Day After

So not much going on here. The kids are playing with their toys. I'm taking down Christmas decorations. I woke up this morning and did a treadmill run, then I stretched out my hips as I squatted by the tree and started taking off ornaments. I figured since I put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving, I had the right to take it down the day after Christmas.

I got all the ornaments off, stuggled with the lights for a while but finally got them off too, then it was time to take down the tree piece by piece. It's nothing personal, Mr. Tree, it's just that we already have more than our share of clutter, and you've fulfilled your purpose this year. I was really excited to see you gone, but we look forward with pleasure to seeing you next year. So I'm trying to clean and put away and hide things, the kids have been putting together lego sets and coloring. Here is the favorite received gift of each child ...well, except the first three. They didn't get any one particularly amazing gift, and the Christmas magic is a little bit gone for these older kids, so we're gonna skip Joseph Mel and Ethan, but I'm sure they liked their new headphones and socks and ACT book etc, right kids? As for the younger kids:

Hyrum - Millenium Falcon drone
Wesley - Neon Street Rollers. He would say his x-wing fighter, but it doesn't fly so well, drat.
Abi - Friends Lego Hotel ...which I ordered online and we picked up at Toys R Us today... Corey and I had a mixup and I thought he bought her gift, and he thought I got it... so she didn't get a toy on Christmas and quietly mourned in the corner that all she got for Christmas was a book and some shoes, so sad.
Lily - Elves Lego Set with the Baby Queen Dragon
Sophi - Lego Queen Dragon
Natalie - I'll just guess the Belle Lego. But yesterday she seemed most excited and pleased with all the Hi-Chew candies in her stoking.
Owen - Hit the 4 balls toy
Daniel - I'll speak for him too and say his new muslin blankets. :)

So yeah, the house is a wreck. It's nice to have a whole week to try and clean it up. :) Any chance they'll actually do any homework? I find it highly unlikely. We're all going to enjoy the break from school and responsiblity.

Christmas Day!

Welcome Christmas day! As usual on Christmas morning, Corey and I slept in while the kids tried to wait. They were up on their own, but thankfully not as early as their alarms were set for (4:30 am) because I had confiscated phones and unplugged alarm clocks. They slept in the front room under the tree. I came out first, and gave permission for them to open their presents to each other, which were under the tree in the front room.

Corey and I went over the list of gifts and checked it twice to make sure things were even between the kids.

We didn't have a big breakfast. We kinda didn't have breakfast at all... the kids were eating the treats in their stockings and Corey had bought lots of goodies that we just set out in bowls at the table. Things like dried mangos, chocolate covered acai, cookies, etc. You know, all the healthy stuff. Then we all voted to go over to the white tree to open presents.

I tried to get a kid picture in front of the tree. There were lots of moving parts though, so these were the two that kinda turned out the best...

Still a little blurry, or kids are half hidden - Daniel above and Hyrum below, but we called it good and the opening began.

Corey puts numbers on the presents and then has a list he goes from, so the kids don't know which gift is for who. Lily chose the first one, the biggest one. It was for Natalie. This was a last minute switch...

Corey had bought this for himself, but gifted it to Natalie last minute cause she needed another present. This is the Nerf Rival Prometheus MXVIII, a semi automatic blaster gun. It was bigger than she is.

Corey figured it was safe to give her, cause she'll more willing share with him, being the sweet 5 year old that she is, and cause if she did want to use it, she would probably tire of it quickly and be open to letting him take it over for her. Corey got lots of these Rival Nerf guns for the kids. They continued to pick up presents, tell Corey the number, and then hand the present to the lucky recipient.

Daniel made a cute face when he opened a toy car. It will have to be preserved in memory though, cause I didn't catch it on camera. He and Owen got lots of cars and loved it.

More opening gifts.

Natalie got an Elsa doll and Sophi got Elena of Avalor.

Gifts almost all opened...

and we have the mess to prove it...

Yeah. Post Christmas chaos.

I cleaned up a little bit, and the house looked awesome yesterday morning. But now that we don't have a "Santa can't come..." threat to motivate them to pitch in, looks like we're on our own for today. But we kinda picked up for a second before we had the real highlight of the day - a call from Joseph at 11:00!!!

HI JOSEPH!!! It was really fun to talk to him. My parents came over and we also skyped in Corey's parents. Owen and Daniel were up watching tv -

a good distraction so they wouldn't make it so we couldn't talk to Joseph. But we did have them make a brief appearance. Owen, do you remember Joseph?

He cried cause we had taken him away from his show and quickly left to go finish watching Big Hero 6, which is his current movie on repeat. Daniel stayed a bit longer and was more willing to say hello to his big brother. "Yeah... I think I remember that guy..."

So we talked with Joseph for an hour.

It was fun.

I took a few videos. Corey did too. I uploaded the three of mine to his blog here.

He's doing a great job. Corey asked him if there's anything he misses from home. And he said he can't really remember what life was like before the mission. I totally get that though, we've been there.

That's good, it means he's lost in the work of the Gospel. He's such a good kid, and we sure miss him, but he's not missing anything here and there's no place we'd rather have him be. Here's Mel's instagram pic in memory of the glorious occasion -

Corey and the kids headed over to his parent's house at 2. I am staying here for a bit while Owen and Daniel are down for naps, and since I had was Santa during the night, I'm going to take a quick breather too. Will post tomorrow with other Christmas fun we had today.

Christmas-ing

We got home from Park City around noon today. The kids were eager to set up the tree. I said "Not until the house gets cleaned up!" (which I had said we had to do before Park City but didn't quite finish...) So those that wanted to Christmas up the house had to unpack, clean their rooms, practice, and such. Abi worked hard since she was the one who wanted the trees up the most. As she vacuumed up the front room, she thought she saw an earring that looked like my gold and diamond earrings that I had let Natalie borrow for a few days (since her ears were infected). Someone one of the earrings was on the floor in the front room. Abi realized what it was after she had already vacuumed it up. She called Natalie over to see if she was wearing both earrings... nope. It must have fallen out when Natalie was wrestling with Joseph in the front room. Ok, so we start to try and pick out the dust and dirt from the bag and set it out on paper towels along the floor, and we shake and poke through it looking for the earring.

No luck. Finally we cut open the bag. Still nothing. Natalie kinda looks through those again and I go to the vacuum to see if it is stuck in the brush or the hose somewhere.

After having no luck during our previous 20 minutes of searching, Natalie said a prayer for God's hlep, and shortly after than, there we gratefully found it in the hose. Whew! Then we finished vacuuming, and THEN we were ready to bring up the trees. Two lights on the white tree were out, and have been burned out for the past 2 years I think, so this year we finally decided to get it all the way off. Abi and I cut the wires with scissors. 

It took a while, but we did it. The lights on the bottom of the tree still work, but they are a soft white and the white strands of lights I have for the top are bright LED lights... so next year we might cut those off of the bottom so that all the lights will be uniform, but we called it good for today and finished putting up the tree. The boys helped decorate. Everyone was in their Santa Hats. 

And done - we've got our two trees up and once again I didn't have to do very much of it, so yay.

Happy Halloween

It was a fun Halloween day. Hopefully it lived up to all the kids' excitement and expectations. 

They are downstairs eating junk and watching Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets right now. Corey went to pick up Abi. This morning for school, they eagerly got out of bed to get ready. I drew a frog on Lily's face last night (thanks to this idea!) and tried to touch it up a bit.

The markers kept bleeding into the white paint... and the eyes had rubbed off by the end of the school day. 

We'll have to experiment and maybe get real make up supplies for next year. Or maybe we'll do some fun stuff for Christmas. But it lasted through the night and survived the day at school. But Lily was good with that and wore a black hoodie. Lily is also really excited that she's learned the rhythm and beat for how to play the cup game. She said she taught that in one of her classes today. I'm sure it was mostly a party day. I don't think Abi dressed up for school, but she and her friends dressed up like Alvin and the Chipmunks. She was Simon. 

The elementary kids were thrilled that the fun day of days was finally here - Halloween! Here's a cute picture of all the excited kids at the bus stop this morning - 

Free candy and imaginative costumes. The elementary kids were excited for the school parade. This morning we couldn't find the washable markers, though, so I used black permanent marker for Daniel's Incredibles mask! We'll find out tonight if it comes off!

Owen is going to be an astronaut tonight, but I put that he was going to be a Ninjago Lego guy for school, and he changed his mind a few times (he wanted to be a pirate, then a vampire, etc) but I said he had to stay with the Lego Ninja. 

His 2nd grade teachers plan a musical program around all of their costumes. Here he is on the back row, in front of the pumpkin -

He did a cute job in the program. 2nd graders are cute. 

Just Katharine and I stayed for the program, but Corey and Peter came to the parade too, which was before the program. Parade at 9:15, then program at about 10:00. We saw all the kids in the parade.

Daniel has such a fun personality. Most of the kindergarteners seemed nervous and were not smiling, but not Daniel. He came up and gave Katharine a hug and then continued on his way, waving to all his fans ~

It was outside, again, and it was chilly but not too bad. After D, we saw Owen and Natalie, but Sophi's class skipped in order and she came before Natalie, so I was looking for a Jolly Rancher and not Cleopatra, so I missed getting a photo of her but we did wave and give a hug. Here she is with her friends trick or treating tonight ~

Our neighbors did a pizza dinner for the neighborhood and the kids went over there, but I didn't. Corey was in the shower and I was nursing Katharine, cause it started at 5:30 right when we got back from a bike ride. Probably our last one of the season! It was snowy and cold for most of the trail, but it was nice to be up there one last time. 

I got a personal best on the ride up! I did a few parts that I haven't been able to do before, and I really did them this time! I didn't pause or stop to adjust my wheel, I was proud of myself! I listened to this on the ride up (well, I listened to part 1 on Sat, this time I was on part 2 and I loved the things she talked shared about parenting. It is a must listen! Start at 25:00, so good! So, it was good, cold, but good. I miss fall already. I'm going to try and go to Corner Canyon for one more ride tomorrow, and then there's snow coming Wednesday morning and for 8 of the next 10 days. We're going to need to find a new daily hobby for the winter since biking will be mostly out. Unless we get a fat bike! Maybe I'll take up snow shoeing? Corey's thinking of getting a pass to Momentum for rock climbing. He and Wes might go in the morning. Ok, sorry, back to Halloween. So Corey showered, I nursed K, she fell asleep and so he stayed home with her and I went out with kids - Lily borrowed a dinosaur onesie for Wes so he could be twinners with Peter. 

They called themselves "The Dinosaur Brothers". Checking out some of the loot - Pokemon cards!

We have a pretty great neighborhood for kids to trick or treat in. 

Lily as a Christmas Tree, Natalie as a Jolly Rancher. Lily didn't get candy, she was just being festive and walked around with us.

Getting lots of loot!

One neighbor was dressed as "Your Fairy Godmother" and the kids lined up to talk with her, like they would for a Mall Santa, and she granted them wishes and gave them candy and some kids (like my 3 girls) got jewelry! 

Running from house to house. 

A neighbor Dave has a tradition of making flat bread - 

And some neighbors next to him had hot dogs to roast and smores!

Another neighbor was serving up hot cocoa and apple cider. It's just a pretty amazing neighborhood and place to live. We love it here. 

Tonight as Owen was trick or treating, he nostalgically said "I'm going to miss Halloween tomorrow..." I'm sure he will. Corey's back with Abi - time for scriptures. We're still going to make it to bed by 10! It's our new modus operandi for survival, and it is working wonders. We've only done it for like the past 6-9 months I think, but it's great. It's still a school night, so party is over - Bye Halloween! We'll see you next year!