Today...

This boy turned 12. He will be ordained a Deacon on Sunday, and will be able to pass the Sacrament. He will be in our seven stake Dance Festival in June doing the "Deacon Dance". He is in the 6th grade, gets great grades, has lots of fun, and is a joy (most of the time!) to have in our family! We love you Luke and love watching you grow up into this beautiful, sweet, smart, helping boy.

I attended Incoming Freshman Orientation for this boy. Oh my gosh! He will be a freshman in the Fall (and I am FREAKING out! Not so much that he will be in high school... but more that he will graduate in 4 years and then be on his own - sort of!!!) We love you Chad, and are proud of the great person you are turning into! Continue to excel in school... and really do try those AP classes... you can do it! We have all the faith in the world in you!!!

Next year, we will have one child in high school, one in middle school, two in elementary and one in PreSchool! Oh my goodness!!!

This boy was registered for PreSchool. This year, he attends a two-year-old class, one day a week, and next Fall he will be starting a three-year-old class, going two days a week. I might almost get some chances to breathe a little bit.

It was a milestone of a day for us.

Happy New Year!!!

So, I was reading my friend, Dawn's, blog. She is one amazing woman! Her and her husband recently adopted their 5th and 6th child, and they just amaze me with their love, patience, humor, and all over goodness. They are definitely angels on this earth - even if they don't see it!

Anyways, back to my original thought, on Dawn's blog, she posted her highs and lows for the last year, so I decided I might try that too (forget the whole "goals" thing... it never works out anyway!). This year has been a hard one for us, so the lows are easier for me to come up with... but there are still lots of highs, and I needed to remind myself of them! So, here goes nothing...

Highs of 2009:

• Haley starting kindergarten (with Macy going into 4th grade!), Girl Scouts, soccer and ballet; Reed starting preschool and Luke going into middle school with Chad - CRAZY!!!
• Having D home to play with a lot
• Working on the PTA and helping to open our new school
• Celebrating 16 years with the love of my life!
• Having 5 wonderful children who totally make my life worth living!!!
• Murphy prom!
• Family coming to visit - we always love this!!!
• Luke's Amazing Race birthday party - it was LOTS of fun!!!
• D taking me to see Wicked for my birthday!!!
• Seattle for Spring Break
• Getting a good start on our food storage and canning anything and everything with our friends, the Geigenmillers
• MANY trips to California for work and play
• Going on the Pioneer Trek with Chad - a lot of work, but a totally worthwhile experience!
• Serving in the Nursery, the Primary and Young Men's
• Wonderful, supportive family and friends who are always willing to help!
• Cottonwood Beach
• Being able to attend many temples throughout the year for many sealings!
• Seeing and catching up with old friends
• Free craft projects at Michaels, Home Depot and Lowes
• All the summer camps our kids attended!
• Signing up with Scentsy - Lots of smelly goodness!
• Becoming a good "couponing" grocery shopper! I'm almost a professional!!!
• D, Chad, Luke and our niece, Annie, attending the Star Wars concert
• D working some freelance jobs and then getting a new job!!!
• Helping out at the schools
• New Moon - sorry! Really enjoyed it!!!
• Great friends who totally support all my made up holidays - and there are LOTS of them!
• Christmas cards going out in the mail!
• Receiving lots of Christmas cards (emails, ecards, whatever!) - this is one of my favorite parts of Christmas!!!
• Getting to celebrate one more new year with my family!

Lows of 2009:

• D being unemployed for about 8 months of it.
• Trying to survive D being unemployed and then trying to catch up from it.
• High - D getting a new job; Low - at half what he was making before... and trying to make it work for our family
• Little Bailey's parents dying right before Christmas
• The death of my childhood friends' dad, Tim, also right before Christmas. Tim was a great example to me when I was a teenager, and I will miss him and was very sad that I could not attend his funeral.
• D's car needing new brakes the week after Christmas
• Being away from D for 4 weeks while he worked in California and we were at home
• Our friend, Mike, who is losing his battle with cancer. A young dad, with young children and a great Cubmaster. We are sad for your family and keeping you in our prayers.
• My father-in-law having a heart attack the week before Christmas and having to have angioplasty done - again.
• Because of the angioplasty, grandma and grandpa Huck not being able to come for Christmas

So really, the highs outweigh the lows (and that's really good to see!)... it just seems that the lows are more dominant! Oh well... here's to a new year... may it be better than the last one (at least for us!)!!!

Eskimo men.

(Mom, notice D in the background wearing his new orange snow jacket???? He LOVES it!)

This is what happened while they slept.

Chad poking out of their snow cave.

The motley crew before they left.

While we were having our freak snow storm, Chad and Derrick were off with the scouts snow camping. Always a "favorite" of Derrick's (you can't get warm for anything!), they all had a great time. It wasn't too cold this year, they were able to get there early enough to dig their snow caves, even though they didn't sleep in them, and the boys just had a great time playing in the snow.

Let it snow!

Reed trying to make snow angels - he doesn't quite get the full concept yet.

Well, we didn't get a White Christmas after all, but we did get some snow a few days later. Granted, not enough for sledding, but still enough to entertain the kids a bit and close down our street, so always fun. It only lasted through the night, but it sure was pretty!

TAG! Haley's it!

One of the best Christmas gifts that Haley received this year was a TAG Reading System (and she didn't even ask Santa for it!)... and it was totally a fluke! One of Santa's helpers found out that Target was "clearancing" (not sure if that's a real word or not) the older version (which looked exactly the same as the newer version), for $12.48 (which was not marked on any of the boxes, you just had to know what the older ones looked like and then scan them - the thing was normally like $39.99). This Santa's helper also had a coupon for $10.00 off of a TAG Reading System, so got it for only $2.48!!! Crazy! Granted... the books run about $10 each, but the elf even found coupons for those, and Toys R Us ran a Buy 2 Get 1 Free deal, so even those weren't bad! So, here's our Kindergartner Haley, loving that she can read books to herself... and Reed really enjoys it too, so, two for one, if you ask me!

Santa came.

Waiting to see what Santa brought...

Lucky Luke... Santa brought him some deodorant! (Or is that, lucky us??? - We haven't had any problems with this yet... but just don't want to chance it!)

Chad already distracted by some Star Wars something

D in his new winter jacket that Grandma Paula sent him - (with Reed's jammy pants on his head!)

Reed's new CARS Geotrax set

Macy's new art set which she loves!

Santa brought us some strategic games (Othello and Mastermind) to go along with the class that Luke is currently taking on strategic games.

New puzzles... always a favorite (granted it's 4 days later, and this puzzle is still poured all over our kitchen table. It's hard!)

The Zhu Zhu pets, Chunk and Pipsquek, taking a "nap" (says Reed). Much better and cleaner than the hamsters I had as a kid!

Well, even if "Christmas Eve Santa" told the children that they were on the naughty list, the real Santa still managed to show up and make it a super Christmas! We hope that all of you had a great Christmas as well and were able to remember the true meaning of Christmas mixed in with all the craziness. Love to all of you... and we wish that more of our family could've been here to share it with us! We love you!

Christmas Eve at our house.

Haley and Santa

Lily

Reed

Macy

Aaron

Ava

Brendan

Jordan

Luke

Chad, trying to put all his weight on Santa

Kinley

Christian

Me and Santa

Jordan, Aaron and Reed trying to track Santa

We were lucky to be able to host Christmas Eve also. Susie had had surgery the week before, and was totally on bedrest, and Christmas Eve was the first day she was able to get out of bed, so we were happy to have her and her family come to our house. We were also happy to have some of our friends over. We had some yummy food, played some games, did a fun white elephant gift exchange with the kids, and of course, enjoyed our visit with Santa. And apparently most of the kids were on the naughty list for not cleaning up dog food that they spilled on the floor.

Sugar Cookies.

A tradition in my family growing up (and another way to entertain the kids) is to make sugar cookies and then let the kids decorate them. When I was a kid, my mom did this with my kindergarten class. I LOVE this tradition (and so did my kids, it's something they look forward to every year!)... but I really don't enjoy the rolling and cutting out process of the cookies. I'm just not very good at it for some reason.

And the entertaining of the children begins.

I try to find some sort of activity for the kids to do while they are on break. The first one we did, besides baking all the goodies for the neighbors, was to make gingerbread houses. They LOVE doing this! We buy boxes of cheap graham crackers and frosting, give them lots of candy options and just let them go to town. Fills a few hours, and totally entertains them and any of the other children that happen to stop by!

A caroling we will go!

Notice that all the treats are hiding in the over. This is because in the last week, Cooper has eaten half a box of Golden Grahams, some chocolate pretzels and a whole package of Biscotti that friends of ours made for us. If we want anything protected from the dog, we have to hide it!

Something we've noticed while living here is that friends and neighbors love to bring treats and carol throughout the month of December (and I''ve started to get really bugged if someone shows up the evening and isn't "bearing gifts". No offense... you just sort of get use to it!). So, not to be outdone by our friends and neighbors, and also to share our love with them back, we made lots of treats and headed out! The kids really enjoyed it, and next year I think that we have to be more organized and planned out ahead of time.