Fun with family and snow

The day after Christmas (Wednesday) I packed up for myself and the kids and we headed to Snowflake to stay through Sunday.  Nate had a lot of work he needed to get done so he wasn't able to come with us.  Ironically, he didn't end up working at all because he got sick with the same respritory flu I had just gotten over a few days before.  This was the first time I had ever gone on a trip by myself with all the kids, and they traveled great.  I hardly heard from them the whole way there.  And Arie slept until we got just outside of Taylor.  Christy was in Snowflake with her family and Melanie and Jade were there too.  It was fun to see everyone and also to meet Easton, who is only a month older than Arie.

While we were there, we got a fun treat.  We got to watch it snow.  I think my kids must think that it snows all the time in the winter in Snowflake.  Because there always seems to be snow there when we go.  It's funny because growing up, I didn't feel like it snowed all that much.  We must time our trips just right because we usually get to see snow.  The kids were really excited.  Natalie especially because she knew it snowed on Christmas Eve in Snowflake and they got a white Christmas (which had since melted) and she was jealous and upset we weren't there to see it.

Hudson was really enjoying throwing snow and Kelton spent the first several minutes trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue.

Natalie was super excited and for once, her coat didn't look out of place with all that fur.  She had a lot of fun throwing snow too, but got in trouble twice for hitting both Kelton and Hudson in the face with snowballs.

Snowball fight!  I love how in probably every picture I have of my kids in the snow, someone has a pair of socks on their hands.  Natalie is wearing my non-waterproof gloves.  We aren't equipped for snow.

Damon was napping when the kids were out playing in the snow.  But, the snow started up again after he woke up, so we took him out to play too.  He was so excited to pick up the snow and throw it that he didn't care that he had nothing at all on his hands.  For about five minutes.  Then all of a sudden it hit him that his hands were painfully frozen and he started screaming and came up to me crying for me to fix his hands.  Poor kid.  Later, after his hands thawed out, he wanted to go right back out.  He didn't even care that his hands were bare.  But this time, I decided to not be a failure as a mother and I found some gloves for him.  As it started getting dark and cold, I had a hard time getting him to come inside.

Here's Natalie with Grandpa and Jade.  I don't know why none of them have coats on.  It was cold.  And I dared Natalie to run across the snowy lawn with her bare feet.  And she did.

Arie and Easton--the two new additions to the family this year.  Easton was actually born on Nate's birthday!

Then on the weekend, we got to see more family!  Erica, also traveling alone with her kids, stopped by overnight while on the way to St. David to be with her family.  This meant that Natalie and Callie got to be together again.  I've never seen two girls have so much fun together.  Grandma made all of her granddaughters skirts for Christmas.  Mine and Erica's girls' skirts were made out of the same fabric, so they all matched each other at church.

 My boys got a new set of church clothes from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas.  They both looked so handsome--even if they were both in desperate need of a haircut.

These last two pictures make me laugh.  I wanted to get a picture of just the boys in their new clothes.  Notice in the picture above that Damon and Kelton are not standing next to each other.  That's because Kelton wanted nothing to do with standing by Damon.  So, trying to get a picture of the two of them together was, well... impossible.  Here are the only two attempts I took:

Picture 1.  Kelton is mad and standing his ground.  Damon-- who is trying to do what he is being told, but also trying to annoy Kelton who doesn't want to stand by him--is trying to sneakily inch backward to get next to Kelton.

Picture 2.  Kelton is now really mad, yelling "I don't want to stand by him!"  Damon is no longer being sneaky and is all out chasing Kelton around the room, trying to get next to him for the two reasons mentioned previously.  And probably mostly for the last reason as you can see a bit of a smile on Damon's face.

And this, people, is my life with these two boys quite a lot of the time.  :)

*Random endnote:  In doing this post I realized that I way overuse the word "just."  I edited out about ten of them.  And there are still some in there.

Christmas

For the first time, we spent Christmas by ourselves this year.  We did have one Christmas a few weeks before Kelton was born that we spent at our own house, but my parents came and were with us.  While we missed being with family, it was really fun to have Christmas in our own house, with our own decorations.  It was also great not having to figure out how to get everything to fit in the car without being seen.

On Christmas morning, our kids actually slept in until 7:00.  Since Natalie will usually wake up at 6:00, the extra hour was greatly appreciated.  The kids had to wait upstairs until we were all ready to come down.  They were so excited.

Kelton's main presents were a bike, and Jake and the Neverland Pirates Bucky ship and Hook's Adventure Rock.

Natalie got a bunch, like around ten, My Little Ponies and this doll.  She wanted an American Girl doll and we could tell she was a little disappointed to get a substitute.  But she is old enough to know a bit about tact and kept telling us that "it was okay."

I made the boys a handful of different superhero masks.  I like how both boys have the same expression on their faces.

A picture of the Christmas mess.

As per the tradition in my family, we let the kids get in their stockings after we had our big Christmas breakfast.  Oh, and if you are wondering by this point where Arie was... she slept throught the whole thing.  And I am just now realizing that we took absolutely no pictures of her on her first Christmas.  Oops.

Damon's main presents were a Little People Wheelies ramp thing and three cool Imaginext planes.  But according to this picture, maybe we should have just given him a bunch of salt water taffy.

We had a great Christmas!

Ward Christmas Party

We had our ward Christmas party this morning.  I know other wards have done this, but for the first time ever, our ward had a breakfast instead of a dinner (or a non-dinner disaster like they did last year...).  I thought it turned out really nice.  There was a breakfast burrito bar, which was fun.  I helped by scrambling 60 eggs this morning before 7:30.  Thankfully, my father-in-law suggested using a large pan to cook them in and it worked great!  I was able to cook 30 eggs at a time.  I would have never thought to use a large (non stick) pan instead of a frying pan.  I'm so glad I asked him!

After breakfast, we sang some songs, which included a live nativity scene--which I single handedly kind of messed up because I got asked last minute to play the piano and I had never played the "Nativity Song" before and didn't realize that there were two more verses not written in the music and I stopped playing before the live nativity was finished.  After several minutes someone let me know that they weren't done yet and there were more verses.  Ooops.  Sorry.  I felt pretty bad.

Then we got a visit from....SANTA!  The kids were so excited.  So excited they could barely contain it and landed themselves in the very back of the line where they had to.  :)

One last unrelated thing.  In this picture, take notice.  Arie's eyes are blue.  Very blue.  It is just crazy to think that they very possibly will still turn brown.  But if she wants her own individual look, like each of her siblings has, she needs to keep the dark hair and blue eyes.  It's the only combination no one has yet.  We'll check back on that in several months...

We love Aunt Melanie

Well, we love ALL of our aunts and uncles...

But this morning Damon was playing with an old cell phone and when I asked who he was talking to, he adamantly told me that it was Melanie.

Kelton likes to play the Wii in the afternoon while Damon sleeps.  Ever since Melanie visited us a while back and played Mario Brothers with Kelton, he laments all the time, "I wish Aunt Melanie was here."  He misses his Nintendo buddy.

And Arie is loving all of her fashionable clothes that Melanie was nice enough to loan us.  I have to take some credit for making the cute baby, but Melanie gets the credit for the cute wardrobe!  And most of Arie's way cute headbands.

Arie--2 months

Last week I took Arie in for her 2 month check up.  She weighed 11 lbs 2 oz and was 22 1/4 inches.  She's getting bigger and even has some rolls and a bit of a double chin at times.  She is such a good baby.  She rarely cries and usually sleeps at night until at least 4:00 a.m.  I've never had a baby sleep that well at this age.  It is very nice for a change.  Arie has also developed talents in the area of grabbing at anything that comes close to her hands.  She is also starting to make her little voice heard with some cooing.  And she likes to bat at the toys on the bar of her bouncy seat.

 

And she loves to smile.

Thanksgiving recap

We went to Snowflake this year to spend Thanksgiving with the Webbs.  We left on Wednesday and got to stay all weekend.  It was nice to get away for a few days.  Here are some of the highlights of our trip.

On Thursday morning we had some family pictures taken.  Chad and Erica were in town and Erica was nice enough to take the pictures for us.  I have to say, it went smoother than I would have expected with four kids.  I didn't even have to yell at any of my kids, so my sister-in-law can still be under the illusion that I am a nice mom...  :)   I think we got a pretty good result.  Arie's not looking, but you can't really blame someone with so little neck control.

 

We then had Thanksgiving dinner with the Webb family.  Brent and Suzie were also there for the weekend.  Tyler wasn't able to come and Lynette's family was out of town.  Dinner was great.  An intereresting note: my kids for the most part won't eat meat or potatoes.  So, nice dinners, like Thanksgiving dinner are not too much appreciated by my children.  It is really quite frustrating.  I don't even know what they ended up eating.

 

Thursday night I ventured out by myself to do some Black Friday shopping at Walmart.  Honestly, I was tired and didn't really want to go, but there were a few items that were specific Christmas requests from our kids that were $30-$40 off.  So I went and was surprised to find that the store was busy, but not entirely, insanely, shoot-me-now busy like last year.  The employees I encountered were all super nice and helpful, which honestly, doesn't even happen on a normal day at Walmart, so that was very nice.  And I actually was able to get almost everything I wanted to get.

 

Natalie got to sleep over at my parents' house on Thursday night to be able to spend some time with her cousin Callie.  She also spent the next day there as well.  Just like the last time they were together, they were pretty much inseperable.  They were off in their own little world and were hardly even seen by the rest of us.  We are always amazed at how well they play together; never a fight or squabble of any kind.  They just have fun together.  It's too bad they don't get to see each other more often.

 

On Friday Nate and I were able to go to the temple with Chad, Erica, Melanie and my dad to help with some temple work for names that Chad has found somewhere in Erica's family line.  Before Nate and I arrived, everyone else did the baptisms for the names.  There were about 25 of each gender.  Nate and I helped with the confirmations and then started to help with the initiatory.  But the men got slowed down for a few different reasons and Nate was only able to do one name.  I did four names.  But then we had to go because Arie was going to need to be fed and we needed to get back to our other kids because Nate's parents had other things they needed to get to.

 

And now a little back story... about three-ish years ago Natalie so kindly "helped" Kelton out of the bathtub and he faceplanted into the side of the toilet.  (There is a post on here somewhere about that if you really want to read about it.  But I'm not sure where it is, and even if I did, I don't know how to link it.)  Kelton's front tooth got jammed up in his gums.  We actually thought it was broken off.  The dentist told us that it was okay and that it would come back down, but we needed to watch it to make sure it didn't abscess.  Because if it did, it would need to be pulled.  We really didn't want to have that happen, but we watched it for the next little while.  All it did was look better and better until eventually, it was pretty much back to normal but just a little crooked.  I thought we were good.  But the dentist, at every 6 month checkup, would always ask about it and remind us to check on it.  Well, about a month ago, we noticed a pimple looking thing on his gums above that front tooth, and we knew that meant the tooth was abscessing.  The dentist confirmed this and told us that both front teeth would need to be pulled.  We were so sad about this because Kelton has such a cute little smile and would now be without those front teeth for probably two more years.  Later I called Chad, who is a dentist, and asked if both front teeth really needed to be pulled.  He said yes.  But he also informed me that the $250 (or so) conscious sedation, which our dental insurance wasn't covering, wasn't necessary.  But then, with Chad coming to Snowflake for Thanksgiving, he offered to pull the teeth for us so we wouldn't have to pay anything.  My mom used to work for a dentist, and they got permission to use his office.  So on Friday afternoon (after pictures) we went and had Chad pull Kelton's teeth.  He used the nitrous gas and Kelton just layed there the whole time and did great.  (Makes me kind of mad that the other dentist's office was going to make the whole process cost so much more for no real reason.)

Kelton with his "elephant nose" getting all zoned out.  :)

A big thanks to Chad for being willing to do that for us.  But hey, doing things like knocking out teeth is what brothers do best, right?

A little while later, once Kelton got some feeling back, Nate took him for ice cream at Dairy Queen.

Here's a picture of his new toothless smile.  He's still super cute.  :)  Although, I will admit that I miss those little teeth every time he smiles.  Also, note the red spot by the dinosaur's mouth on Kelton's shirt.  That's blood.  It dripped in the perfect spot, don't you think?

The loss of these two teeth meant that Kelton got to have his first visit from the tooth fairy.  He was pretty excited about this since the tooth fairy has visited his sister.  He was so excited to find, and tell everyone, about the three dollars she left under his pillow.  Natalie was a bit disgruntled by this amount since the tooth fairy only leaves her one dollar.  But we figured she must had left a dollar per tooth and a bonus dollar for the bravery involved in losing the teeth.  I asked Kelton if he wanted me to take him to the store so he could buy something fun, but he insisted that he wants to save the money for our sometime-in-the-future trip to Disneyland.  I'm so proud to have a little saver on my hands!

 

On Saturday afternoon we went out to Pinedale with Nate's family to the Petersen Ranch.  The ranch house burned down in the huge fire we had in AZ about ten or eleven years ago.  But there is a little cabin that Nate's grandpa built and it is still there.  Nate's dad has been fixing it up so it was fun to see how it's coming.  We also walked down to where there is a giant tree, which also survived the fire, that has a tree swing.  Nate said that swing has been there ever since he can remember, possibly from before he was even born.  I don't know how tall this tree branch is that the swing is hung from.  But it is really high up.  So high that I can't even guess the height.  Which means the ropes for the swing are really long.  Which means that my kids could swing so far out and so high being pushed by their dad that their mother just couldn't stand to watch most of the time.  I think the front to back distance of the swing had to be maybe 40 feet.  But the kids loved it.  And why wouldn't they?  The thing could almost qualify as a carnival ride.  The sun was quickly setting while we were at the swing so we had to hurry back up to the cabin for dinner.  Nate's mom brought along stuff for sandwiches.  After we ate, we roasted marshmallows over a little campfire and made smores.  This was the first time our kids had ever done this.  Kelton had a perfectly toasted marshmallow but quickly discovered that he didn't like the taste of it when cooked.  Not many people feel that way, but I have to say that I agree with Kelton.  I have never cared for the taste of browned marshmallows.  Our little city kids had a lot of fun playing in the great outdoors and we all had a lot of fun at the ranch. 

 

On Saturday night, Nate and I got away for a little while and went to Dairy Queen for a little date and got Blizzards.  It would sure be nice to have family close by so we could do little things like that more often without the hastle of babysitters.

Thankful according to Kelton

Kelton brought this home from preschool the other day.  The things he picked that he was thankful for made me smile.  I thought it was just so cute and summed him up perfectly.

Kelton is thankful for: Arie, Stir Fry, Ice Cream, Marbles, and Family.  I thought it was sweet that his new baby sister made the list.  Stir fry is Kelton's absolute favorite dinner.  He clarified that the ice cream is supposed to be from McDonalds.  Every once in a while we take the kids there, usually as a reward for something, and they get ice cream and play in the Playplace.  Marbles made the list because of our marble jars for good behavior.  Kelton loves getting marbles added to his jar.  And then he got the rest of us in there with "Family." 

Such a sweet little boy!

Arie's blessing

Arie's blessing day was last Sunday, November 4th.  Here are some pictures of our sweet girl.  (Be greatful there are just "some."  I narrowed these down from around 250 pictures.  It was hard.)

Arie Kait Webb

My sister Melanie made this flower for her hair.  I completely ran out of time to make anything, so I gave the task to Melanie.  She twisted some ribbon around and made this.  It was perfect.  And this picture makes me want to kiss those cheeks.  :)

Here is a close up of the overlay on the dress.

This one shows the detail at the bottom edge of the overlay.  My sister-in-law Laura was smart enough to take these pictures of the dress details, but also add Arie's hands in to make the pictures really cute.

This is probably the best picture of the dress I made.

Here is the story of her dress.  My mom made my blessing dress.  I still have it and Natalie was blessed in it.  However, I didn't want to bless Arie in it because I wanted her to have her own dress that she can keep because I will give mine to Natalie.  But since Natalie's dress hold some special meaning, I wanted Arie's too as well.  That's why I decided to make the dress instead of just buying it from a store.  Plus, I like to make things and I didn't really see any dresses in the store worth buying.  My mother-in-law sent me a blessing dress pattern, but it didn't take me long to determine that I had no idea how to use it.  :)  So I made my own pattern.  I used a remaining piece of the sheet from the boys' Halloween costumes to make a mock up of the dress.  Everything looked pretty good, but after putting it on Arie, I realized that it was probably a bit too big.  So I re-drew my pattern a bit smaller.  Before starting with the real fabric, I figured it would be smart to make one more mock up of the top of the dress, just to make sure it fit.  So I did.  And it fit.  So I started in on the real thing.  The real bodice was a bit more involved because I sewed a lining and a ribbon waistband and tie into it.  It looked so good when I finished.  I was about to start on the skirt when I had the thought, "I should probably try this on her, just to be sure."  I didn't really want to because there were still a lot of pins in it and I didn't want to poke her.  But I'm glad I put it on her.  Because it didn't fit!  The pieces in the back barely met up, which meant I wouldn't be able to put the buttons on.  I was so frustrated.  I thought about calling my mom and my mother-in-law to see if they had any suggestions, like using a hook closure or adding another strip of fabric... But sadly, I knew that the only real fix was to do it over.  This was not good because I was on a serious time constraint.  It was Wednesday and I was leaving on Friday for Time Out and wouldn't be back until Saturday night.  I re-drew my pattern for a third time.  This time I was smart enough to measure Arie as well.  I made one more mock up bodice, and then made the real bodice again.  This time, it fit.  Thankfully, Nate's mom came to help me finish the dress.  Friday morning we were finishing it up as I was trying to get out the door to Phoenix.  Nate's mom completely did the sleeves and gathered the skirt pieces and sewed them on to the bodice.

We had so much family come to be with us on Arie's special day. Nate's parents and all of his brothers and sisters were able to come. In my family, only Christy and Chad's families were missing (because they are the only ones in the entire group who live out of state).  And, do you see Kelton anywhere...?  Front, back...maybe in someone's arms?  No?  Oh, that's because he ran off to Primary when Sacrament finished.  We didn't realize this until after the picture.

Our family of six!

Arie was given a great blessing by her dad.  He blessed her to be a strong spirit who would be an example and strengthen other's testimonies.  He also blessed her to be a strength and a peacemaker within our family.

Stripey

I am working on a post about Arie's blessing.  But in the meantime...

Today's post is brought to you by Kelton.  Arie has on a new outfit today, and this is what Kelton said when he saw her.

"Oh! I didn't know she had that one!  She is all stripey...like a purple zebra!"

Arie has also been smiling since she was just three weeks old.  I've never had a baby smile so soon.  If she is awake, and you can get her to concentrate on your face while you are smiling, she will usually smile back at you.  At first I thought it was a fluke, but she has proved to be able to do it over and over again.  It is so cute!  These are some of the first smile I have tried to get on camera.  And I might add, it is super hard to be the one trying to get the baby to smile and take pictures at the same time.  So, the pictures aren't the greatest.  And they don't show how cute that smile really is!

She's not quite smiling in this one, but I like how her face is lit up.

I am sure she is the cutest stripey purple zebra you will ever find.

Time Out For Women

This past weekend I went to Time Out For Women in Phoenix with my Mom, Melanie, and Tina.  Arie got to come along too.  We had a great weekend.  I am excited to watch the dvd of it though, because I was a little sleep deprived through most of it and had some trouble paying attention at times.  But it was still a lot of fun!

 

This picture was taken from our seats on Saturday.  We had seats really close... especially if you consider that there were about 4500 women there.