Our Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas.  This year we were able to celebrate with the Shupe's before Christmas and with the Toone's later this week so that we could be home on Christmas Day.  The Shupe's party included a talent show. All the kids did so well, but I thought I'd share with you Thomas's version of "I'm Getting Nothing for Christmas".  

Christmas Day the kids woke up at their ususal early hour (about 6:30).  We had so much fun playing most of the day.  Thomas and Natalie are at a great age where they can play real games.  After church, my parents came with Camille for the afternoon and we had such a wonderful time visiting with them.

In the Big City

Natalie and I joined my two sisters and their older daughters for a mother daughter date yesterday.  We went to Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake to hear the Utah Symphony's Christmas concert followed by lunch at the Lion House Restaurant.  We had such a great time!

My Roots

I love researching my family lines and I thought this program was so cool that I wanted to share it with you. It creates a 9 generation family chart (including both sides of your family) that is so easy to read.  I had mine posted below, however, I had reports that some computers had trouble viewing my blog with this chart, so I had to remove it.  However you can go to  http://createfan.com/ to create your own and in just a few minutes you can see your ancestors . You may need to create a Family Search ID. Have fun!

Pictures from Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was great.  Almost all of the Toone’s were there including Steve and Leeann’s family from Arizona, and Washington.  Kathy had brought some fun crafts for the kids to do and Carson had made a piñata that kids loved!  We had a wonderful feast, everyone brought something to share.  That evening we went and played basketball and climbed on the climbing wall at the middle school.  We headed home after lunch on Friday since Jared was on call at the hospital.  

Saturday we put up the Christmas decorations including the crèche. We also went to Santaquin’s Light Parade, which for future reference, wasn’t really worth the effort of getting the kids all bundled up (a fire truck with Santa riding on top, a few police cars and maybe 3 small floats with lights). We are super excited for Christmas this year.  We’re reading Christmas books, watching Christmas movies and doing our Advent daily activities and candy.  Although we do include Santa in our celebration, we try to keep a strong focus on Jesus Christ's birth.  Yesterday morning we went to the ward’s Christmas Breakfast and Thomas and Natalie sat on Santa’s lap.  The twins were pretty nervous just to be in the line to see Santa and Amelia confided with Jared telling him “I’m scared”.  Amelia’s new favorite saying is “Bah Humbug” after watching Disney’s Christmas Carol (with Mickey Mouse).  

Thanksgiving

As we approach Thanksgiving this week I thought about this message and how true it is that sometimes we forget how remarkable the everyday things around us are.  "The more often we see the things around us, the more they become invisible to us." 

I am so Thankful to my Heavenly Father for the many blessings he gives to me.  I feel blessed to have a family to love and be loved by.  I'm so grateful that I can be home each day with my kids, to see them grow and learn.  I am amazed by their minds and their sweet spirits full of love.  I am thankful for hugs and kisses.  I am thankful for the everyday conveniences that make life comfortable and fun: electricity, warm water, cars, microwaves, digital cameras, computers, ipods, washers, driers,...I don’t seem to appreciate these things until I don’t have them, like when the power goes out.  I’m thankful for my body and good health.  I had some dental work done last month and I had a tooth that became so sensitive and I was so worried that I would have a lifetime of toothpain.  Luckily the pain is now gone, however if I hadn’t had that pain for a few weeks, I probably wouldn’t have been grateful for my teeth and being able to eat pain free.  This example is one of many that make me grateful to God for the challenges I have faced, big or small that have taught me lessons, have let me see His hand in my life, and increased my faith.  I am grateful for Jesus Christ, His example to and sacrifice for all of us.  I’m grateful to know that He loves us and has restored His church upon the earth.  I’m thankful for movies, music, nature, and all things that uplift and inspire.  I am grateful for those who serve me and for opportunities to serve others.  I am thankful for life.

Time for a Change

Last week, Natalie and I went and got our hair cut (13” off for me, 11” for Natalie) to donate to Locks of Love. Natalie has always loved her long hair so I was actually a bit surprised that she was willing to cut it off.  She was excited to know that another little girl would be able to use it.   Just days before we went to the salon, Natalie chopped her bangs off really short (they were just starting to recover from the last time she cut them when she was pretending to be Mulan!), so we had to cut some longer bangs to cover up her super short bangs. 

Perfect Snow Day

It’s Saturday and we woke up to a fresh 3" of snow.  There's not much we have to do and so it's a perfect snow day. Jared made bread (so delicious) and we played in the snow with the kids and some of the neighbors.  It was a lot of fun. 

Here are some pictures of Halloween.  This year we all went trick-or-treating, leaving a bowl of candy on our porch with a sign to take two.  We carried Amelia part of the way, and then put her in the stroller, she’s getting heavy.  We didn’t go much further than around our block.  We took the Thomas and Natalie through our neighbor's haunted garage. Our neighbors make this spook alley each year and collect cans of food for the needy.  This was our first year through it and Thomas and Natalie were terrified!!! They were about to tears and wanted to turn around half-way through.  They are proud survivors.  Abigail had her share of screaming as well when we went next door and  the 9year old boy answered the door with a pretty scary mask on.

Fall Break

We’re just finishing up an exciting Fall Break.  We headed to Ogden to visit my family on Wednesday. Thursday we had a Halloween Party at the park with the Shupe cousins (except for Carter & Jacob who were with their mom and the Reeve girls who stayed home with their new baby brother Jack since my kids had colds and they didn’t want to risk catching anything).  We played at the park, had a spooky Halloween relay, a doughnut eating contest and ate mummies dipped in blood (hot dogs in a blanket in ketchup) and chips. 

 

We all headed up to Logan after the party, picked up Grandma Toone and went to the Pumpkin Walk which is so much fun and one of my favorite things to go to in Logan. 

Friday we went with Grandma Toone to the Fall Harvest Festival at the American West Heritage Center. We had a blast.  The kids loved the train and pony rides, jumping off hay bales, sliding down the giant slide, going through a box maze and part of a corn maze, and feeding the goats. We got together with Kathy’s family in the evening for pizza.  It was a great visit and we went home Saturday morning, giving us a couple of days to vacation from our vacation.

As far as our day to day routine, each day is eventful. Last week I took the kids outside to ride bikes.  I ran in for a minute to put Amelia’s crutches away (more on that later) and I came out to find Amelia sitting on her walker’s chair, holding onto the handles and rolling down our steep driveway.  I started running as fast as I could to catch her before she hit the street and fortunately she didn’t crash.  I think Amelia was pretty calm through the whole incident although I was screaming.  Amelia is getting to be pretty independent and isn’t afraid to do things like going up/down the stairs by herself.  It makes me a little nervous though because although 99% of the time she doesn’t need any help, if anything startles her or if she gets distracted she does lose her balance.  Amelia is walking so well with her walker now that her physical therapist made her a pair of crutches. Amelia can stand with them for a few minutes.

The twins are now in toddler beds, actually we just took the front rails off of their cribs. To make Amelia’s bed more accessible to her, we cut the legs off of it so that she can climb in and out of the bed by herself.

Abigail is now 19.8 lbs which we felt was close enough to turn her car seat around. Abigail is talking a lot more although she is hard to understand. She loves Elmo and wears her favorite Elmo shirt as much as possible. She’s very picky about what clothes she wants to wear and as soon as she hears the word “bath” she strips down and runs to the tub. She and Amelia fight quite a bit.

Natalie and Thomas are great helpers.  They love to play outside and with their friends. I'm trying to teach them the piano.  I don't play the piano, but I have some musical knowledge and my sister Camille recommended these super fun and easy piano books (My First Piano Adventures). The kids love the songs and are getting where they are really making music.  Thomas wants to start playing the violin, and had his first lesson with Grandpa Shupe over the weekend.  We’ll probably wait until next summer to really start him.

Thomas is loving kindergarten and is reading pretty well now.  He has a good amount of homework every night but it's fun.  Like last week he had to plan a trip to any country in the world, make a postcard from that country and color which clothes he would wear to that country and glue them in his paper suitcase. He chose South Korea, and so Jared helped him a lot on the project since that is where he served his mission.  Another homework assignment Thomas had was to play catch with us and make a graph showing how many times he caught the ball.