Skiing!!

As if ice fishing and basketball games weren't enough for one day,

we decided to take the three oldest kids night skiing too.  Talk about a full day of fun! 

This is Ally going up the tow rope.  She and Logan are good little skiers!  I hadn't been skiing since before Josh and I were married.  I decided I didn't really like it back then so I was a little nervous about going. I was expecting Josh to help me learn again, but he had his hands full with Jensen.  I waited at the top of the "bunny hill" for a half hour waiting for him to come help me.  I finally had to just go down by myself.  This is what I discovered: skiing is terrifying!!!  I can't believe people do it for fun.  I was not enjoying it at all and there may or may not have been a few naughty words uttered in the process.  Ugh! 

Yes, Logan and Ally were MUCH better skiers than me.  By the end of the night I was making it down the bottom half of the "bunny hill" without crashing.  Logan and Ally would wave and ask if I wanted to race-ha, ha.  They thought they were so funny!

Jensen was a good kid to tough it out.  He definitely made progress and hung in there until the end. This picture was taken while we were waiting for Josh, Ally, Logan and Todd (our nephew) to come back from the "big hill".  They took forever because the lift operator didn't notice that Logan didn't get off the lift at the top.  He got sent back down the other side!  This is dangerous because all the weight is on the up side so the down side is much higher off the ground and there are NO SAFETY BARS!  I'm glad I wasn't there to witness it first hand!  He was very scared, but held on tight to the side and made it down safely.  I hope the lift operator got a serious talking to! Not cool!

Logan did end up going on the big hill again (brave boy) and by the end of the night we were all exhausted.  You can tell the kids and Josh had tons of fun.  As for me, I'm still not a huge fan of skiing.  But I'll probably go again because the kids and Josh enjoy it and I love to be with my family!

Ice Fishing

I consider myself a "fishergirl".  I grew up as my Dad's fishing companion and can definitely keep up with the guys when it come to fishing.  However, my Dad was not an ice-fisherman.  So I had never been-until yesterday!  Josh's cousin Shelby invited us to go with him and we were ready to give it a try.

We had to wake up early on Saturday morning to get a good place on the reservoir.  The kids were pretty excited to go, so things went pretty smoothly getting out the door.  This picture of Holden depicts his feelings about ice fishing.  This was taken before we even walked onto the ice.  I should have known he was going to be a little fishing-maniac!

We thought he would just play around while we were fishing, but we were WRONG!

He knew exactly what he was supposed to do (I blame the fishing game on my ipod touch-he loves that one).  He demanded his own pole and his own hole.  He would stick the tip of his pole in the hole and grin like crazy!  Then he saw us putting bait on everyone else's poles.  He had a tantrum until we put some on his.  He can be quite demanding (in a very loud, two year old way!).  By the end he was releasing his line and reeling it in like a pro. 

Ally enjoyed it, but wishes her cousin Kylah would have come.

Jensen had lots of fun and didn't want to leave.

Just imagine Holden saying: "Fish. Where are you?" Too cute!  He was REALLY into it!

He was not a happy camper when we left.  He and Jensen both cried.  But Ally and Logan had basketball games to get to.  We didn't catch anything this time (Holden probably had something to do with that) but this is definitely on my list of things to do again!

The January Blah

Here we are, right in the middle of January.  I call it the "January Blah".  I hide in my house and dream of nice weather.  The kids usually have colds (as we do right now) and are tired of being cooped up.  There's not really anything to look forward to.  No holidays or birthdays in our family.  Josh's work is slow, so there's not money to do anything fun (like Disneyland, sigh). It's just blah.

We decided to take Holden's binky away a few days ago.  He sleeps wonderfully at night without it (yay!).  But he won't nap without it (aughhh!).  It was pretty pathetic the first couple of days.  He would walk around the house with tears in his eyes saying "Inky, 'ere are yoooh".  I felt like a mean Mommy.  But he seems to be doing okay.  He hasn't mentioned it once today. And we can see his cute face!

Here's our cute binkyless Bubby.

Holden has developed a new obsession: MY ipod touch!!  I don't really like him to play with it (he already deleted some stuff) so I have to keep it hidden from him.  But when I need a few minutes of peace I get it out.  It's amazing how quickly kids are learning things these days!

A rare moment of brotherly love.  They enjoy being cowboys together.

Jensen has watched Ally and Logan bring home trophies through the years and has been asking when he would get his own.  Well, they had the Reflections awards assembly yesterday and his dream came true!  I told him I didn't know if he would get a trophy, but he was actually a school winner in the Visual Arts category.  He was so happy to finally have a trophy.  He didn't even realize (or care) that he was a school winner.  He just wanted a trophy!  Way to go, Jensen!

Christmas Morning

Well, things have quited down for a moment while the kids are playing with their new toys, so I thought I would hurry and blog about our morning.  We had a bit of an emergency yesterday.  I ordered one of the kids presents from Amazon and they promised it would arrive on Dec. 23.  By 3:00 yesterday afternoon, after checking with our nice postman, he determined that it wasn't going to arrive until the morning of the 27th.  Nice.  This sent Josh and I (well, mostly me) into panic mode.  We had to make an emergency shopping trip to Ogden, on Christmas eve afternoon.  I would not recommend this to anyone-bleh.  I hate crowds.  But we did get our problem solved.  In fact, I think it turned out better than it would have.  If you want to know the full scope of the issue, ask me.  My kids read my blog so I can't say much more!

Love this picture! I think he was excited about his rock tumbler.

Ally wanted a surprise from Santa.  He brought her some skis.  That's convienient because she just got her 5th Grade Free Skiing pass in the mail.  Funny how things work out!

Logan got a BB gun from Santa.  I'm not sure I'm thrilled, but it was bound to happen some day.

Jensen got a green bike with pegs from Santa.  He was very specific about which bike he wanted, but Santa got it right!

Holden had no clue what was going on, but I'm pretty sure he likes all his new stuff.  He definately had the present opening figured out!  It was so fun watching him.

Last night we went to Josh's parents for dinner and to play games.  Then we came home, had our Christmas interviews, then went to bed. Josh checked on Holden about 3:00 in the morning.  He found Logan on the couch asleep.  It's a good thing Santa had already come, or he might have scared him away!  It's so fun to experience the excitement through our kids.  They were all up and ready to open presents by 6:15.  I love this time of our lives and hope I am remembering to cherish every moment! 

Christmas Tree Hunting

We did our traditional Christmas Tree hunt on the day after Thanksgiving, as always.  It's always so fun to have our friends the Kotters come join us. 

This is a picture of Holden before we got dropped off to look for trees.  Needless to say, he did not enjoy Christmas Tree hunting this year.  It was so snowy this year we had to be dropped off at the side of the road and then hike to get back to the trees.  Josh's dad kept picking up and dropping everyone off in shifts.  We sent Holden back on the next pick up!

Here we are, trudging through the snow.  Doesn't it look fun?

This is our friend, the snow frog.

It was quite a workout for everyone.  It made me feel better about all the pie I ate at Thanksgiving!  Burn, baby, burn!

Ally and Katelyn-snow princesses!

Jensen was a trooper!  He didn't last much longer than Holden, though.  He had to work twice as hard as everyone else and even got stuck in the snow a couple times.

It was still a really fun day.  I loved being out in the beautiful snow covered world and making these memories with my family and friends.  The tree we got this year is probably my favorite one ever!  I just might say that every year, though...

Catch up

I have the Internet again!!!  We have been having problems for months with our Internet.  It's been very frustrating to say the least.  We finally figured out that it was being sabotaged by someone in our neighborhood.  Seriously.  Aren't people nice these day?  Anyway, we're pretty sure we won't have anymore problems now (cross your fingers for us).

I was enchanted by the snow frosting our house on my way to take Jensen to school.  I had to take a picture-beautiful!

I love the Reflections program at school and so do my kids.  Ally entered four different categories this year and was a school winner in three of them!  She even won the "Artistic Merit" award for this picture of Callie and Daisy, our chicken and duck.  The theme was "Together We Can..."  She wrote about how Callie and Daisy are friends even though they are different.  Together we can all be friends, she said.  She also won in 3D art and musical composition.  She always amazes me the way she can compose a piano piece.  She makes it seem so simple!

I couldn't talk Logan into entering this year.  But Jensen painted a picture of fruit and said "Together we can eat healthy foods".  I haven't heard if he won yet.  It's such a great way for kids to get excited about art!

I had a weak moment and let Ally talk me into having a "late night" Christmas party last weekend.  It actually went better than I expected.  They spent an hour and a half just decorating gingerbread houses!  They played games, had a gift exchange and spent another hour or so playing "photo shoot" with MY camera.  As you can see, they got a little carried away with the frosting!  It was fun to see Ally with her friends and listen to their conversations (shhh...don't tell her I was listening).  It brought back a lot of memories of growing up with my friends. :)

Pinewood Derby

Logan was able to participate in his first pinewood derby on November 17.  This is the car that he and Josh made.  Well, Josh probably did 90% of it.  Not sure why they call this a kid activity.  I think Josh was more excited than Logan was.

Josh tried to model it after the one that he made when he was a kid.  We even found the same stickers to put on it that Josh had on his car!  They have had the same pinewood derby stickers for a LONG time!  Josh also had lots of tricks up his sleeve (thanks to his friend Caleb) to make it a winning car.  And it was really fast!  So fast that Logan got in trouble with the City police.

This is Logan getting his first ticket.

A ticket for speeding in the church gym!  This had better be the only ticket he ever gets.

Logan ended up winning second place overall.  Way to go!  All those "modifications" paid off.

Here's all the boys who participated:  Clay, Conner, Jackson, Johnathan, Logan, Taden and Hugo.  What a fine looking bunch of boys!  It's been fun being their den leader and getting to know them.

Grandpa Naylor came to watch the derby and Holden was running around like a crazy man as usual.  I swear the kid never stops.  And look at Ally-she got glasses!!  One week after my LASIK she got her first pair.  How's that for ironic?  We got the ones that were bold and stylish. I think she looks way cute in them. So much for not having to pay for glasses ever again, though!