's pretty much me.

Who are you most like?

Maddy's Special Day

Last month Maddy got to have her "Special Day" with Daddy. He took her to High School Musical on Ice. Maddy loves all things theatrical. When she watched HS Musical 1, I asked her, "Do you think high school is really like this?" (referring to all the singing). She chuckled and said, "No, but I WISH it was!!!" She was amazed at how they changed the scenery so smoothly and how they shined pictures and colors on the ice to go w/the scenes. She loved every minute of it.

Here she is very excitedly anticipating the show!

Travis has let the kids pick a souvenir from their special day. What to choose, what to choose? She decided on the stuffed megaphone and has been very happy with her choice.

She also got a HS Musical hat w/ cotton candy in it. It didn't quite fit over her buns.

It fit Travis better. ;-)
Here are a couple of shots from the show.

They said that Troy looked exactly like the real "Troy". The other characters were pretty close.
Ryan and Sharpay

The first half was HS Musical 1 and the second half was HS Musical 2.

With getting to see HS Musical on Ice 1 and 2 and then getting to go to a birthday party to watch HS Musical 3, she's had a very "Musical" month.

The BIG Night!

I always try to make sure that kids actually eat their dinner before they start shoveling in the candy. This year I tried "worms on buns".

They were a hit, especially with Ally!
It was hard to get anyone to hold still and look at the camera to get their picture. This was the best I could get before they all left.
Ally went to a couple of houses with the kids, but mostly just hung around with me passing out the candy - or should I say sampling the candy.
She also enjoyed playing peek-a-boo with me from behind the wall.

Here is our crew after their buckets became too HEAVY to carry. Apparently Bryson even talked Payton and Maddy into carrying his bucket towards the end. Travis's rule is that he won't carry your bucket, if it gets too heavy, it's time to go home.

Halloween was bitter-sweet for Maddy. Payton, her best friend since preschool, was moving the next morning. Payton got to come Trick-or-Treating with us, so at least they got to spend every last minute that they could together. We'll miss you Payton. Fortunately she's moving close to my sister, so we'll be able to visit her in the summer.

Halloween was exceptionally warm this year and Jacob and Ally had hoods on their sweatshirts and Bryson had that HUGE head on his costume. When I went to pick him up from preschool, he was just in his regular clothes and said he had gotten too hot to keep his costume on. This was how sweaty he got walking around outside on Halloween night. It looked like he had just gotten out of the tub. Poor guy.

Well, all the kids made a haul. Lucky for me, our dentist will give the kids a dollar for every pound of candy that they bring in to him on Friday afternoon. He mails the candy he collects to the troops abroad. My kids will even part w/ candy for money and are actually looking forward to turning in part of their loot. Me too! None of my kids have a huge sweet tooth like me, so I usually end up throwing away at least half of their candy anyway. At least this way it's not around tempting me!

Pre-sugar overload

All the kids had school Halloween parties. Bryson had his on Thursday. Here is a picture of some of the treats they were going to be having. They also had pizza, so hopefully he didn't only eat sugar.

Here are Maddy and Jacob on Halloween before school. I think they look pretty great, or should I say spooky! I let Maddy pick the color to spray her hair. It turned out pretty good.
Here is Maddy and her teacher. Her teacher is a "Charlie horse". Pretty clever!

The kids were also celebrating red ribbon week. There was a parade of classes and banners as they went to an assembly. Maddy's table got to carry the banner for her class.

Here is Jacob joining the parade.

They all had a fun parties and got a big jump start on the sugar overload on Halloween night!

Trunk-or-Treat

Our ward had a Trunk-or-Treat last Wed. The kids were so excited to start the Halloween festivities! Here is the Tasmanian Devil (aka Bryson), Maddy the wicked witch, Jacob the bat and Maddy's black Ally cat.

I had to change Ally's diaper during the party and when she saw herself in the mirror she couldn't stop laughing! Fortunately she laughed at Maddy too and wasn't scared of her green face.
Here is Maddy's friend, "the color green" w/ Ally cat and the witch.

The boys enjoyed the face painting and the cake walk. Maddy was kind enough to do the cake walk a 2nd time so that I could have a cupcake too. Maybe she's not so wicked after all. ;-)

The kids had a great time and were even more excited to go Trick-or-Treating in just a couple of days!

Decorating pumpkins

We postponed our annual pumpkin decorating Family Home Evening until Tues. after Bryson had gone to the pumpkin patch. Ally isn't quite ready for real paint, but here she is enjoying some paint w/ water courtesy of Grandma M. I've noticed lately that when she's concentrating, her tongue starts to poke out. Jacob does the same thing. I love it!

Here are Jacob and Bryson starting to paint their pumpkins after picking some crazy and fun poke-in faces.
Here is Bryson's masterpiece.
Jacob was pretty proud of his creation as well. Can you see why he wanted a long stem?

Here is Maddy painting her creative pumpkin. She was pretty pleased with what she came up with. She used an ear for hair and decided to create an Elvis pumpkin. She is pretty darn creative.

Here is her finished product. She's trying to do the Elvis "Thank you very much" pose here.

Here are all of our pumpkins. Pretty great and creative if you ask me!

We usually carve one as well, but we just didn't end up doing it last night. It's been about 10 degrees warmer than usual and it was already hard enough to keep a pumpkin from shriveling up and molding in just a few days that it's probably just as well that we didn't carve it. It doesn't help that our front porch faces West and we get the hot afternoon sun on the pumpkins. The painted pumpkins fair a lot better and the great part is, the kids can decorate them all by themselves, mostly. We do have 2 jack-o-lanterns that you just plug in. They work great for warmer climates. :-)