Goodbye 2008

Seems like the older I get the faster a year goes by. A lot of fun, not so fun, and eventful things happened this year. We moved again, which was not so fun especially since I was eight months pregnant. I had a really cool baby shower. Mike and I celebrated our first anniversary as an old married couple. We met sweet baby James in March. We very briefly delivered phone books. I started a new part time job from home. We spent a lot of the summer at the neighborhood waterpark. Marcus started kindergarten. He likes it now which is great. We went to Hawaii again and got to take the boys this time. Mike and I played fantasy football and we both lost. We took the boys to their first hockey, football, and ASU games. We both voted for the first time. We went to Tucson to visit Nate and Kaci and to see Kartchner caverns. Marcus lost his first tooth. Jason went on an out of state rafting field trip. Jason and Nathan did a marathon. The boys all played soccer. Mike got a new job as a warehouse manager. We bought a scooter and a big tv. James grew teeth, sat up, crawled, laughed, got sick, and yelled for the first time. We got lots of visits from Grandma Mickey who helped out while I was pregnant, and after. We even got to see little grandma and grandpa and Tom and Mena. We took the boys up north to see snow. And I started a blog!

I'd say it was a pretty great year. I'm looking forward to next year, I'm sure Mike will continue to drive me insane with all the house buying talk. Don't get me wrong, I want a house bad. I am just a lazy pessimist and don't want to try again and get turned down. I just want someone to hand me the keys and tell me where to send the next thirty years worth of mortgage payments.

As far as resolutions, I don't really do resolutions. But if I had to say what I would want to do next year it would be to buy a house or at least be more open minded about trying to buy a house, learn to cook healthier, keep up my blog, spend lots of quality time with my boys, visit with family more, and learn to play guitar hero on medium. Those aren't resolutions though, resolutions usually only last until January 20th and then everyone forgets them. These are just strong desires.

Happy New Year!

Baby Smiles

Make me smile

Snow Day

On Christmas, a few of us were discussing how we don't do anything spontaneous anymore. We always plan everything and it all feels sort of less exciting because of it. Basically, we all feel like we are getting old. So, we decided to NOT plan to go up to the snow on Sunday. We decided to NOT plan to make pb and j's to take for lunch. We decided to NOT plan to meet at my mom's at 7am, and we decided to NOT plan to have my Aunt Suzie watch James for us. We were going to be rebels and we would be young and spontaneous.

Marcus stuck to going down the very safe smaller hills. He was so bundled up at first that he couldn't even bend. He reminded me of Ralphie's brother on A Christmas Story.


Angel making a snow angel. She is not the snow lover she thought she was. After half an hour, she was ready to hang out in grandma's truck. I think she was also tired of Sarah showing everyone the haircut that Angel had given to herself and to Ryan. She aspires to be a master stylist some day.


Ryan was all about the snow. He would get mad that we wouldn't let him go down by himself on the big hill. This child knows no fear. At least not when it comes to snow. He is beyond terrified of Brianna's cat.


Deedee and Chris were a few of the non-planners. Don't they look so young and spontaneous?


Me and my mommy. Look at how tall I am compared to her. I think she is shrinking. Maybe I should have bought her some platform snow boots for Christmas. We never did have a snowball fight that I was secretly NOT planning, but I did hit her windshield with a few snowballs when they were leaving.


Jason was usually nowhere around me. He pretty much stayed on the hill most of the time. I stayed where it was flatter and watched all the other sledders hurt themselves doing idiotic stunts and tricks.


Nathan preferred to stay on the hill too. At the end, his feet were icicles and he was ready to be done with snow for the year.


Here is our picnic we did NOT plan on having. I highly recommend going out and getting yourself a few limited edition cans of honey mustard Pringles. They are delish.


Nathan and Brianna preferred a private picnic in the snow. They sort of look like an old married couple the way they have their backs to each other.


Marcus with a few less layers. Funny how we can be freezing in our house with the thermostat set at 70 but we were sweating in the snow with the temp around 20.


Jason found a snow fort that was the perfect size for him. Luckily, there were no bears, skunks, badgers, squirrels, or spiders inside.


No this picture was not photoshopped. This is an actual picture of Mike and I standing right next to each other in the same picture. Actually this was probably picture number 8. In the other seven pictures Mike was talking which didn't make for an attractive picture.


When the boys were wet up to their chest we knew it was time to go. We had a good time, I even went down the hill once. It ended with me doing a double axle with a one and a half twist. That was something else that I did NOT plan.

Sadly, I didn't get a single picture of Rick, Sharon, Amanda, or Daniel. I'm not sure how that happened because my giant camera was dangling around my neck the entire time. But I promise you, they all looked very young, very spontaneous, and very good looking in all their snow garb.

Christmas

Christmas morning! Quite possibly my children's most exciting hour of the entire year. Our family rule is you can get up anytime after the sun is up but you can't open presents or wake Mike or I up until 7am. At 6:58 I was informed that the microwave clock said 7am. Fair enough, I never specified which clock. We got up and the boys got to open up their bounty. We tortured the boys by making them open their gifts one at a time.

This was James' first Christmas. He really wasn't into opening the presents and his brothers were happy to help him. James thought his gift was all the wrapping paper and the boxes. He loved to crinkle the paper and drum/chew on the boxes.

Marcus got an easel and Bakugan. Nathan got a football launcher, and a skateboard, and Jason got an mp3 player and a book he has been begging me for. They all also got a tin full of popcorn, new shoes, books, socks, and a bubble gum bank.

Marcus was a little sweetie and found things around the house to wrap up and give to me and Mike. He took apart his old fire engine and saved the screws for Mike. It was cute because he wrapped them up loose in wrapping paper and every time it got moved, all the screws would fall out. Marcus gave me some pretty rocks he picked out of the gravel in the front yard so that I could start a rock collection.


As soon as presents were opened, Nathan went outside to try to break his neck on his new skateboard.


I tried too. I really did almost break my neck. Those cracks are deadly!

After, we headed over to my aunt and uncle's house for Christmas breakfast and exchanged gifts with the rest of my family. My uncle Rick made breakfast and decided to torture us by making bacon and pancakes one at a time. We were all starving and hovering over the serving plate like jackals ready to fight over the next slice of bacon.


Here is the master torturer. He had to keep the bacon plate close by or the jackals would attack.


Here are those jackals. Notice the plate with one pancake on it?


From left to right. Jason, Marcus, James, Ryan, Amanda, Daniel, Angel, Nathan, and Brianna.


The kids took turns opening presents. It was funny how close they would sit by each other. Eventually, they barely even had room to open the presents because they were crowded in so close. That black panther in the background would have terrified me when I was little. It looked like it was guarding all the presents.

We visited for most of the morning and early afternoon. When we got home we spent the rest of the day and part of the night wielding screwdrivers and batteries. We stood at the ready to open, assemble, and install batteries into any gift the boys could throw at us.

Christmas Eve

Wow! What a whirlwind the last two days have been. The last 48 hours were spent with lots family, presents, food, and nauseousness. That's right, I was sick. Or at least I thought I was sick. I never had a fever or anything, I just felt like I was on the verge of upchucking constantly.

Anyway, enough about my weak stomach. We spent Christmas Eve at my dad's house like usual. We visited, exchanged gifts, ate homemade chicken and rice soup and tortillas, and did all sorts of other non holiday related stuff. Like-

Seeing if we can fit six children up in the tree at the same time. Which we did.

We saw how many sit ups Jason could do with Mike's new scooter helmet on. 14.


We watched James attempt to shove his entire fist into his mouth. He can.

Then I decided I needed a few cute pictures of everyone for documentation.


Angel refused to let me take her picture. After bugging her nonstop, this is the one picture she allowed me to take. Pretty


She's just like her mom


This will be perfect for the photo album right? The funny part is I am actually really proud of this picture because I took it by myself. I managed to get it centered just right without even looking at where the camera was pointed while maintaining a perfect fish pose.


Sarah and the kids, smiling this time.


Me and my dad


Everyone was super annoyed in this one because my Aunt Suzie didn't know how to work the camera and it took her twelve tries to actually get us all in the picture. I love my dad's face. He's practically screaming with impatience.

The rest of the night was dedicated to present exchanging. The boys got lots of cool stuff. Mike got a new helmet for his scooter, and I even got a Debbie Meyer microwave pasta cooker. Cool!

We went home and put out Santa's milk, cookies, and fudge. Nathan left a note for Santa asking him what his favorite kind of fudge was. Santa likes chocolate. Then we got on pajamas, watched a Christmas Story, read our favorite Christmas books that Aunt Mena sends, and the boys went to bed.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! From all of us, to all of you! More to come tomorrow, my brain stopped working two hours ago.

Christmas Eve Eve

I thought we were all ready for Christmas. We were, all the way up until yesterday when Mike decided to take the boys to the Dollar Tree to buy me presents while I was working. I was under the impression that we weren't going to exchange presents this year. Leave it to Mike to find a loophole. We aren't technically exchanging presents if they are from the boys right? So.... guess who had to brave Walmart at 5pm, the day before Christmas Eve, with four children. Me.

Of course there was no way to manuever a cart through the madness so I had to leave the boys with the cart at the end of the aisles while I went in. I would find a few five dollar gems and offer them to the boys as possible ideas. After nearly getting ran over by an old man on a motorized cart, and having my toes stepped on by a greasy toothless lady, we finally found some winners. We escaped with only minor injuries.

When we got home I decided to take a picture of the boys in front of the Christmas tree with their cute Santa hats. Here's how that went.

Dang it! Forgot the flash!

Marcus is NOT smiling like I had requested, and James is trying to remove his hat.

Then Nathan wasn't looking.

Why Jason why?!

Finally! I was worried that I was going to have to photoshop a picture together.

Consider this your Christmas card. I meant to send them out this year. In fact, there is a cute little box of snowman cards sitting on the counter right now. It's not gonna happen this year.

Rookie Mistake

Mike decided to be a super sweet husband this morning. He took Marcus and James for a walk to the corner store to buy the Sunday paper and hot chocolate. When they got to the store, Mike decided James needed a treat too. Unfortunately, I wasn't there to tell him a cherry ring pop probably wasn't the best choice. This is what he looked like when he got home.

Doesn't he look so happy! Dad didn't know a nine month old could make such a mess with just a little ring pop. Sticky from hair to waist. On the bright side, he smelled just like a cherry flavored air freshener.

He was so sad after we took the plastic remnants away, but a bath was extremely necessary.
Look! It was even in those eyelashes! Red dye #5 isn't the easiest thing to get out, so his jacket is currently soaking in the bathroom sink with a handful of Surf and a few prayers.

And I'm not sure, but by the wide eyed looks Marcus was giving me, I think his hot chocolate may have been laced with coffee.

If your linen closet looks like this...

My children probably help fold your laundry too.

The Box

A couple weeks ago, a box was delivered to our house. On it was written "Open December 19th". We put the box under the Christmas tree and it has been sitting there driving Nathan crazy ever since. Every single day without exception, Nathan would wonder out loud about what was in the box. He would also let me know how many more days it was until he could find out. I knew what was in it, and I suppose I could have told him that it was a week's worth of presents from Grandma Mickey, but I decided it was more entertaining to watch him stew with impatience.

Well today is that day. As soon as the boys were home from school, we opened the box. It was hard for me to even open it since there were three heads in the way. They were all trying to be the first to see what was inside. I opened it up and then took a quick step back to take this picture and to get out of the way so I wouldn't get trampled.

They quickly figured out which gifts were to be opened today. They ripped those open and I think I saw a few candy bars before they were gone.


One of James' presents has to be rewrapped due to the excitement level. Don't worry Grandma, we covered his eyes so he wouldn't see it.


After I put the Humpty Dumpty present back together again, I saw this. Then I was just as excited as Nathan had been. I claimed that Grandma had meant for me to open this present, I'm sure she did. After I opened it I was pretty sure I was right. She knows I am a hopeless jigsaw puzzle addict. I bet I even have the 1000 pieces put together before the weekend is over.