Read a thon...

Cole's school is doing a contest against other schools to see who can read the most. We have been keeping track of how much we read. We do pretty good during the week but struggle on the weekends. 

So one day we did a little read a thon. At first Cole was against the idea until I told him there were treats involved. We popped some popcorn and sat down and I read to them. Cole read a few books too. 

He is doing really well with learning to read. If he would put some more effort into it he could really be way ahead for his age but he hates to just sit there. He is on level C and is going to move to D soon his teacher says.

Lucy's Cast is Off...

We couldn't be more excited!

Lucy was not thrilled with the lady and her little vacuum saw. She freaked out the entire time. But it is all healed. She still walks a little funny and is getting use to not having it on her leg. She actually got pretty fast at walking with the cast on. It seemed to take her a few weeks to learn to walk with the cast and by the time they took it off, She could cruise walking with that bent cast on.
Now to try and keep her off the tramp at the same time as the other kids.

Oh she is a strong willed little girl but we will do our best till the tramp comes down this week.

Gratitude...

Each Day I am reading out of this Simple Abundance book. Last year I tried to do it everyday too but stopped so here we go again!

But I really like this quote I read on Gratitude!

Dailey is our Sunbeam....

Dailey has been excited to go to Sunbeams! She went great and loved walking in there with her big brother Cole. He was pretty excited to have her come to Primary with him too.
I love when I peeked in to see her and she was waving to Cole who sits on the other side of the room.
I will have to add the picture we took or our new Sunbeam later. Since we took it with Kevin's phone.
I can't believe she is old enough. Man time is flying. I love it though.

Ward Conference...

It was our ward conference on sunday. Kevin had to go to another ward's ward conference. They were both at the same time. I kept assuring him that I could take all the kids to our church and that I would be fine. Well, Let me just say I am so glad that he persisted with his plan and took Lucy with him. Because in my head I saw it that it would be fine. I would sit on a bench with the three kids and Tayson would sit in his car seat.
Let's just say the 11:00 church time sneaks up on you. We were scrambling to get everyone ready and I wanted to be on time so I got a bench ( i think bench seats are easier to trap the kids in, than the seats in the back) well we forgot that we only have one car and two places to be. (our Hyundai is still getting fixed) So Kevin dropped us off at our building and ran to the stake center.

Everything was going good and I love having the children on both sides of me at church. Than Tayson started crying and in all the hustle of getting to church I realized I wanted to feed him one last time before church. I couldn't calm him down, I thought if only I could hold him off till sacrament was over, but Tays was not having it.

So I asked Cole are you ok to sit here by yourself while I take Dailey with me and go feed Tayson. He said he would be fine. I was worried to leave him but felt like I had no choice. If I had a car I probably would have taken everyone home but instead I took Dailey into the mother's lounge with me.

I fed Tayson and than of course Dailey had to go to the bathroom and so we ran to do that. We start to walk back into the chapel and I see Cole sitting there and I watch him jump up and run to the door where we were with tears streaming down his face.

I quickly grabbed him and closed the doors. We went out into the foyer and he said, "mom, I didn't think you were coming back" Oh man It totally broke my heart!!! My poor little guy sat alone and did so good until it seemed like forever to him. Oh I hugged him so tight and tried to fight back my tears as well.

 I was in and out of Sunday school and RS. Tayson's tummy was upset and wow did he let everyone in Relief Society know it, especially when it was silent as he filled up his diaper for all to hear.

Man I was so glad Kevin took Lucy. Sometimes I like to think I can do it all but I know I can't!

It was a rough sunday even just with three kids instead of the four. Ha ha. but it was good too. I got some really good things out of church, I came home and made my kids watch Called to Serve, they talked about preparing our kids for missions. I know we are a long way from Cole serving a mission but I thought it would be fun to show him. That movie is old. ha ha. maybe they should update it!

Playing Crack the Egg...

Remember the fun game of crack the egg on the tramp? Well Dailey loves that game too.
Only she played it with a real egg! I was feeding Tayson upstairs and I heard her get something out of the fridge. I assumed an apple. Than as she was passing me she tried to be all sneaky and had something behind her back. I still thought it was the apple. Until Cole comes running upstairs and said "Ok, Mom this is really bad but Dailey broke an egg on the tramp."
I went down and she was throwing baby wipes on top and saying sorry Mom, I'm really sorry.
So funny!

First Casualty on the tramp...

We had our first Trampoline accident! Poor Little Lucy! It was the Friday after Christmas. Kevin was at work and all three kids went down to jump. For the most part I felt like I had been downstairs while the kids jumped. I was nervous about them falling off or Cole's head in the ceiling.

Well I was upstairs when I heard Lucy crying and I thought maybe they were being too rough. Than she continued to cry and so I headed downstairs. She was sitting there in pain and I knew something was wrong. I brought her upstairs where I checked out the leg she was holding. She was so pale. I had her stand on her leg, she was shaking and wouldn't put any weight on her left leg. I felt so bad. I was scared. I called Kevin and he was calm and I said I think Lucy broke her leg. He started looking up where we should take her.  Kevin changed back to his old job and so I wasn't really sure with cobra and all where we should go and if it should be instacare or the ER. We decided on our pediatrician's office.

After calling Kevin I wasn't really sure what his plan was and so I called Rachel to see if she was home. I thought she could take the other kids while I ran with Lucy and Tayson. Well none of us were ready for the day. We all were in our pj's and I was smelly from taking down Christmas.
Rach and Ben were at Jordan Landing at the movies but Rach said Ben is on his way.
Ben got to my house so fast and took Cole and Dailey with him back to the movie theater.
Kevin than met me and we took Lucy in. She had x-rays which proved she did indeed have a fracture. Right under her knee had buckled.

Kevin and I discussed how we would let them know how she did it. We weren't going to lie. We just wanted to make us not sound so crazy. We said she broke it on a lil tramp in the basement. :)
 We now felt like the crazy parents for sure for having set this up in our basement.
The doctor was so nice. He said we see this all the time. We call it the trampoline break.
They splinted Lucy's leg clear up to her thigh. She was screaming almost the entire time.
Poor Girl.

The next few days with the cast was pretty down right miserable for all! Lucy's leg hurt and so she did not get any sleep and she only wanted Kevin so for three nights it was heck. She wouldn't sleep well because she couldn't bend her little leg. She likes to curl up in a ball to sleep.
After a couple days she started crawling around but before we just carried her everywhere.
She ended breaking the splint as she crawled around. I think that is what made her sleep better.
The following Wednesday we went to Primary Children's and they put her purple cast on.
It's been about a week now and today she finally started walking on it. She has been doing a lot of crawling around. She is a trooper our Lu lu.

Christmas Day...

Christmas Day was so fun! I loved it. We got up about 6:30 7 and the kids were so excited and little did they know so was I.
We have them go in from youngest to oldest. They went through their stockings and than on to gifts. We take turns opening gifts. It lasts longer that way and we can see what everyone got. Even though it is hard for them to wait till their next gift I think they like seeing what each other gets.

After it was all opened we had some blueberry muffins and hot chocolate.
Than Cole wanted to go down to play his new skylanders game. Little did they know there was another surprise. They were so excited when they saw the tramp. They couldn't believe it.
We quickly had to set up some rules. Cole is tall enough that if he jumped on his feet he could go through the ceiling. But the other girls can jump no problem.
We played and jumped and hung out and than hurried and got ready and headed to the Bush Grandparents to give our gift to them and than on to the Dearden Grandparents to have Christmas dinner.
We promised the kids that we would sleep on the tramp that night which we did and it isn't quite as comfortable as I remembered!
What a great Christmas!

Progressive Dinner 2012...

We had our progressive dinner with our Visitors!
I knew Lucy would not be happy when she saw these guys come in!
It is always so fun to have them come and to hear each child say what they want and to have santa say things about them. I love it!
The dinner went like this: Appetizer: Ma and Pa. Soup: Aand J's, Main: C and M's

Indoor Trampoline....

We got home and got the kids ready for bed. We set out milk and cookies for Santa. Cole and Dailey were super excited and it took quite awhile to get them to sleep. When we thought they were in bed we proceeded to our Christmas Eve duties. This year I had pretty much everything wrapped and ready.
Kevin had a few things to wrap. Dailey came out once and we quickly put her back to bed.

So we bought a trampoline for Christmas! We have been wanting to get one for awhile. We thought we would put it up outside but it snowed quite the snowstorm.  Kevin had told me about someone at his work who got a tramp and they put it in their garage. Well we didn't want to do that. I didn't want to give it to the kids just in the box. There wasn't even a picture on the box of what it was so we thought we could wait till spring.

I was pretty bummed and so Kevin not liking to see me unhappy, said Ok we can go down and measure and see if it will even fit. It barely would. But we would have to move out our couch, treadmill, healthrider and you know everything to make it work!
So at 11pm we were moving things around and it actually didn't take that long to set up and the whole time I was so giddy and felt just like a kid! We put on the Elf movie to watch and away we went.
Kev rocked it with the springs, seriously he put them on so fast. I didn't even do one of them.
Lucy woke up in the middle of our crazy tramp idea and so we had to rock her and stop for that but we ended up getting to bed at not too bad of an hour for being Christmas eve.

I didn't sleep great. I was too excited and didn't want to miss the kids waking up!

Christmas Eve..

Every year we get together for Christmas Eve and the kids act out the story as we read in the bible. The kids get dressed up. Cole was Joseph and he was not amused. ha. ha. He was super excited that he got to open two gifts that night.
We did our family name drawing gifts. Which is always so fun. Above is a picture of my Dad and Mom giving Liz and Andy their gift. Playing the accordion. Andy always asks my Dad about this so it was a fun little joke. They did get a real gift too.
It was so fun to have snow on Christmas Eve!