Funny Mr. Chips

Russell discovered this last month.  I love the fun he has brought to our family.  Who knew you could spend 20 min watching a kid crushing chips?!

Tyler's LAST Pinewood Derby

When Scott and I realized that this would be Tyler's last pinewood derby, his last year in Cub Scouts, I got sad. :(  I mean, can he really be getting that old?  And then we mentioned it to Tyler, and he responded with a grin.  Not because he doesn't love the pinewood derby-because he does-and not because he doesn't love Cub Scouts-because he does love that too-but because he's so excited to grow up!  He's ready to get older, get taller, and have the adventures that growing up brings.  So I'm trying to keep up with that attitude that he has. 

 

You can guess where he got his inspiration for his car:

Tyler and his friends watching the cars as they are about to come down the track.

Tyler's two most LOYAL and LOUD fans.  It made me so proud to hear these two girls staunchly cheer on their brother-very loudly-no matter what boy asked them to cheer for their car.  The cheering helped-Tyler took 5th place overall!

My favorite part of this video is Emalyn and Krysta cheering loudly for their brother.  So fun.

Christmas and New Year's in Utah

So, we did finally make it down to Utah.  But we were SLACKERS!! PHOTOGRAPHY SLACKERS! *gasp!!**

 

I know, such a surprise.  But I am so so sad.  I have NO pictures of our time with Scott's family.  Or with my family.  NONE. ZIP. And that's so sad. We had so much fun with them.  All the pictures you see here, are courtesy of my mom, who sent me all the pictures she took.  So I'm turning over a new leaf this year, and I'm going to take pictures when we visit family in Utah.  Because we really do love them.  You just wouldn't know it by our lack of pictures.

 

So we stayed with Ron and Nancy from Dec 28-Dec 30.  On Dec 30, we drove to my parents' house and went home on Jan.1. 

At Scott's parents, we had a lot of fun.  Craig and Lauren, Jeremy and Carolyn, Jaron and Heidi, and Jason and Christy, and all the grandkids from these parents were all there.  We missed Jesika and Chris and their girls because Jesika had had surgery and was too sick to come.  We really missed her though!  It was so good to see everyone, especially Jason and Christy whom we hadn't seen since the summer.  It's so fun to talk to everyone and to catch up on what's going on in eachother's lives.  We sisters & mom nancy all had a great girls night out-we went out to eat and the food was soooo good!  Scott and all the brothers & dad Ron had fun watching all the kids and then having a guys get-together the next day. 

 

When we got to my parent's house, there was a birthday party for Victoria and David, who's birthdays are only one day apart.  It was so exciting to have Dave and Belky there with their girls.  We hadn't seen them in about a year and a half, since they live so far away.  We'd never met Luisa.  But we made up for lost time.  Luisa is so adorable.  Emalyn and Krysta enjoyed playing with thier cousins Elena and Victoria.  At the birthday party, we played pin the tail on the doggie.  It was fun to watch all the kids go up and try it.  Some didn't need a blindfold for it to be challenging. :) 

 

 Yummy, yummy cupcakes!

 

Happy birthday to my "little" brother Dave (who's a lot taller than me!)

What to do with your bowl when you've finished...or not.

One cute baby!  Luisa and I bonded...I miss that darling girl (and her mama...and dada...and sisters...)

 Other uses for a boppy.

 

We had a great New Year's party!  First we did sparklers in the garage.  It was sooo cold, we wore coats in the garage with the garage door down!

At "midnight" (aka 8:30 pm) we rang in the New Year by banging pots and pans.  I'm sure the neighbors loved us.  But that was a whole lot better than doing it at the actual midnight!

We are so blessed to have such wonderful family! It was so good to see them again.  We can't wait until we see all of you again!

Christmas

Emalyn made this dollhouse for Krysta for Christmas.  It took her hours to do, and Krysta was soooo excited when she opened it up!

 



Our tree, with all our presents around it, Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve, I made a really big, nice dinner.  Potatoes, carrots, and ham, with rolls, a green salad, and what was supposed to be a fruit salad actually ended up being a plate of orange slices :).  We finished the "Gift of the Magi" advent calendar and then we read the rest of the scriptures in another advent calendar, and had a testimony meeting.  This is the first time we have done a family testimony meeting on Christmas eve instead of acting out the nativity.  I have always enjoyed doing the nativity with our family, but I felt the spirit so strong at our testimony meeting.  It was wonderful.
Then we put the kids to bed, and Scott and I (aka "Santa") wrapped presents and watched a movie.  We finished around 11:30pm (not too bad considering some past years...).  Then we went to bed.  I couldn't sleep-I was so excited!  Then I woke up around 7:30 to the kids counting how many presents they each had with their name on it under the tree.  We had cinnamon rolls and eggs for breakfast.  Russell ate and ate and ate-apparently he LOVES cinnamon rolls-and it was so hard for the rest of the kids to wait to open their presents until he was done, but they did a good job of trying to be patient.  When he was done, we took him out to the tree and the presents, and Scott began handing out presents.  Tyler and Emalyn's goals for this week (in our weekly goal meeting) were to ONLY show gratitude for all their presents-and they did a great job.  It was a wonderful Christmas morning.  We spent the rest of the morning and afternoon enjoying our presents, putting some together, figuring others out, etc.  Later in the day, we began packing for our trip to Utah we were supposed to leave for in the morning.  Little did we know that snowy conditions would make the roads unsafe to leave on the 26th.  We are still waiting for the weather to clear so we can travel down there safely, and today is the 27th.  Hopefully we can go down this afternoon.



Opening presents.  We had a great Christmas. 

Tyler's game, a piano recital, and other random photos

Tyler had to make a game for his school clas based on the book "Naya Nuki".  He worked really hard on it, and it turned out really good!



You can see the goofiness and silliness whenever they are together!

 Funny, random photos of Krysta and Russell just goofing off together.  They are such great friends, and love to play together.

Also, Tyler and Emalyn had their annual Christmas piano recital this past Monday.  Tyler played "The Little Drummer Boy", and Emalyn played "Deck the Halls".  They both had their pieces memorized and played them so well!  We are so proud of them!

Russell's cast #3 is off!

Well, it's off for at least a few weeks, until we get him in the next one. It was a little hard for me to want to take the cast off this time, because he had a little bit of a hard time last time. It seemed like he missed the tightness of his cast when we took it off, and he seemed happier when we put it back on. Also, we talked to Shriner's anesthesiologist, Dr. Csontos (pronounced "sahntoes"), and she agreed with us that we should wait on putting a new cast until he's completely healthy. She is THE best anesthesiologist ever! She has done wonders for Russell. Her opinion that we should wait wasn't a surprise at all, but it meant that we didn't have to remove his cast yet. We could just leave it on until it got closer to his new casting date. However, we want to work on muscle strengthening, and it just felt like the right thing to take it off. Plus, life is just easier with it off.

So, we turned on a movie for Russell, while he laid on the floor and Scott cut it off again with the tin snips. Russell wasn't bothered at all. It took about 30 min to get it off (this one was really thick!!) and Russell was so excited to have it off. He didn't seem bothered at all! He's really uncoordinated, and wobbly, and keeps pointing to his tummy and saying "Tummy!". It's the cutest thing to watch. He also got a bath tonight, and he smells good for the first time in about 6 weeks! He had two red spots on his lower back, but they don't look bad. It just looked like that must have been where they anchored the cast this time. It was funny to watch him going up the stairs. He's used to crawling up, because with the cast he can't get his leg up high enough to walk up, but he realized that he actually could lift his leg up high enough now, and so he could walk. But he couldn't make up his mind which one he wanted to do, so he ended up with this awkward half-crawl-half-walk thing. It's so amazing how quickly they adapt to new situations!

Ready to get it off!

Scott started at the lower part of the cast. I was there to help Russell's hands stay away from the tin snips, but as you can see, he was pretty relaxed and into his movie. I didn't have to hold his hands until we started cutting the top part by his chin.

Tyler was our photographer-and he got this great photo of Scott using the tin snips close up!

Breaking him free!

Freedom is close at hand!

"What? That thing was removable this whole time?!"

The empty, lonely cast. It amazes me everytime I pick it up after we've cut it off, just how heavy it is!

TaVaci Singers Christmas Concert

Emalyn and Krysta joined the TaVaci Singers, a musical performing troupe, this fall.  They have absolutely loved it!  It reminds me a lot of the Bonneville 5th and 6th grade choir my brother and I were in when we were young.  They had their Christmas Concert a couple of weeks ago, and it was awesome!  Well, it was for me and the girls anyway.  The poor boys all stayed home, because Tyler was sick with a temp of 104*, and we didn't think we should share those germs with everyone there. For me, it was nice because I got a pretty good seat since I only needed to find one for myself.  There's probably over two hundred kids in the troupe, so there were ALOT of people in attendance at the performance.  I was lucky that I didn't have to go early to get a good seat.

 

 

Krysta and Emalyn, right before the performance.

 

 

 

Can you spot Krysta? She's in the second row up, and looking straight at the camera.

I love the zoom on our camera.  I also love how I was only about 10 rows back, and on the ground floor.  I only got that good seat because I only needed to find a seat for myself, so I sat on the end of a row of a big family.

I waited and waited for Krysta to turn around so I could get her picture, but she just kept looking the other way.  It was cute, so I just took a picture of it.

But at last she looked a little closer to my direction!  And I caught it on camera.

For anyone interested, I have the whole performance on DVD.  Of course, we'll be bringing it with us to Utah in a couple of weeks, and will be showing it to anyone upon request. :)