Oh how Otis has grown

I wanted to post a couple of pictures of Otis so that Joy could see just how much he has grown. His ears still don't stick up all of the way. They kind of curve back on themselves. But he is doing great and we are still glad we got him.

Sledding Again

We had another church sledding activity today. Ugh not a fan of snow. We went to the same place that I went with the Young Women. This time the snow was a lot deeper and it was more powdery. It was hard to go down on our sleds. But we bought some tubes for the kids to use. There were not as many accidents this time. Nichole did get ran over once and did almost a complete flip in the air. And Nate did white wash himself when he made a running start for his tube. The kids had great fun but Ella complained of being cold about 20 minutes into it. She went down on the sled (at snail speed) one time by herself and then I went down with her once on the tube. We had great fun. The Elders Quorum bought 3 dozen doughnuts to feed all of the people that came. We had a total of 10 people come. That equals a lot of doughnuts for all of us.

wii moves and kung fu moves

We haven't been doing a whole lot this week. I have been super busy with Young Women's the last couple of weeks because we had New Beginnings and Nate worked nights the last couple of weeks so the kids have been having to entertain each other. They are more fun then I am anyway. Ella is getting pretty good at Mario Carts. She does not like to use the Wii remote for it at all. So she uses the game cube remote. I love watching her steer the remote because she uses her whole body. She also repeats to herself "Don't stop, don't give up." I think that it is from a show.
I have to set time limits on the wii or else Tyler will be on it all day long.
Lately Ella has convinced Tyler to play Kung Fu with her. She has started playing that since we got Kung Fu Panda for Christmas. The first time she asked me if I wanted to play Kung Fu. I told her sure and then she hit me square in the forehead with her kung fu chop. I was not actually thinking that the game has started yet because I was standing up to play but apparently it was.
Tyler showing off his Kung Fu pose.

Ella showing off her kung fu pose. After she poses she beckons with her hand to bring it on.

Some funny things

Today was a very interesting day. Church was cancelled. I have never heard of that happening but it sure does and it is the second time that it has happened since I moved here. We didn't do much of anything today. Day of rest right? As a matter of fact I am still in my pj's. But some funny things did happen today. I was downstairs reading with the big girls today and we were reading about a phonograph machine and I asked Natalie if she knew what one was. She said yes that it played music with one of those big black C.D.'s. It made me laugh. I remember listening to record's at my parents house. One of my favorite's (I wish that I could see them now my favorite would of changed) was Bon Jovi's Slippery when wet. I think that my sister got it for her birthday one year. I also liked to listen to Bonnie Tyler. I always got stuck playing the air keyboard. I really wanted to play the guitar but Peter was always playing the guitar. Okay enough of the babbling.

Also today while Ella was finishing up her dinner and she thought nobody was looking. I notice her sneak under the table with her bowl. For a moment I had no idea what she was doing with it until I realized that she was going to hide it. There is a little lip under my table that apparently she had been hiding food in that she didn't want to finish eating. I made her clean it up today. There was another bowl, a grilled cheese sandwich, and a muffin that has been there for who knows how long. The worst part was, when I she pulled out the muffin she decided that she should try it. That thing was so hard she would of broke a tooth off trying to eat it. Anyway, just thought that I would share.

Report cards

Yesterday was the end of the semester for the kids. And I am proud to report that my kids are doing so well in school this semester. Tyler got all 3's which means that he is at or above grade level.
Natalie got all A's and B's this semester. And she still loves Math.

Nichole has done significantly better in school this term and got all A's and B's which was quite an improvement for her. She worked really hard at pulling up her grades and boy did that turn out great for her.

Sledding with the Young Men and Young Women

It was the Young Men's turn to plan an activity this month and they decided to go sledding. The kids loved it. Although many of the kids ran into a bush they still enjoyed themselves. After watching the kids get hurt time after time I opted to not actually go sledding down the mountain. I know that I am not invincible and that I would probable have some freak accident like get the tube stuck in a tree or something. My kids went with me and all of them decided to go down the smaller of the hills. And even then Nichole got pretty beat up. But we all had a great time. This was Ericka's second time down the hill. The first time she went down she went about 10 feet and her tube popped and she tumbles heat over feet 2 times before she stopped. Everyone made the ohhhhh sound and then started laughing.
As you can see there were bushes placed randomly on the hill. The one to the left is the one of the ones the kids kept running into. They would start at the top of the hill and somehow would veer right and take them into this tree. Cara is coming down the hill now. She will eventually hit the bush with her legs before coming to a stop. Angela and I would start yelling at the kids to bail and get off the tub about 1/2 way down the hill. Cara gave it a valiant effort but never quite made it off.

This is Sheryl. She is on the tube with her daughter. About 4 seconds after this picture was taken she narrowly missed the trees and instead crashed into one of the Young Men. Who then flew 3 feet into the air before landing right on top of her and her daughter. And she was just excited that she didn't hit the tree. (later her son said to her..."Mom are you going to go down the hill again." No was her reply. To which he said "You mean there aren't any other innocent kids you want to take out today".) When I heard him say that I just started busting a gut. It was so funny.

Here we have (from left to right) Cara (the one who hit a tree with her legs) River, Samantha, (who went down on the tube together and ended up crashing into the bushes right above them. They both hit there heads but recovered just fine), and Cecily (when we told her to bail instead of turning to the side and rolling out of her tube she went onto her knees and fell onto her chest before she stopped. At least she got off before she hit a tree.)

River just happy to be alive

Preston, Ericka, and Cecily who are sitting in the ditch that one of the boys slid right into. It was like a cartoon. He went over the ditch, his tube dropped out underneath him and slid down the ditch as he was suspended in air for about a half a second but it seemed like a long time and he then fell straight onto his rump popped back a few feet into the air and feel again. It looked like he jarred his back and it took him about 20 minutes before he could compose himself again.

Jeremy is the Young Men's President who I think is very brave and took his life into his own hands when he decided to go down the hill. He went on one of my sled's and said that it hurt his rump the whole way down. Still better then crashing into the bush

Sheryl and I with some of the girls waiting by the dreaded ditch

The Young Men and Young Women at the top of the hill. They really did have a great time together. So in total. We had 1 kid crash into a ditch, 2 people crash into another person, 3 people crash into a bush and 4 popped tubes (BTW we went up with 8). We are lucky there were no serious injuries.

Wax on, Wax off

The girls asked me if they could start shaving their legs. I thought that they were a little young for that still. I thought that if I said no but you can wax them. They would say no way. But they both said waxing was fine. So away I went waxing their legs. They didn't complain at all and as a matter of fact they told me that it wasn't even that bad. I guess I should give it another try. I only waxed the bottom part of their leg and I didn't wax the back. Now we will have to wait and see if they ask me to do it again in 3 months. Natalie said that it didn't hurt as bad if she didn't look.

Natalie's leg all ready for the rippin

Nichole decided that she could have a phone conversation at the same time. She too had to hide her eyes.

The funnest part was getting ready to pull!!!

A Special Message

Ella has really been missing "her aunt Joy" so I decided that I would help her write her a letter and since she wanted Joy to see it right now, I thought that the easiest way to do that was to scan and blog it. Plus then everyone gets to see her cute handwriting. She has been working really hard on writing her letters to get her ready for Kindergarten. I hope you can read it.

Nothing much is going on here

I haven't posted much on my blog lately because well, nothing much has really been going on. I did get to go out with some of my girlfriends Friday night. We went to Boise and ate at Johnny Carrino's and then went to watch Bride Wars. Which by the way was just so funny. It was nice to get away from the house and hang out with my friends. Saturday Night I had some friends over for dinner and we played the Wii. I love to watch people play Mario Cart on the Wii. It makes me laugh when they fall off the edge (Kori I promise we were laughing with you). I had a blast hanging out.

Something very rare happened today. Tyler stayed home from school today and he wasn't even sick!!!! They did not have power at the Elementary School so he hung out with me and Ella. We played games and he even helped clean the house (kind of).

And tonight something almost as rare happened. We went to the movies and out to dinner for F.H.E. It has been a while since all of us have gone to the movie together. I really can't remember the last one that we did. We went to see Madagascar 2 which I thought was an okay movie. The girls liked it okay. They really think that they are too old for those kind of movies and Tyler and Ella laughed their heads off the whole time. Then we went to eat at GoodWood BBQ. It is one of my favorite placed to go and eat. The whole night cost us less them $20.00. Thanks to my mom and dad.

I hope that all is going well with everyone else. Just wanted to let you know we are still alive here.

Just so I don't forget

On Saturday Nate, Ella and I went to the commissary to get some grocery shopping done. As we entered the frozen foods aisle I opened the door to get some pizza. I heard Nate yell "watch out" As I opened the glass door right onto Ella's face. Yes she left a nose print on the glass. Anyway, I turned to her and said Ella I am so sorry. She said "It's okay mom." I could tell that she was trying to be brave. So leaned in to give her a hug and tell her that I was sorry again. To which she replied, as if she was a teenager "ahhh I said it's okay mom". Did I just see a glimpse into the future. Does she already have some teenager attitude coming out in her. Already? Seriously she's five and I already have 2 at home giving me the attitude. Deep breaths Jessica. I am sure I will survive as innumerable moms already have.

New Years Day

I think that I may of had the shortest night of sleep in a while and after reading the last post I believe that I wasn't completely coherent when the dog woke me up after about 5 short hours of sleep last night. I figure that some of you have already read that post so I am just going to leave it how it is and hope everyone realizes how tired I was when I wrote it. We had a great time with Pam and David today. We went up to Boise and ate at one of Nate's favorite restaurants, Mongolian BBQ. Afterwards we went to Barnes and Noble, and I am sad to report I did not find a book for me to read even though I am running dangerously low on books (I think I have maybe, maybe 3 in there that I have to complete). After we got home Nate took the kids and his parents to the church to try out Tyler's new Bball and I got to relax by myself at home. What I did is a secret but it did involve reading. We came back to the house for about 30 minutes and then went to Pam and David's hotel to swim in the pool. I refrained from swimming. Although I love it the thought of me in a swimsuit is scary enough. But for now I am just going to blame it on the weather. It is winter time and I refuse to get into a pool (even if it is indoors) when it is winter. I could catch a cold after all. Yeah I do think that sounds a lot better. We let the kids splash around in the pool for about a hour then we took the little kids home to get ice cream and watch Nim's island while the big girls stayed at the hotel with Grandma and Grandpa. The 2 little ones were plum tuckered out from all of that exercise, plus they stayed up until 10:30 last night on top of that. But we had a great start to a new year. I hope everyone did too.

And a Happy New Year!!!

Nate and I are so lucky. For our New Year's Eve Party we got to chaperon the stake dance. It was better then I thought that it was going to be. The only problem with it was that it was so long. The stake had an activity for all of the Young Men and Young Women that started at 7:00 and the dance didn't get over until 1:00. So it was very, very, long. They had a nacho bar there and lots of good treats too. I even got to dance with Nate. Nate and I went on our first date to a New Year's Eve Stake Dance in 1995. So it was kinda like reliving the past. They even played a lot of the same songs. Anyway I said that to Nate and told him because of that he should dance with me and he said okay. I quickly backed out of that. But when the last song was playing he asked me if I wanted to Dance again and with much reluctance I said yes. I was surprised at how many of the adults were dancing at the dance. They never danced at ours and when Nate and I chaperoned a dance about 6 years ago none of the adults danced at that dance either. I was also very lucky because my friend Heather was there too and she is a lot of fun. And I got to meet a lot of new people. I hope that the New Year brings you all great adventures and fun times.