CHRISTMAS

It's hard to believe another Christmas has come and gone. The kids have been off school since Dec. 12th so we've really been enjoying our nice long break. We've had tons of snow this Christmas so the kids are basically outside playing most of the day. They go sledding behind our house at the church or walk over to the middle school and sled on the hill there. Lots of people have four wheelers in the neighborhood so the kids will tie their sleds to the back of the four wheeler and get pulled around our circle. They love it!

Here is a picture of the stockings being hung by the chimney with care. The arrangement in the vase is all from plants in our backyard.

Here the kids are dressed up to perform the nativity on Christmas Eve. During the month of December we have a manger (a box that I've wrapped in brown paper) sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Next to it is a bag of straw (raffia). Every time they do or say a kind thing to someone, they can put a piece of straw in the manger for baby Jesus. The kids try to get the manger as full of straw as they can so it will be nice and soft. After we perform the nativity, we light a lantern and turn off all the lights. We start from the farthest point in the house and walk to the manger, pretending our lantern light is the star guiding us to Jesus. When we get to the manger we talk about how Jesus loves it when we do nice things and being kind to each other is the greatest gift we can give Him. This is probably the kids' favorite part of Christmas Eve. They love walking through the house when it's pitch dark with only our lantern to guide us.

The last thing the kids do before going to bed is to open one gift which is always pajamas. Then they put on their new pajamas and leave milk and cookies for Santa. Here they are modeling the PJs for 2008.

Christmas morning!

Maryn with gifts from her stocking.

Luke and his new ramp for jumping on his bike, scooter or roller blades.
This is Gabe in his Star Wars Commander Cody costume that he wanted SO badly for Santa to bring. Of course, a week before Christmas he said he didn't want Commander Cody but wanted the Jango Fett costume instead. By then it was too late for Santa to make another costume so Gabe got Commander Cody, but he couldn't have been happier.
Ian and his ball popper that he loves to play with.
Maryn in her new Heelys.
Luke and his Heelys.
Gabe and his Star Wars gun and battle ship.
Ian and his ride on toy.

Lots of pictures!

Below, I've taken some of my favorite pictures from the last few years and put them into slideshows. Each year has its own slideshow. Enjoy!

2008

2007

2006

2005

Fourteen Years!

Daron and I have been married fourteen years! Our anniversary was yesterday, December 17th. We take turns planning our anniversary each year and surprising the other person. This year it was Daron's turn to plan. He took me to dinner at a restaurant called Chandlers which I had heard of but never been to before. The food was AMAZING! If there's one thing I love to do in life, it is eat good food! I had the best spinach salad for the appetizer with a chunk of warm, crusted goat cheese on top. My mouth waters just thinking about it. I then had fillet Mignon which was so tender it seemed to melt in my mouth.
After dinner we went and saw Lord of the Dance! I have always wanted to see this and it was every bit as good as I had hoped. When the intermission came, I looked at my watch because it felt like we had just sat down, and we had been sitting there for almost an hour! Our seats were about 10 rows back right in the middle so I could see everything perfectly. I literally could have sat there all night. They are such a talented group of dancers and have so much energy. They had two fiddlers who could fiddle and dance at the same time, and a singer who had such a beautiful voice.
It was such a fun night and of course the company was great. I'm very thankful to be married to Daron and for the wonderful husband and father that he is. These fourteen years have gone so quickly and get better all the time. I feel very blessed in so many ways.

Luke's Baptism

We went to Utah for Thanksgiving. It was wonderful to see grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. The highlight of the trip was Luke's baptism. He was so excited to get baptized and receive the Holy Ghost. Grandpa Mike conducted the meeting and had some nice words to say about Luke. Grandpa Brent gave a talk on baptism and about making good choices. He shared a story of young child who was a prince and would be the next king of France. He was kidnapped and exposed to all sorts of vile and evil things in the hopes that the king could be corrupted. After six months, they realized their efforts were failing and the king would not participate in the evil things around him. When asked why, the young child responded, "I was born to be a king." Grandpa Brent told Luke how important it is to remember that we too are born to be kings and how important it is to not take part in the evil around us. Maryn played a piano solo of Amazing Grace and played it beautifully. Daron's confirmation was very touching as he told Luke how much we love him and his Heavenly Father loves him. After the baptism we went to Mike and Sue's for refreshments. Everyone was congratulating Luke and I could tell he was very touched by the whole experience. He came up to both Daron and me at different times during our gathering at the house and told us how much he loved us. It was very sweet. When we got home, he wrote in his new journal for the first time. Being the nosey mom that I am I had to take a peak at what he had written. He said he wouldn't mind me sharing it. He wrote, " When I was at my baptism I felt happy, loving, and grateful for myself. It was weird. I never felt that way before. I liked having everybody around me. I felt good. When I got to my grandma's house, everybody was asking me questions about my baptism. It was fun at my baptism." At church on Sunday Daron bore his testimony and said how much he loves his kids and what a joy it is to see Maryn and now Luke make their first covenant with their Father in Heaven.

Maryn the artist

Maryn came to me and said she wanted to paint a picture of dolphins (she has loved dolphins ever since she got to touch one last month at Sea World). She asked me if I had a blank canvas, which I didn't, so she took a canvas she had painted on a few years ago and painted it totally white. She now had her blank, white canvas so she proceeded to paint this dolphin picture over a number of days. I was very impressed with how patient she was to let certain colors dry before she would add to them, and with what a great job she did.

The Little Munch is Walking!

Ian actually took his first steps when he was 12 months, but he would only take one or two and then get down and crawl. This was different from our other three kids who, once they could take one step, started walking almost exclusively after that. But then again, none of them were the master crawler that Ian is. At 14 months, he finally gave up crawling all together. We have started calling him The Climber because he just HAS to climb. He climbs on anything and everything. He loves to climb up the chairs and onto the kitchen table where he'll then proceed to dump or pour out anything in his path. He loves to climb up on the chair of my computer desk, onto the pull out where the keyboard sits, and up onto the desk where he'll play with the phone and take it off the hook for hours. He has learned to undo all the child locks on the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen even though our other kids couldn't do this until they were three! And of course he has started taking one nap now instead of two; I'm guessing so that he has more time to terrorize.

Luke Turns Eight!

Wow! I can't believe Luke is already eight and will be getting baptized soon! He is growing up into such an amazing boy and we love him so much. He grows like a weed and is already a few inches taller than Maryn who is two years older. He wanted a Vampire cake for his birthday (must still have Halloween on the brain), but decided to go with his favorite football team instead - BYU! Every other year the kids have a friend party starting with age five so this was Luke's year to have a family party. Daron and I took him out to dinner the night before his birthday, and on his birthday we all went to Pojos (like a huge Chuck-E-Cheese).

Two of the things he was most excited about turning eight were getting his own set of scriptures and starting scouts. At scripture study every night he has been using my old ones that are so beat up and have pages missing. He couldn't wait to have a brand new pair. He was also so excited to start scouts since most of his friends have already turned eight, and he has already started memorizing the scout promise.

Halloween!

I must admit, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. We decorate the house the very first day of October, bake and decorate sugar cookies, eat tons of candy corns throughout the month, and this year we did the Pumpkin Run. For the Pumpkin Run we got together with three other families and had dinner. Each family brought a carved pumpkin, a plate of cookies, and a poem to drop on someone's doorstep anonymously. We went after dark, left the stuff on the porch, rang the doorbell, and ran and hid as we watched them open the door. In the poem we left for the family we chose, we told them they had to sing their ABCs before they could take their goodies inside. It was so cute to watch from the bushes as these five little kids sang their hearts out.

We had our ward dinner and trunk-or-treat the Friday before Halloween, and then we went around the neighborhood Halloween night. Maryn and Luke both went off with friends, and I took Gabe and Ian around while Daron passed out candy. It was the warmest Halloween I think I have experienced in my entire life, and we had a great time.

Citizen of the Week

Every week at school, each class will announce the Citizen of the Week to much applause and fanfair. Maryn was named the Citizen of the Week the last week in October. The teacher always writes a poem about the person without the class knowing who it is, and as the poem is read they try to figure out who it is. The poem for Maryn said:

There is nothing spooky about this gal
For she would never play a trick on a pal.
Candy can't compete with this sweet treat!
Her compassion and kindness just can't be beat.

All I Want for Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth

Luke lost his two front teeth in the same night. They were very loose at dinner, and Daron graciously offered to pull them both. Daron LOVES to pull teeth. He does it so well that kids rarely even realize it's gone until he shows it to them in the palm of his hand. We have neighborhood kids and kids from his office come to the house to get their teeth pulled! Anyway, Luke went to bed, decided he couldn't sleep with his teeth so loose, and pulled them both out himself! The tooth fairy rewarded him for his hard work.

CALIFORNIA

We went to California for the kids October break. They get almost three weeks off in October, which I LOVE, because it is such a perfect time to travel. The weather is nice and places aren't crowded and the kids are ready for a break from school. We stayed at the house in Carlsbad and the weather was PERFECT! We spent two days at Legoland. Legoland is great for kids there age because they can go on all the rides. Gabe has to be with an adult most of the time, but he can still ride, and Maryn and Luke can go by themselves. I think this is one of the best amusement parks for kids ten and under.

Daron and the kids spent one day at Sea World while Ian and I went shopping and went to visit a friend. Their aim was to get as wet as they could and they said mission accomplished. They sat in the splash zone at all the shows and rode the rides that go them the wettest over and over.

We spent a day at the beach and the kids had a great time digging in the sad. We met a nice older couple and realized they were LDS when we saw him reading his Book of Mormon. Turns out he was a Catholic priest in Ireland before he converted to the church about 7 years ago.

The big crash

Poor Gabe had his first bike accident. He and a friend were riding home from a neighbors when his friend got a bit too close to Gabe and Gabe lost his balance. I was outside on the driveway when it happened and ran to pick him up. He had a bloody nose, bloody mouth (luckily all the teeth were fine), a scraped up forehead, and gravel embedded in the inside of his lower lip that Daron had to pull out with tweezers. Luckily, Daron had just gotten home from work because he deals with blood much better than I do. Gabe was such a trooper. He was back on his bike the next day and had completely recovered within a week. Thank goodness, little kids are so resilient.

Gabe turns four!

It's hard to believe our Gaber Baber Flavor (his nickname for himself) has turned four! He is growing up so quickly. He really is such a sweet little guy and so much fun to have in our family. He wanted a Batman birthday, of course, so Daron created the perfect Batman design on his cake. He got plenty of Batman presents and says he looks just like Bruce Wayne when he's wearing his Batman mask. I wonder at what age he'll stop praying for Batman in every prayer he says. I think it's only been going on for a year now. Hopefully it won't stop anytime soon because that is one of the many things we love about Gabe. We love him so much and adore his kind, fun-loving personality.

Gabe on two wheels!

Gabe learned how to ride a bike without any training wheels and he's only three! The first time he got on he just took off down the road as fast as he could go, turned around, came back and jumped over the bump in the sidewalk onto the driveway. The look on his face was pure exhiliration. Since Gabe has the tendency to be a bit accident prone, I wondered if we should wait until next summer to take off the training wheels, but he was definitely ready to do it now.

The Peanut turns one!

It's official, the Little Peanut hit the one year mark! He was delighted with his banana cake and ice cream and managed to make a major mess. Although he was crawling at 6 1/2 months, he hasn't started walking yet. He gets around too quickly on his hands and knees to want to bother with standing up. We love having him in our family and his older brothers and sister just adore him. They couldn't wait for him to open his presents and show him how to play with everything. Having babies in the home is definitely more fun with older children around to enjoy them with you.