Christmas 2010

Now that it's nearing the end of January, its time to post for Christmas...

We got to have a long, relaxing vacation. We were going to leave for St. George on Monday the 20th but because of a coming storm we took off on Sunday.  And we're glad we did!  There was a stretch of road where we could barely see anything that night and it only got worse the next day.  In fact, for the first couple of days we were there, there were flood warnings throughout St. George (there was a stretch of road that was closed by our house!) and there was a dam that looked like it might fail. Crazy!!!

We rented a house this time.  So after waiting all day for our Odyssey to get its oil changed and recalled parts replaced, we finally went over to see it. And we were in awe. It was NICE.  There were 4 bedrooms, a fireplace, granite countertops, a little putting green and on and on.  Which is good because Steve got sick and we were stuck in the house for a few days.  They didn't go crazy in the house like they would have in a hotel!!

We also took care of passport pictures for all of the kids, did some shopping and visited with all of Steve's family.  It was so much fun! After a rather large mess of getting Christmas gifts (long, funny story that I can't share on here but if you ask, I'll tell you later) we had a fantastic Christmas.  We borrowed a small tree from Steve's parents' neighbor and had our own little Christmas. I even made egg nog milkshakes. YUMMY!!

Christmas afternoon we took off and headed home. It was hard to leave because the kids were having so much fun with cousins they don't get to see very often but we needed to make the next leg of our trip.   We got back around 10:30 that night and because the kids had slept in the car, we opened the gifts that couldn't fit in the car. 

The next morning we went to church and then headed on to Idaho. The roads were not so pretty but we made it and were happy to be there.  We opened the gifts from Grandpa and Grandma and cousins.  The kids loved it!  My brother's family also opened the gifts from us.

We enjoyed our time in Idaho. We played with cousins, enjoyed time with Grandma and Grandpa and just had quiet time.  We visited both of my grandmas which was a lot of fun too.  I woke up with a cold one day and I was very grateful to have time to just lay down.

New Year's Eve was great!  The kids played Twister which was fun to watch. Grandpa spun the wheel and Grandma took pictures.  Then we all sat in the hot tub.  Around midnight we pulled out the fryer my dad got my mom and we enjoyed mozzarella sticks, french fries, and cheesecake.  YUMMY!!!  For Christmas we all got a industrial french fry cutter and we tried it out. It is AWESOME.   My sister came over after her kids were asleep and we enjoyed talking until 3:30 in the morning.

Then it was time to go home.  We got home and shoveled our way out so we could actually make it into the house.   Now to see what 2011 brings us!!

Christmas Letter 2010

Every year I look forward to sending out Christmas cards.  And getting Christmas cards. Its nice get something in the mail you actually WANT.  I vowed I would never do the email card because its just not the same as getting letters from the mailbox.

So life happened this year and we got to Christmastime without getting to send cards. So you get a blog letter and email letter if I have your email address.  Enjoy!

_________________________________________________

Dear Friends and Family,

Another year come and gone and what a year it has been!  Between running a bookstore, having a new little one in March,  sports, bookstore events, birthdays, school, school events and everything in between its amazing we came out alive!! But here we are and we’re much stronger for it, as the entire experience didn’t kill us... yet!!

Steve recently switched jobs and is now doing consulting for NEC.  He loves it and is in between projects right now, so kind of a vacation of sorts.  In church he started the year teaching nursery where he enjoyed singing different words to the songs, making up stories, encouraged play-dough tasting and tried to get the kids to color with white crayons.  Ethan was the only one who would flat out refuse to take the white crayon.  “No, it’s broken!”  The kids absolutely loved him, even when he kept giving them white crayons :)  He now teaches Sunday School for the 12 and 13 year old class.  He has done a great job of juggling being a Dad, Mom, and employee all at once, although sometimes he feels like he needs a straight jacket.  He has managed to get kids from school, feed them all and keep our house in order-ish.

Jaclyn has been working at the store non-stop since last November - and loved every second of it. She has had a few breaks here and there where awesome neighbors or her sister would take over (THANKS CHARLOTTE!!!).   She will be heartbroken the day the store closes (the 18th of this month) but will be happy to be home with her kids again!  She is now serving as 1st counselor in the Primary and enjoys hearing the children sing and everything else that comes with it.

Jakob is still doing his ALL (Accelerated Learning Lab) classes for 4th grade and loves it.  He’s enjoying the US and Utah History sections he’s learning. He is also going to be doing Knowledge Bowl in March.  He did competitive soccer this year and loved it.  He is a wonderful big brother and good helper!

Andy loves his 2nd grade class and does well in school. He’s sporting a big gap in his mouth with both front top teeth missing and just lost another one the other night. His exact words were “Jakob and I got bored so we pulled out my tooth.” Grrrreat!  The tooth-fairy actually has written him several notes in response to Andy’s requests to her, where she told him that she couldn’t bring him the $2 that he asked for because she got beat up by some bullies who had stolen her lunch money and then for another one of his teeth, he asked for $15, to which the response was that the toothfairy would have had a broken back carrying that kind of money around.

Ashley is all girl. She loves pink and getting her hair done.  She sings non-stop, even if she doesn’t know the right words.  She wears her skirts (with shorts) to play soccer - where she scores at least one goal each game.  She even scored seven goals when she was in Idaho visiting cousins! They needed another player and she was happy to help out.  After the game they asked if she was going to be there the next week!  She started Kindergarten this year and LOVES it.  She sings all the songs she learns and everyone else ends up with them in our heads!!

Gavin eats up everything he can learn from Ashley when she gets home from school. He can spell his name forward and backward and count to 20 - and back down to zero. His dimples and bright, happy eyes help to make you forget the mischief he can get himself into!  He really enjoys drawing on the walls...

Ethan is growing quickly day by day and amazes us with what he comes up with.  We got Letter Factory for Gavin for his birthday and Ethan can tell you every letter and its sound!  He knows what he wants and I often say he is Stubborn in human form.  But he can also be very sweet and his sense of humor is awesome.

Adelheid (Heidi) Pearl Weist was born on March 1st of this year.  She is a bundle of happiness and is an amazing little baby.  She’s my “bookstore baby” because she has spent nearly every day of her 9 1/2 months in the store with me. She greets people as they come in and I have several people say “Where’s my Heidi?” when they come into the store.  She had RSV when she was only 2 months old but by the second day in the hospital she was smiling at all the nurses and back to her cheery, happy self.

As the year ends, so does our bookstore.  We loved every minute of it.  We met lots of people, got to know new books and had all kinds of fun events. I got to use my Early Childhood degree by doing story times.  I met amazing authors and shared our store with them.  It was literally a dream come true. I’m sad its coming to an end.  My kids, however, are not.  On Sunday I sadly mentioned to my kids that it is our last week. My kids jumped up and down cheering “YAY! Mommy gets to stay home with us!” and continued talking about everything we’ll get to do with me at home.

We wish you the very best in the New Year and we hope that your dreams can come true!  Have a Merry Christmas!

Love,

Steve, Jaclyn, Jakob, Andy, Ashley, Gavin, Ethan and Heidi

Stories

I'm so far behind on this blog... But I wanted to put these stories in first. 2 years ago I posted Andy and Jakob's Halloween stories from Kindergarten. I wanted to do it again this year with Ashley's added to it.  Here are Jakob's, Andy's, and then Ashley's Halloween stories.  After that will be Ashley's Thanksgiving story about a turkey and 5 pilgrims.

Scary Pumpkin Patch

By Jakob

Once upon a time, a pumpkin named Jack went off to a camping trip. And he saw a bear. And it frightened him away.

He came back and he lived again in the pumpkin patch. All the pumpkins ran away in a storm that came. Then Jack was lonely. Then he found his friends.

When he found his friends, they went off on a bear trip. A storm came and they went on a boat. Then the storm got bigger and bigger and then their boat sunk. They found land and forever they went off looking for treasure.

They found lots of gold. They were filled with joy. And then they went off for another treasure hunt. And then they ended up in a forest. A bear found them. They ran away back into their patch.

The next day they explored again. They explored for giraffes. They found the biggest giraffe of them all.

The End.

A Scary Pumpkin Patch

By Andy

A scarecrow scares you away from the pumpkin patch. When you ask him to let you go, he lets you go. The patch is scary because there are scarecrows all around the patch. And the pumpkins are alive and they stare at you. But they are happy pumpkins because they like to be jack-o-lanterns. There are also happy flowers because they like to be flowers and like to be watered.

A Scary Pumpkin Patch 

By Ashley

Once upon a time there was a scary pumpkin that was a costume.  He was a boy. And there was a boy that was a pumpkin and he was wearing a pumpkin shirt. There was this little lady that he was in love with.  The girl let him play at her house. And they went in to the house and played with some toys. 

The girl and the boy went to the pumpkin patch. They were looking for a pumpkin. First they went into the haunted house and then they went on a haystack ride. They were riding for the pumpkins to see which ones they liked. They said stop and one person found a cool pumpkin. And the girl couldn’t find any so the boy went to go find one for her and the boy found a beautiful one for her. 

There was big noise that said “WAHAHAHA!!!”  The girl and boy were surprised. They ran out of the pumpkin patch super fast and went back to their grandmas house. 

The End. 

5 Pilgrims and a Turkey

By Ashley

Once upon a time there were 5 pilgrims and the turkey went over and talked to them. They were going to their house. They did stuff in there. And they played toys downstairs in their house. They went back upstairs and ate breakfast. The turkey and the pilgrims went in the living room and played the wii. 

Then they went to play outside in the snow. They ate lunch and then they went back outside and played on their bikes. They went back inside and played the Wii again and then ate dinner.

October 2010 (as written in November)

Well, I skipped October completely and here we are in November.  Here is how our October went in a short, condensed version.

The first weekend of October we went to St George to see my mom and brother-in-law run in the St. George marathon and see Steve's parents.  It was a great weekend! Except the whole stomach flu part but we won't get into that...  My kids love going to St. George and sleeping in the living room. There are a few battles of who sleeps where but then they cuddle up and fall asleep.

Saturday we got up and watched part of Conference before heading over to the finish line.  It was HOT. 95 degrees hot.  My poor mom had had a cold for over a week but ran anyway. This was her 13th marathon. Ben did great and even beat his time!!  He had to leave my mom near the beginning because she knew she wasn't doing well. 6 hours and 10 minutesish later she made it across the finish line. I was so proud of her! And relieved she made it in, unlike the thousands of people that weren't able to make it. Sad!  We walked her back to her car and helped her get her shoes off and flip flops on and we headed on to Wendy's for lunch. Its tradition for us to eat there after their race. :)  Steve had to run back to his parents to continue working on a project for his consulting job.  We enjoyed lunch and then my mom and sister and her family all drove home (in 2 separate cars).  All 8 hours after running for 6 hours....

 We went shopping afterwards.  My kids got to do a little service while we were out and about. There was a big nasty windstorm that came up and they all helped bring in all of the stuff from outside at Down East Basics.  And they didn't stop until it was completely done. I was very proud of them. It was Jakob's idea and he did a great job.  :)  We went and enjoyed a quiet evening with Steve's mom while he and his dad went to the Priesthood Session. It was a very nice night. Oh, I forgot the part about shopping for school clothes (love the outlets so we waited till we were down there) with 6 kids... That was fun. But we got some great stuff!

Two weeks later we headed off to Idaho for a nice, relaxing weekend.  We went on the potato harvester, pumpkin patch(where we picked out our own pumpkins!), Ashley played soccer with her cousins (and scored 7 goals), went to the school carnival, had a hot dog roast, played volleyball and relaxed.   Know those times when you wish the world would just STOP for a little so you could breathe? I got one of those moments that Friday night.  We were outside roasting hot dogs. It had been windy all day.  For just a moment the wind stopped and it just felt still and quiet and the world was good.

Halloween was wonderful - except for the part where we couldn't find the perfect Alice dress for me. But that's okay because I was Mother Nature, a princess and an 80's girl at different times during the festivities. Which ranged from Jakob's school's carnival, a party at our friends' house and trick-or-treating. Our poor little Gavin had a fever for Halloween so we did his trick-or-treating for him.  And sadly I didn't get any pictures for Halloween!!

Thus ends our October - it flew by quickly!  Here are some random pictures from the months of October. I wish I had more in St. George but my poor cell phone camera just doesn't cut it sometimes:

The kids had so much fun in St. George they were just plain tired!!  Ethan snuggled up with Grandpa and took a nice little nap.

Here are the kids helping pick up rocks by the shrubs so we could move them to the fire pit for a hot dog/marshmallow roast. They had a lot of fun - the youngest loved to dump the bucket in the wagon!

Here are pictures from the pumpkin patch we went to. The kids LOVED picking out pumpkins by themselves!!

The theme for the Oakley carnival was The 80's. I had fun dressing us all up. :)

Gavin made a 'Snowman'.  He begged and asked and yelled and begged for us to go down and see. If you look closely you can see the crayon legs.  I love the imagination of a 4 year old!

This was at the school carnival in Saratoga Springs. The kids are gearing up for a donut eating contest. 

You would think this is Heidi's Halloween costume. You would be wrong.  Heidi had a lovely blowout at the store and I had to find SOMETHING for her to wear until Steve could get to the store.  I tried a handkerchief first but it wasn't quite modest.  Then I found the cape. It ended up as a dress of sorts. She didn't care. She had a ribbon to chew on! Luckily Daddy saved her from her mom dressing her funny just in time for Kirby Heyborne to show up for his front room concert that night!

AHOY Matey! This is the one photo I have of my kids for Halloween this year. Sad. But he's sure cute!!