Winter finally came

The kids have had a lot of fun playing in the snow this year. I can't believe how much more they have played in the snow since having a dog. Emma follows them everywhere and is so fun to play with. She runs in snow that is deeper than her and it looks so funny. I wish I had a picture of Emma when she went on the sled with Lynn. She is such a good dog. We have been able to let her come inside in the evenings when it gets really cold and she will stay right on her bed. She knows if she gets off she has to go out. So far it has been a good system and Joanna hasn't had an allergic reaction. We sure enjoy our snow blower that we got for Christmas. We had around 18" of snow on Christmas day.

Oldest and Youngest

This is Robert's latest look. Church ball is getting a little too rough. A foul by Robert's best friend was made against Robert which caused him to smack his tooth on the gym floor.
Fortunately we have a dentist in our ward who went and glued it back on at 9:00 that night. He said it still has a 50/50 chance of the tooth dying but since we found the piece and got it glued on before it dried up we might have a chance of it being ok without more work done. I know it wasn't Robert's fault but I couldn't help notice that most people don't chip their front tooth 3 times before they are even 18!

My baby is officially four years old.

He enjoyed making a cake and having breakfast served in bed!

Bad mother moment

One of the reasons I don't update my blog or write e-mails as much as I should is because of the neglect my kids get when I do. Tonight I had Joanna take the Costco cordon bleu chicken out of of the oven and told her to start feeding everyone as I was at the computer. The kids were half way done eating before I realized the chicken wasn't done and they were eating raw chicken. Joanna ate the most because she was trying to be nice and not say the dinner was gross!
So, now the waiting game begins to see if any of my children get sick because I'm a neglectful mom. So, what do I do about it? Go write the experience in my blog and spend more time at the computer. I am weird.

Wednesday blues

Instead of having "Monday blues "I have "Wednesday blues" today and I'm not sure how long they will last. As if I wasn't depressed enough after last nights election results then I had to wake up this morning to about 8 inches of snow. It does look beautiful ,and the kids are all excited ,but for me it is a reminder of what I have to deal with for the next few months. Cold, snow, and staying indoors a lot. I could have skipped winter this year! Our poor dog was wondering what in the heck all this snow was after living in St. George her whole life. We are hoping she adapts and that we don't feel sorry for her all winter long.

It was quite wild getting everyone ready to go out in the snow. If each person in our family has socks, gloves, hat, coat, snowpants, and boots that comes out to be 72 pieces of clothing! I was amazed that I was able to find most of them and fortunately being able to pass clothes down the line helps out! Again we appreciate anyone who has given us clothes to help out. We sure get our use out of them.

Lynn and I went on a quick trip to Las Vegas last week as he had a conference there. I got to spend some time with my friend Amy who lives there while he was in the conference. Then we got to go to some shows while there. Lynn surprised me and took me to the Donny and Marie show which we both enjoyed. Then the conference treated us to the cirque de sol? (Ka). It was also very good.

I was sure grateful to my mom for tending. She did a great job. Lynn and I got home about 4:00 on Halloween day just in time to get the kids ready for trick or treating. I will be glad when the candy is gone and Kyle doesn't beg for candy all day.

Memories

Both my dad and Lynn's mom's birthday are in October so we always have a tender heart when remembering the both of them and what wonderful people they were. It is interesting to wonder about how much they are allowed to be involved in our lives. I know I still think about both of them a lot and I still feel their influence and love. We sure don't like that "c" word. We miss them both.

Lagoon

We had a great day last Saturday at Lagoon. We are thankful for antibiotics that made Dallin well enough to be able to come. His high temperatures last week ended up in pnemonia. Kyle was so happy to find out what Lagoon was all about. He had seen pictures of of us at Disneyworld and he asked "where am I?" He wasn't happy when I told him we had left him home. He was really brave and even went on the tidal wave and liked it (for awhile). Dallin loved the big roller coaster and all the other kids loved every ride. I was really scared to go on wicked but Lynn convinced me to go. It was fun. Before we got to Lagoon I convinced Lynn to stop at Costco for some things we really needed. I couldn't believe it when he agreed to let everyone come in. We walked around with 6 kids eating all the samples we could find. We made quite a scene at the drink area because we were trying to decide what kind of drinks to get for lagoon. It is nearly impossible to please 8 people but Gatorade won out. I told Lynn he has come a long way to be able to handle going to a very busy store with all of his kids and still be in a good mood when we walked out. That isn't easy.

Fall Break

A few weeks ago Lynn and I approached the topic of fall break and what we were going to do. We went the rounds deciding between Lake Powell, Goblin Valley, Salt Lake, Uintah, Camping in the desert, home sweet home, Midway. I don't know how many of you are trying to please kids from age 17 down to 4 but if you are you know something of the stress. I know kids have to grow up but it is so hard when they aren't happy doing something like swimming anymore. Well, after much debate about the time, effort, and money it costs to do anything we ended up spending Thur. hanging out at home and had fun with Kathy and Jeff's family. We then ended up pawning Robert off at Jeff and Kathy's (thank you) and taking the kids to Uintah yesterday to a pool that Lynn's company built. It was a really fun place and the kids were thrilled despite the long drive to get there. I keep wondering if I will ever enjoy swimming once I am not stressed about watching anywhere from 1-3 kids who can't swim. Lynn was working on the pool and so I just spend my time thinking "where's Kyle? where's Dallin, etc? Fortunately we were all safe and sound.
Today we decided to start off the day working on projects around the house. I begged Lynn to help James and Taylor with their wood boats (in place of pinewood derby's) for the raingutter regatta this week. It made me want to watch the hilarious movie "Down and Derby" about the fathers who go a "little" out of control with their kids derby cars. Then we switched to helping James with his haunted house for his school project that has to have a light switch. While Lynn was helping him I was helping Joanna with her school project and trying to get halloween costumes ready for our Halloween Party at Kent and Janies tonight. I really am grateful my kids aren't too picky about costumes as ours are pretty pathetic. I somehow missed the creative gene and we will never have homemade cute costumes. We get a lot of use out of dracula capes and black clothes and have come up with some good ways to interchange old costumes into new ones. Finally everyone had a costume (except for Lynn and I wasn't going to push that one.) Neither Lynn or I are big Halloween fans of dressing up and so we are thankful for others who do it and make life fun.
We then decided to go hunting for treasures with Lynn's newest "toy". I'm not sure of the official name but it is like a car "gps" but you can hold it in your hand. You put in a destination and it points the way for you to go. We put in a bunch of Midway locations where people have hidden "treasures" around. You find the treasure and take something out and leave something else in its place and then write your name on the log. We found one at our churchyard called "the write way" that had a bunch of writing utensils and notepads. It had been placed only a few days ago. We found one at the Homestead that has been there since 2005. It was really fun and the kids loved searching for "treasures".
Dallin wasn't feeling good and when we got home I took his temperature and found he had a high fever and much to his disappointment we decided to have me stay home with him and the rest of the family went to the Halloween party. He is sleeping right now which is why I grabbed a moment at the computer.
So, it was a laid back fall break but fun to be together and I appreciated Lynn spending it with us.