Blogger Ketchup: December 2014

I ♥ Apples

Aubrey starred in her class production of A Mid Summer Night's Dream.  She was the narrator and had one of the largest amount of lines to learn.  She did a fantastic job.

I told Emily that some people pay big bucks for eyelashes that long.  Hers are free.

We had a lot of snow and some very cold weather in December.  My crazy kids loved playing in the snow.

Winter nights provide some of the most gorgeous sunsets.  Unfortunately the pictures never do them justice.

I finally found out how all the headrests in my van are getting destroyed.

It would seem Addy wanted a picture of the gingerbread house she made in school, because I have about 100 pictures of it on my camera from every single angle possible.

One night we dropped Aubrey off at a friends house.  Emily hopped in the car just as we were pulling out of the driveway.  She was dressed in shorts and I think she was barefoot but found these shoes in the van when I decided to make a last minute stop at Sam's to go shopping for my 40 Random Acts of Kindness Birthday Celebration.  She was not happy I made her go into the store like this but I let her sit in the cart and put my jacket over her legs and feet.  Addy went through a cup stacking phase for a few days.

Steve gave me a new 3D TV for my Birthday.  And suddenly my bedroom became the hang out place.

The kids all got new glasses, and Addy got her first pair.  Isn't she cute!

More stuff we did in December.  Click to see the posts:

I fell in a lot of holes and lost my cell phone

We got our Christmas on

Christmas

A spontaneous cross country trip

I turned 40!

Blogger Ketchup - January 2014

Our January must not have been very exciting.  I don't have many pictures.  We did travel home from Missouri the first few days of the month.  There were some parts of the ride home when we thought we were going to be blown over by the wind.  We saw semi's flipped.  We were able to stay just in front of the storm enough that we avoided closed highways.  Once, when Steve and I were first married and were on our way home from St. Louis one October, we got stuck in a bad storm and had to spend the night in an elementary school in Wyoming.  Ahhh...the memories.  Fortunately we didn't make any memories like that this time around.  And we made it home safe and sound.  I think I spent most of January putting things back together.  We literally up and left in the middle of Christmas Day.  Imagine stopping Christmas day with gifts and toys and boxes and wrapping everywhere, packing 6 people for a cross country trip-in the winter where you have to take big warm stuff- and then coming home more than a week later and depositing all your trip mess in the middle of your Christmas mess.  That's what January was like for me.  I hardly remember it.  It went by so fast.  I do remember the joy and jubilation the day that the daytime temperature dropped enough to unfreeze our driveway, which up to that point had been a solid sheet of ice.  Before the sun went down and it froze again I sent the kids out to shovel it.  Zac and Aubrey spent hours chopping away at the slushy icy mess.  Also in January Zac went on the Scout Klondike camp out.  

We went to see Saving Mr. Banks and Addy, who has become the expert at the claw machine, was able to snag this flower.  Unfortunately the gold string got stuck on the claw and would not release.  That was a pretty fun melt down.  Good thing it was after the movie.  We have so many (TOO MANY) stuffed animals, so I can't say I was too terribly disappointed to not be bringing this home with us.

Face Timing their cousin Alaina in Ohio.

Aubrey became a master lock pick, as demonstrated in this video below.  For about a month, everywhere she went, she had a lock and a bobby pin with her.

Blogger Ketchup - February 2014

I've been here a million times before.  I'm so behind in blog posts it makes me crazy.  My blog is my journal, my family's history.  When I let blogs post go undone, that's a part of our history that gets pushed back in the cobwebs and forgotten.  Last year I hardly did any blog posts.  I was busy making Birthday Videos and any time I had to sit at the computer was used to make videos.  I did the math and I think I probably spent around 300 hours last year making/posting Birthday Videos.  This year, I don't really have an excuse.  Is it really already the middle of March???  I think my biggest hold up is I just don't know where to start.  I've decided I just have to jump in, so here it goes!  I'm just going to work my way back through each month and do a little recap.

February 2013

We had a Super Bowl party which I did blog about.

 Our friends opened up a new drink shop.  We went to visit them the weekend they opened.  Only the drive through was open at the time but we got a sneak peek inside.  They have some pretty awesome floors!

We had a lovely Valentine's Day celebration.  I also managed to blog about that one.

Steve and I went out one night and this is what we came home to.  Cat girls.  Rawwwr!

One Saturday while Steve was at work and the kids and I were all home bored, my Mom and Lauren called us and and said they wanted to take us to lunch.  We had a fun day with them.

And after lunch, we took them to Fiiz!  I had my first dirty coke (I don't even drink coke!) and now I crave it fortnightly. (name that movie)

We were able to go to our dear old friend, Nichole's missionary farewell in February.  Nichole's mom is one of my best friends.  We lived in the same ward when our kids were all little and they used to play together ALL the time.  I can hardly believe Nichole is old enough to go on a mission!  After her farewell we stopped by the new aquarium.  Steve has been doing the floors.  He was able to give us a little tour.  They didn't have any fish yet.  And they had a cleaning crew in there so the air was really dusty as you can see in the pictures.

There was a plethora of selfies going on the whole time we were there.

Ahhhh... the dreaded Science Fair Projects.  Emily and Aubrey both had to do one.  There was one weekend when Aubrey and Emily both had their friends over to help them work on their projects.  I was sick in bed, like deathly ill-could not raise me head off my huge pilla (that movie's in my head now) and I had a million kids running around in my house.  It took me over a week to right my house after that weekend.  They didn't get a lot of scientific work done that weekend, but I finally regained my strength and we finally got their projects finished!

 Steve felt like the truck needed do be driven so we took the neighborhood on a little drive.  

We also took a group of Cub Scouts for a spin with us.

And picked up a few strays along the route

We ended the month celebrating Aubrey's Birthday!  

Please Pass The Blogger Ketchup - July 2011

In July my sister Kristy and her kids were staying with us while making the transition from Russia to the US of A. The kids had so much fun together all summer long. Here are Baron and Addy having a little Capri Sun picnic. Below is a picture of Emily giving them a ride on Aunt Lauren's bike.

One of our many cookouts of the summer

My Grandma, Irene (my dad's mom) was here visiting us from Washington state at the beginning of July. Then she went to Idaho to visit my uncle and his family. Then she came back for a few days before flying back home. This was the day she was leaving for the airport. Little Miss Addy is very attached to her and would not leave her side.

Granny kept Addy and Baron entertained for hours.

Emily, Aubrey, Addy and Tia playing Beatles Rock Band

We spent a day at my friend LaRee's house in her pool. It was fun to see our friends from our old neighborhood. (Addy is sitting on my lap right now and she is telling me I should add this dialogue to this picture. Aubrey: I want the white one back! (the floaty thing Addy's is sitting on) Addy: No I want the white one! Aubrey: NO! I WANT IT BACK! Addy: NO I WANT IT. Then she said, "Seriously. That's what happened. And then I went into their garage and found all the toys and I said cool guys! There's floaties in the garage! And then everyone got them out and then lalalalala we got in the water and well, it's kinda a long story." She's still talking about it but I'm gonna have to cut her off now)

Kristy and I took the kids on a walk to feed the ducks.

Bestest Cousin Friends Tia and Aubrey. These girls are only a few weeks apart in age and they had so much fun together last summer. For months now Aubrey has been making plans for next summer when Tia comes to visit. For years Tia has been making plans for Steve to build her a house across the street from us. I only wish...

Feeding the masses

One day the kids and I found ourselves alone and went for a little hike.

This catches me up for July except for the last few days my whole family was here visiting. For the posts I have already done of that time you can click here. That will take you to day 5 of their visit and at the bottom of that post is a link to the rest.