Sunday, December 20, 2015

December 13-20

Not the best picture, but Rylea girl absolutely adores Auri.

 These are some fun puzzles we made for the new sunbeams coming in to primary next year.
 Jaron's blanket had been missing for several days and I had the reward up to $5 and still no one could find it.  Well, it was in a backpack, in the van!!  I found it, so I got the money haha.
 My boys have been awesome with having some extra sisters around the house.  I caught Damon giving piggy back rides to Auri and Jaron.
 The boys chose to build a city for our Family Home Evening activity.  It's pretty much their favorite past time right now, but they do get a little frustrated when the little kids come and "change" it.





 We made these ornaments for our primary Christmas gift this year.
 My friend does some awesome hair that I like to copy every once in a while.  This is my neighbor's daughter, but I attempted the same hairstyle on Auri and Brittyn.  It sure is fun having nieces that will let me do their hair.  :)

 Tragon wrote my grocery list for me the other day, pretty good.
 It was time to switch companions at our house again, so we moved Damon and Logan back together and Jaron and Tragon back together.  It was a much needed swap and so far they have been doing really well with it.  I did find about a dozen books stashed under Logan's pillow.  He loves to read at night with a flashlight.  We got him a book basket to put under his bead so he doesn't have to keep them under his pillow...although, now he's back on the top bunk again...I guess I need to find some sort of bookshelf to put up there now.
 Tragon's artwork
 Another Tragon masterpiece

 Rylea in a box


 Haha, funniest cheese ever

 These are my favorite carpool days.  Both Rylea and Jaron fell asleep, Auri is sitting behind Rylea and I thought she was asleep too, but she was just being so quiet and snuggling with a stuffed animal that it was the most peace and quiet I had all week.  30 minutes of bliss.  :)
 Logan has been wanting to grow his hair longer because he likes to "style" it.  It was fun on crazy hair day.  :)  Morgan is ready to buzz it off, but Logan wants to keep it a little longer.  We were just being silly after bath time this night.
 Brownie Mix Cookies = delicious, you get the crispy outside like the edges of a brownie and then the gooey chewy center, they were awesome.  That was part of my Christmas goodies that we delivered around.
 Logan decorated an awesome gingerbread house at school for his Christmas party on Friday.
 He made sure I got all views in there.  :)

 Saturday mornings are the best when the boys get Rylea out of bed, give her a bottle and yes even change her diaper when it's not poopy and then they snuggle together on the couch and watch a show.
 Logan came down a little bit into the show to show me some exciting news, his tooth was bleeding and even more wiggly, so we kept working and working it, man that tooth was tough, but Logan was even tougher.  He's got some stubborn roots on those baby teeth.  Half of it was all the way out, so we were able to put some floss around it, but he did NOT want to shut the door to pull it out, so we counted to 5 and I yanked on 4 and it popped out.  YAY!!!  We didn't have to have the dentist pull this one out.


Damon is usually the one to get Rylea in the morning so I think she is forming a special bond with him.  She saw him come upstairs yesterday afternoon and got excited and held her arms out for him to pick her up, so he did and she cuddles with him like she does mom and dad.  It was pretty adorable.

Our weeks seem to get busier and busier and the days seem to take forever, but then suddenly its Sunday morning again and I'm updated the blog thinking what in the world happened to the week.  This next year we are really going to try and focus on building good family relationships with the boys and spending more one on one time with them and time as a family doing fun things.  This Christmas will probably bring lots of games to play with each other.  The boys love when we play games with them at night, especially if treats are involved.  :)  This also led to our decision to say good bye to karate for a time.  It was causing too much chaos and the boys weren't enjoying it anymore and it just made us feel like we weren't even able to spend time with one another because half of us were there and then it was crazy getting home and there were bad days and tantrums and overall it made more sense to get rid of the contention.  I think for the time being we have set a new family rule that you must be at least 8 years old to request and extra curricular activities, otherwise our boys have proven they are just too young to be consistent.  I'm good with that, it's really hard dragging our family to and from things that the boys don't even enjoy anyway.  I was surprised though, because they started out really good and were really excited about karate, but it fizzled fast.

I'm really excited for Christmas this year, I think it's going to be the best Christmas Ever, so I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures to post next time, so until then....

Sunday, December 13, 2015

December 7-13

I'm so proud of my boys!  Damon won the Patriotism award for the month of November.  There was only one in each class of Kindergarten.  It was pretty awesome.

 I've been a little obsessed with soup lately, but I've found some amazing soup recipes.  It's perfect to put in the crockpot and have warm soup right after church on these cold days.
 Ellie had been missing for a few days and I finally found it in my craft room closet of all places.

 Rylea can move the chairs around the kitchen and get to the counters.  I'm not too thrilled about that, but Morgan thinks it's adorable. Haha.


 I found Logan's certificate for his straight A's.  My boys are awesome.



 A long lost treasure from when I was little.  A friend from elementary school was cleaning out her closets and found it and sent it to work with her dad who works with Morgan.  It was really fun to see again.


 We had a work part for Gamma West.  It was crazy, but fun.



 Logan didn't like Damon coming in on his spotlight.  :)
 Rylea girl liked the desserts the best.





 That's my favorite picture of Tragon right now.
 They even had a visit from Santa.

 Of course Rylea freaked out haha.
 The Nativity Scene at the temple.
 The boys at karate.
 Morgan took the kids on a little hike to Green Valley Gap with some friends from Lehi on Saturday while I was teaching my craft class.  It was quite the learning experience for him.  :)

 The boys loved it!


We will probably go again when we are together, but our 5 kids are just a lot for one person to handle in a situation like that, especially when it started getting colder out.  It was fun to visit and hang out with the Gerritsens.  I sure hope that we can keep in touch with them, they have been true friends and for the most part we just pick up where we left off and our kids get along great with one another.

Until next time...