Begining the Catch Up

So I have several posts to do, what with Christmas and Birthdays and such, and I wasn't sure where to start so I decided to start at the beginning and do them in chronological order, so here goes:

The week before Christmas my kids had their first piano recital. They had been practicing extra hard (I hear the songs in my sleep now) and I was SO proud of how well they played them. Luckily we are close friends with not only the piano teacher...aka Aunt Andrea, but also her other students, so the recital was a small affair at our friends house.

They had some soft cozy lighting, which made for a more intimate setting, but terrible video, but I knew grandparents would want to hear so here are the dark videos:



They did SUCH a great job! I will be glad to go from Christmas music to regular songs (I think) but will look forward to next year when my kids will once again fill my house with the sounds of Christmas!

A Tag and a Story (aren't you lucky?)

Ok, so I knew this tag was out there and I have been meaning to check the 4th picture in my 4th folder to make sure it was something good, but never got around to it and I was just tagged by my friend Alicia so here you have it. It is nothing spectacular, but does go with a crazy story.

We lived in St Augustine Florida for 2 1/2 years while Bryan attended physical therapy school. It just happened to be the worst two hurricane seasons in recent history. Every late summer and early fall the elders quorums would be called out time and time again to do hurricane clean up. Most of the time it was cutting up fallen trees, or patching roofs, but this picture is of the clean up to hurricane Katrina.

Bryan not only had to do regular clean up, but because of the flooding they had to gut houses. He told me the horror stories of cleaning out houses where you could tell how high the water had come because the mold was that high on the walls. He told me how belongings were scattered not only throughout the house but down the street. He told me how the smell was so overwhelming and the sadness of telling people that their homes were not salvageable.

Even through all this loss, he was able to also tell me how grateful people were when they showed up to help, how awesome it was to see members of the church come from all over and sleep on the church gym floor and surrounding land, bringing their own food and supplies because all stores and restaurants in the area were wiped out. He told tales of service, love and gratitude. We did not get hit by that hurricane, but I will never forget Bryan coming home and wanting to get rid of all our stuff, because he had realized that's all it was, was just stuff. He had seen these people lose all their stuff and it made us both realize that stuff does not matter. What matters is family, friends, and faith.

It reminds me of the scripture found in Matthew 6:19-20 "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. What a valuable lesson to remember during this wonder season.

Here are a few more pictures (sorry they are blurry, for obvious reasons he did not take our good camera with him): This first one is a typical trash pile after cleaning out a house: This one is what all the trees and bushes looked like: And if you look closely at this one you can see some steps that used to lead up to a building, and as you can tell the building is just gone.

Oh yeah and I tag my two brothers, Barlow and Gordon and Brandee G.

Just your average trip to the post office....

My children have been on a 2 hour delay for school every day this week. While in some ways it has been wonderful (you know...more time with my kids, no not that I can sleep in longer, shame on you for even thinking it) But it has caused a few hiccups in my Christmas preparations. The worst hiccup came with shipping my Christmas presents though.

I am pretty paranoid about getting things shipped on time. You would think this would motivate me to get all prepared and shipped in the first week of December, but somehow I seem to cut it close year after year. This year was no different. I had planned to do my post office run on Monday, but because of the two hour delay (and a lot of wasted time playing intellectual games like Cake Mania) I had to postpone my trip until Tuesday.

I had everyone ready to go before I took the kids to school (oohh, everyone clap for me...I can get everyone ready to go by 10:30) and went straight to the post office after the school. When I pulled into the parking lot. As I got out of the car I realized that I had not brought a coat for either one of my boys that I still had with me. Now the dilemma starts

*It is only a few feet to the door of the post office....they will be fine with no coat
BUT-I am wearing a big heavy coat so everyone in the post office will think I am a TERRIBLE mother for wearing a coat myself and not putting one on my babies

*Maybe I should just drive home and get their coats
BUT-I live a whole 10 minutes from the post office....what a waste of time (not like computer games...stop judging me) plus Ashton's coat is in the washing machine.

*Ok, my car is messy enough that there HAS to be SOMETHING in here that will work as a coat
BUT-but NOTHING, this never fails. When my car is messy enough I can usually survive for days.

I realized quickly that there was a baby hoody in the car as well as my heavy black jacket (ok, so I can not blame only my kids for leaving stuff in the car) I put the sweatshirt on Ashton and roll up the sleeves on the black jacket for Nathan and into the post office I go, and of course the line is HUGE.

I patiently wait and surprisingly enough my kids behave great and before I know it I am at the front of the line, then I am at the counter shipping my packages. During the transaction an elderly gentleman comes up to me and hands me a pen. OK I thought, I didn't drop a pen, but thanks. Quick smile to the old man and back to the shipping. A few seconds later a woman comes up to me and hands me a pacifier and a "woman's item" Hmm...now I am wondering where this stuff is falling out of. It was obviously mine. Oh well, that was kind of embarrassing, but back to the shipping. It was not until the third visit from someone in the HUGE line handing me another "woman's item" and a receipt that I take the time to turn around to see Nathan had removed my black jacket and was spinning it around, and thus spreading the contents of the pockets all over the post office floor, giving EVERYONE in line some good entertainment.

Oh well, my shipping was done, my kids were warm enough and the post office even had plates of cookies sitting out for us to eat. All in all I will count it as a successful trip to the post office. Hope everyone I had to ship to appreciates it! Have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

My Baby gets Baptized

Wow, my first child has reached the age of accountability, and chose to be baptised. We are SO proud of him. He has become a very responsible child that I can count on to help me out when I need him and lead his brothers and sister in good righteous ways. I am very happy that he has chosen to enter the waters of baptism and become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

We chose to do the baptism in Utah so that all of Trevor's grandparents could attend. He has several family members come including his Great-Grandma and Grandpa Bodily, Uncle Barlow and Aunt Andrea and their family, Uncle Bill, Aunt Bethany and her family, Uncle Danny, Aunt Sarah and of course his Mom and Dad and siblings.

The baptism went great....all three times. That's right, the first time the wording was a little off, but because Bryan and both witnesses had only done baptisms in Spanish and apparently the word for "by" and "of" is the same in Spanish, no one caught the mistake until Bryan and Trevor had gotten out of the font to change. So back they came and tried it again. This time it seem ok, but once again, when they were changing, the witnesses decided to have them try one more time (as they were changing Trevor tried to tell Bryan that he had read it wrong....guess he was right) So back they came, into a half drained font and did the baptism one more time. This time Bryan read the words slowly and deliberately and got it right.

Congratulations Trevor....We LOVE you!

For Example....

In case any of you were not clear on how the pinata thing worked....Andrea and I decided to demonstrate:

Andrea chose to show the traditional style, and I am clearly showing our new found technique

Trevor's Birthday

(yes that is Trevor giving bunny ears to his cake...must be an 8 year old boy thing)

We left to go to Utah on Trevor's birthday. It was only a half day at school because of Thanksgiving break and I knew that Bryan would be working until around six so I decided that Trevor could have a birthday party right after school.

After much deliberation he decided to have a Mario Party Party. Which meant that he wanted to play Mario Party on the Wii with his friends, which meant that he could only invite 3 friends. It was a hard choice to make because he knew his other option was to invite his entire school class plus friends from church and get MEGA amounts of presents, but I was SO relieved that it would just be a few boys coming over to pay Nintendo.

As the boys played upstairs I decided to come down and frost the cake. For those that have never seen the way I make the cake toppers for my kids cakes here is how I do it. The day before the birthday I print off a picture, put wax paper over it, and trace/color the picture with frosting. Then I put that in the freezer over night so that it will peel off the wax paper and go onto the cake. Some years it works great, others, not so great. I pretty much have the process down and can make it work. This year I had done all the steps and the topper was frozen and ready to apply on the cake, but low and behold....when I came down to frost the cake, I see that one of the kids (I later found out it was Trevor) had decided to help my by taking out the topper from the freezer and setting it on the counter. AHHH! This is terrible!! Frosting takes overnight to freeze hard, but only 30 seconds to 1 minute to thaw out completely. I quickly threw it back in the freezer and wondered what I would do. Having no other options, once I finished frosting the cake I took out the topper and scrapped it off with a knife. It actually worked ok, but the picture was a bit smeared. Oh well.We also did a pinata, but seeing as I was the only adult and had no hooks on the ceiling to hang it from I decided to just throw the pinata at the boys and let them beat it up. This actually went over really well...go figure...8 year old boys like to karate chop stuff. They each took turns kicking, or "chopping" the pinata until all the candy came out. Overall it went great and Trevor had an awesome 8th birthday.

(yes that is Trevor giving bunny ears to his friend..and his friend giving them back....must be an 8 year old boy thing)

Tidbits Durring Breakfast

Well...I AM HOME!!

We pulled in last night around 9:30. We had a great trip and everything (including Trevor's Baptism) went great and I will post more about all that later. For now I am eating breakfast then starting on the job of cleaning out the car, doing all the laundry, cleaning the house....hopefully all before the kids get home from school so that we can put up our Christmas Tree tonight. So I thought I would just share a few tidbits while I sat here eating breakfast.

Most of the trip from our place to Utah is spent in Idaho, which....lets face it, it is not the most "scenic" drive. So usually when I am going through this part of the trip I can have some personal time to meditate. Well....this time when we were going through Idaho, it was not only dark, but foggy, so you could not see any thing! This left me way to much time to think....hmmm...what could I blog about when I get home....lets see....I could blog about:

~~The fact that my kids refuse to unbutton their pants to put them on, they will just squirm, lay down, jump, or wiggle, but will NOT unbutton the pants (staying in one small room and making all 3 of them get dressed at the same time in that same room really opened my eyes to this one)

~~The fact that Bryan thinks that road trips are a lot like Mario Kart (when we were driving at 3-4 in the morning, this was HILARIOUS to me, I thought of several similarities, but then when I thought of them during regular daylight hours it was not that funny at all)

~~The fact that I CAN NOT eat a jaw breaker without biting it. I tried it about 7 times on the drive down and couldn't do it, I just had this CRAZY desire to bite the thing...don't get to close to me I guess, you never know when that desire will hit!

~~The fact that I can rent some redbox movies in Utah, let the kids watch them the entire way home, and return them at a rexbox here....that is just AWESOME!! And the BEST part?......there is NO charge for the AWESOMENESS!

~~The fact that I will have to vacuum for 2 hours to get my car clean when I get home....No, no one wants another vacuum post :)

~~The fact that not matter how much fun you have or how many wonderful memories you make, there is nothing quite like coming home!

Some Ham With Your Dinner?

I have entered the busiest 2 months of the year. Not only are they the busiest holiday seasons, but most of my family's birthdays are in these months also, not to mention the fact that Trevor will be 8 and we have decided to go to Utah for his baptism over Thanksgiving. I find myself rushing from one project to another fighting off cold after cold from lack of sleep.

How do I manage to stay sane?? Lots and Lots of ham:

Ok, so maybe I am not sane, maybe my whole family has lost it....oh well, who will notice right?

The Davis Thankful Tree

For Family Home Evening on Monday we made a thankful tree. I got the idea from my cousins blog and adapted it a little. We decided to go to the park to gather real leaves that had fallen. Then we made a tree trunk out of butcher paper. We wrote things we were thankful for on the leaves and hung them up. It was interesting to hear the things my kids would come up with. Some of them took a little tweaking but I think we covered the basics. I told them that every time they were feeling grumpy or sad they could walk by the thankful tree and remember all the blessings we have. This technique actually worked for me as well when I walked past it with a grumpy baby who had been crying for an hour. I walked past the tree and saw Ashton's name on one of the leaves. Pausing to remember how grateful I was for Ashton to be in my family made it a little easier to deal with the crying fit. I am thankful for all the many blessings in my life.

Posting about Posts

Ahhhh, I finally had a chance to do a little meditation today. You might ask yourself when would a busy mother of 4 have a chance to meditate and the answer would be while I vacuumed out my car. To some this might not be a good chance to find some inner peace, but my car REALLY needed vacuumed out so I had a LONG time to listen to the hum of my new vacuum. New vacuum you might ask, yes, new vacuum. My old vacuum that I learned and grew so much with finally bit the bullet so we bought a new bright green one. The suction was fabulous AND it came with an extra belt and filter, but I noticed when I turned it on that it didn't quite have the same umph as when it was brand new about 2 weeks ago. I knew it was not the belt so I thought hmmm....maybe it is the filter. I pulled out the filter and it was CAKED with dirt. It was a wonder any air got through there, so I pulled out the new filter put it in a vuala! Good as new (It made me wonder if maybe my old vacuum just needs a new filter.....it was over a year without cleaning or replacing it.....) Then I thought "Oh! I should blog about this" (I know...it is pretty sad when you blog so much about vacuums) I thought oh it could be a cute little update to the vacuum post.

As I thought this through I realized there were several blog posts that needed updating so here you go.

Remember how I told you I shrink all my shirts? Well I am proud to say that I hang dry ALL my shirts, however, this means that I have fewer shirts to wear everyday. How can this be?? Well you see, I hang my shirts up in the laundry room to dry, then I leave the laundry room and shut the door behind me (usually in an attempt to forget how much laundry I have) Then fold and put away the "dryer-dried" laundry. Then the next week (or so) when I do laundry again I see my now dry shirts hanging in the laundry room and think "Oh there you are!" Then I walk out and leave them there with the new wet shirts that need to dry thinking that I will just get them all at once. It didn't take long before nearly ALL my shirts were in the laundry room and none were in my closet. *sigh* I don't (yes spell check had to add the apostraphy to this word) think I will win this battle.

I used to post about my weight loss goals and progress, but as I sit here eating gum drops I dint (figured I would throw dint in, instead of don't this time) think I will update that one......However, once while we sat and had ice cream during the Biggest Loser show, we saw a commercial for a local biggest loser contest. The winner would get a 47" flat screen TV! Bryan decided to enter and has been doing GREAT. He now rides the bike not only during biggest loser, but every morning and nearly every night! He is down about 20 lbs and still going strong. I don't think he started out big enough to win the contest, but maybe!

And one more thing. For those that read my messy car post....Bryan wanted me to let you know that "his" car is spotless.....given that my name is on the deed just like his, the kids NEVER ride in his car and the only time it is driven is to work and back, I just wanted to say "good job honey....way to keep "your" car clean!

Valuable Skills

We broke out our wii fit so that we could do some exercising. No our charts are not full yet so the kids can not play any other games on the wii, their friends can not play. The only thing we can do is the wii fit. However, they have gained some valuable skills by exercising on the wii fit. Nathan is a prime example. We have never owned a hula hoop, so naturally he did not have any hula hooping skills, but oh how that has changed! He can do a virtual hula hoop as good as the rest of us. (if you have never seen it the wii fit has a virtual hula hoop game where you swivel your hips around to keep the hula hoops going...pretty good workout if you ask me...anyway) So this begs the question; Can he hula hoop in real life. Well the other day he says "MOM!! Mom!! Watch me Hula Hoop! After watching him (and taking several minutes to recover from the giggles) I grabbed my camera and had him do it again. And now to share with everyone:

Happy Birthday Ashton.....A Little Late

So, you know that week of hibernation where I sewed like a mad woman to finish those amazing costumes? Well during that week, on October 29th to be exact Ashton decided to turn one. I managed to pull myself away long enough to make a cake and buy some presents and even have some family and friends over for cake and ice cream.
Some fun facts about Ashton's first year of life:

*He has NEVER been a good eater
*He started out life a couple of ounces heavier than Trevor, but has since become my most petite baby. He usually weighs in at less that 50%
*He was an early crawler and walker taking his first steps around 9 months and walking all the time by 11 months.
*After learning how to walk he quickly learned how to get up AND down the steps and will now throw his toys down the steps, crawl down and get them, crawl back up the steps and do it all over again.
*There was no fooling him at Trick or Treating time. If people skipped his basket he screamed at them...I kid you not!
*He is a PRO at losing pacifiers....and finding them: One night Bryan and I had searched the house top to bottom, even checking under beds and couches and carseats for a single pacifier. When we finally gave up and figured we would just let him wear himself out and crash without one he came walking in the room sucking on one. We have NO idea where he found it. (I think he has a hidden stash)
*He could not be more loved by his brothers and sister, mother and father.More pictures of the fun day

Ashton ate his cake until there were no crumbs large enough to pick up. He even tried eating his plate. The next morning I found him standing at the garbage can fishing out the cake plates from the party to finish them off as well!

Super Mario World and Mario Kart Wii

Halloween at Last

And without further delays......I think the pictures will speak for themselves:

The Mario Brothers!!

Koopa Troopas-Jace & Ashton
Donkey Kong-Trevor

Toadstool-AddieToadette-Kaylee

Yoshi-Nathan

Daisy-AndreaPeach-MeThe Davis Family:

The Tucker Family:

The Whole Group (without one green shell that accidentally got left at home!)

The Whole Group (after the Mario Brothers saved the day and ran home to get said green shell!)

So there you have it. It was a fun journey, but I am EXHAUSTED!! It took me all day to recover my house from the week of sewing that took place (that is why the post took so long to put up.) We had fun at the party and are enjoying our spoil of candy (plus the free doughnuts we brought home from the party!)...Until next year......or maybe the year after that....or maybe......

Oh where oh where has the time gone!

I would love to do more posts right now, but alas, I have to hibernate up in my craft room sewing like a mad woman to get my families Halloween costumes done. How long can it take you might ask?? Well this year we are doing a family theme. Last time I did a family theme this is how it turned out:And yes, I sewed all those costumes myself with NO pattern! This year should (knock on wood) turn out pretty good, but it will take ALL week for me to finish. I have asked the Relief Society to bring in meals and plan to just ignore the laundry (hey, it has already been a couple of weeks, why not one more right?) But it will be worth it right? Only time will tell.

Let the Creativity Flow

We have been doing some fun Halloween crafts lately. The first thing we did (for Family Home Evening last week) was to paint pumpkins. The kids each picked a large and a small pumpkin at the store and then they got to paint them. We normally carve pumpkins, but didn't think they would last until Halloween if we cut them up, so painting it was. I was going to have a guess who made that pumpkin contest, but decided that it was pretty obvious who made each one, so decided to just tell you.
Trevor had a lot of great ideasKaylee said "I don't care if it does not look like a face, I just LOVE to put a lot of paint on it!"Nathan was very creative in mixing his colors, he has a great knack for turning any combination of colors into the same shade of gray.
Here is my lovely masterpiece (most of the pumpkins have glow in the dark paint on them, and it makes them look really cool in the dark)
And here is Bryan's (I think he won the coolest pumpkin award)Oh yeah, and Ashton's pumpkinThe next craft was last night for FHE. We got together with Barlow and Andrea and made TONS of graham cracker houses. Then we gathered in the club house at their apartment complex with a few other families to decorate some Haunted Houses. It is normally a Christmas Tradition, but it was REALLY fun to modify it into a Halloween activity. Nathan promptly finished first and fell asleep on a chair (turns out he wasn't feeling well), and Bryan was the last to finish (turns out he is quite creative) All in all it was a great night and I think even our crazy Halloween Aunt and Uncle aka Kim and Ken would be proud of our houses.It was Kaylee's idea to have the eyeball in her mouth (poor thing growing up with 3 brothers)Trevor wanted to show off both sides of his house (some day he will regret making THAT face in every picture I take of him)Nathan put all the candy on this himself (we helped with the frosting glue)Bryan's Masterpiece (notice the dirt landscaping made from crushed graham cracker)And Mine and Ashton's not much to brag about. (Ashton ate tons of candy so that he would stay out of our hair....turns out he wasn't feeling well also and ended up losing most of the candy later that night....yuk!)I am still busy working on costumes. I am half way done, and getting started on the other half....can't wait for the big night!!