A very Merry Christmas!

The girls get to open a present on Christmas Eve which is usally a new pair of pajamas. This year they were made by their grandma. Thanks Grandma, they look great!

This year, "K" had to work on Christmas day. He had to leave by 6:00 AM so we woke up the girls at 5:00. They did not want to get up so early (I am sure this will change as they get older), but after saying it was Christmas, they gladly jumped out of their beds. These pictures show that kids can still be happy this early in the morning and we still got to do our tradition of opening presents one by one, youngest to oldest. "K" and I always enjoy watching each expression as each present is opened. So even though "K" didn't get to spend the whole day with us, we still enjoyed a pretty good morning together.

Feeding Reindeer

"B" has made some special reindeer food this year. It consists of oats, sugar and glitter. The glitter is used to attract the reindeer to the food at night. It's hard to see oats when it's cloudy and rainy in Indiana.

It looks like it will be cloudy enough for Santa to bring Rudolph, that makes "A" much happier. "A" was a little worried about Santa this year and included him in her prayers last night.

A fun Christmas decoration!

I bought this inflatable decoration at Lowes the other day and thought that "K" and the kids would enjoy this. We put it up in our house to see if it would work first. We will put it outside of course.

Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving Day started early when I got to help with "A's" class party. Their class made these cute turkeys out of apples, marshmallows, and cranberries.

Here we are sitting down to eat our feast. "K" decided to do something different with the turkey this time. He cut all the meat off the thawed turkey and marinated it with some herb seasoning. The presentation wasn't there of pulling out a beautiful browned turkey, but it tasted soooooo good that we might just make it a tradition. Can you see "B" peeking out over the rolls?

Our camera does 4 shots in a row so we thought we would be silly on the last one. At least you can see Brooke in this one!

This is "B" as a North American Indian.

Here is "A" as a pretty little pilgrim. She wore this at school for her party. We really needed bobby pins to keep the hat down but oh well.

Kids are good for a laugh

So tonight at dinner, we were trying to be good parents and teaching our very demanding little one about manners. "K" asked her "Where are your please's and thank you's?" Well, "C" starts looking around the room and then says " I can't find them daddy, I don't know where they are." I guess we need to work a little harder.

Time at Riley

"C"went to the Hospital last Thursday. Turns out she had Pneumonia and later we find out she's had asthma probably for quite a while. Nice to know the symptoms now, unfortunately we learned it the hard way. We were able to come home this afternoon, she's feeling much better and should feel very well for a long time to come now.

Halloween Fun

We did the traditional -before Halloween-carving the pumpkins for Family Night. The girls at least were able to get their hands in and dirty this year. Before it was all mom and dad doing the dirty work. They each drew on their own face and mom and dad did the carvings.



The finished pumpkins. "B's" on the left, "A's" on the right.

We had a trunk or treat on Saturday. Here are the girls in their costumes before we left. "C" is a pink poodle, "B" is Pocahontas, and "A" is Jasmine.

The two older girls went to a costume party and recieved these pop up pumpkins in their goody bags. "C" just thought they were the most hilarious things she had seen. Kids are pretty funny.

Practice makes perfect?

"B" is working hard at dribbling while trying to block the coach. As you can see, "A" is doing what she does best-chatting it up with her friends. :)

"A" does really work hard. Here she realizes that she is ahead of everyone and doesn't think it is good, so she turns around to join the group. They are both pretty fun to watch. And, I know it doesn't really show it here, but they are getting better.

I've been tagged!

My sister in law tagged me. It must be 8 is great or something, so I thought I would play along.

8 of my favorite TV shows:
I don't watch a lot of TV so some of these might be a stretch but...
The big bang theory (they should get rid of penny, the guys are hilarious enough)
How I Met Your Mother (they need to do more slap bets)
Scrubs (it isn't on anymore, but I followed it when it was on)
Grey's Anatomy (I catch this one every once in awhile)
America's Got Talent( the violinists were much better then the opera singer I thought)
60 Minutes (I watch it if I catch it on)
News ( I like to be informed of what goes on)

8 things that happened yesterday:
Our family went to church
"K" had to give a talk
I taught a lesson to some very wiggly sunbeams
I committed myself to run a half marathon in May
Our atomic clock decided to finally get the right time( changing the dates for day light savings didn't jive and we couldn't reset it)
"K" worked nights
I got to sleep in
"C" coughed all day

8 favorite places to eat:
Cheesecake Factory
Black Angus
Macaroni Grill
Olive Garden
Red Lobster
Chipotles
Chik-fil-a
Brick Oven (yes, in Provo, UT)

8 things on my wish list:
I wish I could get my eyes lasered
I wish I had some fashion sense( no seriously, I need help)
Going on an Alaskan Cruise
I wish the house cleaned itself
I wish healthly foods would go down in price
I wish we could get our last 2 loans paid off quicker
I wish I could get more sleep
I wish to travel somewhere outside of the U.S. someday

"A's" Birthday Party

We had a "treasure" party for "A" for her birthday. The party guests found clues (puzzle pieces) as they went on a treasure hunt. Once every one had all the clues, we put them together (the puzzle that is). On the puzzle it told them where their treasure was. It was a treasure chest pinata out in back. We got video of it all, but is too big to download here, and everyone had a lot of fun taking swings at it. Once we opened up the treasure and the girls grabbed their fill, then we went inside for gold and silver bar cupcakes.


"A" was pretty proud of herself blowing out the candles.


Time to open presents!
Parties are fun but a lot of work. "A" had great fun.

Here are all the girls at the party singing happy birthday to her. The video of course decided to time out right before blowing out the candles.

7th birthday

We had a small party for "A" last night. The big party

is Saturday. A and B really like talking on the radios, but

this morning it was a way to waste time instead of getting

ready for school. While "A" was stamping, "C" put

her hand on the ink pad. After the opening, we all went

for ice cream.

MO

Spent some time in Missouri this last week.

Had nice weather, but not a lot of flying.

I watched a lot of Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs.

I Love to see the Temple

Our ward put together a temple trip to the Louisville, KY temple. The primary did an activity for the primary aged children while their parents got to go to the temple. The temple is right across the parking lot from the church building, making planning for this temple trip a lot easier I am sure.
The girls enjoyed our temple day and even enjoyed getting pictures taken too. Here is "C" doing something that looks like "jazz hands" and the other girls being silly. I am so glad that families can be together forever.

A place to park.

I get some free time to take pictures when the
med crew is delivering the patient. Normally
I like to go in with the crew and help where I
can, but when I do not, I take pictures.

Here are a couple pictures from the last week....

This is Cincinnatti, OH at The Christ Hospital.
A raised pad on top of a parking garage.
My first time to Cincinnatti, I hope I get to go
back sometime.

Indianapolis, IN is the background, parked on
the Methodist Aux Pad. 7th floor of an older part
of the hospital.

I am off nights now, so there should be fewer night
photos for a couple of weeks.

Cheers!

What do you hate more than melted ice cream?

Well, we hate it more when our whole refrigerator goes kaput!

"K" went to go get some ice cream the other night and pulled out a mushy squishy carton of ice cream instead. He knew something was wrong. It looked like everything was running and working right and he checked everything. But after investigation and conversing with his dad, he concluded that the compressor had gone out and no cold air was going in. So we had to start transferring stuff into coolers and saving as much stuff as we could. Soooo, we unfortunately got a new fridge. We had planned to upgrade our other fridge in about a year or two, but as everyone knows-things don't always go as planned. So we got ourselves a side by side fridge with a water and ice dispenser in the door. I just assumed that the kids knew what the water dispenser was used for, but our youngest thought it was a convenient way to wash her hands one day. So after cleaning up the big water mess , we instructed her that it wasn't used for such things.

Indianapolis Childrens Museum

I took B and C to the museum yesterday with some friends. It is the best children's museum I have ever been to. It was four stories high and had so much to do. I think we only saw about a 1/3 of it, because the kids would get stuck on one thing and wouldn't want to move to the next. They had tons of fun. In this picture they are digging for dinosaur bones. C said it was spooky and didn't want to stay in.

Here they are at the construction zone in a tractor. They got to dig, and pick up rocks in these tractors that really moved!
The water features are always my kids favorites. Here "C" tries to catch a fish.
Look mom, I found the biggest ducky I have ever seen!
Here is "B" in a submarine.
This is B, C and our friends son standing by the leggo man in the entrance of the museum. They had so much fun, and were pretty tired by the time we left. We will definately go again.

Fun day at the park

The girls had a fun day at the park with daddy. This park has a super duper high slide that the girls just love. They had fun, but it was also hot they said and came home pretty tired.

Back to school.

"A's" first day of school!









"

"A" getting on the bus. She was soooo excited to finally get to ride a school bus.

Here is "B" in front of one of the Kindergarten classes. She just got tested yesterday and none of the Kindergarten students know who their teacher is until Friday.

Here is" A" sitting at her desk in her classroom. They had meet the teacher day the day before school started.

Here is "B's" first day. Waiting for the bus.

Flower Bed Project

Before After

So, I never have liked the look of our flower garden in the front of the yard, but I knew it had potential. I just always thought that the tree that was there looked funny and I really didn't want a tree that close to the house anyway. So I had my wonderful husband take out the tree. Then I decided I wanted a border around the flower garden. I was happy how it turned out so I wanted to share.

Ordinary day turns into extrodinary day!

I went to our new credit union today to pick up our van title. We were switching our van loan from our other credit union to this one in Indiana since they gave us a better rate. Our van was still titled in Nevada and apparently we have to have an Indiana title if we register our vehicle in Indiana. So I go inside the credit union and they have doughnuts and cookies and popcorn out. So I asked the member service representative what they were celebrating. They said it was members appreciation day and that I could have what ever refreshments I wanted. They also told me that they were doing a drawing for an ipod and that I could put my name in if I wanted to. So I do what I always do and sign my name not really thinking anything will come out of it. At 6:00 last night the phone rings and I see that it is our new credit union. Didn't think much about it, thought they might need me to do something else to switch our car loan over to them. But the branch manager said that she had pulled my name from the drawing! I had actually won the ipod! For only being a member of their credit union for about a month- I call that member appreciation!

Backyard Campout

The girls have wanted to go camping in our backyard for a long time. Since we actually have grass instead of rock in our backyard we finally put up the tent for them.

We didn't have smores, but there were marshmallows.

Daddy gave the girls a lesson in frisbee throwing, and the family played a nice game of frisbee. The girls got the hang of it after awhile.

Getting ready to go to sleep. Got a flashlight, books, beds. Yep, everything is set.

Pictures of our family

We've Painted!

Here is our kitchen. I saw this color in another kitchen when we were looking for houses and loved it. So I copied the color in our own.

Here is our great room. We still have curtains and pictures to hang up, but we are getting there.
Here is another picture of what you would see first walking in the door.


Here is another picture of our kitchen, it is big, but it has a lot of floor to clean!
Here is what is supposed to be our dining room. But we think it works well as an office and piano room.

Here is Allison's room. We just painted it yesterday, so it is not put back together and organized, but at least you get an idea of the color.
Here is Colista's room. It is so girly and pink and I love it! Here is another angle of the pink room.
Brooke's room turned out nice too. It has flower power!