Monday, November 30, 2015

5 Year Reunion

We had our friends from Costa Rica come visit us on Saturday.
They are not currently from, neither were any of them born, in Costa Rica, but they'll always be our "friends from Costa Rica" cause that is where we all met. It's been five years since that adventure (that was documented beginning here), so it was fun to get everyone together again. We all met up at a park a few years ago, and we also had the Meyers up for a visit two years ago, but it's been too long. Yikes, just found the post of that get together, and nevermind, it wasn't two years... it was 3 and a half years ago! Yes, the time is flying. 

This past year, each of our families added a baby boy. Abraham, Owen, and Adam. Bringing our 7-5-7 kid totals to 10-7-10. All 27 kids had a good time visiting and playing. Wait, not, it was just 26 kids... Michael didn't make it (Joseph missed him). Mary taught our kids how to play some soda pop game where you throw quarters and whoever gets a quarter in the middle cup of pop doesn't have to speed drink their soda, but everyone else does, and the last person to chug it looses and has to drink an extra cup with some soy sauce in it or something gross like that. They thought it was fun. No way I was playing that game though.
We adults just visited like we did 5 years ago. Just this time it was cold outside. Not like in the jungle of Costa Rica.

We had the day open and free and spent the whole time visiting, just like the good ol' days - Nov 22, 2010 - visiting in the kitchen of Costa Rica

That was then, this is now:
We took a break from visiting and played one game with everyone that was new to us and pretty fun ~ Rules: 1) everyone write three names of famous people on three slips of paper. 2) mix all the names in a bowl. 3) Divide into teams (we had 3 teams). Play: Round one - get your team to guess each name you draw from the bowl as you describe it but don't use the name. Get as many names as you can in 90 seconds. Keep playing until all names have been drawn and guessed. Round 2 - same names, draw them one at a time, and get your team to guess by acting it out, no words. Round 3 - same thing, only this time no acting, and just one word. The men won with 43 points. Mom's came in a close second at 42, and I think the kids had like 28 points. It was fun. Some of the names were easy, others were hard, like Genghis Khan... don't know who chose that one, it forced us all to get creative in how we communicated. Sometimes we did sign language or spelled it out in the air.
That's a big group of people around a small screen. I think that beats our past family record.

11/24/10 - watching tv on Thanksgiving Eve 5 years ago~
Watching "Inside Out" in our unfinished basement - 11/28/15
The Meyers headed home around 9 pm on Saturday and the Royals had called earlier to ask if they could spend the night, so they slept over and came to church with us. We had fun visiting more on Sunday and they stayed the day. We still had lots of thanksgiving meat and pies to share. One sad thing - during our evening of fun, I noticed a certain little person play with the thermostat, and I forgot to fix it, until on Sunday morning when I came down the stairs to feel the freezing air.  It was like 60 degrees! And they were in the unfinished basement where it was even colder. They were freezing! I felt horrible. First thing I'm going to do whenever we have money is to finish the basement so we have a decent place to host friends.

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Edible Turkeys

We are having friends over to visit today. I've got supplies ready for everyone to make turkeys. My children have been waiting patiently. Our friends hadn't arrived yet, they were running a little later than we planned, so I finally gave in and let my crew make their turkeys.
We didn't do as many as last time, but it was still good, and I can say I did something festive.
I should have gotten a picture of Abi's cause it was the best one - she made the feathers out of bananas and clementine wedges. Hyrum just went for pretzels.
Good enough. Owen fell asleep on Mel as our first guests arrived and we visited. I thought his little lets looked so cute.
 All tuckered out. 
I'd say that is his preferred way to nap, sitting on someone's lap with his back up propped up.. He's a cutie. 

Friday, November 27, 2015

Few More Pics

A few more pictures of Thanksgiving. Joseph took my camera and did some artistic shots (without permission)
(...but I was sitting right next to him and saw what he was doing.)
It's always good to get another person's perspective of things. He's not this short, he was just sitting down on a little chair.
That yellow chair there above at the kiddie table was Sophi's place. It has a full plate of Thanksgiving goodness, which was untouched by Sophi. She didn't want that yucky food. She hid upstairs during most of the meal as she tried to wait until the time that the cake would be open for eating. She finally gave in and ate some "cupcakes". They were pumpkin bread muffins, but I figured they might as well be cupcakes, so that's what we called them, and that's what Sophi ate for her Thanksgiving dinner.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving

Today we enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving meal. My parents and my little sister and her husband were our dinner guests. We enjoyed setting up last night ~ the kids were excited when they saw how the tables were being decorated. We put on the place settings and plates and cups today as the time for the feast drew nigh. We had a nice table set for the adults:
A banquet table was set up for the all the "big kids" - youngest big kids was 8 year old through 15 year old
A little table set up for the toddlers. Lily wanted to sit at the table with the big kids until she saw that the gold pumpkin was set at the toddler table. "I guess I'll sit at the little table..."  
Once everyone had arrived, we offered a prayer of gratitude and began our feast.
It's fun to pull out decorations, lights and candles. I'm sure the kids wish we'd do it more often. I haven't been keeping up with my once a month goal from two years ago, but we will begin to try again. 
How's the food at the little table?
(Natalie, you're so cute!)
Kids enjoying the traditional turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, ham, pumpkin bread... it was a feast. A bottle of sparkling apple cider at each table. 
The adult table - nice meal and dinner conversation.
I love fall leaves, even the fake ones. We've had them all over the house. After today we'll probably have to clean the up in exchange for winter decor, but I love fall the most.
I guess the meal's about over - kids are getting distracted from their food... Natalie's driving away.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Eldest of the Hibb Sibs

Today is my big sister's birthday. I was looking though old memory books and old photos to try and find a picture of us together that I could post on her facebook. I found a few, but facebook isn't letting me post them. I was going to put this one her wall. Aren't we cute?
But it wasn't letting me post them. I thought it was cause they were too big, but I saved them again as smaller files and it's still not working. SO, today's post is now a tribute to my big sister and our awesome siblings.
This picture above was taken her Senior year I think. Nice rugby shirts, eh? Camilla and I were soccer pals all through elementary and high school. This was one of our favorite AYSO teams - Crushers because we were orange like the orange soda Crush, and cause we were gonna crush all the other teams in our games.  And we did.
High school soccer was awesome too. We drove a big white station wagon to school. I remember our coach saying that it was funny that the two of the shortest players drove the biggest honkin' car.
She signed my yearbook right above that photo of my sophomore year, her junior. Doesn't she have nice handwriting.
She ends her autograph by letting me know that I'm bugging her to finish up, what a nice sister I was! So, let's talk about school for a second ~ Camilla began a tradition in our family that has carried on into my own ~ a tradition of excellent grades. I had to keep up with Camilla, she was a 4.0 student. So I mostly got 4.0's too. Which impressed Corey so much that it got me on his radar of top notch girls. Corey has that expectation for our own children now. Me, not so much, I think as a teen I let grades become more important to me than being honest, so I play the "A grades are good, but do not do get good grades at the expense of your integrity." Those are stories for another day.

Last of all, Camilla was by my side on one of the most important dates of my young adult life - my first date. And not just any first date, my first date with COREY
Thank you Camilla, wish we could see you more! I'm grateful you're part of my eternal family! xoxo

Monday, November 23, 2015

Thanksgiving Plans

For Thanksgiving this year, we invited our friends, the "RMs" to come over so we could have a little 5 year Costa Rica reunion, celebrating our American Thanksgiving together while we were there in 2010. That 2010 Thanksgiving was really a memorable feast - we really felt like modern pilgrims in a new land, and the traditional Thanksgiving meal we all pulled together to make reminded all of us of our long lost home in the blessed US of A.

Corey was gone in Chile and I had another week or so until we went down to join him. I was very thankful to have friends from American to enjoy the holiday with. Not to mention that Melanie and Rachael were miracle workers with the meal, the food was delicious. Here is our Thanksgiving Eve, and Thanksgiving Day
Here we are 5 years later, and our families of 7, 5, and 7 have grown to 10, 7, and 10~ add the adults, and I've been mentally prepping myself for how to host 33 people, can we say party?

So anyway, that was our plan, but then unplanned things happened (a grandpa passed away, parent's on a mission in Guatemala came in town for the funeral and needed a place to go, I invited them to join us, but they decided to have it just be family, etc...) - so then we thought maybe we'd change our day to Wednesday? or Tuesday or Friday... What to do. We finally decided that we're just doing a get together on Saturday. So now we're going to spend some time with Corey's family on Wednesday and Thursday, and then for our Thursday feast we're going to do a much smaller than planned dinner here with us, my parents, and we're going to eat early enough that my little sister will be able to join us before she heads to feast with her inlaws. Glad we got it all figured out, and it should still make for a great holiday. I'm mostly excited about just two days of school this week, yay! I love days off from school

Friday, November 20, 2015

Survived a Week Solo

Well, it's Friday! Which means we've almost made it, and that the hard part is over, phew! I've survived this week of school and carpool and band with Corey gone, and he'll be back tomorrow night around 9 pm. His trip to Brazil went well I believe, although we haven't really talked much. He'd been busy and so have I. We did get in one skype call. Look at my baby's baby blue eyes, he's so gorgeous.
Here's my computer screen after our call. 
We didn't argue over who wins the "my week was crazier than yours" title. But if we were to base our crazy weeks upon the expectations we had, than I know that mine was easier. Cause I had visions of total chaos and exhaustion. But everyone came to help me. My parents and Corey's parents helped to take the boys to their jazz band practices in American Fork, which was a huge blessing, and then there was another little miracle that happened that I'd like to share. Might just be a nice coincidence or a lucky break, but it was a miracle to me. I hope people were there to help Corey with all his stresses and burdens!

So my biggest worry was doing the morning carpool - Joseph has band at the high school and we have to leave for that by 6:15. We're usually a few minutes late. Then usually Corey takes the Jr. high crew to their before school jazz band practice at 6:45. (...although they are pretty consistent at leaving about 15 minutes late every time.) So, I was thinking I could just take two trips out every day, but I don't want to do that. I could make the Jr. high kids come with Joseph, but then we run a good chance of being 15 minutes late the whole week. And we also give a ride to a neighbor kid and I felt bad asking him to leave at 6:15. But the neighbor was willing to go early, so that was good cause it meant all the carpool times for the rest of the neighbors would be unaffected and would stay the same. So, then I just made sure my kids went to bed early so they would be ready on time. I told them we had to leave at 6:15 sharp, which means wake time of 5:30. Monday Joseph has late start, so he didn't have carpool that day and it was just the regular 6:45 carpool time. We left on time for that, yay, gave me hope for our 6:15 departure on Tuesday. But at school he found out that Tues morning band was cancelled, sweet! Then Tuesday at school he was told and texted me that it was going to be cancelled the whole week! The school is doing their musical play "Fiddler on the Roof" so the band teacher and other band members were having late nights at school rehearsing for that, so he gave them all the mornings off this week. Isn't that a little miracle! What a blessing to my little running ragged self that on the week that Corey is gone and I have to do both our carpools myself that one of them gets cancelled. Heavenly Father is so kind to me. I'm grateful Corey will be home tomorrow, praying for him to travel safely.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Blog Books

I've gotten all my blog posts printed up in Blog books. It's taken me a few years to get it all done, but I just ordered 2014, so now I'm officially up to date. The book for 2014 should be here in time for Christmas. I started printing them in in 2012 and would give them to Corey for his birthday or Christmas.
They are on a shelf with all our journals now. 
We've got 7 book so far. 2007 is the first book there - I didn't blog back then but did put all our emails to family from our first trip to Brazil on the blog when I started in 2007, so that's that book. The second one: 2008-09. I didn't blog much yet, so those two years are combined into a thin book - Book #3 is 2010, it's a big one from our adventure to Costa Rica. Book 4 is 2010-11 and documents Chile - those 5 months are larger than two years of 2008-09. Book 5) 2011 when we're back in Utah, Book #6 - 2012 and Book #7 - 2013.
This last book I just ordered today for 2014 is gonna be big, it was over 400 pages, yikes. Maybe I should have split it into two. we'll see. I'm glad I was able to get a discount with it~ right now there is a great deal - 25 % off with the promo code 250K, cause Blog2Print has printed over 250,000 books. :) Offer expires tonight! I don't let the kids look at them, they are just for keepsake. If they want to reminisce they can come find it on the computer. But I'm glad I have them printed up. :)

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Winning Smile

Wesley got his braces off today! His smile looks amazing. It's good. Too good perhaps. Ethan said he looks like some spoiled rich kid. He does look a bit like Richie Rich or Ricky Schroder.
Pretty amazing Wes! Good looking kid!

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

3 to 6 Months

I love love love 3 to 6 months
~ I think it's my favorite baby age. They aren't as fragile as a newborn, but they're still tiny (well, Owen's kinda become a chunk - he's had a growth spurt the past month... but we'll take as tiny as we can get), so they're tiny yet also oh-so squishy and chubby, Plus they are fun and interactive! I love it.

Owen turned 3 months on the 27th of October. So he's just barely 3 months. So, unfortunately, I just barely rotated the clothes and put away the 3 month clothes and broke out the 3-6 month wardrobe, and he stinkin' barely fits in them! We had a little dress shirt for Church and had to squeeze it on him. Poor kid, mom insists on dressing up her doll and putting a shirt and tie on him. It was so cute, but it was tricky getting that top button buttoned with the rolls of that little neck in the way. He didn't like me after that. So this past Sunday might be the only time he dons the baby suit. It was so cute though. His expression is saying "Do you see what I endure?!?!"
I gotta go through it and put the small 3-6 months with the newborn to 3 month stuff. Cause I'm still keeping baby stuff for another few years. (shh! Don't tell Corey) Ethan took off the tie and unbuttoned his shirt when we got there, which I found ironic since it was Ethan who insisted that I take the sleeping baby out of his cozy blanket and pjs and put the Sunday clothes on him. Owen drips all over when he drinks his bottle though, so dressing him up just makes me stress about his clothes more. Better to just let a baby be in his pjs so he can spit up and mess his diaper without causing his mom undue worry. But then again, maybe just once a week it's fun to dress him up? Hmm, maybe I'll go find a bigger suit for him in the 6-9 month clothes so I can play dress up with him again. I love my baby doll, he's my little prince.
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