Not just for kids.

We made the kids take turns opening their presents so they could watch each other instead of rushing through all their own gifts. It made the moment last a little longer.

Sam really likes his Drawn to Life SpongeBob game for DS. All four kids ended up receiving a DS game, but unfortunately we only have 2 DS consoles, so I'm afraid there will be some arguments tonight!

Here the kids are trying out the creepy crawly maker. I remember having one of these when I was a kid.

Nerf gun wars were a major part of our day, and pretty much everyone in the family was involved at some point.

Noah trying out his Moonshoes. They're like mini trampolines for your feet, and a bit tricky until you get the hang of it!

Of course, Daddy had to give the Mario Bros. Wii game a try.

Chris and Sam working on the Lego home. Legos are so cool!

Sophie, multitasking. ;)

Christmas traditions.

Tonight the kids got bundled up in their new Christmas jammies and we read some stories in the 'Friend' magazine about the importance of being mindful of the true spirit of giving at this time of year. Then we said family prayer and sent the kiddos off to bed. Sophie said the prayer: "Heavenly Father, please bless Jesus that he'll have a good birthday tomorrow! Amen."

Now I've got the homemade Christmas tree shaped cinnamon rolls in the fridge to rise overnight, and Chris and I are just relaxing, watching Twilight for the umpteenth time, waiting for all the kids to fall asleep; two down, two to go! I'm so glad we've been wrapping presents gradually over the past couple of weeks, so the work to do tonight is minimal. I'm so excited for our kids to enjoy a super great day tomorrow. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Kickin' it off!

Today was the kids' last day of school until after the New Year. They will be home for the next 19 days! I guess for those of you with kids on year round school, a two and half week break isn't anything unusual, but I'm just hoping I can keep them busy so they're not fighting. Tonight we decided to jump-start their Christmas vacation by decorating a gingerbread house. It's something we've done almost every year and the kids love it.

This is the place.

Yesterday morning after dropping the kids off at school, I noticed how beautiful the sunrise looked over the mountains. I climbed up a little bit on the hill behind our house to take this picture. I'm so grateful to live in such a pretty place; I just love the way the mountains make us feel like we're enveloped and protected. I also noticed while I was up on the hill that there were fresh mule deer tracks. We haven't been able to see the deer during the daytime yet, and I've been watching for them ever since the snow has been driving them down lower from the mountains. They must be sneaking down at night, but I'm sure sometime soon they'll start spending more time grazing down here closer to the house and I'm really looking forward to it.

Sweet baby grill.

At some point this evening, when she was supposed to be in bed, an elf snuck out of her room to place a Magnadoodle message where we might find it...

(In case you have trouble reading her writing, it says: "I love you mom and dad, litll grill Sophia."

Snow Day.

Well, technically not a snow day, more of a FREAKING FREEZING day! At 6am I was startled awake by the phone ringing: school cancelled due to the extremely cold temps. As soon as I heard the kids waking up at their usual time to get ready for school, I went in to tell them the good news. Sam and Sophie were disappointed, they wanted to go to school. So we found ways to fill the day, including a big breakfast complete with homemade biscuits, green eggs (with zucchini) and bacon. I wasn't too sure how the green eggs would go over, but luckily the kids all wolfed them down and wanted seconds!Then we made homemade play-doh. The kids helped with the stirring and kneading, and we made red and green for Christmas. That kept them occupied for a couple of hours. Sam's best friend called and asked him to play at his house in the afternoon, where he got to go sledding on the big hill in his friend's yard. While he was gone, Chris and I made sugar cookies for the kids to decorate later on when Sam came home. I put some different colors of frosting in little bowls, gave the kids clean paintbrushes, and let them decorate the cookies any way they wanted. Nick had so much fun "painting" the frosting on that by the time he finished with his allotment of cookies, Chris referred to them as "Nightmare Before Christmas-Cookies", because the colors of the frosting all melded together and thickened in a brown and reddish mess! It was so cute to watch him enjoying himself.Noah was able to have his friend over for a couple of hours in the afternoon, which kept him happy. Then, this evening Chris watched Fred Claus with the kids while they ate their dinner. Now they're in bed, I just finished making a couple of dozen cupcakes for an Achievement Days activity tomorrow morning, and I'm getting ready to go school Chris in a game of Trivial Pursuit on the Wii. ;)

Christmas program.

Noah, Sophia and Samuel ready to go to their school Christmas program.

Before the show started, I got this picture of Noah being "cool" with his friends. They needed the sunglasses because Rudolph's nose was too bright. ;)

Here's Noah during his class' square dancing routine. He looks enthused, doesn't he?

Sophie singing "Up on the Housetop".

Sam waiting for his class' turn at the mic.

Festival of Lights Parade

Tonight we went down to where Chris' brother and his family live because their town was having their Festival of Lights Parade. We all ate dinner at a yummy pizza parlor, then headed downtown to see the parade. They started it out with a few fireworks, which the kids especially liked. It was pretty cold, but the parade wasn't very long, so it was okay. After it was over, we went to Weston and Stacy's and just hung out and talked a bit while the kids played. They don't get to see their cousins too often, so they always have a lot of fun when they do get to be together. I love this time of year!
Look how cute they are watching the fireworks.

Weston holding Brooklyn, Chris and Stacy enjoying the fireworks.

Allie is such a cutie!
Stacy with little Brooklyn.
Chris thinking Nick is loving the fireworks; he looks a little frightened to me!

MaKenzi and Sophie giggled the whole time.

Sam, Noah and Jaeddenn always have fun together.

It's snow fun!

Saturday we woke up to a beautiful layer of snow, that continued to fall throughout the day. Of course, being early in the season, it looked so fresh and pretty. (I'm sure by about February I'll be fully prepared to ditch this place for a warmer, sunnier venue!) The kids were in a big hurry to get out the snow pants and head outside. Unfortunately, just as Chris was getting up for the morning, settling in on the couch to enjoy some breakfast and relax on his day off, the phone rang and he was called out to work; there were a lot of slide offs and accidents on the freeway. Luckily he only had to work a few hours, but it's a part of his job that we don't particularly look forward to each winter.

My how things change.

Today is our Sophie's 7th birthday! She is such a loving, thoughtful, spiritual child, and we're so blessed to have her in our family. I don't know what I'd do without my girl! Here she is at 1 year old...
And today...
Happy Birthday!

Never a dull moment.

I'm just sitting at the computer downloading the photos from the past few days, and wondering why we haven't had any trick-or-treaters at all! In previous years, we've taken our kids to do their trick-or-treating, then come home around 8pm to hand out candy. We've always had quite a few kids come to the door, so I don't get where everyone is this year. Well, I guess I'll just write this post while I wait...
On Thursday the kids had their Halloween parties and parade at school. Chris was on his day off, so we planned to go to the school around 2 to help them get into their costumes and watch the parade. But at around noon, the phone rang, the school calling to tell us that Sophie had fallen going up the stairs on the slide, knocked out a tooth, and she was all bloody. So Chris went over there to check on her, and he ended up bringing her home so we could attempt to clean her up for the parade. She was wearing a pink, sparkly sweatsuit that was the base of her kitty costume, and she was extremely upset about the fact that both her sleeves and the front were covered with blood from her knocked out tooth. On top of that, she had basically hit her face onto the steel slide right on her mouth, so she also had a cut and swollen upper lip. She cried for over an hour while I worked at getting the blood out and washing and drying her jacket so she could wear it again. Then I had to try to convince her that her mouth didn't look that bad and no one would notice. Ugh. Finally we were off to the school and enjoyed seeing all the school kids show off their costumes in the parade. Nicolas even got to prance around in his puppy costume, for which he received a lot of attention! He was fully into character, panting, barking, and doing tricks for treats. :)
Yesterday, the boys had scouts in the morning, but after that, since I knew the kids would be going crazy with anticipation for Halloween, I decided to surprise them by taking them to the movies, a rare treat for our kids. Chris was working all day, so we met him for lunch at McDonalds, then I took the kids and drove to the theater. It was so funny to listen to them speculating from the backseat where we were going: Wal-Mart, they wondered? No. The mall? Nope. A hah! The theater! But what movie would we see? Chris met me in the movie theater parking lot in his patrol car, just so he could see their faces when they found out we were going to be seeing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, in 3D!! They jumped, they yelped, and I got lots of hugs. It was awesome. I actually don't think I've ever taken them to the movies by myself, so it was pretty fun. And since it was a Friday in the middle of the day, and most of the other schools are on a regular schedule (not the four day week like us), we almost had the whole place to ourselves. It was pretty cool, and the 3D part made it a much more entertaining movie than it would have been otherwise.Then, of course, today was the big event: trick-or-treating! It was a long day of waiting, for the kids. We have some of Chris' family staying with us, a nephew here last night, and the rest of that family tonight and tomorrow (10 people total). So I stayed busy most of the day cleaning up to get ready, with the hopes of reducing the Sunday morning stress when we're all trying to get ready for church. Anyway, when Chris got home from work this afternoon, we dressed the kids up in their costumes and headed into town where we ate dinner at a 50's diner type place, then went out to hit the suburbs. Of course, the evening wasn't without incident. Sophie ate some at dinner, though not her usual self. As we were driving from dinner to find our stomping grounds, she started complaining of a stomach ache. Chris drove to a neighborhood where one of his co-workers lives so we could stop by his house. Luckily I had a (vomit) bag in my purse, and Sophie made use of it. Then she said she felt better, and didn't want to miss out on the fun and candy, so we started herding them out of the car, only to find Sophie had forgotten to bring her pink candy bucket! She started sobbing as we went up to the first door. We told her we would just put her candy in one of the boys buckets, and when we went to Chris' friends house, we would see if they had a bag she could use. Well, when the lady at the first house saw Sophie crying, and we told her that we just realized she had forgotten her candy bucket, the nice woman ran back in her house and came back out with an orange Halloween bucket that she said Sophie could keep. Then she gave Sophie a hug! It was so nice! Things were better after that, as we went house to house, Nicolas just took off running in his cute little puppy outfit, the whole night being made worth it for me and Chris just to hear him say "Twick o Tweet!" and "Thank You!" in his cute little voice. After one cul-de-sac and a couple of streets, we moved the car to another corner. We did a few more houses then Nick said: "Mom, I have enough candy. Let's go home now." So Nick and I sat in the car while Chris finished the street with the older kids. Then we came home, the boys chowed down on candy, and poor little Sophie - well let's just say, she's not having a good week. :( Hopefully she'll feel better tomorrow, but it looks like she and I will be staying home from church.
Hope everyone out there had a safe and fun Halloween!

It must be close to Halloween.

Today was interesting, to say the least. This is how I found Nicolas early this morning, next to our bed, after spending most of the night vomiting. Poor little thing. He seemed to do much better as the day went on, but he was definitely feeling tired and a little lethargic.
Anyway, Chris had the day off, so we decided it would be a good day to winterize our camp trailer. This required taking the trailer into town so we could empty the tanks and pick up some antifreeze. While we were in town, we decided to stop at Fred Meyer to pick up a few things we needed. When we left there and headed to the State Trailer Supply store, I was starting to get a bad headache. So I pulled out the little bottle of "meds" I keep in my purse. I usually just keep Tylenol and Motrin in there, but one of the last times I was at the store, I grabbed a little bottle of Aleve that was on clearance and thought it was the perfect travel size to keep in my purse. So I took two Aleve and we went on to the store and bought antifreeze. When we got back in the car to drive home, I said to Chris: "Hmmm, my tongue feels itchy all of a sudden. Weird." He keeps driving and we're now on the freeway headed the 10 miles to home. Suddenly my hands and the bottoms of my feet start itching, like crazy, mad, burning, itching. I turned to Chris and said that I was thinking I might be allergic to the Aleve?! Things sort of spiralled out of control after that; I started having pain and tightness in my chest and neck, my ears felt full of air, I started vomiting, and then a pain came in my lower abdomen like nothing I've ever felt before. It hurt so bad, it was shooting down my legs. Chris was panicking a bit at this point, he kept asking me if I wanted to go to the doctor, but I just said "Get me home!" But instead, he was so worried about what was happening, as I was apparently turning bright pink and rashy on my face, he pulled off on the side of the freeway and called 911 for an ambulance. What happened after that was sort of a blur to me. I was put in the ambulance and taken to the hospital, while Chris took Nicolas and ran home to unhook the trailer from the car and come back to meet me at the hospital. Once I was there, they took some blood, started an IV, and gave me some Benadryl, Steroids, Zofran (for vomiting) and Morphine. As fast as word travels, I was greeted by Chris' ISP Captain and two of the sargents before Chris was even back there to be with me! It was kind of embarrassing, actually, as I was sobbing and shaking from the pain in what felt like my uterus. It was the strangest thing, almost like having contractions, only I'm not pregnant. Once the meds started helping, and I was feeling some relief, they took me for an ultrasound to make sure there was nothing else going on. That test came back normal, thank goodness. In the end, the doctors decided it was most likely a severe allergic reaction, and I was prescribed a three day stint of steroids, and given a prescription for an EpiPen that the doc said I should keep with me at all times.

I just wanted to say 'thanks' to Holly and Jared for taking the kids home from school on such short notice and keeping them happy until we could get them back. You guys are lifesavers! Now I should probably go try to get some rest, since the Morphine, still running through my system, is making me feel loopy. I hope this blog post even makes sense!

Fun at the park.

After school today we took the kids to the park to enjoy the nice fall weather. Sammy was given this cool, green motor scooter for his birthday by his Grandma and Grandpa Blanch. Now that he has the hang of it, he zooms around the track like it's nothing!




This is a picture I took from across the park as the two older boys were on the other side of the track.