Katie's Piano Recital

Katie did such a great job at her piano recital on Sunday. She loves to play the piano and practiced her Christmas songs for weeks. We were so proud of her and she was so excited to play in her recital. Here's a short clip of her performance.

Christmas Activities

This year I decided that I wanted to do something fun with the kids every day for the month of December. I haven't done as much as I wanted to, but definitely more that I ever have before. Here is a quick sampling of what we've been up to. We started with Christmas trees made out of popsicle sticks and sequins. It definitely turned into a project that took more than 1 day and we're still finishing up, but we got a few done. The one below was done by Sydney.

We strung popcorn and cranberries (actually little wooden beads). The kids only did it for about 5 minutes and I had to finish.

The finished project!

This morning we made and decorated sugar cookies. Audrey preferred licking the frosting and at one point I caught her painted frosting on her legs and feet!

Charlie displaying his cookie that he titled "Audrey."

Here are the finished cookies. It was a huge mess but they turned out pretty cute!

Random Christmas Season Updates

After 3 hours of bathing, primping, curling hair and talking Charlie into getting dressed, here are a couple of examples of our sad attempt at trying to get a Christmas card picture.

They are going to make Audrey look at the camera rather she likes it or not!

Audrey is crying in about 90% of the pictures.

We kept trying to get Sydney to smile a little less intensely, and Charlie to look a little more involved. Ah, the joys of four children!

I had book club at my house last night and I made lemon water to drink with our dessert. Since Sydney discovered lemon water that's all she want to drink. Here's our sophisticated 3 year old enjoying her lemon water this morning.

I found this picture of the Elder's and our kids from 2003. What a difference a few years makes, it's fun to look back.

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We've been saying that we were going to visit our friend's the Elder's for four years and we finally got to go and spend the weekend with them. They live in the beautiful Gold Beach, Oregon, and had many wonderful sights to show us! It was a ton of fun. This was our family at Otter Point. The view was spectacular, although a little nerve racking with the kids and all the cliffsAnnaka did a gingerbread train with the kids. They loved it! I'm not so good with doing these kinds of things because I'm afraid of the mess, but after watching how much they enjoyed it, I vow to try and let go and do some more fun activities.

Here are six of our eight kids. Charlie, Anya, Katie, Isaac, Sydney, and Ellie.

We're off on our hike. Boy, we are a crowd!

David, enjoying the view with the little kids. Notice how tight he's holding on to Sydney, she was insisting on walking on her own. Sorry, Sydney...not gonna happen!

Here are all eight kids. From left to right. Audrey, Charlie, Anya, Sydney, Tyler, Katie, Ellie and Isaac.

Last we got to go to a farm that does a little petting zoo. This is Audrey petting the rabbit. She LOVED IT!!! This rabbit was 30lbs. and his feet are as big as a dog's paw. It was amazing!

We had a wonderful time... Thanks Annaka and Travis for letting us come and visit and for the wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner!!!

Laughed So Hard I Cried

Last night as I was getting the kids dressed to take Charlie to piano lessons, Sydney was making my task extremely difficult. After an all-out wrestling match she told me she was just going to take her clothes off anyways. I then said, "If you you do that, then the rest of the family is going to get a treat at the store and you won't get anything." She then looked down at the floor, walked away and said that she wouldn't take off her clothes. About 5 minutes later I saw her "streaking" through the kitchen in only her underwear. When confronted with what she had done and reminded of her punishment she started to get worried that I would actually follow through (which I usually don't) and responded with this.."I went in the other room and cried a little bit and they fell off!" She then rushed off and put the clothes back on herself quite quickly. When repeating the story later that night I couldn't even get the punchline out because I was laughing so hard. David later asked Sydney, "So did you go cry a little more and then they just floated back on you?"

Charlie Through the Years!

We have soooo many pictures of Charlie. I was looking through them and reminiscing about how sweet of a baby he was and how I can't rock him in my arms anymore. They grow up way to fast. So here's a little journey of Charlie through his first 8 years! At the hospital. I was convinced he was the most beautiful newborn ever! 6 Months

1 Year

2 Years

3 Years

Charlie on his first baseball team. 5 years old

1st grade. I think there is a picture of me making this exact face when I was little.

Happy Birthday Charlie!

Yesterday was Charlie's 8th birthday. He is growing up so fast! In our family 8 years old means he gets baptized and he get to join cub scouts. He was very excited to hit this landmark. We had a party for him at Papa's Pizza. Grandma and Grandpa Leon got him his scout uniform. He even asked them for it and went on Monday to pick it out with Grandma. She sewed all the patches on for him.

David and I got him the a game for his XBox that he'd been asking for. He's told us about this game every day for the last three months. David was messin' with him yesterday and told him that he hadn't had time to get his present yet, so would it be ok if we just waited until Monday to get it. Charlie even volunteered to bathe the girls so that Dad would have time to get him his present. We even had Charlie in tears at one point. So, he was VERY excited to show off his new game!

Aunt Emily got Charlie a radio controlled car. I guess Brett thought she may have spent too much money, notice the surpised look on his face.

All of Charlie's friends at the party. It's nice that Charlie has so many great friends!

Charlie trying to conceal a smile as he choses something to wish for!

And finally he blows out all the candles!

We love you Charlie and hope that you had a great birthday!

Halloween!!!

We had a great time tonight! It's so much fun to dress the kids up and parade them around. We convinced all the girls to be witches this year and Charlie ended up being Indiana Jones. This is all the kids at Grandma's house. We trick or treated in our neighborhood for a few minutes, then we went to a party at the church. We also made appearances at Grandma and Grandpa Leon's, Aunt Amanda and Uncle Jed's and Aunt Emily's house. It's moments like these that make parenting so worth it! Here are our three little adorable witches!!!

Audrey - one of the rare moments that I caught her wearing the hat.

Sydney as an "October Witch." She was surprisingly sweet tonight and wanted to share her candy with everyone!

Katie - always wanting to trick or treat all night long. This girl is always ready for a party!

Here's Charlie in one of his Indiana Jones poses. He's been wearing this costume for the last three days. I actually had to pry it off of him to wash it for tonight!

Pumpkin Patch

This was our family trip to the pumpkin patch. I decided to take them myself after school because I figured Saturday would be too busy. If I ever think about doing this again, stop me! I didn't think about the fact that we were going to get PUMPKINS, and that we would somehow have to pay for them and get them to the car, all the while managing the kids. Overall, we had fun... but I'll never do that again! Here's Audrey because she wouldn't get in the picture with the other kids.

The other kids with the two pumpkins we were trying to decide between. I would only let them pick one because it suddenly dawned on me that I would have to carry them out!

This is the hayride. Audrey loved it, but was constantly trying to climb out over the sides!

Katie's Field Trip

I went with Katie on her field trip to the pumpkin patch yesterday. She talked about it for days before and she had a ton of fun. Here are a couple of the pictures I got.

Katie's friends, Reice, Enoch, and Mya.


Katie and her best friend Mya with the pumpkins they picked.

Getting ready to leave on the hayride! Boy it was fun to spend time with just one of our kids at a time. We don't get that opportunity often enough!

Audrey

I just realized that our baby may be watching a little too much TV. She doesn't have very many words yet, but the sad thing is that these are some of them...spongebob, little bear, dora, diego. Sad, huh? I thought that was pretty bad, but last night I found out it's worse than I thought. I heard her crying in the other room, when I asked the other kids what they did to her (thinking they had turned off her show), I was told that they just took the remote away from her. That started me thinking that she really does enjoy holding the remote while she watches TV. It gets worse... she calls it "ba-ba." She carries it around with her and cries if it gets left behind. And don't you dare try to take it from her. Luckily she will accept a remote from another room so she doesn't turn the channel on us. I thought it would be cute to take a picture of her with her favorite things, the bottle, the binky, and none other than the remote. Looks like she's following in her father's footsteps.

Katie on the Piano

Katie is one of the most determined kids I know. When she wants to learn something she practices it over and over until she gets it. I started teaching her a primary song, thinking that she would be able to play the first line or so, and she memorized the whole thing. Needless to say, this is what we hear all day long. So here's Katie playing, "When Jesus Christ was Baptized..."

Update on Mom!

Well, it seems that this is going to be the year of trials for our family. Whatever we are supposed to learn we pray to learn it fast so that things can return to normal.

Saturday night my mom was picking up Jed and Amanda from the airport when through a combined effort of her forgetting to put the car in park and an accidental foot touching the gas, the car ran over her foot, knocking her to the ground and breaking a lot of bones. Her foot is broken in two places, her ankle is broken, and her hip is broken. She needs to have a total hip replacement surgery to fix the break. The hip surgeon at the hospital that she's at is on vacation so she is being tranferred to Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland sometime this evening. Once they evaluate her there they should be able to schedule her surgery. She's doing ok. She seems to have a really positive attitude about the whole thing. She's been wanting a hip replacement anyways, and this just happens to be the same hip that she was having problems with. This may just be a blessing in disguise. We all love her and are praying that she gets better quickly.

First Day of School

Since David had his surgery on the first day of school, Amanda and Jed took the kids to school. They took pictures of them and we are a little slow in getting them posted. I heard that they had a great first day of Kindergarten and 2nd grade!