All the Drama

Okay, this time the blog site wouldn't let me do what I wanted with the pictures, so I'm doing three different posts to cover our Christmas experience. Friday was a lot of fun, but a little scary, too. Last year when Derek and I visited New York, our favorite part of the trip was being able to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. So when my mom came, we really wanted to take her and our kids to see them. Well, we packed the kids in the van. I ran inside and up to my room to get a coat with my hands full of stuff for the outing. On the way downstairs, I overstepped the first step and fell down the relatively steep flight of stairs. I did a summer salt and a half and landed on my face--my left cheek. (Afterward I realized exactly what hit, because I had a soar left shoulder, right knee, etc.) Derek came in the door to hear the last few bumps and was VERY worried that I was seriously hurt. To make a long story short, after one of Derek's incredible treatments, a blessing and some ice I was off to the Statue of Liberty. I know I was protected from serious harm and am SO VERY thankful I'm okay. If you look at this picture closely you can see my cheek was swollen. Luckily the black eye didn't set in until later.

Holiday Vacation

Well, I'm back from vacation! Before Joseph's school was let out for winter break, he told us, "Mom, we're going on a vacation." I told him our family was not going anywhere for Christmas this year and he informed me, "My teacher told me I'm going on a vacation with the kids in my class." He eventually realized his teacher was just talking about time off from school, but usually he has to find things out on his own 'cause he doesn't take our word for it. :) We had a WONDERFUL Christmas!! My mom was able to fly out to visit our family here and Ann's family in Connecticut. It really made it Christmas to have Mom here.

Thankful!

As you can tell, our kids were not excited to get their pictures taken. (They were REALLY tired.) This was at the Christmas party last night for our ward (church). They had the bishop and his counselors dress up as the three wise men instead of having Santa come--which I thought was great! It was really cute. Well, I realized last night how thankful I am for being able to work with the Young Women in our ward. I thought we were going to be released because of some of the rumors that have been circulating. Well, I spoke to the president and she said we were going to add not replace the leaders in YW. I knew I enjoyed being in it, but when I was faced with thinking my time was done, I really was so sad about it! Our girls are great! Really sweet and down to earth from really good families here. And the leaders that I work with are great also!! This little experience has helped me count my blessings. :) Yesterday, I cut all of our kids' hair. You can probably tell from recent pictures that they have needed it for SO long. Charlie's Superman curl was getting longer and longer. In the past I've tried to bribe them to sit still with a sucker, but this time I let them watch a movie and it was AMAZING how long they were patient. Even though Derek has been the one asking for a haircut, he was working until the party so he didn't get one until today. (So it's my fault that he had long hair for our picture.) Everyone ready for Christmas????

Emma's Quote

Emma came up to me with a book and was pretending to read to me from it. She said very seriously, "And the Prophet says...No more monkeys jumping on the bed!" I laughed SO hard, which caused her to repeat the phrase over and over all day. So much has happened since I wrote last, but now that I sit down to write it...I'm having writer's block. I'm so very excited that my mom will be here on Monday! She will be visiting for two weeks during Christmas. Right now we're in the middle of a snow, sleet and freezing rain storm, but I think it will all calm down by Monday.

Joseph's Tooth

Emma reprogrammed our laptop while I was helping one of our other kids, so I have to "borrow" our neighbor's internet signal (which isn't always on). This morning I had my first parent-teacher conference, which was a good thing and it went very well. Also, Joseph lost his first tooth last night. I will probably post a picture of it soon. I went in to give him some water at about 1 am 'cause he was coughing and he said in a very calm voice, "Mom, my tooth is over there." It cracked me up that he woke up, pulled his tooth out, and threw it across the room.


So, this picture is on Monday morning right after we took Derek to work. (That's why they still have their footed pj's on.) When we got home, it was snowing just a little and they wouldn't go inside 'cause they were having fun running around in it. Well, it was one year ago that we visited New York with NO intention of moving here. In fact, Derek bought our plane tickets when he was out of state on a different rotation. I told him I would rather have gone with him to a different interview to some other place and he said he bought them because it would be our only chance to visit New York, since we would never move there. Now look at us---------I love it here!!

Snow, Snow, Snow!!

This morning we woke up to LOTS of snow! I went to all the trouble of taking video of the kids as they came down stairs and discovered the snow, but then Derek reminded me that the boys all saw snow on the fathers and sons outing last year. Oh well, the footage is still cute! Emma was excited to see the snow though. I must say, it's a lot funner for me to drive around in a car in it, than to be cycling through it like on my mission!! I was talking with the kids and we just happened to start talking about future brothers and sisters. Well, Joseph and Charlie decided it would be fun for us to have 2 more baby sisters and 2 more baby brothers at the same time. I told them they would have to come visit me in the mental hospital. Well, Joseph doesn't know what a "mental" hospital is, but he caught what I was saying and said, "Okay, mom. We will only have one baby girl and one baby boy and you don't have to worry because Charlie and me will hold them all of the time!" This morning at church was fun, too because I lost my keys out in the snow on our way in. Well, I didn't realize they were lost until a good friend of ours went up to bear his testimony and showed my keys to the congregation and announced that if the owner wanted their keys back they would have to bear their testimony. He left them up on the pulpit. Yes, humiliating, but pretty funny!! I had wanted to bear my testimony, so it helped motivate me. The day before Thanksgiving we discovered our heater/furnace had stopped working. When the repairman looked at it, he told us he was surprised it didn't burn our house down when it burnt itself up inside. I have been thinking of that a lot over the past week and I feel like more than at any other time of my life, Heavenly Father is leading and guiding me and our family and protecting us. I feel that He loves our children SO much and their future is VERY important to Him. Even though I'm not studying the scriptures and teaching the gospel for hours everyday, like on my mission, Heavenly Father is still using me to help my kids and He gives me guidance to help them. To me it's a similar feeling to helping someone learn about the gospel, but a little different. I'm so grateful for the guidance of the Holy Ghost. I also have more empathy for my parents now that I'm trying to do what they did. I feel I fall so short, but that if I'm trying my hardest and ask for His help, he will help my kids in the ways I wasn't able to. WOW!! Okay, I'm done. If you've read all the way to the end I should give you a prize or something!! :) Have a great day!

We've decided to adopt 7 more!!

Okay, the title was a ploy to get you to read this! Actually, since we have the habit of bringing lots of kids home and announcing shocking news, we thought when we moved to New York it would be fun to pay a few kids to stand in one of our family pictures and REALLY surprise everyone with our Christmas card pictures! However, we HAVE adopted 7 more...sugar gliders. Yes, you have to GOOGLE sugar gliders if you don't know what they are. I happen to love kangaroos and other fun things that come from Australia, so since I couldn't bring a kangaroo home, I settled for 7 sugar gliders. I think I was going through withdrawal since I don't have 4 kids in diapers anymore. Not only do I get to clean up after them, but I also get to buy them baby food from the baby aisle. (I was starting to miss all the baby stuff!) I actually have wanted to get a sugar glider since a guy in my office at Ohio Casualty told me about them (that was 7 years ago!) I wanted to buy one in Arizona, but they were too expensive and they had to ship them from across the country. Well, out here I was looking on Craigslist and someone wanted to get rid of all or none...so I took all 7! They are fun, but I want to give away at least 5 of them. We'll see. We had a FANTASTIC Thanksgiving!! Ann & Dave, Julia, Katie, Grant, Megan, Marissa, and Annie all came over for Thanksgiving. It was so wonderful to have them over. I'm so grateful they could come. Then the next day Chip & Dy, Dallin and AJ stayed the night. I can't believe how fun it was to see everyone. I really would have been homesick if we weren't surrounded by family. Oh, and it was the first time I cooked the Thanksgiving turkey! I followed this cooks recipe that I saw on BYU TV. When it was finished I told Derek I thought it was undercooked. He said it was really good and that I was just used to dried out turkey. :) I would've thrown it back in to make turkey jerky if it were up to me, but I hope it was okay. I had a nightmare the next night about ruining the whole thing. Derek told me it was now over and I could stop worrying about it. We love all of you so much!! Thank you for all of your WONDERFUL emails!! I really am glad I started this blog now that it's helping us keep in contact with everyone more. I'm SOOOOO grateful for all of you!