A busy December

Wow it has been a busy month!! (actually the last 2,3..4 months have been pretty busy!!) Ellie is growing up so fast! She is such a joy. She is 9 months old now and loves: crawling, putting everything in her mouth, eating and eating and eating, pulling things out of boxes, baskets, cupboards and drawers, playing peek a boo, standing and climbing and just being busy!
 

We have been trying to bundle up and enjoy being outside for just a few minutes to play and ride our bikes. David does not dare to go play outside without someone watching him though.... silly kid! He used to go play in the dirt for 20-30 mins on his own (with me checking on him). Now he won't even go out in the yard for a second without me walking right along with him. Its good to get me out there playing with him though. He loves playing outside with his sisters though. They are always making little huts (messes), and exploring.

David had a fun month at preschool doing Christmasy things. He made this cute Santa, they exchanged presents and made little gifts to give away to a friend. 

We had a nice time at the Ward Christmas party, good food, a nice program and 50 baked potatoes to bring on dance, gymnastic night!

We have had a little Elf come to visit from the North Pole this year. We even got a special letter from Santa Claus explaining his job. We named him Jack. Almost every night Anna writes him a letter with lots of questions, and leaves him a treat. He has done some funny things: drew pictures on our pictures on the wall with a dry erase marker, took peices out of Daddy's puzzle, turned our milk green, hung up by our mistletoe, hid in our poinsetta, climbed in our Christmas stocking, left us mini oreos, hung our underwear up on the Christmas card holder, and today toilet papered our tree!! The kids get a good kick out of everything he does, and are most excited when he does something silly... Isn't he supposed to be watching if they are good or bad?... huh, guess thats not too fun! 

This is my new addition to the Christmas decor this year. I hung little pictures of our past Christmases on it. It has been fun to look at and remember.


We recieved this beautiful poinsetta from Wayne's boss at his Christmas Party. It is so lovely, I have really been enjoying it. We are blessed to have such wonderful employers who take such good care of us. This year Wayne was put on salary, and we started getting Dental Insurance, such a blessing. 

Grandma gave our family this little Nativity to paint, It was fun to do together and is a wonderful addition to our Christmas things. Thanks mom!

Anna has been taking Piano lessons, and she had her first recital last week. She played Good King Wencles, and did a wonderful job. She is enjoying piano and has a very sweet teacher. 

 

Saturday, Santa visited the community center in Vernal so we went to see him and tell him what we wish for this Christmas. It was wonderful we didn't even have to wait in a single line (thats a first!!), and we were able to take our time. The kids were happy to see him.
David wants a Transformer house.

Megan wants the whole Lalaloopsy collection. 

Anna wants a surprise! 

Ellie was intrigued and didn't even cry! 

 

Amist all of this fun I have been crocheting Christmas presents. And just learned how to crochet some fun new scarves using Sashay yarn. We have also been moving forward on plans for building. We plan to start Feb. 1 if everything goes according to plan. So probablly by next Christmas we will be in a new house, wow!

Grandma Zola

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My Grandma Zola passed away on Nov. 20, 2012. She hadn't been feeling really well for a week or so, but decided she really wanted to go to the Primary Program at church. But she got there and sat down and slumped over and stopped breathing. She was able to be revived and taken to the hospital. We thought it was a stroke. But probablly it was just her body shutting down. She was on life support for a couple of days, and I was able to go see her and tell her goodbye.
She was such a great example of serving and loving others. She leaves a great legacy for her posterity. I will miss her sweet little cards in the mail, and hearing her voice on the phone, and visiting with her.  When I was young I would go spend a week with her in the summer and she would always spoil me and my brothers. There are certain foods and places that will always remind me of her.
The funeral was a lovely service, I think we were all still in a little shock. But it was nice to be together and share our memories of Grandma.

My cousin had all of the great grandkids release a white balloon to go up to heaven to Grandma, it was very sweet.


Grandma  has 4 granddaughters and 10 grandsons. The granddaughters shared memories of Grandma at the funeral, and read her obituary, and the grandsons were pallbearers. Lots of tears were shed, but we have peace knowing that we will see our beautiful Grandma again.  

 

 

 

Happy 4th Birthday David

David turned 4 in November. We celebrated his birthday at Preschool class, with these little cupcakes, he picked out Spiderman and Ironman rings to go on the tops.


His class made him this fun Birthday crown.
 

They also made this cute turkey hat for Thanksgiving


We had a little party the day before David's birthday with our cousins and Grandma and Grandpa. Mommy made Transformer decorations, a pinata, Transformer ballons, and a Transformer "cake"

David was one happy boy, he loves his Transformers! He kept bringing me a his toy transformer and asking me to draw this one too. He was so sad when some of them popped.

I'm so thankful to have this little guy in my life! He keeps me smiling. He is getting to be a great help, and loves playing with his sisters and his cousins and friends. He is a little social guy thats for sure. Lately he has been more nervous about certain things though... (a stage hopefully). We love you David and are so glad you are part of our family.

David recieved several nice gifts, Mom and Dad gave him a new balance bike. We have been practicing riding it several times thanks to the nicer weather we've been enjoying. David is getting good at cruising on it... I need to take pictures. One of his favorite things though were these super cheap 'transformers' that I got from the dollar store to decorate the cake with... they broke so easy though, always in pieces and he was constantly asking us to fix them. (they ended up in the garbage a couple of days later)

Halloween 2012

David made this cute candy jack o lantern at preschool. They had a cute little program where they sang some songs for the parents. It was really cute, I wished I'd brought something to video it. He has so much fun at preschool!

For FHE we had a fun Halloween Dinner with bone bread sticks, and ghost shepherds pie. The kids had fun with it and I had fun making it!

Round two of our Halloween Dress ups, We went to trick or treat at Gma and Gpa Clayburn's house Anna was Princess Merida from Brave, Megan was a Rockstar Seleton, David was Spiderman and Ellie was a Unicorn.

We carved some pumpkins, roasted some seeds, and saved some seeds to plant next year.

I made this fun 'spooky' halloween breakfast. :) THanks Pinterest.

Anna changed her mind so many times this halloween. Good thing we have lots of things in our dress up/costume box... she had fun being creative. She was a devil for her school halloween party, then came home and started changing and creating costumes. She wanted to be a zombie so she made this mask, then she changed to a cheerleader for the trunk or treat.

Building plans

If you follow me on Pinterest, you know that I have been pinning LOTS of floor plans... We have decided that we want to build a new home! Pretty exciting and a bit daunting too. After looking at hundreds of plans.. (they all start to look the same after a while), we finally found this one that we really like!

We want to change the front a bit. It won't jog out or have the double dormer, but I was inspired by this picture:

So we want to try to do that.

The main level floor plan. Pretty much perfect, just trying to fit in a pantry space, and elimanate the front door off the master bedroom, as well as the cute little nook (to cut down on costs). We will probablly replace it with french doors. And elimanate the french doors off the dinning room.

The upper level is again just about perfect, we will frame in the rec room to make another bedroom though, and leave the bonus spaces unfinished for now. Well thats it, our Dream Home! Now just chipping away at all the little things that we need to do to prepare to build. Yesterday Wayne and Dad started clearing some russian olives to carve out our site. It was pretty exciting to see something happening! A lot of work ahead, but so excited and looking forward to the end result! :)

Anna's Insect Collection

Anna was assigned to create an insect collection for school. We had lots of fun finding insects all over our yard and feild. We even found a praying mantis!  (though it was missing a leg). Anna came up with this idea for dispalying them, it turned out really nice.  She is enjoying 3rd grade and is busy with homework, Activity days, Dance and new this year: Piano. She really likes her piano teacher and wants to go 2x a week instead of just once!

I found this cute back to school subway art printable on pinterest and came up with my own little back to school decoration, featuring our cute kids back to school pictures inside the bus and school house. It has been fun and helped us be excited about school! :) 

Megan is enjoying 1st grade. Her teacher does lots of cool stuff with them: a mighty "Oh yea!" when they do something good, and a mighty Grr! when they do something bad. She is constantly reapeating their rules "Be smart, Be safe", and telling us about draining your brain, ect. She is also busy with homework, dance and new for her: Gymnastics! Yeah! she is on a roll, literaly. Praciticing front flips, kart wheels, hand stands and more.