Kelton is 7!

Kelton turned seven on January 16th.  He was so excited for his birthday!

Opening presents before getting ready for school.

I forgot to take a picture of all of his presents.  But I think everything is in this picture.  He got a big Lego City set and a small Lego 3 in 1 helicopter, the second half of the Magic Treehouse books set (he got the first half for Christmas), and a Nerf Gun.  He was more than thrilled to get money from both sets of grandparents and has his sights set on buying another lightsaber from Disneyland.

I took packages of little donuts, chocolate frosted and powdered, into Kelton's class for a birthday treat.  He thought that was really fun and enjoyed passing them out to everyone.  When he got home, he excitedly started playing with all of his new birthday toys.  He requested stir fry for dinner--still his favorite dinner.

Kelton doesn't really care for cake.  The problem is, I care quite a lot about cake.  I asked him what other birthday treat he would prefer, and he chose ice cream.  So I bought the requested ice cream, but also had to make some sort of cake.  I introduced my kids to cupcakes in ice cream cones.

He's such a little cutie!  I can't believe he is already seven.  He is such a sweetheart and loves to be loved on.  Happy birthday Kelton!  We love you so much!

Christmas!

There's nothing like the excitement of opening Christmas Eve pajamas!  Even Arie knew something great was about to happen.

It's amazing how much work goes into creating the scene below.  Especially when you get too busy to wrap any of the presents beforehand.  See the clock on the wall?  That is really what time we went to bed.  I didn't take a closer up picture, but Mickey there in the front has an envelope with 5 day Disneyland tickets for us and a Mickey shirt for each child.  The kids were very excited.

Christmas morning!  Waiting at the top of the stairs before getting to come down.

Arie loved her car.  And her giraffe (more on that later).  They rode around together all morning in the car...

And in the wagon.  We could not convince her to put her stuff in the wagon and pull it around.  She was positive that she was supposed to sit in the wagon herself.

Stockings!

Santa also left this for us:

 

 Santa was kind enough to bring some little critters to live with us.  Guinea pigs, to be exact.  They got named Midnight and Snowball.  (The one on the bottom is all white with just a little brown on her head.  The lighting in the picture is bad.)  We actually had them about 2-3 weeks before Christmas, locked in our office.  And we actually kept it a secret.

I finished up all of my Christmas orders and got busy working on some things for my own kids.  The boys asked for scarves or big stuffed minions.  I just didn't have time to do the minions, so they got scarves.

Here is Arie's giraffe.

I made Natalie a Pinkie Pie My Little Pony.  I was worried about this one, but it turned out great.

Somehow I didn't get any pictures of this... but we got visits from both sets of grandparents after Christmas.  Nate's parents came later on Christmas Day and stayed for a few nights.  Then my parents came and stayed for a few nights.  It was really fun and the kids enjoyed having all of their grandmas and grandpas at their house.

A little bit of December

This is a self portrait by Damon.  Maybe it's just me, but I see a striking resemblance to Mr. Potato Head.

Random note... I have been making all of my family's bread for about the past year and a half.  I've maybe bought two loaves in that time and they were both about a year ago.  Anyway, Arie decided she was hungry and decided to help herself to a brand new loaf!  *Sigh.  It's a good thing she is so cute.

I did some Christmas/grocery shopping while Damon was at preschool.  Can you find the one item that doesn't fit in?  Shortly after getting to the store, she curled right up and went to sleep.  I had to use some pretty awesome grocery stacking skills for the rest of the trip.  This is so atypical.  She never falls asleep anywhere but her bed.  I didn't quite know what to do!

See what I mean about the cuteness?  It saves her from getting into so much trouble.  Like, on an hourly basis.  Don't let that innocent face fool you.  She is very sweet and has a very good temperament for a two year old, but she is one big mischief maker.  And she makes mischief in order to distract your attention so she can move on to bigger and better plans of mischievousness.   And she is fast.  And I promise, I do watch her.  But lets just say, hypothetically, that she was returned to my doorstep by a police officer in December and that I lost her at the mall last Saturday.  Hypothetically...

(Okay, she escaped from the back yard while I was cooking dinner.  The older kids left the gate open.  Someone saw her happily wandering the streets and called the police.  Who then picked her up and started going door to door with her.  Then, the other day, I was doing a return at Children's Place when she slipped out of the store and down and around a corner, about 9 storefronts away, to play on some toys she had seen when we entered the mall.  Yes, I know, Mother of the Year award goes to me.  Did I mention we are going to Disneyland next week?  We may or may not come home with Arie.)

Church is exhausting.

Annual gingerbread house decorating at the library.  I'm so glad they do this.  Decorating gingerbread houses, or graham cracker houses in this case, is fun, but it's even better when all you have to do is show up and everything is there ready for you.

November randomness

If you can't tell, she did her own hair.

 

And if you didn't know, it is virtually impossible to buckle a child in a car seat when they assume this position. 

 Natalie always comes home from school and dumps a huge stack of papers in my lap.  As I was sorting through them, I found this:

I was surprised that she didn't mention anything about it, so I asked, "Natalie, did you see this?"  Her response was, "what??"  So she came over and read it.  I think she was a little bit excited.  She and I went to the school in January and got to paint her tile.  She had me help her paint some of it and thought that was really fun.  The school will fire the ceramic tiles and they will be permanently placed on one of the walls at the school.  Pretty cool.

 

I took a few of the Young Women in my ward on a temple trip.  There was a lady there who was having the kids do some of her family names.  That is always so neat to see and to feel the spirit that is there.

This little girl.  She is the cutest, sweetest little thing, and some days, we just don't know what to do with her.  She decided in November that she just didn't like diapers anymore.  I would come in at night before going to bed and find her like this.  Every night.  I tried all kinds of different pajamas.  I tried duct taping the pajamas.  I tried duct taping the diapers.  That last one bought us about a week before she finally figured out how to get the duct tape off, even when it was wrapped completely around her, with both ends in the back.  What do you do?  I guess you teach them how to use the potty.  I didn't do it until the end of January, but Arie is potty trained!  And she leaves her clothes on at night again.

Places to go, people to see...

This school year, Damon has been in Miss Marcy's preschool.  He goes twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:00-12:00.  He loves it!  This is his Thanksgiving program.

And his Thanksgiving feast!

We spent Thanksgiving in Snowflake with the Webb's.  For the first time in many years, I didn't do any shopping on Black Friday.  (There wasn't anything I wanted!)   It was nice to just stay home and enjoy the holiday.  Here is Arie at Thanksgiving dinner.  She was trying to pretend to be grumpy. 

But it was always quickly followed by this face. 

Soccer with AYSO

For the first time ever, we signed our kids up for organized sports.  Natalie had been begging to play soccer, so we decided to go ahead.  We figured Kelton was old enough, and he wanted to play too, so we signed both kids up.  But then, when we went to buy some equipment for them, Damon was very sad to find out that he wasn't going to be playing.  He was so sad, which made us feel bad, so we signed him up too. I will tell you right now that having three kids in soccer was a bit crazy. 

 

The season ran from August to November.  Kelton broke his arm right before the season started, so he didn't get to play for the first five weeks or so.  He wasn't even allowed to practice.  He was so happy when he got his cast off and was actually able to play!  His friend Noah Garcia, who is in our ward, was on his team.

Damon was in the Jamboree league, which is for four year olds.  They aren't actually put on a team.  What they do is take all of the kids and do four 10-15 minute rotations of different  skills/drills and then they divide the kids up onto several small fields and they play a 30 minute, 3 on 3 game.  In hindsight, if I would have know how this worked, I would have made Damon wait one more year until he was old enough to actually be put on a team.  Because there are no coaches in this division, the parents are the one who have to help their child with all the drills and the games.  This was difficult for me because Nate wasn't off work and I had Arie.  But Damon loved it and had a lot of fun.  This picture below was taken during a game.  Yes, I said during.  I will admit, Damon was probably the instigator.  The kids thought hiding in the goal was more fun than actually playing.  We had to keep chasing them out. 

 Here's Damon at the end of his season with his trophy.

Kelton's team-- the Sharks.

Natalie's team-- the Pink Crushers

During the soccer season, we had soccer stuff on four days a week.  Natalie had practice on Monday and Wednesday nights.  (We had to move Family Home Evening to Tuesdays.)  Kelton had practice on Wednesday nights also, but of course, at a different field that was ten minutes away from Natalie's.  Wednesday night was also Activity Days for Natalie, mutual for me, and bishopric stuff for Nate.  Wednesdays were interesting to say the least.  Then Damon had his practice/game on Friday night.  Natalie's games were either right after Damon's or an hour after.  Kelton's games were Saturday morning.  The kids were very sad to see the end of soccer season.  However, the parents didn't share their sentiment.  We were pretty glad to have our evenings and Saturday mornings back.  But we are glad the kids had so much fun.

Halloween

I had an idea for costumes this year, and luckily, all of the kids were on board!  So... we ended up with a house full of minions! I let the kids choose whether they wanted to be a yellow minion (normal) or one of the purple ones (crazy, mutated ones).  They chose yellow for Arie, and we ended up with an even two and two split.  I thought it was funny how they really did pick the type of minion that best fit their personality.

Apparently, you can't be a purple minion and take a normal picture.

These costumes were really easy.  Yes, it required me to make four hats, but otherwise, it was simple.  I couldn't find yellow shirts though.  So I bought cheap white ones, a $2 bottle of yellow dye, and we had yellow shirts.  I cut the suspenders out of felt.  The girls happened to both have black boots and the boys had their black church shoes.  I'm kind of all about not spending a lot of money on Halloween costumes, especially with four children.

The pictures above were from our ward trunk-or-treat and the pictures below are from Halloween night, before the kids went trick-or-treating on our street.

Look at my good little yellow minions!

Still can't be normal...

Or wait, maybe they can! 

I love this picture.  She's trying to figure out what is going on inside that pumpkin.