Holiday Fun with Cousins!

I hosted a cousins party the week before Christmas where everyone made a snowman craft out of powdered sugar donuts, then they all watched "the goonies" together.

Hello! It's Christmas time!

I went to the school for the holiday open house last week. Here's Sarah in the classroom enjoying a cookie.

Here is Sarah and Jr. goofing around. They only sit a couple of seats away from eachother in class.

Isn't he a goober? ha ha

Here's me and Tommy, he was happy to see me.

Here's a picture of the gym when Mary was performing. She is in the front row with a red dress.

Oh, the cutest thing happened here...Tommy came to me and said "Mom, can you button my top button on my shirt?...because me and Mary are goin' dancing!"

You all know what a nutty person I am by now. I tried the "dog" thing again, and this time it was the biggest catastrophe EVER! This dog looks so cute, doesn't he? Well he was actually a DEMON dog sent straight from hell to torture me! haha They said he was potty trained, but when we left him alone for an hour, we came home to find (and I'm not kidding here) he had squirted out diarrhea in a circle all around the Christmas tree, and I was like "Merry Christmas to you too, buddy"...and it was just all over the livingroom and in Mary and Tommy's room too. So we left him in the downstairs bathroom so we could go get some medicine and different food, and when we got home he had chewed through his harness, knocked the pictures off the wall and chewed them up, chewed the shower curtain, the toiletpaper, the soap container, the water was running in the tub. So we opened the door to find a dog who used to be white, now brownish/yellow who is standing in broken glass/diarrhea/chewed up trash galore. That was all I could take! So back he went to where he came from. I just HOPE I have learned my lesson now.

Merry Christmas to all!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday. I will post pictures later when I get them downloaded. Dad and Lucille came over (and it only took them 45 minutes to get here!) That beats the two to three journey it used to take for them to get here. Lucille's son, Donald also came over. He got divorced last year and he did not have any family to be with. Also, Lisa came over, but her kids were in Oklahoma with their Dad so they were not here.
Every time I peered out of the kitchen, I saw Jared on his laptop watching movies (classic Jared), Dad was playing a giant checkers game with the kids, and Donald was playing catch with Rusty. It was so nice to have loving family around, it was a fantastic Thanksgiving.
One funny part during the day was when Jared tried to take the turkey out of the oven halfway through the baking time, and a bunch of drippings spilled out into the bottom of the oven and caught fire! The turkey escaped the fire and was still delicious. We threw some baking soda on the fire to extinguish it. Then we turned the oven off and eventually vacuumed out all the baking soda and cleaned the oven. Jared went to Walmart and bought a better roasting pan also so it wouldn't happen again. We at at 4pm instead of 2, but who cares? Everything turned out nice and tasty. Good company +Good food =Good Thanksgiving.
Hope you all had a wonderful time as well. As I reflect on what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving, I can name so many blessings. The Lord has been so good to me and I'm just so glad to be alive! I'm glad I can have the opportunity of being a mother! I am grateful for the opportunity to further my education, and be able to help people the rest of my life. I'm thankful for our good health, for Jared's job, for our home, and for each one of my six sweet little angels who light up my life each and every day.

Where to start...

We all had fun outside for most of the day yesterday. We raked up about 15 bags of leaves with hickory nuts galore mixed in there. Our front lawn is so hashed from all those nuts. But we got the front yard looking presentable again, and the kids had a lot of fun in the process.
Thomas & Sam in the leaf pile

Rusty in the leaf pile!
Grandpa and his little helpers have been hard at work building the treehouse in the back yard. It's a lot more work than we planned, and it probably won't get finished this year, but it is looking good so far!

Jr. up in the treehouse in our back yard...with Grandpa

Jr. and Isaac with Grandpa up in the treehouse
Here's Grandpa mixing concrete for the footings in the wheelbarrow.
Working together on their project!
Here's me and my little Gord. I am having so much fun with him these days.
I went to the temple with my temple buddies...
And we met up with Dad and Lucille!!! It was great to go to the temple with some family! I hope this will be a regular occurance.
Rusty wanted me to squirt some whipped cream into his train so he could have fun eating it...
And he had so much fun!
I love having kids!!!
Tommy was iron man on Halloween...
Mary was a bunny this year...
Jr. was a green alien. He wouldn't put his wig back on for the photo though, so you can't see how cute he was.
Isaac was a powerful WIZARD!
I've got power and fashion!
Did I post this picture yet? Jr. got his braces off in October.

Before
and After...what a difference. Isn't he adorable? I sure think so.
Take care people. I hope you are all in good health! Meanwhile, I'm still plugging away trying to be superwoman and do it all. I must be crazy!

I've been so busy!!!

I cannot believe it's been over a month since I posted anything on here. I've been so busy with school that I hardly noticed! Well, I am doing well this week because I'm between classes. I will start into fundamentals of nursing on Monday. I've already learned basics of patient care (you know, bathing and feeding and changing linens, vital signs etc.). Now I'm going to start learning about head to toe assessment. I get to go to the VA this semester and have my own patient for a day also! Sue said that the old men fight over the student nurses over there. Ha ha ha!
We've been busy around here with this and that. Sam turned 4 in August. Happy birthday little buddy.

He loves going to preschool. He comes home and sings a song to us "rise and shine and welcome to school today". It is really cute. He is growing up so fast! It is nice that he has something of his own.
We all had fun spreading mulch around the bushes in the front yard. Even little Rusty helped out. We love working together as a family.
Mary went to dance camp for a week this summer (during the day only). She learned some really cute new dance/cheers. I cried at the recital. She really has a special gift for dancing.
We went out to the lake and had a picnic with all the cousins. We roasted hot dogs and let the kids run as far as they wanted out into the sprawling park. They had a blast together. Then we went swimming after the picnic in our favorite lake. I had so much fun playing in the water, you would think I was one of the kids! haha
I will try to keep up on my posting better.