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.