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!