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.