Odds N' Ends

Just a few of the comings-and-goings of out life lately:

• We've had some busy days lately.  I hosted a book club in our home one night.  The girls and David had a Daddy-Daughter-Date which sounded very fun, and very rowdy!  A few days later I had to perform a "reading" at our Relief Society Christmas dinner.  It was a very nice night.  I've been super busy with my calling as compassionate service leader.  Seems like things happen in spurts with that calling - I'm either doing nothing, or I'm swamped.  David went to a two-day continuing education class in Salt Lake a week or two ago.  We've been continuing to meet with the missionaries and Jordyn.  It's all been good, stuff, but we're really busy.  I guess with five kids we'd better get used to this pace.  

• Nicole played rec volleyball this fall.  She went every Tuesday night for six weeks.  She'd never touched a volleyball in her life before, but neither had most of the other kids.  In fact, they didn't even play a game until the last week.  They just had lessons on how to hit, serve, set, etc.  It was really fun.  She learned a lot and is actually pretty good!  I hope she does it again!

• Joshua's kindergarten class had a "Grandparents' Day" last week.  Unfortunately, my parents were in St George at a conference and David's parents are wrapping up their mission in Idaho, so Josh didn't have any grandparents that could come.  The teacher specifically said that younger siblings were not allowed, which took me out of the running as a substitute, and David's schedule was packed with 6 Salt Lake visits. So guess who drove all the way here at 8:30 in the morning to be Josh's substitute grandparent visitor...Uncle Brian, of course!  Is that the nicest thing you've ever heard?!?!?  He's on medical leave right now because he's recovering from shoulder surgery (and foot surgery as well), so he was able to go.  

Here they are going into the school...

And here they are when I picked them up.  I wish I had pictures of the day, but I wasn't there.   They both said they had a great time!  Josh was pretty proud to show off his cool uncle who just had his shoulder "broken."  Brian's a pretty fun guy, so I bet all Josh's classmates thought he was awesome!  Brian (who's 6'7") said that everyone kept commenting on how they could see where Josh got his tall genes.  Brian didn't have the heart to tell them that he's my brother-in-law, so Josh didn't get his tall genes from him.   Ha ha!

Afterwards, we took Uncle Brian to our favorite neighborhood Chinese restaurant so they could tell me all about it. What a great uncle!  Maybe we'll have to invite him to Grandparents' Day for Bron and Quin too!

• Last Saturday night, my dad's brother, Brian (not my brother-in-law, mind you...the OTHER Uncle Brian) and his family hosted a Thanksgiving dinner at a church in Daybreak.  What a fun night!  It was the first time my children had met many of my cousins.  We all live within an hour or two of each other, but we're all so busy with our own lives that we NEVER get together.  This was truly a first!  Hopefully we'll have more to come.  We had such a great night!

I LOVE these people!  Back in the doorway is my cousin, Rick - the only cousin from my Uncle Dick's family who could attend.  The rest of them live far away.  He's talking to Uncle Brian and Rick's wife, Julie.  Katie W's in brown plaid.  Aunt Jodi (Brian's wife) is in the light blue.  Scott's the one getting his meat.  David's behind him.  Next to them are my cousin Jake (Brian and Jodi's oldest, and my same-age cousin) and Katie S.  Megan is at the table and Nicole is enjoying her turkey drumstick in the foreground

Bronson and Alison loved their huge drumsticks!  My dad said that Bron looked like King Lear gnawing on that huge thing.  

I've already told you about everyone at that main table, except for Jennilyn.  She is Brian and Jodi's third child.  In the background are Jessie's roommate, Janille's husband, and Jake's wife.  

Her'e a cute picture of the brother's.  Brian's standing, my dad's in red.  They are such a hoot when they get together.  They really get us all laughing.  Jessie (Brian's 5th child) is standing with her hands on the chair.  The two kids next to Rick are two of his children.

We had a fun time visiting with each other.  After the meal was cleared away, we played a few rounds of a charades game.  You haven't lived until you've played games with that rowdy bunch!  It was a blast!  I had to leave early so that we could get our kids to bed.  I was pretty bummed.

The younger kids played in the nursery.  

The older kids had a Nerf gun battle.  

Time for pie!  That's my cousin Janille in the blue shirt.  She is the 4th of Brian and Jodi's children - Scott's age, I believe.  My mom is in the background.  Sorry, but I don't know the names of all of my cousins' kids. 

This is a cuter picture of me...

But Quin is an angel in this one!  Plus, I love Megan's head here too!

•  I love my little Bronson.  He keeps me VERY busy!  He's my little buddy while the other kids are at school.  Here are some pictures of him working on a preschool lesson.  We rarely miss a day.  He loves it!   Let me share just two things he's said recently that made me smile:  The other day, he was talking to me and he said, "Mom.  I'm weewy dood at deeting."  Now, Bron has a speech pattern that is different from my other four kids and VERY difficult to understand.  We almost certainly have speech therapy in our future.  I have to interpret for him all the time - even to David.  Usually I'm pretty good, but this sentence had me stumped.  "Deeting" could mean a lot of things - he's really good at tweeting? drinking? singing?  I could not get it.  Finally, I tried a different approach and asked, "Really?  What makes you good at it?"  He said, "I don't know,  Maybe my brain."  Then, I finally understood.  Bless his heart, Bronson is really good at thinking.  

• I've mentioned before that Bronson likes to be told yes.  He'll do just about whatever it takes to word his questions and requests so that the answer is "yes."  The other morning, I was trying to bustle through my chores while the baby was napping.  Bronson wanted to play.  He said, "Mom, weew woo pay woo with me? (will you play zoo with me?)   I'm not totally proud of myself, but I said no - mommy was trying to hurry and get her work done.  A few seconds later, he said, "Weew woo pay guess what aminal I am with me?"  Again, no,  He asked if I'd play hide-and-seek, hot-and-cold, etc. and I kept saying no.  Finally, I said, "Bronson.  I don't WANT to play right now!  I'm a mom and I have to work!  I don't like to play!  I like to work!  Let's play fold-the-laundry."  He didn't like the sound of that game.  After a few seconds, the sweet boy said, "Mom!  I had a date idea! (great idea) Let's pay woo de mom ad I de tid and we neder pay anyting!"  (let's play you're the mom and I'm the kid and we never play anything.)  I laughed and said, "That's not a game, that's reality!" and it kind of broke my heart.  I guess I'm going to have to play zoo a lot more...

Election Day!

Tuesday, November 4th.  The day we'd been waiting for all year.  Election Day.  For me, it was kind of a bummer.  I'd sent my ballot in the mail weeks before hand, so I didn't even get to go to the polls.  No "I voted" sticker or anything!  LAME!  Just kidding.  But seriously, I did kind of miss going somewhere to vote.

Anyway, in the evening, I went over to my parents' house to watch the numbers come in.  After talking about how to handle the night for several days, we decided not to have it be a big, kid-filled, loud night.  My parents wanted to be surrounded by family, but in a more mellow setting.  So David kindly stayed home with our kids.  They got pizza and watched a movie, so they didn't mind.  Plus, it was a school night so the kids couldn't stay up any way.

At my folks house, Kristin, Katie W. and Megan, Scott and Katie S., and Quinton and I were the only people in attendance.  It was calm, peaceful, and very fun.  We ate pizza and treats while we visited for a while.  Around 8:00 pm, we turned on the news and started watching the numbers come in.  Of course, the numbers for Dad's race didn't come in for quite a while.  We kept checking our phones, tablets, etc. every few minutes.  It wasn't necessarily stressful - Dad was heavily favored, but we were all anxious to see the actual numbers.  Quin fell asleep - too much excitement for him.

Finally, a little after 9:00 pm, the first numbers started coming in.  Dad was the projected winner with 64% of the vote.  His two opponents had 27% and 8% ish.  Dad's phone started chiming every few seconds with "congratulations" texts and emails.  We were all excited!  We called my grandma Church to let her know, and almost called David in Chicago, but he beat us to it and called Dad first.  Then, we took a few pictures with our newest County Commissioner.  Soon after that, the party stared to dissipate.  Quinton and I left a little after 10:15 pm.

By the time I got home and got Quin back to sleep (not a good night for him) it was nearly midnight. By then, the final numbers were in and we could officially rest, knowing that the race was over! I plopped into bed and slept like a rock until 4:30 am, when Bronson came upstairs with a nasty stomach bug.  So, I spent the next day taking care of a sick boy with very little sleep myself.  Luckily for me, I had no plans for the day, so we could just veg out in our PJs and watch TV.

So the hard work of campaigning is past and the hard work of being County Commissioner lies ahead.  Now, upward and onward!  Time for Dad to get to work and show everyone what he meant when he said he'd be great at this job!  I can't wait for the next four years!

Halloween 2014

We had a nice Halloween this year...in retrospect... There was a while when I wasn't sure we'd survive it, but it ended up being fun.

The kids with their pumpkins.  We carved them on the Monday night before Halloween.

The Davis County School District was brilliant this year, making sure that Halloween fell at the end of a semester, so there was no school.  This meant that the Halloween Parade and all the class parties were on the day before the actual holiday.

The 6th grade kids each paired up with a kindergartner for the parade, so Alison and Josh were able to go together.  So cute!

Nicki was going to be a pirate up until the night before this parade, when she decided that the pirate wasn't good enough.  It mattered enough to her that I decided to cave in.  We went shopping at about 8:30pm and were lucky to find this cute bee costume.

On Halloween morning, after a healthy, non-sugary breakfast, we got the kids all dolled up and went to JC Penny Portrait studios for our annual school-year pictures.  I ALWAYS make sure that we are the first appointment of the day so that we don't have to wait (they are ALWAYS behind schedule).  The photo shoot itself went really well!  All five kids were darling, we busted through them really quickly, and we had some GREAT pictures to choose from.  But then, there was a mishap with the computers and the photographer couldn't get the right photos to load properly so that we could order them.  She worked on it for over 45 minutes.  Meanwhile, the next appointment was waiting and beginning to lose patience.  The photographer asked if I'd come back later so that she could take care of the other customers.  I very politely said that I didn't live nearby and it would be hard for me to drag all five kids out of there, then back again.  She wasn't very happy with me, but hey!  What could I say?!?  After another 15 minutes or so, when the kids (and I) were all VERY near meltdown mode, I told her we'd come back.

Waiting and waiting..."We are not amused."

I took the kids over to a nearby IHOP.  On Halloween, IHOP gives free spooky-faced pancakes to kids.  I thought it would be fun.  I was wrong.  I'm not sure if IHOP always sucks or if it's just on Halloween, but we waited for more than an hour to get our pancakes.  Bronson was trying to be good, but after about 40 minutes, he'd had it!  He chanted, "Where's my pancake?" over and over for a while.  Oh well.  When the food came, all the frustration was forgotten and we enjoyed ourselves.  Even Quin got a pancake.  He ate almost half of it by himself too!

At least they gave balloon animals while we waited.  

See the faces on the pancakes?

Quinton was excited!

We went back to the portrait place and got that all straightened out (eventually).  By the time we got home, I put the little ones down for naps and barely had time to make dinner.  We had our traditional dinner-in-a-pumpkin meal.  The kids all liked it (except Bron, but you can't win them all, right?)

This year, we added clementine Jack-O-lanterns to our meal.  So fun!

And I bought pumpkin bread bowls to scoop the food into.  What a festive meal.

David had been very busy at work, so he missed dinner.  He came home while I was getting everyone in their costumes.  He took our little crew trick-or-treating around our neighborhood while Quin and I stayed home and passed out candy.   When they got back from the neighborhood jaunt, I took them over to my parent's house and David stayed home to answer the door.  We've kind of got it down to a science now.

I didn't take any pictures at my parents' house.  It was too dark any way.  But here are a few photos of our wise old owl.  Sorry there's so many, but A) he's adorable and B)  I just bought this costume and he only wore it once! He's our last baby, so it won't get handed down to anyone else.  I had to get my money's worth!

Joshua's Birthday!

Joshua's birthday marks the end of birthday season around here.  We celebrate 4 birthdays within 30 days in September and October (Cookie's too, but she doesn't really count).  Josh's is on October 23rd.  He turned six this year.  That's UNBELIEVABLE to me!  He's so grown up!  Josh has made huge strides in terms of his anxiety this year.  He's mellowed out a lot!  But he's still such a sweet, tender, loving little guy!  I'm do proud of him!  Lately, I've been a little worried that he's suffering from middle child syndrome.  The girls are louder than him and the little boys are more demanding, so Josh can just kind of slip through the cracks sometimes.  He can go outside and play or get on the computer and I won't see him for a LONG time!  Sometimes I realize that he's talking to me about some alien or dinosaur or something and I'm only half listening.  I've been trying to be better at getting one-on-on, focused time with him every day.  I really wanted this birthday to help him feel special and loved and not ignored.  I hope it did.

Josh's birthday celebration started the night before.  Grandma and Grandpa Gee came over for a visit!  They took us to Red Robin for dinner.  It was very fun to spend a little time with them.  Hopefully, when their mission ends in a month, we'll get to see a little more of them.  Dinner was great.  Josh even got a free birthday sundae.  Woo Hoo!

Bronson with "Grandpa and Grandma Idaho" as he refers to them.  

What a good lookin' bunch, eh?

The almost-birthday boy!

The next day, Josh started off with birthday presents.  He got some fun toys - especially a bow and arrow with a huge inflatable animal hunting target.  I can't really explain it - just know that it's pretty cool.  He chose dinosaur instant oatmeal packets for his birthday breakfast (gag!  I passed, but the kids LOVE them!)  Then, I gave him half a hair cut.  That's right.  Half.

Love that boy!

Who wouldn't want a Captain America toy?

This is the hunting thing I was trying to explain.

Quinton supervised.

It happened to be crazy hair day at school on Josh's birthday.  I'd been noticing how long Josh's hair had been getting for a while.  I toyed with the idea of letting in grow long.  But when it came time to do a crazy hair do, I decided it would be the perfect time to give him a haircut.  We talked about a Mohawk or even a reverse Mohawk.  In the end, we went with a half-and-half look.  I thought it was awesome!

The whole crew.  Even Bronson got in on the crazy hair thing - we spiked it up and sprayed some color in it.

Josh's teacher goes out of her way to make kids' birthdays very special.  Josh was treated like a king all day!  He had such a great time!  When the little boys and I showed up for the last half hour of class, he was beaming with joy.  He spent some time showing the poster he had made and explaining all of his favorite things to his class.  Then, they sang and danced a funny happy birthday song to him.  And he passed out treats - frosted sugar cookies.  Yum.

After school, I made him his requested birthday lunch - scrambled eggs.  Then, while the little boys slept, I cut the rest of his hair and we got everything ready for that afternoon.  Know why?  He had a birthday party with a few of his neighborhood friends.  It was a dinosaur-themed party.  The girls basically ran it for me.  It was very fun.  I think he had a great time.

On a dino hunt in the back yard. The girls went out and hid a bunch of toy dinosaurs back there before the party started. Then, we handed out magnifying glasses and sent them out on the hunt.

Quinton supervised.  By the way, my parents stopped by for a little while to see the party and to give Josh a present - an AWESOME remote controlled Jeep.

We "hatched eggs" - a.k.a. sat on and popped balloons with little toy dinosaurs in them.

The party boys (missing one little boy who came later).  

Pinata time!

After the party, Dad came home and he brought Chinese take-out with him.  Yummy!  After dinner, Josh played with his friends in the neighborhood for a while before bed time.  I think it was a busy, fun, special day for our little Joshua James.

Josh didn't want a cake - he wanted a HUGE donut!

Look at that thing!