Teaching Moments...

Last night we were driving from my sister-in-law's house back to our hotel and remembered we didn't have milk for Santa. We decided to stop by Harmon's and grab some milk from there. I forgot that on Christmas Eve everyone closes early!! So we sat in the parking lot trying to figure out who might be open for milk. I suggested the little shop ("In a Pinch") in our hotel but it was REALLY expensive. Jakob piped up from the backseat that we could just go to Grandma's and get some from there. Steve and I hadn't even thought of that!!

We started driving towards their house and I was praising Jakob about thinking of such a good idea and he told me got it from me. I tried to remember the conversation to think of what I might have said that made him think of his grandparents.

Finally he reminded me of what happened a month ago. We'd been at Red Balloon letting the kids pick out gifts for each other and were hungry. We'd been trying to figure out what to have for dinner and Steve suggested Cafe Rio. I was all for it! But we both knew we should just go home. On our way out of the shopping center parking lot, I told Steve I was REALLY wanting some Cafe Rio so we turned around and went back into the parking lot. I sat there debating whether to take the kids in or leave them out in the car with Steve while I lugged 6 meals out to the car. Finally my good reason won and I told Steve we should just go home and eat there. Now, for me that's a big thing because I love to eat out. But I knew I needed to be a good example and back away from something that we really didn't "need". We went home, had dinner (chili), went to bed and that was the end.... I just didn't realize at the time that I'd taught my son the importance of saving money!! It made my night and I just hope I can continue teaching him the important things he needs to know in life.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and everyone is safe!!! We had a fantastic Christmas and its been fun spending time with Steve's family. :)

Blackmail Material

Poor Gavin. He sure loves his sister's princess room. He can name all the Disney Princesses and wants the pink cup at meals. Ethan needs to grow up fast so Gavin will play HIM! In the meantime we'll enjoy some of the great photos this provides! our camera is blurry because he likes to move instead of standing still for photos but they're still worth keeping!

Wow, I love the pretty shoes! This is Ashley's church shoe and halloween shoe. The bandaid on his eye was from stitches he got while at a yard sale...

Yes, those are little butterfly clips in his hair. I wish he would have let us take one while he was looking at the camera because with his big blue eyes framed in long lashes he was really pretty. ;) He's a sweet boy with plenty of fight. I guess its good that Ashley has SOMEONE to play with!

Gingerbread Men

I decided to try something new this year for goodies. I usually do a lot of candy but I wanted to try cookies. So I got a recipe off Food Network and started on it. After having a rough start from not finding my ginger (kind of important for gingerbread!), I got to cut all the men and trees out and bake them. They came out rather crunchy. The three older kids LOVE them and Gavin tolerates them.

For Family Home Evening we did our cleaning of the toys and got rid of a bunch (yay!) and then started our decorating. We had red(well, pink) and green frosting and I let the kids do it. Ashley had fun making dots all over and Andy and Jakob got creative. I just let Gavin squish the bag while I held it. Ethan just hung out and watched everything happening. It was a fun night and we had some yummy cookies to show for it! We even hung some on our tree afterwards!

Andy's working really hard on his! He actually did a pretty good job with the designing and you could tell he was concentrating on getting the eyes and buttons just right! He sure enjoyed eating them too. :)

I didn't quite trust Gavin with the frosting so I decided to do it for him. He did squeeze it like I said before but I did the actual frosting! He promptly licked all the frosting off and left the cookies on the table! Do you like my bow in my hair? :)

He's sure proud of his cookie though! He just loved the frosting even more. Mmm pure sugar!

Jakob had a fun time making his cookie look crazy. He and Andy were both laughing pretty hard at how they were decorating!

Ashley loved her cookie and wanted to keep decorating - so she could eat them!

And here's Steve's. He was holding Ethan and helping make sure that no frosting ended up on tables or floors. Jakob decorated two for Steve and two for himself. It was a great night! My next attempt will be to make a gingerbread house! Wish me luck!

I just went back and reread my post. Man, do I like exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MmmmYummy Crackers!

Ethan was chewing on everything he could find yesterday(and as he was on my lap and has only so much arm length, it was generally my arm or hand...). So I found him a graham cracker which he gnawed to pieces. I realized that as it was a honey cracker it probably wasn' the best so I gave him a teething biscuit (for babies not dogs...) and he went crazy on that one too. Here is the aftermath of the whole cracker meal. A great big mess!!

Thanksgiving 2008 - One For the History Books

This was one crazy but very fun Thanksgiving for me and mine. We had the opportunity to go to Idaho for the first time in 8 years. Mostly because I've been selfish and kept Christmas with my family(as in my parents and siblings and our 22 kids) to myself instead of sharing our family with Steve's family. :) So this year we decided to reverse the visiting.

We left early Wednesday morning and had an uneventful trip to Idaho. I did get to stop in Ogden to pick up a package for Kristen but otherwise it was pretty quick. Steve slept through the trip and most of Wednesday since he had to work the night before.

Thursday started bright and early at 4:30 when my sister brought my little Andy in to change out of wet clothes(always fun). He was also nice and toasty with a fever and had a croupy cough! What a wonderful thing to wake up to! I gave him tylenol, got him settled and went back to sleep. The poor boy slept most of Thanksgiving and only ate a few bites of Thanksgiving dinner. Gavin was also coughing by that time. GREAT.

We did have a VERY enjoyable, VERY delicious meal. Nothing beats my moms noodles n' gravy!!! You think gravy on potatoes is good? You have no idea until you try my mom's noodles and gravy! Everything else was fantastic and I ate WAY more than I'd planned. But hey, it was Thanksgiving right? The others ate well. Gavin especially enjoyed the corn and stuffing. We got to have my aunt, uncle, Grandma and my brother-in-law's grandma all have dinner with us. It lively and fun to be with everyone.

My uncle took this picture. Yes, there are three tables just to try and fit us all. And that's not even all of us!

We had more family come over and then put all the kids down for naps. I had quite a nice nap myself! We enjoyed Kung Fu Panda as a family and then of course had our pie - pumpkin, cherry and apple oh my! There was blueberry too. MMMMM!!!!!

I tried to get to bed early that night but it didn't quite work out that way. I had just closed my eyes when I remembered I had made the extra trip to my sisters to get the humidifier so I should probalby use it(and I'm glad I did). Plus, I forgot the motrin and vaporub for my boys. So I finally got to bed only to wake up at 2:45 and then again at 4:45 with Ethan. By that time I just got up and went and did the whole Black Friday thing. I got a few of the things I'd hoped to get and 4 hours later I made my way back home.

My dad put up the millions of Christmas lights while I went from helping my mom with decorations throughout the house to checking on my poor Andy. By afternoon his fever had broken and he was getting back to his normal goofy self. We decided to take him and Gavin in to make sure they didn't have strep. We got in pretty quick and they gave us medicine to get rid of whatever it was they had. (I WISH they had swabbed them for strep instead of just giving them the meds because now I'm pretty sure it was just a virus...). We rushed over to Guadalajaras for some delicious Mexican food. So among fighting a whiny Gavin, upset Ashley, Crying Ethan and spilled Root Beer, I had a most delicious meal. Typical family meal. :)

By Saturday morning Steve was feeling a cold coming on so we took ourselves to Smiths for medicine for us too and headed on to Twin Falls to get our sicko family away from everyone else for a few hours. Gavin and Andy had been going crazy staying in one room. But hey, when you have 30 people in one house, you gotta do something! So I took Steve to a few landmarks we'd never been to before. Well, I had. But he hadn't. We looked down into the Snake River Canyon and then headed over to Shoshone Falls. The wind was COLD so we ran the kids over to the stairs, let them look and then ran them back to the car. Steve and Jakob went to another place and got this fun picture.

We then headed over to the mall and checked out some of the stores. We found a few cool deals at JC Penney and then I distracted the kids while Steve went back to get a gift we found. I thought it would be fun to get pictures with Santa. It wasn't until oh, 3 days later that I realized I shared the very germs I was trying to keep away from my family with Santa!!! Hopefully he's better by Christmas Eve. :)

We finally returned to Grandma and Grandpa's house and got to help decorate the tree and have egg nog milkshakes. We also let the kids dress up in the clothes that my sisters and I dressed up in when we were young! The kids had a BLAST.

Sunday was a nice day at church. We enjoyed the lessons, the kids enjoyed nursery and primary and then we got to see our sweet little niece be blessed. We had dinner over at their house before heading back home.

It was a crazy weekend but it was so much fun! I just hope that among all Thanksgivingness of the holiday, we didn't "give" the gift of strep to everyone else!