A Love Story

A few weeks ago I bought Logan a cardigan...

 and he L♥VES it. 

He made me take this picture of him and send it to Bruce the first time he tried it on so Bruce could see how sweet the cardigan looked on him. He was ready for church so early on sunday, and so excited to walk home from choir so everyone in the neighborhood could also enjoy the sight of him in his new cardigan.  The End.

Dallin's school Photography 

Project below:

{Logan times 8 + the slide in our basement}

❉ Fa la la la la ❉

--Christmas Concerts--

I loved all the red flowers on the stage....

Emma is in choir, and loves it.

This is exciting because I... kind of... made her sign up for it, even though she didn't want to.  HOORAY for a parental decision success story, ha ha.

Her and 3 other girls tried out to be one of the "special musical numbers" during the concert... and they were picked.  It was so beautiful.  I had never heard it until the school concert, because they had done all their practicing at school. Ashlin filmed it on her phone. When it was done I leaned over and whispered down the row to Ashlin, "that was so pretty I cried"... and Ashlin motioned to herself and whispered back, "me too!" {seeing Ashlin's reaction was another sweet moment for me}.

Their song "When Christmas Comes to Town":

This week her choir also performed at the mall by our house. 

These same 4 girls were asked to sing a couple songs with the jazz band. {The only girls asked}

They were cracking me up with all the impromptu choreography moves they had.  It was so funny how they were hamming it up up there.

 They got to perform again the same song they did for the evening concert.

 Emma was also invited to accompany the whole 7th grade choir on piano for one of their songs.  Emma practiced the song for weeks.  It is such a beautiful Christmas Lullaby.  I have loved listening to her practice it.  I was sooo nervous for her, because accompanying is scary stuff... you can't mess up or you could potentially mess the whole choir up.  She did good.  She only messed up when the page turner didn't turn her page in time and it threw her off, but you could hardly tell from the audience.

I was so proud of her.

 She was way jazzed up about this day.  She had so many little special parts, it was like 'the Emma show'.  She convinced Bruce to leave work to come watch her, and a sweet lady in our neighborhood {Logan's friends mom, which was so sweet of her to come}, and her Aunt Chrissy.  I was really proud of her.  She is so different from her older siblings and gets involved with so many school functions {mostly with Student Council events}.  It is so rewarding to see her growing in to a beautiful capable young lady.

I just went to see my niece Lexi's choir perform tonight.  It was amazing!  HOORAY for a school that sang lots of reverent songs about our Saviors birth.  So touching.

Loving all these Christmas Concerts!

The Naughty List

 Just in case Santa checks blogs, here is who belongs on the "Naughty List":

Sophie has been making me crazy lately.  People use the term "terrible twos", but.... yowzers, for us its more like "terrible threes".

I just wanted to document some of the naughty things she has done THIS WEEK.

Sophie is a hoarder, and she regularly thieves non-toy items from all over the house and stashes them in her room or playhouse.... appliance owner manuals, all of Bruce's watches, my camera, my keys, my phone, 2 containers of chocolate frosting, perfume, all of my brand new make up, grill skewers, duct tape, games, Cocoa Puffs and more.... UGH!!!  

-She took all my brand new make up to her playhouse and the kids over were putting it on.

-Dallin found her with chocolate frosting containers in there, eating them on the carpet with her hands.

-Today while a friend of mine was at my house (crying actually, because she was having a rough time) Sophie ran by covered head to toe in white powder.  I followed the footprints back to the pile in the kitchen, cornstarch.

-She dumped out a bottle of lotion in my closet carpet

-The other day I overheard Dallin annouce, "Sophie's hittin the sprinkles again!" and I laughed out loud at him, because I knew that meant she had pushed the chair over to the baking cabinet and climbed on the counter to eat sprinkles like she has done every day this week.

-Sophie jammed all of Ashlin's makeup brushes in to her foundation bottle

-She constantly takes the peanut butter container and eats out of it with a spoon

-She took all the games out of the game closet yesterday and disassembled each one

-She re-programmed our TV today and it took Bruce 10 minutes to figure out how to get it working again.

-And she throws TANTRUMS now!!!

Today she cried for 15 minutes, because she didn't like how I did her hair.  I have started leaving the room to just let her cry.  When I heard she stopped crying today, I went back to check on her. She had cried herself to sleep on my bedroom floor....

(I covered her with a blankie and let her nap)

Poor thing, 

she even wears herself out.

(But to be clear, even though we joke about her being so naughty lately, we love this little 3 year old a lot.)

Grandpa's Jeep

Whats the best way to explore the Arizona Desert?? 

Jeeping with Grandpa.

The last few weekends my dad has been taking his grandkids jeeping.  I love my dad.  He is so wonderful with his grandkids. So understanding, so patient. He makes me want to be a better parent. He is always trying to get me to loosen up.  He thinks the kids are perfect how they are, and don't need me meddling so much. So naturally, they all adore him.

 He took Ashlin, Dallin, Emma and Logan and they brought a picnic lunch. I thought it was cute because my dad told me he'd take whatever older kids wanted to go.  He told me not to make Ashlin go, because he knows she's older and maybe would have other things she'd rather do.  Then Cassidy brought her home that night and was trying to make plans with her for saturday. I was nervous to tell her that actually Grandpa was taking the kids jeeping, hoping she wouldn't rather go on a date.  But as soon as I gave her the choice, she said, "DUH, I TOTALLY want to go jeeping with grandpa!!"  

When they got home and I asked the kids how it was, they very energetically yelled, "Totally AWESOME!" Then told me all about the hills, exploring, and how fun/scary it was riding on top of the jeep... you know, all kinds of details that stressed me out.  

But luckily they made it back alive.

 We ♥ Grandpa.

Music

Emma practicing piano.

Something I have enjoyed so much starting around Thanksgiving is all the live Christmas music getting practiced around here.  {And some times, because its Christmas music, they even practice willingly, sometimes} Listening to Emma, Logan and Ashlin on the piano... and Dallin, guitar.

So many performances the kids are getting ready for....

{Next week Emma is playing the accompaniment for her junior high choir, eeek I am nervous for her!}

Turkey Day

We had lots of family over at our house on Thanksgiving.

And GUESS what I cooked on the BIG Day??

NOTHING.

Bruce cooked 2 turkeys and made the mashed potatoes and gravy.

I loved him on Thanksgiving.

The kids table looked the funnest, I wished I was sitting at the kids table instead of the adult table to the left. (Especially when they started burning stuff in the candles.)  They discovered you could melt lots of holes in the plastic red cups.  I got up from my seat to get seconds (naturally). Soon after returning I went to grab my cup for a drink, and discovered that instead of a full red cup of ice water, I had an empty deformed red cup with melted holes all over it.  

(those tricker kids, ha ha)

 Then we made a grateful tree... 

(and all thought of ♥The Statens♥)

Ashlin and Macy (she's a regular on my blog) made the trunk.

We cut out all the leaves and nobody was allowed to eat pie until they made at least 3 leaves saying what they were thankful for.
See how bossy I get when the feast is here. 

(Tree is still up at my house, amidst our Christmas decorations)

After which, even more cousins, aunts, uncles and family stopped by between us and Davis's house, and we walked on over to the park for the annual football game.

***It was a wonderful day, honestly. We were surrounded by family and very thankful. But it was also really sad and hard to see my dad.  He had a horrible morning, first Thanksgiving without my mom. He had to drive around for 45 minutes he said to compose himself before coming in to my house.  It broke my heart. We missed my mom a lot this day. I cried.  Happy Thanksgiving mom! I wondered what they do in heaven.

PIES!!!

Even though November was filled with lots of house projects... 

I will have to post those later.

Our big Thanksgiving Tradition is PIES!!!

{wow, look how not skinny I am looking these days}

 The night before Thanksgiving we get out the Christmas music for the first time and make pies together. While I make the big ones, the kids make their own little ones.

 Except BIG changes this year... 
Ashlin made the other BIG pie.  

{she's getting all growned up}

 Above you get to see that instead of posing for another darling picture of me not looking skinny, I am yelling at Dallin to get down and that he cannot stand on the counter for the picture, pretty typical.

Oh... and PS) cutest Preschool Thanksgiving songs ever sung to all the parents taking pictures and filming... 

and Sophie wouldn't sing a single word.  ha ha.  

{Sophie's Gobble Gobble}