The Latest

FRIDAY: Zach, Kate, Noah, & I went over to Sunshine's house for a playdate. Zach has so much fun playing with Kai and Koa. I spend the time trying to figure out which twin is Kai and which is Koa...I can pretty much tell when they are together, or when they are wearing different colors, but when they are apart I'm not so confident. I also have fun chatting with Sunshine and looking at Baby Bo. She is a few months younger than Noah...future mates???...and she is so good! She is much happier than Noah who I have nicknamed Grumpy Gus. I think he is teething, but no sign of a tooth yet. Lately, I either need to be feeding him or holding him while standing up. I'd really like for him to be content while I'm holding him sitting down.
Side note...Eleanor wants to invite her friend Lucy to her birthday party right now. She doesn't care that her party isn't until May. She's asking me how to spell different words now. It's nice that I can tell her the letters and she says "got it" instead of "what does that look like" which is what she did before going to Kindergarten.
Okay, back to Friday. Matt invited some friends over for Man Camp. So the kids and I picked up Zoe's friend, Morgan, who we invited to spend the night, and then we partied...and stayed warm...and were well fed. My mom came over with Hawaiian pizza, cheese sticks, fries, and soda. We ate, the kids watched episodes of "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" on Netflix and my mom and I played a game of Phase 10. After my mom left, the kids got settled in by the Christmas tree and watched a few movies. The little ones fell asleep first and the older girls fell asleep during the second movie.

SATURDAY: Zoe had basketball practice at 9am. My parents stopped by to pick Zoe and Morgan up, while the rest of us tidied up and Matt unfroze our kitchen pipes. Luckily, closing all the heat vents except for the one in the kitchen did the trick. Zoe and Morgan wanted to go sledding and frankly I wanted to send them outside, but it was too cold. Dawn, you didn't need to send the deep freeze our way! It has been cold, cold, cold! In the afternoon, I met Morgan's mom at a nearby gas station, so Morgan could head home with her family and then Zoe, Emily, Noah and I went to Family Dollar to buy a gift for Emily's classmate, Emily who Emily picked to buy for. Did you catch that? Usually I have my Sunday School lesson pretty much squared away by Saturday, but this day I had no idea what I was going to do for my lesson and I couldn't seem to buckle down and put a lesson together. My mom came over to play another game of Phase 10 and then she took Eleanor and Zach home with her to spend the night. That was nice. Eleanor and Zach were so excited to be going over that all morning they asked when Grammie was going to be here, so they could leave. After dinner, I finally shut myself in my room with Grumpy Gus to prepare my lesson. I wondered why I was having such a hard time preparing it and wondered if I was even going to teach the lesson, but I was going to be prepared either way. I didn't come out until it was prepared, a few hours later. Everyone was sound asleep, including Matt, but not Grumpy Gus of course.

SUNDAY: We woke up to another cold day and the pipe to our toilet was frozen. We didn't have time to fix it before church, so we got ready and left. We were expecting a big snow storm to start in the afternoon, but it started to snow a bit on our way to church. When I saw the snow, I had a strong feeling that we would only have Sacrament meeting and I wouldn't be teaching my class. We were a little late getting to church, but Matt heard the announcement that there would only be Sacrament meeting and he sent Emily back to the coat rack where I was to let me know. Now I could enjoy our Christmas program knowing I didn't have to teach my lesson. Zoe and Emily did a great job singing a song with the Primary kids (Eleanor refused) and Zoe did a great job reciting the scriptures she memorized for the program. She spoke slowly and clearly and we were very proud! The program was so uplifting and the music was beautiful. We went over to my parents' home after church for lunch and to celebrate my Dad's birthday. We had a very nice time. When we got home, we shut all the vents except for the bathroom vent and unfroze the pipe to the toilet. We prepared for a power outage, but thankfully it never happened.

TODAY (MONDAY): No school...Snow Day! We got the snow we anticipated and it looks like we'll be having a white Christmas. :-)
Another cold morning and the kitchen pipes were frozen, so I unfroze them with the shutting vents trick. We are so thankful that works! I've been cleaning today and the kids have been cleaning, holding Noah, watching "Zack and Cody" and playing in the snow. It has been a pretty good day. The girls actually wanted to go to school today because they were going to have their Christmas parties, but they'll have them tomorrow. They have a half day tomorrow and then they'll be on Christmas vacation! We are all excited for Christmas!