Christmas 2009

We started our Christmas festivities with a pretty mellow Christmas Eve. We went out to lunch to Olive Garden where the kids were really good which surprised me and Skyler. They were so good that a lady sitting next to us commented on them being well behaved and of course cute. She told Skyler he was blessed to have such a wonderful family. I tend to agree. After we went home and Sandy and Steve came over to give the kids their presents. Which of course always goes over well. Gifts are a hit. After they opened the gifts, I attempted to construct some "gingerbread" houses. I actually made them out of rice krispie treats. It would have worked great except I couldn't stir in anymore cereal so they ended up with too much marshmallow and didn't stand up like they were supposed too. Some how they stood up long enough to decorate and then the frosting glued them together enough to stay. Gotta love royal frosting. Steve and Sandy helped/supervised this for a little bit then left us to our own devices and clean up.

After the houses we made pizza for dinner. This is always a hit. We only ran into one problem.....I was 1 cup short on the flour. So Skyler had to run to the store to get some. The pizza was good and the kids love making their own. I have to breathe deep and let them do it but that is fine since they love it. After pizza we cleaned up the house. (Something we do every night before they are allowed to watch a movie and Christmas Eve is no different. Especially since there would be a mess in the morning. )
Something that we started this year is to have the kids draw names and get gifts for each other. Something that helped them think of someone else and what that person may want and not on what they want. I was happy to see them excited about it and excited to have the other person open their gift. They all picked out the gift for the other on their own except Jocelyn. But she did help wrap it still. They opened these gifts on Christmas Eve.

Here they are exchanging gifts with each other.

Ryker to Jocelyn

Reagan to Ryker

Jaxon to Reagan

Jocelyn to Jaxon

After the gift exchange We watched The Polar Express together and the kids had a camp out in the girls room.

Christmas morning the kids woke up at 8:00. It probably was Ryker who woke up then woke up everyone else, but it's Christmas and it is okay on that day. Jocelyn had no idea what was going on really and was still tired when we started shoving presents in her face. And she and Jaxon were sick and not in the best of moods anyway. But once things got going they were all excited and Jocelyn was the one that kept grabbing more presents. They got lots of fun stuff and enjoy their toys, but I think the most fun thing we got was Nerf guns. We got 4 new guns so that we can have family wars. Everyone has a great time with it. Mostly Ryker and Skyler, they get the big guns. The little kids like to help shoot and then Jocelyn loves running around collecting the bullets. It is fun. We need more ammo. After gifts we really just say around for a while and let the kids play. It is never fun trying to rip them away from their toys to go places but hey they shouldn't complain cause they get more gifts. We went to my mom's for lunch and had some good food. I love food. When we came back home I set to work cleaning and organizing the house. That's right. I cleaned out the toy room and threw away a bunch of stuff and organized everything and now........there is more room than there was before Christmas. AAAHHH... Felt so good to do that. Everything has a place and everything was in it's place. That is how I like it. Christmas night and all the new toys are put away.

We also got something AMAZING delivered the day after Christmas.........

A PIANO!!!!!!!!!

I was SO excited and am SO happy to have a piano! We found it about a month ago but decided to wait to after Christmas since we already had the tree up and it was in the spot where the piano is now. It worked out nice and everything fell into place so nicely it was amazing. I love Sykler for wanting me to have a piano and knowing that it was important to me. I love that we wanted it to be a surprise (wouldn't really work since I had to clean up the tree) I love that I didn't think it would happen but he DID surprise me that he was still trying to work it out. Thanks Skyler. It ended up being delivered the day after Christmas because the guy who was delivering it was leaving the next week. So Merry Christmas to me. It has been fun to play again. I am VERY rusty and in need of A LOT of practice, which I won't have a ton of time for (the kids think that if I play then they can too, at the same time.) but hey I will get there. And playing the piano de-stresses me. So this will be good. The kiddos like to play it too. Reagan pretty much will just go sit down at random times and start playing. I need to get her started on lessons. (maybe it will help her focus) Ryker hasn't been too interested in it but he had a lot of new toys that were more exciting. He needs to start lessons too.

So that was our Christmas in a nut shell. Hope you all had a great Christmas!

Jaxon's birthday

Jax turned 3 on the 19th!!! It was a fun and yet stress free day. My family came over and we had dinner. Then we went to the Festival of Lights. We have a new tradition now where we ride in the back of a truck while going through the lights. It is cold but they love it.

Jax is such a sweet kid. Don't get me wrong he has is moments of beign a stinker, but he is very mellow and quiet compared to the other kids. All day when we would mention his presents and ask if he was excited he would be like sure whatever. Then when I said he could open them he said "me?" I laughed, "yes you." Then he asked me "not Ryker?" Oh man, Ryker must have had a lot of attention the last littel while with schoo and soccer and friends and everything else. The poor kid just assumes we do everything for Ryker. But it was cute how surprised he was that everything was for him. After he would open one gift we would tell him to open another and he was really confused by it all. Not confused so much as surprised it was his day. The first birthday where he will remember and be excited next year. His face in the pictures say it all. I love it. My sweet, tender, almost always sick, little boy.

Sledding

Skyler took Friday off from work so that he could play with the kids before he went to a movie with his brothers that night. Anyway they have been waiting to play in the snow and this was there chance. They all had a blast. Jocelyn loved just walking around in the snow. Jax for some reason thought that he had to crawl everywhere. Probably easier than walking in boots. Reagan and Ryker love sledding and just being with Skyler. We also have a big pile of snow by our driveway that the snowplow piled up and they dug a hole in it to make a igloo. They love it. I am glad Skyler enjoys it too because I hate being in the snow.

Santa's lap

Last week Santa came to Skyler's work so all the kids of the employees could see him. Santa was a little late so the kids got a little restless but in the end they were happy. And got to see dad a little earier than usual. So here they are with Santa. The fist year they have sat on his lap.

Ryker told him he wanted a basketball. We have one but since he went to a friends house that day and played basketball he decided he wanted another one. Sorry buddy not for Christmas.......


Reagan didn't say anything. Which would be fine if she was really shy. She is not though. She has that smile on her face that says "I'm not going to talk and maybe they will baby me..." She does this a lot. She did enjoy it though. I think by next year she will actually say something.

Jax walked up to Santa with a little push from me and just stood there. Santa kept going out to pick him up and then would stop and so I told him it is fine to pick him up, he won't freak out. Jax is pretty mellow and will go along with stuff like this. Unlike Jocelyn who started screaming and hung on to my neck for dear life. Jax also didn't say anything but I was expecting that.

All in all I think they all enjoyed it. Plus I didn't have to take them to the mall and deal with those crowds. I think it is hard to see Santa at the mall because you are already flustered by all the people and then add a guy dressed up and, lets admit it, a little funny looking into the mix, it is no wonder kids are always crying. I am glad we had this chance and I am glad the kids liked it.

Oh, on a side note, Jax saw Santa once this year at Walmart and after going back and forth with him a little bit decided he wanted to tell him what he wanted. Well, he thought that if he told him Santa would give it to him then..... that was funny and yet sad. He cried and was mad. That is probably why he didn't say anything this time, cause he did at Walmart. What is the point if you aren't going to get it right then.

At least we got a good laugh

Here are the pictures that weren't "perfect" but priceless....
I LOVE these pictures and I am glad I have them.

This one was my favorite..... Jocelyn wanted to lay down like Jax and this is what we got from it. HILARIOUS!!
I tried to move to, but to no avail so I just took the picture for posterity sake. Seriously makes me laugh. Maybe you just had to be there.

Photo-op.. or not.....

So for some reason I had the brillant idea to take pictures of the kids for Christmas. No, not for Christmas cards but just for fun. Anyway, that didn't turn out great. Comical, but not really what I wanted. I wanted Santa hats on them, but for some reason they just looked funny. So this is as good as it gets for today. Still adorable kids. I think I might post some of the ones leading up to this one. And the ones that came after they all got scared by Santa's falling on them..... Jocelyn wasn't a fan of the heavy objects falling on her head so the tears came. Good times!!!

Gingerbread Houses

Not sure you can call them Gingerbread houses when you just use grahm crackers, but hey you get the idea.
My brother and his family came to Utah for Chirstmas this year. They were here a couple of week early but we did Christmas stuff all the same. On the day we celebrated Christmas with them we made gingerbread houses. The kids enjoyed it and ate more candy and frosting than they put on their houses but hey that is the point right. Jax was actually sick this night so he was asleep. (poor kid) I didn't take pictures of the finished products either. (man I am good) I am planning on doing another round of houses so that Jax can be a part of it. So here are the few pictures I took. (notice how Jocelyn has her tongue out in concentration....... Also Reagan's hair was done at the beginning of the day.......)

Kids Cook Dinner

Skyler had the idea to let the kids pick what they wanted for dinner and then on the day that we have that they get to help cook it. This was a good idea because the kids LOVE it. They get so excited for their day to cook and excited about eating it. Now I have a really hard time with this because the kitchen is my domain and having lots of little hands grabbing and wanting to do everything that minute when it isn't time or there just aren't enough of me to watch them. (say with a knife or something). But I am sticking to it because it makes them happy. If nothing else it is one on one time with them one day a week. I think they need more of that but this is a start.

So we started with Reagan. She chose her very favorite thing ever. Taco Soup. She cooked the hamburger all by herself and was very proud. I had to help her open cans but she did dump them in. Then when the soup was done we made quesadillas. They are really good to dip in the soup. We discovered this because Ryker doesn't like the soup and has a quesadilla instead. Once I stole one of his pieces and dipped it in my soup. Really good. So now everyone does it and we have a super tastey meal. So here she is cooking.


Next was Ryker's turn. He wanted "cow". (Funny. None of them call it beef or roast. They are eating cow. Everything was "can I put salt on my cow" "is this cow" "can I have more cow" Made me laugh) Anyway, we had potatoes and noodles with it. Ryker really did cut the potatoes. I have no pictures of it because I didn't want to leave that unsupervised for even a second. He gets excited and just goes for it. As fast as he can. That meant loose a finger if I turned around for a second. So the put all the spices and everything in the crock pot and we let it cook. Then when Skyler came home he help make noodles. (We made shells and white cheddar noodle roni stuff because Ryker really wanted that and doesn't like potatoes. So we made both for everyone.) And of course biscuits. Ryker sometimes really lives on rolls or biscuits. Okay not lives but it is sometimes his whole meal. So here is Ryker cooking his "cow" and all the fixings. (note: Ryker didn't like "cow" until about a week or two before this)



Jax said he wanted noodles for dinner when asked. I asked him what kind and he said "elbow" while pointing to his elbow. Now that was so cute I couldn't say no. So I thought of something that everyone would like that I could use "elbow" noodles for. I decided Chicken Parmesan. Jax helped me bread the chicken. It was funny. He did a really good job and did all but one by himself. He did touch the raw chicken and then lick his fingers which made me cringe and Jocelyn picked up a piece of what she thought was probably just bread crumbs but turned out to be a little piece of chicken with bread crumbs and tried to eat it and that made me really cringe. Other than that we had no problems. After he breaded the chicken he pretty much just sat and watched. So I had him set the table and once that was done he just sat in his seat and waited. He had fun but doesn't quite get it yet. Here is Jax cooking his meal.



We had a family cooking night too. We made pizza. This is another one of those things that the kids love but is hard for me. It takes a lot to made pizza, especially with kids. Talk about mess. I just have to breath. Anyway, They all rolled out their own pizza and put their own toppings on. They were born into a pizza family so they are naturals. It really isn't that hard if I think about it, but all the flour...... So here they all are. Rolling out, sauce, cheese, chicken (for all but Ryker), bacon (for the J's), more cheese, oven. Cook. Take out of oven after checking 16 times in as many minutes. ENJOY!!!! It was fun. Even with the flour. Of course after we ate I made cookies with Christmas M&M's so I must not have been too bugged. Here we all are. Belly and all.



That is the end of our adventures. I hope there weren't too many typo's and that is made sense. Thanks to all who read all of it even though it was boring. LOVE!

Big Boy Jaxon

Jax is offically potty trained! He has been really good about going on the potty. It has taken a while to get to this point mostly because of my laziness. I got him a box of pull ups and just let him learn what it was like to need to go potty. I didn't push him too much just occasionally asked him if he needed to go and would take him. Then he went to the hospital and we had a set back. So we almost had to start over. When his pull ups were gone we started hard core. Only underpants. I felt at times that I was going crazy. I was doing laundry almost everyday just for his under wear. (I didn't want to buy tons of underwear because I knew it wouldn't last forever). So he filled up his potty chart and got his "potty prize". He was pretty excited. We went to Toys R Us just me him and Jocelyn. That was nice because then some other kids weren't telling him what to get. He picked out his own thing and loves it. (if you know Jax you know how much he LOVES Cars.) Then for two days he kept asking why he got a prize and no one else. What a sensitive kid. It was cute. I had to keep telling him it was because he is a big boy now and filled up his potty chart with stickers. He still would say oh so I got a prize and the other guys didn't. Exactly. They got theres a long time ago. Anyway, something I learned is to not let the peed in pants get to you. Don't get stressed out they feel it and then get frustrated themselves and then don't want to go potty. I really needed to just say oops and change his clothes. I know for most of you this is a no brainer but for some reason I had a hard time keeping my cool sometimes. So there is another rambling story that should have taken two sentences. Sorry. I am very proud and happy that Jax is potty trained. 3 months of only one kid in daipers!

Pumpkin Carving

This is the first year we did pumpkin carving by ourselves. I thought it was going to be crazy and stressful, but it wasn't. It was actually fun. We cut off the tops and then had the kids take out the seeds, which for some reason they call "nuts". Ryker and Jocelyn were not fans and pretty much waited for Skyler to do it. I made them stick their hands in for a picture. Then we set about the carving. The "warty" pumpkins from Paca's garden were really hard to carve. Thick hard skin. So Skyler did those ones and we survived. It was so much easier this year because we didn't do elaborate things on them. Simple faces is the way to go. Lucky for us the kids still loved it. Ryker would tell me what to do and I would do it. So it is his own design without him using a knife. The boys wanted "scary" and the girls wanted smiles. (okay I admit Jocelyn didn't actually say or know what was going on. She just liked to take the "hat" off and look inside. Oh and take nibbles of the lid. I remember last year she crawled around and ate the guts.) We had a great time and it only took us about 45 minutes to do it. Besides look at those faces.


Pumpkin Heads.........
Oh man these kids are funny. I love them.

Cuties in Costume

Alright so I only took one (5 pictures of the same thing but only one turned out) picture of the kids in costume. I don't really know why I didn't carry the camera with me every where but I didn't so this is all you get. Sorry I know I am lame. You can take my word for it though, they were seriously cute. Ryker was Venom (bad spiderman). We ended up exchanging his costume twice before getting here. That is what I get for not letting them open their costumes before they actually needed to. Live and learn right. Anyway, Reagan was Ariel, she got this costume for her birthday and has been waiting for Halloween forever. She has worn it a few times since her birthday, but she was excited that Halloween came and she could really wear it. I don't know it that made sense, but you get the picture. Jax was Optimus Prime, I don't have much to say about that because he really didn't care what he was as long as everyone else thought it was cool and he at least knew what it was. But he was cute. Jocelyn was.....A pumpkin I guess. The package said pumpkin pie but I am not sure why it said that. She was cute in the bright orange. She has on her orange tights which don't match but were warm. The costumes didn't cover her bum so it was cute to walk behind her and see her orange bum hanging out. (which got bigger and the day wore on......hmm) Anyway that was a lot of talk about the kids costumes. You don't have pictures so I described their cuteness for you.

Flavor

So we just went in for our 20 week ultra sound (a week late) and found out we are having a little GIRL. Tuns out I am following my moms pattern which is weird. Everyone thought boy (my kids that is) except Jocelyn who would whisper "sister" when I asked her today. So everyone can stop wondering and waiting because we finally know. We are all excited.

Mommy Musings

For anyone who cares, I posted something on my other blog finally. If you do check it out sometimes then sorry it took so long. If you don't then sorry you have to read this little note.

Ryker's Birthday Party

We decided to give Ryker a "friend party" this year. This is the first time he has had a birthday party (except for his 1st birthday). He was really excited when I told him we could do it. Reagan was not. We took him and 4 friends to a new place called Pirate Island. It is in Orem and is like Chuck-e-cheese but pirate themed and the food is WAY better. The kids loved it. The boys thought is was so cool with the pirates everywhere and the ship that would shoot cannons when they were eating. Reagan had a friend come too (a sister of one of the boys who came) she was not a fan of the place. She wanted Reagan right next to her. (Probably would have been hiding behind me but I was across the table. Skyler was sitting next to her. He is more scary than pirates.) They had videos games and a little play area for younger kids. We didn't use the play area though or even really look at it so I don't know how good it was. They had a balloon guy come around to the tables and make balloon animals for everyone. All the boys wanted swords of course, but this guy went further and made them a belt to put the sword in. Pretty cool. Reagan and Jaxon got parrots that hooked onto their shirts. I told him to make whatever he wanted for Jocelyn since he probably gets sick of making the same thing all the time. He made her a ladybug which doubled as a bracelet. It was cute. So now that I have rambled forever here is a collage of the pictures. (getting nine kids to pose for a picture when they are excited is hard)


For anyone who wants to do this for their kids or something here are some tips. ...
They do have party packages where they get tokens and a pirate hat for 7 bucks. And a couple others that include food, but here is the secret...... the kids menu is the pirate hat that they give you. Therefore every kids gets one with out payying 7 dollars. So it is cheaper to just buy how many tokens you want. Also a good thing kids meals are 3.99 and under. Pretty good. Cheaper for us than buy one pizza and drinks for them. (only by 5 bucks but still) They have a 24 inch pizza that you can split up with different toppings. That will feed quite a few people. (it is 35 dollars) One thing that made Skyler super upset was that our waitress lost our debit card on the way to the register and then tried to blame it on us. I wouldn't really hold this against the place just the person. It was found, but it was frustrating. So that was his fun party and I am sure half of you stopped reading along time ago.

More Party Fun!

We had a party with family on Sunday. We of course had to have noodles for dinner, which is fine with me because I an a noodle fan myself. I ended up making chicken parmesan. It was good and the only mishap was that my over caught on fire. (on the inside) Yep that's right, a fire. It was pretty fun. Why do they put fire alarm things at the very top of a twelve foot ceiling??? Anyway, we had a good time and Ryker of course got some good loot. Here is my handsome 6 year old.


We had some back and forth with the cake. He wanted power ranger but I didn't have black frosting for the mask over the eyes, so we did Bionicle. He really likes bioncles and the only one I have actually gotten him is the one I got him for his birthday. My brother gave Ryker his collection of bionicles when he moved. So here is the cake. No one can probably tell what is but hey I tried those things aren't exactly 2 demensional worthy.

This is what a bionicle is. I tried to copy this guys head. Can you sort of see it now???? I hope so.

And of course the blowing of the candle moment (he only wanted one that was a "6")

Happy Birthday to my big kid. He loves sports and loves to be around people. (except brothers and sisters most of the time) When he made a bag about himself for school the teacher asked that they put in three things that are important to them. The first thing he said was family, so that made me feel good. I actually had to tell him to pick a toy. (I couln't thing of anything else that would work that we cold find an object for) He is a kind kid who obeys way more than other kids. Parents tell me he is smart, sweet, polite, kind, advanced, and many other things. Makes me feel good as a parent, but I think it is just in him to be like that. I don't take much credit. Anyway, I don't like to brag about my kids like that but I thought that I might want to remember this some day. (when he is a teenager perhaps??)

First day of school

Ryker started kindergarten last week. He was very excited and talked about it for weeks before. He gets to ride the bus to school too, which was almost more exciting than school itself. The first day I walked him to the bus and waited with him then went back home to drive to the school to meet him there. (His teacher asked that we come for a few minutes on the first day to help them figure out what they are supposed to do.) By the time I got to the school Ryker was already there and in his classroom figuring out what he was supposed to do on his own. He was also the first one there.
So here are a couple of pictures I took later in the day because I was nervous for him and forgot in the morning. I know I never remember to take pictures but hey, I still got one and it IS on the first day of school.

You can always count on Ryker to do some kind of pose. It makes the picture more interesting.

How old are we????

This is what we did after Reagan's party. This is only one of the formations. We always did stuff like this when we were younger at our house in Woodland Hills. This was a fun way to remember those days. (yes Paige as a tube around her waist. wouldn't want to get hurt if she fell....)

It's her party......

Reagan is 4!!

This is miss Reagan on her birthday. She is getting so big.


Here are the gifts. She got lots of fun stuff and now everyone fights over them. That means they are good. We got her the bike. At first she didn't really want to ride it. I was expecting this so it was okay. We have tried to get her to ride Ryker's old one for a while but she always acted like she didn't know how to pedal. So when she didn't do it right away I knew she would do it on her own time. It didn't take as long as I thought for her to be interested. Everyone started playing on bikes and stuff so she joined to fun. She just got on the bike and started going. I was shocked. She is a lot smarter than I give her credit for most of the time. I just can't be there and want her to do it then or she won't. I don't think she likes people watching her. Anyway, she rode her bike for the rest of the night. She even went all the way around the "block". Of course she wanted her toys in the basket on the bike. Which is the reason I bought it so that worked out nice.

Here is the cake. She wanted an Aladdin cake. I was going to put the figures on top but thought that would look a little weird. So this is how it ended up. I like it. (by the way it is a magic carpet)

Happy Birthday to you!!!! Here is the cutie waiting for her lovely rendition of Happy Birthday to end so she can blow out the candles. I love this girl.

Flaming Gorge

We went to Flaming Gorge a couple of weeks ago with my family. We had a great time. We went boating, on the water wennie, and fishing. We were camping while there so we also did all the stuff involved in that. The only downfall was that it was FREEZING at night. One night it rained and when we woke up all the rain had frozen. Yeah.... cold. Anyway when we got there we went for a boat ride on. Most of the kids loved it. Ryker and Reagan acted like it was something they did every day and was no big deal. Jax was typical Jax and just took everything in quietly. Jocelyn did not like it when it went fast. Mostly due to the loud noise of the engine. After a while she was okay with it and wanted to walk around while the boat was going at high speeds. On the other days when we went out on the boat Jax and Jocelyn would almost always fall asleep. We had a blast but next year I hope it is a little warmer.


Skyler, Peter, and Michelle went cliff jumping. So naturally Ryker wanted to go to. I was a little worried about this but figured he would see what it was and decide no way. That wasn't the case, but there was just a tiny little cliff that worked great and Ryker thought he was pretty cool.......

But he did do a belly flop when I got the picture.

On one of the days everyone (except me and the two little ones) went on a rafting trip down the Green River. This was the coldest day there, so it wasn't as fun as it could have been. The kids got soaked bout stayed in the raft. Skyler, of course, jumped out of the raft (so I heard) and one of the rafts was having trouble and kept tipping over. (I think it was over loaded) Mom said I am lucky I didn't go cause it was so cold,but I think everyone else had a good time.
When we got done I only had 10 loads of laundry to do........