Merry Christmas

May the spirit of Christmas fill your homes with joy and happiness!

Month of Changes

November was a month of changes and good times.

Emily had her fifth birthday.....

Cody's room got a makeover....

Emily was getting ready for Turkey day .....

We spent Thanksgiving eve with some friends. The kids had fun

roasting hotdogs and freezing their "buns"

off while playing and visiting.

Thanksgiving day, Brant Amanda and Marli

arrived to spend the weekend with us.

Amanda and I were able to get a good bit of our

Christmas shopping done on Black Friday.

Jessi spotted this wasp nest in the neighbors tree,

so I cut it down.

Last but in no way the least, I recieved a new calling.

I am now the Young Women's secretary.

I was sad to leave my primary kids

but am looking forward to getting to know the Young Women in

our ward. Especially since Jessi will be joining

them next May.

Emmy's Birthday

We celebrataed Emmy's 5th birthday this week. We let the kids pick what/where they want to go for their birthday dinner. Emmy chose Applebees this year.

So, after Rob got home from work (2 hours late) we loaded the kids up and headed out.

WHen we arrived at Applebees, there were so many cars and the line

was outside. Later we found out that they were giving a free meal for Veterans.

As an alternative we just grabbed a couple hot-n-readys from Little Ceasars.

After dinner Emmy got to open her presents.

This is one of my favorites. A mini baking set. It comes with a mini cupcake pan, mini wooden spoon, set of measuring spoons, mini wire whisk, a mini spatula, and an apron.

She is completely into princesses right now. I think the look on her face says it all.

(it's a princess barbie)

We were even able to find a princess fishing pole....

and notebook.

This morning, I helped Emmy make muffins with her new baking set.

She had a lot of fun!

She also recieved a few more princess presents from Nana. On Sunday we'll do

her birthday cake at the in-laws.

I can't believe Em is going to be in Kindergarten next fall.

Halloween Fun

A week before Halloween, we went to the pumpkin patch.

The pumpkins around here had already started to rot

due to an early frost. We didn't realize the extent of the rot until we went to carve them
two days later and found the pumpkins to be mush.

So the only jack-o-lanterns we had this year were the ones that

Jessi and Alexis had carved at Activity Days.

They turned out quite well.

On Halloween we went to the trunk-or-treat at our church. We saw alot of cute

little ghosts and goblins. Then the kiddos

were ready to hit the streets. We had Jessi the ghoul,

Lexi the vampiress, Cody as a ninja, Kaylei was a beautiful butterfly,

Emily the sweet little witch and

Spencer the lion, with the friendliest roar you've ever heard.

This year the kids outlasted the people passing out the goodies.

They made out pretty well. By the end Emmy was quite tuckered out.

She started to fall asleep while I was

washing the make-up off of her face.

Soooo Behind

So much has happened this month but I haven't had the time to blog it all as it happened. Mostly because our little family has been sick with one thing or another for the past 3-4 weeks.

We'll start with Kaylei running XCountry. She absolutely wanted to quit after the first week. But with some encouragement she stuck with it. At the District meet she was awesome!

Kaylei ran the entire race without stopping once. She did her best and I was so proud of her for not giving up.

Cody a couple weeks back, recieved some awards for cub scouts. He was so excited about getting some new badges and "pinning" his Mom.

This spider has decided to make a home at the front of our garage. It's been there few about two months. Our girls decided that they needed to feed the spider. Whenever they saw a fly, it would be hit hard enough to make it fall but not too hard so that it would still be twitching.

The fly would then be tossed onto the web. The girls like to see how fast the spider would come out and wrap up it's treat.

In the midst of all the goings-on we had a stomach bug that consisted of random puking and diarreah for two weeks. Right after that Cody brought home the swine flu. We know for sure what is was because Kaylei was hit really hard with it. Her fever kept spiking even with motrin in her. She would be awake but not concious. I took her in on Monday night and spent an hour in the dr office before we were even seen. By the time the nurse took us back, Kaylei's fever had spiked to 106.8. She woke up the next morning coherent and wanting to eat. Within a few days of Cody everyone except for me had come down with the swine flu. Alexis was the least affected and was only down for two days. I was very blessed not to have it as well, someone needed to be able to function. All in all I'm glad this month is over.

Mommy"s night out

About a week ago, a bunch of moms from our ward got

together at Farragut State Park.

Some twenty of us hung out around the campfire 'til midnight

but only six of us stayed the night. We had a

blast talking,drinking hot chocolate and

eating a variety of goodies.

We heard a bunch (like 20-30) coyotes howling

off and on throught the evening. At 4;30am

Emily and I finally hit the sack. Roughly 45 minutes later we heard the howling

not far from our campsite. That was the eeriest sound!

Shortly after the howling started to die down, we heard the clicking of paws running past

our tent thru the campsite.

In the meantime, at home Rob was having all sorts of fun himself.

He wasn't going to stay up very late but

found himself still awake at 1am.

Finally he hit the sack just to be woken up by

Kaylei. She had a major bloody nose.

He helped her get cleaned up and

back to bed. This happened about 3 more times that night.

I'm looking forward to our next mom's night out! Rob

not so much.

School and Photos

We've been pretty busy the past couple weeks getting ready for school. Jessi is in 6th grade now which means she is in Middle School. She had a great start for a new year. Cody is ten on Monday and in 4th grade this year. He was very excited to return to school. Alexis is in 3rd grade and kivung every minute of it. Kaylei is a 1st grader. She was so ready for school to start about two weeks before the first day. She loves being at school all day and being able to eat lunch there. Emily and Spencer are doing "Mommy" preschool. I've signed them up for story time at the libray. In october we get to take a "fieldtrip" and see firetrucks and other emergency vehicles. I'm looking forward to having a year with just the two of them at home!

So at the beginning of the school year there's a picture day. This year I thought we would do our own photo shoot. We did Jessi's today. I had so much fun!

It's hard to believe that she's my baby!