Christmas Shinanagans

"Mom!  Come quick. Max is stuck!"

I walk outside with Rhett to find this little stinker perched on the shed. HA!  Since he was not actually in too much peril, I stopped for a quick snap shot, while laughing, to document this silly boy.

Luke loves to sing, and was in the school choir again this year. His favorite song of the production was one with lines like, "Santa Clause, Santa Clause, you are much too fat. I was sleeping peacefully and now my bed is fla-at! Oh Santa Clause, Santa Clause, how much do you weigh? I'm glad I'm not a reindeer, who has to pull your sleigh." (apparently he fell through the house and landed on the child in the song..)   I think it was teaching the kids about the importance of exercise, and how to treat other people respectfully :) HA!  But they all loved it and the principal dressed up as Santa (to which Rhett informed me that he WASN'T the real one.  It was just their teacher.) And the performance was super cute. (and I would show the clip, only the woman in front of me kept moving her head into whichever spot I moved it to for filming.  I guess filming from my seat wasn't my best option....)

Kade learned how to play the recorder this year. Woo Woo.  So their concert was also lovely with singing and playing and jolly-ness.

We went to a work Christmas White Elephant party for Jess' job at Provo City Attorneys and brought pickles--cause they're gross. I forget some people like them.

 turn into:

UGLY SWEATER PARTY! Woo Woo!  So who was excited that she lived next to a DI and could buy dolls for cheap? This girl.  Who felt SUPER strange and morbid tearing/cutting said dolls heads off? This girl! HA! But it was for a really really good and important cause.  I wanted to win the trophy. Which trophy?

THIS BAD BOY!  Woo Woo! Came home a winner people.  And as my brother BJ put it, 

"Doll heads will win every time." 

So true B.J. So true.

We ALWAYS look forward to the Lindquist White Elephant Christmas Party!  We've been going since we both lived in Georgia and for the past two years since they've lived here! YAY! They know how to throw a party!  Jessica's shirt was A-MAZE-ING.  I mean...it didn't win...but...(I kid Jessica....I kid.)   Love her.

BTW--we gave a shocking pen...(a pen that shocks you when you try to write with it! HA!--) and a box full of doll bodies for our gift.  HA HA HA HA!  I for real think that's sooo funny!  But also slightly massively CREE-PY!

SYTYCD

So for Christmas this year Julie took us all out to eat (Olive Garden--mmmm) and to see....

So You Think You Can Dance!

Woo Woo!

It was awesome and they were so so great.  It's amazing that while some of us, (ahem...me) have no ability to dance and not look like a siezure is happening, while others make you feel so much (not embarrassment) and be so entertained.  These guys were good! THANKS JULIE!

(Also, it should be mentioned that all these beautiful girls in Jess' family are all dancers--they are awesome and could tell you just how insanely hard all the things we saw were...and probably do a lot of it still.  They're fancy.)

Grandpa's Funeral

We love this man! He is so funny and quiet and easy going.  Jess has memories of Grandpa ALWAYS always always being happy to see them.  He would stop what he was doing and just listen to them.  He was always great about just listening.  He remembers going to a couple of football games with him when he was young and Grandpa was super excited that they were there, and about being at the game. 

"He really just always always cared that we were there."

(grandpa had just given Kade and Luke some of his old hats)

The funeral was beautiful! Jess, Aubrey and their cousin Brandon sang the opening song, "Oh My Father" (Andrea played) and it was so perfect.  Then Julie and Laurie gave the eulogy, together side by side--they're both criers and wanted someone to take over if one started. The two of them are the perfect example of what sisters should be--close and hilarious together.  Love them.  Jess' cousin Kayla sang next- "The Lord's Prayer"-it was incredible.  Her voice was so sweet, peaceful, and lovely to listen to. She cried at the end and couldn't finish--which only increased the attention to the feeling we all had of love and gratitude for our Fathers plan for us.  Then Barry spoke and told such great, honest, and beautiful stories about Grandpa.  Then all the grandkids and all the great-grandkids sang, "I Feel My Saviors Love".  I don't believe there was one grandchild that kept from tearing up.  The Spirit was so strong in the room.  To close the meeting Andrea and Aubrey sang "The Lord is My Shepherd" while Emily played the piano.  Lovely.

The grave site was reverent and peaceful.  The 21 gun salute scared Max and Rhett--mostly just from shock, but they recovered well.  And Veda was so beautiful and kind and perfect and AMAZING like she always is. She's such a wonderful, funny, and thoughtful woman.  Always graceful and poised and we love her!

Family Pictures 2014!!!

I can just go on and on about how great our photographer was.  She was just so smart about everything. We were only there for about 30 minutes.  She placed us in the spot she wanted and took like 30 shots of one scene, all the while directing our every posture, smile, and reminding those who cared--to suck in :)  Plus, she took so many at one spot so if we needed to have a head swapped out to make a family picture look good with everyone, she could do it. For real. She's so smart and great.  Erin Summerill for anyone who needs family pictures taken in Utah :)

I know..this one seems like of cheezy, but I love it and the kids thought it was fun.  So there you have it.

Seriously--no work was done on any of these pics--she got them all to smile! Magic.

While Jess and I were getting our picture taken, the boys, off to the side, started a little leaf war.  She got a few of them. Ha! I think Luke was in the process of rubbing Kade's face into the ground. Oh, brotherly love. :)

Ahhh.  I like him.

And here's my favorite 2!  Ah.  Good times.  Plus, they all were happy the whole time because of the shortness of the whole thing.  Real smiles everyone! Real! so happy.

Jess was behind Erin and acting so silly that the boys all started busting out laughing.  I want them to stay like this forever. That's okay right?!

End of Year Favorite Randoms

The first snow-fall of the season!  I'm actually kind of lame when it comes to cold. I hate the cold..just not a fan. I love how pretty everything is....I'm just kind of a pansy in cold...ANYWAY--that being said, I'm soooo glad that even though my mind was saying, "Just let them play outside and make a snowman while you stay nice and warm inside--cause this is the start of MANY snowy days where you'll be able to do it again..." that I didn't listen. Because this winter was a doosy and this was one of our only snowy days! It was crazy. So we booked it out, made a snowman, and sled until we'd worn through to the grass and were ready for dinner.  It was so fun. I love watching the kids eat so much snow. They love the stuff--it just makes me smile.  Good Snow Day and Happy Mothering  Day.

Every Sunday it seems there is a new "fort" up in the kids rooms. HA!  This image made me laugh so we took some pictures of how "tall" Max had gotten!  It makes me laugh (read: cringe) how much stuff the kids feel they have to get out to make a fort each week.  This week it was my favorite--just some blankets tucked into the bunk beds--but when they pull out every book and every table and every toy it's so insane to try and find where the actual 'fort' is supposed to be. :)  Forts. Ha!

For Weeblos Kade and his troop did an AMAZING puppet show. They even made their own puppets and did a Star Wars theme. It was adorable and very entertaining!  Kade has Hans Solo and Chewbacca.  Aren't they all so adorable?!

For Kade's 11th b-day me and Jess took him out to do whatever he wanted. So, on the night of, he chose Tucanos---mostly because he LOVES meat with all his 11 year old heart!  He even got a specialty drink to boot!  He's so funny to watch savor his new flavors!  He even tried chicken heart--which I think was super gross and grainy and kind of disturbing, but he said he liked it...so...alrighty!

Then a couple days later Jess and I took him to a Lions Club/Outdoorsman Club Shooting Range where he got to use some high-powered air-soft riffles and shoot them at targets and pop cans.  It was fun.  It's so nice to spend some one-on-one time with that kid.  It's hard in a bigger family but it's sooo nice when we make it happen.

As it got closer to Christmas time, Rhett came into my room with a Snowman note pad and had decided that he needed to write Santa a letter.  So, since he had learned how to write most of his letters, he proceeded to ask how to spell things and get 3-4 letters on each page.  His final letter was pretty short because of how hard it is to write letters for a pre-schooler--but he was soooo adorable about it, just laying on my bed, earnestly trying to write out everything and rejecting any help.  Cute stuff.

During early morning choir one day, while practicing for their Christmas program, Luke was playing with a little suction-cup spike that had fallen off his bike helmet....and decided to suction his head for several minutes at a time.  HA! These bad boys were so bold for probably 3 days!

(incidentally, something that I DON'T have a picture of, but for which  I was so glad that his forehead decorations were covered up, was when he sang in Relief Society.  A few weeks before my friend DeAnne had asked if one of my boys could help with her Christmas lesson. She asked if he could come in at the end of the lesson, dressed as a shepherd boy, and sing Silent Night acapella for the closing song.  Rhett said he'd be too nervous, and Luke jumped at the chance. He likes to sing and I swear has no fear.  So he practiced the words with the piano for a little while and wasn't nervous AT ALL when the time came.  Her lesson was so wonderful and the Spirit was definitely there testifying to all the things she spoke of. And when Luke walked in and sang with his sweet innocent voice, there were lots of tears in the room.  It was wonderful!

Later that day she brought him over a giant plateful of cookies. He shared one with everyone and with the remainder of the cookies put the tin-foil back on and wrote, "Please ask if you'd like one". Which I thought was sweet cause he's always trying to get money from everyone for anything.  But by morning the note had changed to say, "Cookies, .50.  Please ask if you'd like one."  Oh Luke! HA!

Just cute little pic of Max and Grandma practicing the piano!

SCHOOL PICTURES!!!

KADE--5TH GRADE

LUKE-3RD GRADE

RHETT-PRE-SCHOOL

MAX-HOME WITH MOM :)

Clue Night with our Buddies

We had SUCH A FUN evening with the Lindquists!  It was a Clue Night at the Bean Museum down in Provo.  We were supposed to dress up from the 1920's for an evening party and we didn't know what to expect after that.  (except that dinner was included--we're all about that.) 

So we ate and they explained the game. 

It was a entire night of solving riddles and clues given by the characters from the movie Clue! So great.  

Some of our favorite riddles:

I build up castles.  I tear down mountains. I make some men blind, I help others to see.
What gets wetter the more it dries?
I have a neck, but no head; two arms, but no hands.  What am I?
You can't see it.  It weighs nothing. If you put it in a barrel, it gets lighter.
How far can a dog walk into the woods?


It was sooooo fun for the four of us to work together to solve them!  We just love hanging out with these two!

(rock/sand, towel, shirt, a hole (I have issues with this one...cause I think you could see a hole..that's all), and half-way--cause after that he's walking OUT)

6th Annual Tree Jumping!

Yup... We keep doing this. It's crazy and there's always the risk of a serious break...but it's like the fall leaves just CALL to these boys.  So we do what we can to help them survive each new year of tree jumping.

I'm so glad that Max was nervous and wanted to jump to Scott cause he was the tallest.  Love to know that kid has boundaries!  (not that his parents are apparently teaching him that :/)

Here's Kade 6 years ago--5 years old--doing the same thing! 

Happy Halloween 2014

Max LOVES balls so so so so so much!  His favorite is usually the one that his older brothers are currently playing in Rec ball, but he ALWAYS has a ball with him. So when we found a little football costume it was the one!  He loved it!

Rhett had wanted to be a Knight...or so we thought when we bought his Knight costume a month and a half before Halloween--only to find out he really only wanted a sword, and didn't want to be a Knight. Not sure how I didn't see that :).  So a couple days before Halloween we took our unused AMAZING costume back to Costco to see if they had something else to exchange it for.  Well, we crazy lucked out cause there were like 5 costumes left and only one in his size and gender and it had HAND CUFFS, and BINOCULARS, A COOL HAT AND GLASSES and he was like a spy.  He loved it and totally acted the part.  Since he's in his cute little pre-school class, he got to do a costume parade through all the big kids classes on Halloween.  Kade and Luke loved it too.
(notice Max doing the 'Sasquatch photo bombing' in the back of this photo :)

Luke and his good friend Ian both decided to be Ninja Turtles....well, first they wanted to be Good Cop/Bad Cop from the Lego movie, but since that was gonna be hard, and this costume fell together so easily, and they love Ninja Turtles, they changed their plan and were both TMNT's!  RAD!

Kade had decided months before that he wanted to be Anikan Skywalker....and had even started growing out a Jedi braid (much to my happiness :/)  Then during one of his hair cuts I totally forgot about it and buzzed it right off! AHHHH!  He was so so so sad, and mad at first, but then, after he calmed down, "and felt peaceful all over" he forgave me and we went with Anikan AFTER he became a Jedi..and was starting to go bad, instead of as a padawan.  He looked so cool.  Plus he was able to pick what outfit he wanted me to make and totally owned it.

Kade went trick-or-treating with his FRIENDS this year. No adults even. How crazy is that?  They were all instructed that they had to stay within the ward boundaries and stay together and he had the cell phone with him.  I was slightly nervous, but this is such a good neighborhood and his friends are good kids and we know all the houses he was going to...so we went for it!  And everyone survived.  Luke went with his friend Owen and his dad and I took the little guys around with Melanie Curtis and her cute kids.  Everyone got a good haul, and met back up at our house to watch Ernest Scared Stupid. Classic.  Candy was eaten, kids loved it, and everyone was safe and cute. It was a Happy Halloween!