A Wii bit of fun!

Everyone had a lot of fun with our new Wii. Here are Maddy and Jacob concentrating on one of the new games.

Ally isn't quite ready for the Wii, but she sure loves the new kitchen that Santa left her. She was always pulling whoever wasn't playing the Wii into the other room to play with her. She kept pretending to shake a little packet of pop rocks into a pan. The packet made noise when she shook it, so it was almost like baking. She also loves to make the stove make bubbling noises. She acts surprised every time she pushes the button.
Ally also found that she could get into the kids new toys while they were distracted by the Wii. Here she is listening to Jacob's new Transformers radio. It cracks me up that she even knows to put the ear buds in. She is very observant!
The very first time the kids and Travis bowled, Bryson smoked everyone, even with his unconventional just run up and swing your arm bowling style. It just killed grandpa to watch him swing crazy and keep getting strikes and spares! How do you like the Mii Bryson created. Looks just like him don't you think? ;-)
Here is Jacob when he got his first win in bowling. He also bowls pretty crazy with a hop throw and does well every time. His Mii is also a spitting image of himself, right?!

The first time they golfed, Maddy won. She even beat her grandpa who is a pretty good golfer in the real world. Her Mii actually does look like the real Maddy.

Travis's mom, Maddy, myself and Travis bowled Christmas night. His mom and I didn't have our own Miis so we used the boys. She got the high score and no one could top her score for a long time. Maddy did excellent as well. I came in third with the highest score I've ever gotten. I guess it was beginners luck. In any case, I Wii bowl better than I really bowl. Pretty fun!

Grandpa won a game too. He got an excellent score as well, but not the highest. ;-)

Travis couldn't stand not to be able to bowl well consistently. He finally figured out how to make his ball spin and to do what he wanted and broke his mom's record of 199. Only Bryson was here to take his picture for him. Pretty good shot Bryson!

I had to laugh when I saw Travis playing tennis with Ally's "help". She does love her daddy and wanted to be right there with him. The really sad thing is that he can play tennis sitting down with Ally on his lap better than I can all by myself with no distractions.

Thanks for the Wii Santa. I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun times using it!

Grandparent Christmas

Travis's parents were able to spend Christmas with us this year. We really enjoyed having them and wished they could have stayed longer. I didn't get too many pictures of his mom. She spent a lot of time playing kitchen with Ally or games like Kerplunk with the kids. She also held the top score on Wii bowling until just recently when Travis finally perfected his bowling.

Here are the boys being tickled by grandpa. It's funny how they just keep coming back for more!
Ally and Maddy couldn't be left out of the fun either!

One evening Ally was getting sleepy and wanted Grandpa. He put her right to sleep. Must be the Grandpa touch.

Here are all the kids with Grandma and Grandpa before they left.
Thanks for making Christmas that much more special! Feel free to come and visit any time!

Our fun Christmas!

Merry Christmas a little late. I've been a little lazy about downloading the pictures and it seems that one of the kids is always logged onto webkinz now that that Bryson and Jacob got webkinz for Christmas and can join Maddy online. Of course Maddy being the expert has volunteered to "help" them spend their webkinz money and earn more playing games.

Here is the first installment of our Christmas pictures. Bryson is being silly as always with some of his candy canes before we opened presents.

All of the kids made quite a haul as usual. Here is what Ally got. I put in 2 pictures because she covered up some when she was in the picture, but she looked too cute not to show too. I wasn't going to push my luck and try to have her sit down in front of her presents.

Ally wouldn't let go of Bryson's koala webkinz, so rather than have her in tears for her picture, I just let her hold it even though it was not one of her presents. She thought ALL the new stuff was GREAT!

Bryson had to make a scary Hulk face for the picture. Isn't he terrifying?!

Poor Jacob was fighting a cold over Christmas and looking back at the pictures I see how sick he really was. He's such a trooper and rarely complains. He has sooooooo much energy, that he doesn't even slow down much when he's sick. He also lost his 3rd front tooth on Christmas Eve and thought it was pretty cool that he could suck on a candy cane without even opening his teeth. The last front tooth looks crooked and should be falling out any day now. Then he really won't need to open his mouth to eat them!

Maddy quickly changed into her new PJs and slippers, so she's all set in her new stuff. Of course she never put her new clothes on that day. Oh well, we weren't going anywhere.

The big hit was that Santa left our family a Wii and a few games in the other room. The kids found them after all the other presents were opened. They each unwrapped a game. You could see the light come on as they were first confused as to why Santa left a Wii game and then realizing that the present dad was opening was a Wii.

Bryson looked disappointed because he thought the game he opened was just his and wasn't sure if that was the game he wanted.

We explained that they were all for our whole family and let him trade w/ the one that Ally opened. Now he's happy!

They have had A LOT of fun with the Wii and their other Christmas presents! Thanks everyone!

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!