Monday, December 28, 2015

Christmas Day

There's nothing as magical as watching kids on Christmas morning. The excitement as they get to see what they were brought Christmas morning. This year we were privileged to have my parents and Kimball visiting for Christmas. It's always nice to have more people around. Everything is just more fun.

 

 

Jane went straight for the stocking, she may have looked at her doll but she wanted to move on and see what else she got.

Nellie went for the stocking too!

Russ liked his bow and arrow that he got from Santa

Annie was pretty excited about her babies and all of the baby gear. She didn't seem to really care about getting in her stocking as far as she was concerned she was all done.

Lizzy likes the stocking as well. And honestly who can blame them. The stocking was also my favorite as a kid. Just the excitement of what fun goodies might be inside.

 

 

Russy was pretty exited about getting so many new toys this year. He got a lot of Legos and that is probalby one of his favorite things to do right now. He will build them for hours. It's so fun having a boy.

Lizzy was all about the clothes this year. That's all she asked for. She is really growing up. It's sure fun to see all the kids and how much they change every year.

It was fun with Annie and Russ this year. They really seemed to get the whole present thing so it was really fun to watch their excitement.

 

This was the shopkins year for Nellie. She got a bunch of shopkins and wouldnt you know about a month later she was no longer into them. I guess that's just how it goes sometimes.

My sweet babe was so tired and slept the whole morning, but honestly it was probably for the best so we could focus on the other kids and not worry about a baby crawling through all the wrapping paper and getting into everything.

One of my favorite things on Christmas is when all the present opening is done and the kids get ready and just go and play with all their new stuff. Jane had all her doll stuff set up.

Lizzy and Nellie had fun making all the different things with Nellie's new Legos.

One of my all time favorite things is that living in California, Christmas is usually still pretty warm, so the kids will always go outside and play. Theydecided to go and play hungers games because Lizzy was way intoitatthe time and with Russy's new bow and arrow it worked out perfectly.For Lizzy anyway. I still don't know how she c'mon ex Russ to lether have the bow when he just barely got it.

Such a great day! It was another great Christmas!

 

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

A Christmas Party!!

Once upon a time I told the kids that I had a Halloween party in fifth grade. Lizzy had asked me if she could have one in fifth grade too, I told her yes because that was way in the future. Well lo and behold that time had come. October is retry crazy for me becuase of Halloween and having two birthdays in the month so I told the kids that we could have a Christ,as party instead, thinking December would be less crazy?! December rolled around and the kids kept asking and I kept delaying. I also had to host bunch in the month and we had our Anniversary and all the candy making and school stuff. It was a circus, but I didn't want to go back on my word, so a few days before Christmas, surprisingly not as crazy as the week before, we had a Christmas party and invited 14 kids, in addition to the ones we already have. It ended up being really fun though!

We separated into groups and one group did a craft while the other decorated cookies.

The kids loved decorating their gingerbread men, the only problem was we did it in groups and the kids that went first we really had to try and reign in becuase they were trying to use up ann the candy, but the same thing happened to the craft supplies.

 

One of the favorite things was the game stacking snowmen marshmallows. after the games we had a little free time before parents came so we had a freeze dance dance party.

Even though it was at a stressful time, it ended up being such a fun time, and I think it may be something we end up doing again.

 

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Christmas Activities

I am a little bit sad to admit that we didn't do a ton of christmas activities this year. We did do our usualy dancing at night and watching some fun Christmas shows, but this year has been a little but hard on me. I sometimes feel like I am barely making it through each day and so trying to go above and beyond and do extra stuff gets pretty hard for me. I am really hoping by this year next time I won't feel quite so overwhelmed and I can start to think about doing more things. One really amazing thing that we did was we went to a live nativity that was at the temple grounds. I was seriously blown away. The music was amazing and so we're all the costumes, but more than anything I felt the spirit so strong. I hope that it had a little impact on the kids as well.

It actually was a real baby and it made it even more special I think.

The lighting was really bad to take a picture, but we ended up with one sort of. It is definitely something that I plan on doing with the kids every year. It was even better becuase we just happened to bring a stroller and becuase we did we got to go to the front of the line. Score one for us!

Jane did a little Christmas program too, and it was so fun to get to go and see her perform. She does such a great job. She just loves her best friend Maxim so much!

I got to take Annie on her first Christmas date this year. I may have explained in the past, but every Christmas we take the kids on a date where they pick out a present for the sibling that they have that year and then they get a treat. I really think it may be my kids favorite Christmas tradition. It was fun to have Annie be old enough to take this year. I tried to take her to the mall, but we circled the parking lot for 20 mintues to no avail. It was crazy! Finally from the backseat Annie yells "mom lets just go to target!!!" And she really did yell, that girl has a bit of a yelling problem, she's a feisty one. So we went to Target and she picked a present for Russy and got herself an icee. It was a perfect little date.
We did our annual trip with a ward group where we go walk around a neighborhood in Rocklin and look at the lights and then meet up and havetreats. It was so warm the night we went that we barely needed jackets. It was pretty awesome. I loved this picture of the kids with the inside out group. Nellie totally fits with sadness.
All in all we had a great Christmas season and had a good time doing fun activities together as a family.

 

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Clara- 9 months

Oh man do I love love this sweet girl! She has turned into the sweetest baby ever! Right around nine months she decided to crawl and when she could get where she wanted she all of a sudden became the easiest going baby ever. Totally content and happy, I love it!!

This baby seriously loves her some berries. I may say this every time, it's hard to remeber, but she is the best eater ever! She LOVES everything! I have yet to find something she won't eat, although probably her last favorite thing is cereal, which is funny because most kids love cereal more than anything. But all fruit and veggies she will eat, all kinds of beans and cheese, everything! It's pretty awesome. I just feed her what we have for dinner which is so nice to not have to try and feed her something else. She didn't do baby food for very long, just like all my kids but that's fine with me, because between you and me baby food is the biggest pain!

All of her siblings love her to pieces!! No one can get enough of the sweet clarabelle!

One problem with a crawling baby though is that when you are working in the kitchen you seem to always have a baby underfoot. She is also obsessed with the dishwasher and seems to have radar for when it is open so she can climb in and get into all the dishes.

We also discovered that she absolutely loves to swing!! She will just giggle like crazy when she is swinging, and her laugh is to die for!

She loves to play with the other kids toys too. She is just the most precious babe and I am so glad that she is mine!!

 

 

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Christmas Decorating

What a circus it was trying to get the Christmas decorations up this year!!!  the kids were so excited about getting the stuff out this year, and I had to make them wait until the day after Thanksgiving.  But then when we did get the stuff out, it was mad chaos.  They couldn't seem to focus on one thing and kept skipping around, (I wonder where that came from) But seriously, it ended up taking way more time than it should have. It was seriously ridiculous, but I guess as long as the kids ended up having fun, that's what matters. 







 Annie was having areally good time hanging the ornaments on the tree. she had hang them all togehter.
 Russy had a good time helping put upthe decorations. He is such a cute boy.

We had Kevy put up the angel at the end because it is tradition for him to do that at the very end.