Out of The Mouths of My Babes

Since the beginning of the year Becca has become a little more independant. She has started going to Puggles(the youngest Awana group) at church. She is totally getting into praying especially at bedtime. She prays, the Dani prays and lastly Gretchen prays.

It touches my heart that kids at such a young age have a love of praying and their prayers are so honest and true. I'm always a bit surprised about what comes out of Gretchen's mouth and very careful about what we discuss around others.

Tonight Gretchen's prayer went like this. "Thank you Jesus for this day, thank you for the dolphins and Tiffany and Alex. Help Baby Kinley to get better and Baby Kayleigh. Help Mom to not go crazy. Amen." She totally clues in to how my day went.
Thanks Gretchen for praying for Mama.

Here I Come Tiffany and Alex!!!!!!

When our friends Tiffany Kimball and her fiance` were home for Christmas Gretchen decided she needed to go to Florida with them and swim with the dolphins. Tiffany told her that she needed to save her pennies and grow a little bit and then she could come. Gretchen has talked of nothing else since she was given the go-ahead. She even prays for the dolphins every night.
She definitely keeps us on our toes and she's just so stinkin' cute all you can do is smile.

sorry the video is sideways

Winter Fun!

The kids are having so much fun in the snow. This is right off the back deck and they have made a little slide off all the snow that has been thrown there.
The weather has been really warm lately which has been so nice but not so good for the snow.


I love this picture of Gretchen. Her hat is pushing her brows down and she can hardly keep her eyes open. As long as she stays warm, right?!

Man, I love this kid. She's about the most beautiful thing ever, don't ya think.

I'm not partial at all!

Christmas

Christmas this(last) year was so awesome! It was one of the most "relaxing" Christmas's that we've had in a really long time. We started off by going to Idaho Falls to Tony's mom's and spent a couple days with her. We came home Christmas Eve and made it home just in time before the big storm hit. It started snowing Christmas Eve night about 6 and didn't stop until about 10 Christmas morning. When I went to bed there was about 8 in. on the deck.

I didn't go to bed 'til 4 Christmas morning. It is tradition that we have homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast and I volunteered to make dinner rolls for Christmas dinner at my moms. I decided that since I was in the baking mode I would just stir up a batch of the best sugar cookies in the world. To make a long story short, my cinnamon rolls raised faster than I thought they would and had dough all over the garage, my rolls didn't want to raise and I thought I was going to have to start over but they finally raised, and the sugar cookies make about 8 doz.

At 3:30 while I was waiting for the oven I heard noises from upstairs. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs. It was Than. He didn't know that I was still up and he came around the corner and about wet himself when I asked him what he was doing up. He told me, "My body said it was time to get up. " I told him the my body was telling him to go back to bed and not come back downstairs until 5:30. At 5:30 on the dot he came in and asked if it was okay to go back downstairs.

At 7 when Tony got up to see about the snow, I decided I'd get up too. When I came downstairs and looked out the window there was 22 in. on the deck. Yes, it snowed 14 in. in 3 hours. After 3 more hours of shoveling and snow blowing we had breakfast, then finally got started opening presents.

I didn't post any present pictures because you'd be here for the rest of time. No, the kids didn't get that many present, but when you have four kids you get a lot of pictures. I did post a couple videos of Than opening his main gift. It was priceless!

these two pictures are out our front door

Than was working on the deck and fell off and sunk.

yes, that is snow still falling. talk about some big flakes.


video 2 video 3

video 1

When Will I Ever Use This In Real Life?!

I'm BACK!!!! It's not that we haven't been busy, just on blog-post-burnout. We have been quite busy actually. I've always wanted the stereo-typical soccer mom title. Run, Run, Run, and to be the "cool mom". I don't know if I still have the "cool mom" title with all my kids, but we do run, run, run.

So far this school year Than has played soccer and bowled and the youth bowling league. At this time both activities are done. He is also involed with AWANA at church which is once a week. And let's not forget school.

Being a homeschool project myself, I am asked somewhat regularly why I don't homeschool my own kids. I'll tell you why. I can't teach above average children and keep them challenged the way my son needs to be challenged. And I love them tooooo much to subject us all to that kind of torture. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against homeschooling, it's just not for my family. It's a calling from God that I don't have.

After parent teacher confrences, something I have always loved, I realized somethings not only about myself but about Tony and our mixed gene pool we call our children. Than has always been above average(gets it from Tony). This was confirmed yet again. He reads at an 8th grade level, but chooses not to most of the time(also from Tony) and has totally skipped 5th grade math and is in 6/7 grade math, which is taught by a different teacher than his home room teacher. We were told at the beginnig of the year that he was bumped up to the advanced class and to not expect anything over a C. Going into confrences he had a B- and that it could be higher, we still neede to go talk to the math teacher. I was sooooo proud of him, he was above what I was expecting. After talking to the math teacher we were told that indeed his grade was a B- and to be able to stay in the class he had to pull the grade up to and A. What? An A? Why?
Totally caught off guard by this report the controll freak in me came rearing it's head. What do we need to do to get this grade up, 'cause by golly I won't have any child of mine dropped down to a lower class! Here is the answere we got: Than needs to ask questions when he doesn't understand things, Than is not showing up for all the "extra credit" study time before quizzes and tests' (being at school at 7:30), Than needs to try the extra credit work(problems that the students only have to attempt to get 10 pts toward their grade). Oh, the Than is a quiet kid thing again(get's it from Tony). I simply don't get the quiet thing!
So, in the three weeks since confrences Than has brought his B- up to an A-, has been asking questions, showing up early when necessary, and attempint the EC work and getting it right. Oh yeah, I also kinda threatend him with being tutored, which would entail him talking to someone. You can do anything when you have a very persistant and vocal mother behind you.
We are so proud of him, I knew that grade would come up.

I know, I know, where am I going with all of this? One of things Than has to do is bring his math homework home so that I can check it before it's turned it. I'm finding I remeber a lot more than I thought I did from ???? years ago when I was in 5th-7th grade. Right now he's doing fractions and decimals. Sounds like fun doesn't it?

The answer to my title question. When will I ever use this in real life? When you have kids and they need help on their homework. That's when!

Two main things I came away from confrences are: 1) Tony and Than are more and more like each other every day. They don't like to talk, be around too many people, and apply themselves to their fullest potential. 2) I may need to go back to school so I understand how they are teaching kids these days.

Dani is still in dance once a week and absolutly loving it. Her confrences went great. She is slightly above average and such a little mother to the class.

Gretchen and Becca are still my babies at home and we are all loving it.

Hope this post makes sence to all of you.

Outside Fun

I took these pictures the other day, Dec. 10. As you can see there is no snow on the ground and barely any on the mountains. We took advantage of the unusually warm Dec. day and played outside for quite awhile.

beautiful Becca, I just love that faceclean faces are totally over-rated

Gretchen and Nevaeh

Becca having fun on the big swing. This is the best I could get, she wouldn't leave her eyes open.

Pancakes Anyone?

Gretchen has been asking for pancakes for breakfast and since we were out of milk I decided she would get her wish. All the girls love helping in the kitchen and pull their little chairs in to "help". Gretchen is getting really good at putting the ingredients in the bowl and learning how to use a whisk. Here are pictures from start to finish. Enjoy!