New Year's Eve

Today was the first Saturday in a long time that Matt, Zoe, & Emily have not worked on the new house! There was plenty of work to be done inside our old house, though! The Christmas decorations have been put away and we are ready for a new year! We are not going to stay up tonight to welcome in the new year since we will be up early tomorrow for church. The kids watched one of the Free Willy movies this evening and now they are in bed. I'm going to watch "Midway to Heaven" and then I am off to bed, too. Matt has already crashed.

The kids are still enjoying their new games and toys. :-)




Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve Eve

Kate is still dealing with a tummy ache/diarrhea, but everyone else is back to being healthy. Zach complained that his stomach hurt before he went to bed. Hopefully, he'll sleep and feel good in the morning.

The kids were up for an outing today so we stopped at McDonald's for lunch and then we went to Old Navy to spend Christmas money and a gift card. Going to a store with all of the kids is always an adventure!

Matt and Zoe went to a stake youth activity this evening. The highlight for Zoe was getting to play volleyball. The rest of us ate dinner with my parents and my grandmother at my parents' house. The kids watched "Kung Fu Panda 2" and made huge messes everywhere while my mom and I played Phase 10. A few of the kids spent quite a bit of time crying because they were expected to finish their dinner before they ate anything else. OUTRAGEOUS!

Matt's truck and old SAAB are no longer sitting in our driveway. YAY! Matt gave them to a guy he knows in exchange for labor on his Suburban. I like it!

Sickness Has Struck

Eleanor was supposed to go play with her friend, Anna today, but she woke up not feeling well. She is REALLY sick if she passes up a chance to spend time with a friend! She has been hit the hardest with a fever, headache, and achy body. Zoe wasn't feeling great yesterday and Kate has had diarrhea and stomach aches on and off for days. Matt came home and said he hasn't felt good all day. Ugh.

Emily & Zach were able to go play with Daisy, Anna, & Ryder today. Zoe & I had a wii fit competition. It was a fun way to exercise. :-) We started simplifying old toys and making room for new toys. That will be a work in progress for awhile.

Emily's Basketball Fame

If you have trouble watching this video, you can click on this link

House Progress

The last floor board on the 2nd floor was put down today! :-)


The kids are going to have a laundry chute! How neat is that?!

A view from the 2nd floor of the kids sledding.

Maher-shalal-hash-baz

Our fish turned 2 on Christmas Day! When we got him, he had fin rot, so we didn't think he would live long. He has never been very healthy and lively, but he has hung on much longer than we expected! He spends most of his days sleeping at the bottom of his bowl.

The kids went outside first thing this morning to try out their new sleds. There was fresh snow to slide on since it snowed yesterday. Eleanor opted to stay inside to try out her Easy-Bake oven.





I didn't get a photo of the pink frosting Eleanor made. She was quite impressed that the frosting powder and water mixed together made real frosting! :-)

Zoe opened her Mouse Trap game while Eleanor was baking.


Later on, the boys had some bonding time with Daddy as they played with Zach's new toy from Grandpa. :-)


Emily & Zoe had back to back basketball practices today. I'm glad Matt was home to do most of the transporting. :-) Zoe has a Round Robin in Dexter tomorrow and Emily's team has a game tomorrow and then they are off for the rest of the week. Yay!

Eleanor received the movie, Rio for Christmas. so we watched it tonight for FHE. It was a fun family night!

Merry Christmas!

It just may be the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER! First thing this morning, the kids opened their stockings and a few other presents from some church friends. Then we ate French Toast and pancakes and got ready for church. Sacrament meeting was delightful with beautiful music/singing and testimonies of Christ. I wish we could attend Sacrament Meeting every Christmas. The kids did well waiting until we got home from church to open their presents. They were super excited when the unwrapping began!

Zoe & Emily received Kindles.
My parents & Grandmother now have 2012 calendars with pictures of our family. :-)
Pillow Pets for all of the kids!
Games! Noah loves to play Don't Break The Ice. He was happy to receive a new one since he wore out the old one.
Money! Zoe & Emily unwrapped several boxes within boxes before they found their money. Fun idea Grammie! Matt regrets giving me money since I am seriously thinking about spending it on a weekend trip to Orlando in March for Time Out For Women!
Christmas wouldn't be the same without Grammie hugs!
I'm not sure where we are going to put this CARS track, but it is fun to play with!
Some toys needed to be charged before they could be played with. Remote control cars are so much fun!
Zach made this hand print for me. I consider it Matt's too, but only my name was on the card. :-)
Fijit Friends! The highlight toy for the younger kids!

Some other highlight presents...
Emily ~ Camera
Zoe ~ Pottery Barn Teen Gift Card
Eleanor ~ MP3 Player
Sleds for all of the kids

The Magical Christmas Dust that Zach, Kate, and Eleanor spread all over the lawn last night for the reindeer really was magical! It has been a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Eve

I have been wanting to post this video of Zoe playing basketball and making her first basket of the season since Tuesday! It is such a sweet shot. :-)


Zoe & Emily were supposed to have games on Wednesday, but the games were cancelled due to icy conditions. It was supposed to be cold, but dry during the day and then get warmer with rain in the afternoon/evening, but it ended up being cold and rainy all day. I got my hair cut, picked the girls up from school and then I was happy to be home and off the slick roads! Emily had a field trip to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland on this icy day and I'm so glad they traveled safe! We had an unexpected family dinner/evening at home which was so delightful!

Thursday was warm, but still icy as my Mom found out the hard way. She slipped and fell down her steps as she was heading to work. A trip to the walk in care confirmed a fracture just above the ankle and she is in a boot cast. :-(


I couldn't find my phone on Thursday and I was sure it was somewhere in the house since the last time I had used it was Wednesday evening at home. I was quite surprised Thursday afternoon when I talked with the secretary at the middle school and she told me that my phone was in their office! I still don't know how it ended up at the school when I hadn't been in the school that day. Strange! I did drop Zoe & Emily off in the morning, but I didn't get out of the Yukon. My guess is that my phone fell out of my jeans pocket or my bag and was on the floor of the Yukon and it got knocked out of the Yukon in front of the school. I am grateful for whoever found it and turned it into the office!

We have snow for Christmas! The kids had a great time playing outside yesterday as it snowed. :-) What a fun way to start Christmas vacation!




We have had a fun Christmas Eve! We went over to my parents' house to eat a yummy brunch. We were going to have the brunch at our house, but since Mom is still getting used to walking on her boot cast, we brought the food to her. My grandmother was there, too. :-) Our family went to the movie theater to see "Puss in Boots". It's fun that our kids are old enough to sit through a movie without interruption. It makes watching the movie much more enjoyable. :-) The kids colored pictures when we got home to complete our coloring page countdown. We were a bit behind, so we colored all the pages that we had missed and they are all hanging up on the wall.

I love how festive our living room looks this year! I'm thinking the snowflakes will stay up until Spring. :-)

We have our tradition of watching the animated version of The Grinch every Christmas Eve. Max, the dog is SO ADORABLE! We love all the parts he is in. :-)

I tried to send the kids to bed, but they reminded me that we hadn't prepared the cookie plate for Santa!

Then I was going to send them to bed again, but I remembered that we hadn't unwrapped our last Christmas book of the season. There were actually two books because I added one of Zoe & Emily's favorite Christmas countdown books that I neglected to get at the beginning of the countdown. Oops! They looked for the book all month.

Then Zoe unwrapped the last Christmas book that was in the original pile. Emily has been waiting for this one.


We are all excited for Christmas tomorrow! I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Books

Here are more books that the kids have unwrapped and we have read. :-)

Handsome, Silly Boys!

Zach & Noah received these sweet vests from Pat (Daisy & Anna's Grandmother). They looked so handsome today in church.


They were quite active this evening as I took pictures of them in their CTR shirts!






Taking individual pictures worked much better!


Here is a picture of Kate's shirt. I love the brown and the butterfly! These shirts will get worn a lot because they are so awesome!