Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I'm baffled that it has already been a year since we moved into our new house and that Tragon is already 5 1/2 months old and loving solid food already, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I should start with Christmas. We had a great Christmas in St. George. We left on the 23rd and headed down after spending the 22nd working on the basement. We were able to make some good progress, but it was nice to be away from the house and not be tempted to work on it. It was a nice break for us and for the kids. The ride down was pretty uneventful, the kids did really well in the car and all took naps at various times and they did really well when we stopped in Scipio for lunch and went to Subway.
Damon loves trains! My mom has a singing train tree and Damon would just stare at it for a long time. If I ever heard the music playing and couldn't find him, he was usually on the chair by it watching it. He was very concerned though that the top train didn't move and always made sure to tell me so.
Someday I will get a picture of Damon with a real smile and not a crazy cheese. :)
Our days were filled with lots of fun and family. The whole crew was there, that makes 7 grandkids ranging from age 3 (Logan the oldest) and Tragon being the youngest. There was a good share of tantrums, but for the most part I think all the cousins got a long really well and had a great time!
Logan loves Moon Dough, it's kind of like Play Doh, but less messy, I might have to get some for his birthday that's coming up in a few months. :)
I can't remember a Christmas when we didn't have some sort of video game that was being played, this year is was a puzzle game on the Wii.
Every night we probably stayed up until 1:30-2:00 am and Christmas Eve was no exception. We got all the kids in bed (our favorite time of night) and read our Christmas Stories by candlelight. After that we played games until we could barely keep our eyes open. Traditionally it's me waking the family up around 4-5am to start Christmas, but this year I wanted to sleep in as long as possible...Tragon woke up at 4:30...then Logan woke up about 5:00....but Lincoln my nephew takes the cake, he was up at 2:00 (about the same time his mom and dad were climbing into bed) and wouldn't go back to sleep because he was so excited to open presents. Finally about 5:30-6:00 since most of us were up we decided to get things started. We had to wake Damon up, and boy was he unhappy. The poor guy just threw tantrum after tantrum, mostly because he wanted Logan's truck/car toy (above), but I think he wasn't feeling well either. He even threw a tantrum when we tried to give him a new present of his own. Lesson learned: never wake Damon up early, he gets very grumpy. That's good news for future Christmases though, hopefully my kids will want to sleep in until at least 7:00 when they typically wake up.
This was a toy that Logan picked out himself and then I wrapped it. His cousin got the exact same one. Logan was a champ opening presents this year, he actually did most of it himself. I think next year will be even more fun for him.
Damon is my puzzler. He loves puzzles almost as much as trains and he will spend hours doing puzzles...yes, really hours. I love it! He's actually really patient with puzzles and will spend time figuring them out for a while before asking for help, I think right now the most he's done by himself is a 35 piecer. We usually have at least a 1500 piece puzzle set up during the holidays and I even snuck Damon into the no kids zone to have him help me with the puzzle. I think together we put in about 10 pieces, I'd find the piece and tell him where it goes and he would figure out how to get it in. After about 10 pieces though I could see him getting a little anxious and wanting to push the puzzle off the table, I didn't want to press our luck, so we played something else.
I couldn't resist. Logan was getting dressed for the day, he can strip down by himself, but he didn't want Damon to get his toy while he got dressed, so he grabbed and ran upstairs to hide it until he got his clothes on. This one is going to be a classic butt shot for years to come. I can't wait until he starts dating...(well, yes I can).

We had such a fun time at Christmas, Morgan and I had a chance to have a little date and went and played pickleball. It's sort of like tennis and ping pong combined. You're on a court like tennis, but the paddles and ball are more like ping pong, it uses a heavier wiffle ball. It is more of a retirement game...I think we were the youngest by about 30 years. We had two nice old ladies teach us the rules and played a couple games with us...they were really good. We were starting to get the hang of it though and played a few single games. My legs were even a little sore the next day. That will have to be a new tradition when we visit is to go play pickleball, Morgan loved it.

This year was my year for the sickies. All my boys had some sort of cold on the way down or by the time we were headed home. They're all doing pretty good now though and Tragon is almost over his stuffy nose. By the time Sunday rolled around, they were all ready to go. I think I had reached my lack of sleep limit staying up too late and being up through the night with a baby that couldn't breathe, and the incessant whining of sick kids. It was crazy trying to get ready for church and deciding to go or not to go, in the end my mom helped me make up my mind and gave us all hugs and kisses and told us to be on our way to get our boys home and feeling better.

It really was an awesome Christmas, but it is always nice to get back home and get back into a routine. Thanks everyone for a great Christmas! Until next time....

Happy Thanksgiving

I can't believe I've gone from a once a week blogger to a once a month blogger....wait, yes I can, I have three kids, it's the holidays, and we're booking it to finish our basement. :) Come to think of it, once a month is pretty impressive right now. I'll start it off with Thanksgiving, sadly, no pictures, but we did have one of the best Thanksgivings ever.

My parents and my brother and his family came up to stay with us for Thanksgiving, it wasn't really a planned thing, it just sort of happened and I'm glad it did. We had great food and had quite the spread for hosting my first Thanksgiving, although I think my mom still gets most of the credit for it, I couldn't have done it without her. Whether it was her cooking or playing with the kids so that I could get stuff done. We had a delicious turkey, candied yams, green beans with bacon, homemade crescent rolls, thanks Kim, Morgan is still talking about them, juicy ham, of course some Stove Top stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, dixie fruit salad, coconut creme pie, pumpkin pie (made with a real pumpkin!), cherry pie...wow, just thinking about all of it reminds me that I could probably still go another few days without eating. :)

Secretly, we were really making a push to get the drywall and mudding all done in our basement before the company arrived and I'm happy to report that we made it, of course that was also one thing that we decided to hire out. They got done the day before everyone arrived. My brother and dad were planning on helping with the drywall, so I hope they weren't too disappointed that they weren't hanging it and mudding all weekend. ;) Seriously though, we got so much done in those few days with help from them and Kim with some painting too. We were able to get the bathroom all tiled, the doors hung, the electrical stuff all working (yay no more flipping the breakers to have light down there), we got the fireplace mantel put together and a whole lot of other stuff.

We did have some fun too, although they all did spend a really good portion of time in the basement working. We played games almost every night and brought out good ol Monopoly and Clue, of course there was the customary Canasta games as well as a few others. The kids played so well together and we only had a few minor tantrums with all of them having a few turns each. :) Once we have the basement done we're definitely looking forward to more get togethers; we had a great time.

The next week...well, we all got sick. :( Damon and Logan each took a turn with the flu, it only lasted a couple days and included only one messy barfing each...although, when they spread it out over a week, it does feel like I was cleaning puke and diarrhea all week. I didn't get the yucky flu and neither did Tragon, but we both got colds, his nose is almost clear and it's not quite such torture to clean out his nose so he can eat. Morgan was sick a couple days, but not enough to take a sick day, it's really crazy at work around the holidays. We are all pretty much feeling tip top now with only a few drippy noses here and there. I hope that we have gotten all our Christmas sick bugs out and done with (knock on wood).

We've been so focused on the basement...which is almost done, but all the little details sure add up to a lot of little projects and time in the end, so it will probably be another couple months, our goal is to at least have the bathroom done by Christmas and since we just got all our stuff delivered today, I think we can handle that.

I did finally get the tree out....today....December 10th....shhh, don't tell my family. Traditionally it's me begging to break out the Christmas music by Halloween and man, if we don't have those decorations out the day after Thanksgiving, it's too late. It's a little different with little kids though. I did let them help me decorate the tree, but then Damon spent the bulk of the morning in time out for hitting the balls off the tree....I may just take all those breakable ones down, or keep the tree in our bedroom and just read bedtime stories by it at night, and we are definitely NOT putting the presents under there, oiy! It really does feel like Christmas time now. And, the shopping is almost done too, I think I only have a couple more things to get, wahoo!

The boys did like all the snowmen ornaments. They like to find their favorites and show me.
I was surprised at how well Logan could hang the decorations, even if the tree is a little lopsided and droopy on the bottom. :)
It's going to be a great Christmas!

Time Flies...when you're busy

It's been an interesting November. I'll start backwards and go from there. Tragon had his 4 month checkup today. I forgot to get the little printout, but I'm pretty sure of the stats:Height: 26" 50ish % Weight: 12lbs 6oz 8% So, he's still tall and skinny, like my boys have all been...must take after their daddy. :)
Tragon is an absolute joy and probably been the best "baby" so far. He sleeps great, eats great, let's me actually put him down, and adores his older brothers. They are much better entertainment than myself and they love to play peek-a-boo and try to tickle him. He's starting to laugh, smiles all the time, and can almost roll over.
Haha, this is what happens when I get distracted doing the dishes or cleaning. I think Damon and Tragon were both sleeping and so I let Logan use a marker to do some preschool activity books (gotta love the dollar store). Anyway, I turn around and he has blue everywhere. Granted it was a Mr. Sketch marker, and really who can resist smelling them.
It was too funny that I just busted up laughing and got the camera. This is Logan's, "what's so funny mom" look. My boys sure keep me on my toes!

So, sadly no more pictures, but here's the rest of the month, this past week we attended a funeral of one of Morgan's cousins who died very unexpectedly and was about Morgan's age. I'm not much of a funeral person, in fact if you ask any of my friends from high school I vowed I would never attend a funeral, even my best friend's. I guess I matured a little bit, but I'm still not a huge fan. This funeral was different. There was just a different feeling there. I'm not saying people were happy, because we are all definitely going to miss him and there was a sadness about it, but there was such a certainty of the gospel plan presented that it was hard not to have a testimony building experience. I think I was able to keep my emotions in check until I gave my aunt a hug and then I was just speechless for fear I would start sobbing. I can't imagine loosing a child so young. My prayers will definitely be with them all for quite some time, but I am grateful for my knowledge to know that families can be together forever and that our Father in Heaven loves us and will be with us always.

This month also marks the passing of our 4-way inspection on our basement. We're definitely making some progress, so we'll have to get some pictures up soon.

I started a playgroup with a neighbor, we trade off every other week for about 1 hour and half one day a week. It's been fun. Logan definitely likes having friends over and he seems to behave pretty well at other houses too.

On the 13th, it was Morgan's 31st birthday, and on the 6th it was 26th birthday. It was pretty low key for both of us. We decided that our fireplace was our real birthday present...and Christmas present...for about the next 5 years. :)

We're part of ward dinner group thing and we're a host family. Towards the beginning of the month we had our first dinner. We had 3 other couples over. It was really fun. A little hectic because that was also Morgan's late day, so he was getting here about the same time as everyone else. They had some games going at the church after everyone's dinners, but my kids had been sick the week before and we were both exhausted and couldn't find a babysitter so we stayed home. We're looking forward to more dinners and being able to get to know more of our neighbors.

We're planning on having a lot of fun over Thanksgiving, so I'll post about that later, so until next time...

Happy Halloween

What could have been a not so fun Halloween, ended up turning out really well. These are a few pictures from the day.Logan had been asking to carve the pumpkin all week, but we just kept getting too busy, so finally on Saturday we carved the pumpkin face. :)
I don't think Damon really had any idea what Halloween was about, but he did great following Buddy around.
Tragon was a good sport about the whole thing. I forgot to take off his bib so you could see his Halloween outfit, but oh well.
Since we've been working on the basement, we're at the place where we needed to finally move the TV upstairs to get some things finished...
I sure hope it doesn't stay up here long. And this was a rare TV dinner sort of day while I was trying to get some other things taken care of so we could go trick or treating.
Logan was Batman. The first time we put on the costume, he freaked out an hated it, but then when it was time to actually go out, he kept running around saying, "I am Batman!"
Damon was Robin. I'm glad we got a picture before the glasses broke. It was so cold, he ended up wearing a beanie anyway. :)
Batman and Robin. Logan even called Damon Robin for the night and when he couldn't see Damon he would ask, "Where is Robin?"
Here we are carving the pumpkin.....I still don't think they are quite old enough, I spent the latter part of the carving trying to get them to stop throwing the pumpkin guts on the floor and taking the pumpkin saws away. We survived though and I think it turned out pretty good.
The boys picked out the owl picture from our carving kit. I'm glad too, the other ones would have been a lot more difficult to do with the kids.
And the finished product. We didn't have many trick or treaters. We all went together anyway and just left a bowl on our porch and it was pretty much all there when we got back. We went later than we wanted, but we had to wait for the rain to let up and it finally did. I bundled Tragon and we headed out around the neighborhood. The kids did really good except they still think they are supposed to actually go into the houses, I guess it doesn't help that the first few people we went to were houses that actually did invite us in for a while. :)

Just as we were about done, Damon tripped on the sidewalk and wasn't too happy for the rest of the night. And just like we thought, Morgan ended up carrying the two boys while I had Tragon, the umbrella, and the baskets....yeah, should have grabbed the wagon when we had a chance. Oh well, it worked out and it was a fun night. We got home and put the kids to bed and fell asleep watching a movie. Sunday I woke up with a sore throat, and this morning, Damon woke up with a little cough, so hopefully this week we'll get a chance to rest and recover. Until next time.....

Family Pictures 2010

We got our family pictures done last weekend. I was a little hesitant to do "family" pictures and not just Tragon pictures, but I'm really glad we have some family pics now and I think they turned out really good.


This one is my favorite of Tragon. We got some really good smiles from him.





All my boys. I love them all so much!


And now we're back to just my pictures. Tragon has been such a good baby. I was actually able to snap a few while he was sleeping. I think babies look so peaceful when they sleep.
Damon favorite thing to do with cars is to build a "parking lot" By the time they were done, they had both sides of the ottoman filled up. They are pretty good playing with each other...most of the time.
We had some friends over last week and so spur of the moment we did a little craft/activity. We painted some pumpkins and put faces on them. Damon was trying to take a nap, but when he heard me say paint all I could hear was this desparate voice saying, "I paint too?" I caved. Actually I think Damon is almost done taking naps even though he probably still needs one. There are days when I don't give him the option, but if he's playing nice and is happy I'll let him stay up.
This is Tragon's famous look he gives me. He likes being in the high chair at the table and when I'm cleaning the kitchen and it's much easier for me to have him there than on my hip.
This is a cute outfit Grandma Hadlock got for him when they went on their Alaskan cruise. It finally fits. I love it.

This little guy does not really like the binky. :( We still use it, but most of the time during the night and to fall asleep, he's content enough with just his fist and fingers.
We were getting some good smiles from him the other day.
He's been such a sweet boy and Logan and Damon really love him. Well, that's all for the picture overload. Not really a whole let else going on. We're still surviving P90X, we're on week 4 of 13 now. Woohoo. It's been fun to have something that we do together. Morgan just home today from a 3 day campout with his Scouts. And...right now, Tragon is screaming desperately for some food, so I better go. Until next time....

P90X

We love it and we hate it. Morgan and I both started the P90X workout this past week. I'm determined to finish the whole 90 days this time since last time I found out I was pregnant about 3 weeks into it, so I didn't finish. We're on the second week now. The first week we were both so sore, it was really hard to get up and down with the kids during the day, I'm surprised I was able to hold any of them at all last week.

I haven't really taken many pictures this past week, but we are having a friend do some baby/family pics this weekend, so hopefully we'll have some good pics to put up soon. Life is sort of falling into a routine right now and I like it. We're still working on the basement, although to we haven't been able to work on it much lately, but this weekend we'll get some good work in. We're still waiting on our house in Oklahoma to sell so that we can really have an extra financial push to get the basement done.

Logan is fully potty-trained now and I hardly ever remind him to go. He does still wear a diaper at night, but he does wake up about 6 of the 7 days of the week dry. Sometimes I'm still working out when they wake up and the door is still closed so the diaper is a good thing.

Damon acts like a 2 year old. He still loves to get messy and dirty and loves his trains. He is my little tantrum thrower and trouble maker, but he also so sweet that I think we'll endure this stage and look forward to the next. :)

Tragon is getting big way too fast. He sleeps through the night from 8:00pm-5:00am which is perfect for me, then I can get up and workout before the other boys wake up. He is awake more during the day and likes to have attention and loves to hear the boys playing and talking.

Well, that's about it for the update. Until next time....

September is over?

I'm not sure why September has passed so quickly. We had a few things going on this month, but I just can't believe that it's almost over.Damo had his birthday and turned 2....and acts like it. :) We had grandparents over for dinner on his birthday and he got to open a few presents. We went down to St. George that weekend to visit my parents too, but I forgot the camera, so I didn't get any pictures. He got lots of train stuff this birthday. He loves trains!
He hated the fire on the candles, but loved the cupcake, at least the cupcake part. Logan would eat the frosting/top for him, and then Damon would finish the rest.
He loves his Handy Manny tool shop. We've had a few battles over this toy, but they are learning to share....sort of. :)
Logan is a good big brother. Not quite sure how the birthday thing works when it's for someone else, but that's okay because Damon needed a little help opening his presents.
Logan loves to "hold" Tragon. He sits on the couch with the Boppy. I love the look of admiration on Tragon's face. They sat like this for over 30 minutes. It was really cute.
He're some more birthday pictures. Logan of course, hamming it up.
Some animals from Grandma and Grandpa Hadlock. His favorite song right now is 5 Little Monkeys (teasing mister Alligator....I'll have to get a video of Damon singing it, it's hilarious).
"Oh wow! Thanks!"
Damon did pretty well opening the presents, but still needed some help to get them started.
Classic Damon. Logan always runs for the tissue, but Damon is content to wipe it on his arm. I have to be more diligent when he has a cold, or he ends up with a forearm covering in dry boogars.
More loves from Logan (my pictures got out of order somehow, but I didn't care enough to fix it)
This is how Logan watches his shows on the computer. Arms behind the head chillin' It's pretty funny when he falls asleep like that too.
And my sweet Tragon who is growing just wonderfully and sleeping through the night.
We were finally able to catch a few smiles. He is smiling more often now, but I never have the camera around.
He has been such a good baby. It is getting a little more challenging with him being awake more during the day, but so far we're still alive. I guess that's about it for a quick update to get me back on track. Hopefully I won't fall behind another three weeks. Until next time....