Hands full of Love

Lexie made these hand/heart valentines in young women's for valentines day and she when she showed me how cute they were I had her make one for each kid.  I think they are adorable.

Lexie

Ashton

Abbie

Myles

39 Steps

Lexie was in one of the high school's winter plays, it was called 39 Steps.  It was an Alfred Hitchcock based play done as a radio show.  It was really good and Lexie did an excellent job as a multitude of characters.

Miss Annabell Smith, secret spy.

I'm really glad that Lexie's friends pushed her to get involved in the school plays because it is something that I really don't know that much about.  But she really loves it and does a good job.  

Jan/Feb update

It has been so COLD this winter, really cold.  It has stayed in the teens or lower for the high most of December and all of January, with some days with a high temp in the negatives, so I think we have all had a little cabin fever around here.  Well yesterday and today we have had beautiful days with high temps of around 40 so today we let Myles run around outside for a little while he LOVED it so much.

This picture totally captures Myles right now, he is always running. Always. 

Abbie brought home this cute snowman from school.  She said "I had the longest snowman in my whole class mom,"  

Too bad this picture is a little blurry cause I just had to show how cute she is in her snow stuff.

My little sleeping angel.  

I just love holding him and snuggling with him while he is sleeping.  I know that all too soon I won't be able to hold him like this so I am taking full advantage of it while I can.  

Ashton has been wanting to earn money to buy more skylanders for his wii game, so I have been trying to find ways for him to earn money.  One thing that he can do for money is the dishes... and he has become quite the dishwasher.  What a little incentive will do for you.

Stuff

Im trying to get better about blogging more regularly so here are a few random pictures from January.

Jake and Myles posing for me to figure out my new camera one night...

Abbie too. 

Myles playing in the curtains in the girls room while they were cleaning it.

Abbie loves to get her picture taken.

One day the kids were playing a game they had made up that reminded me of twister so we decided to get it.  The game has come in handy with all of our no school days lately due to cold weather.  

They have spent hours playing this silly game.  I love this picture because Myles was trying to figure out how to play too.  And the kids just let him be involved, no trying to get him to leave them alone, they just let him play right along with them.  

Mommy's Little Helper

Myles loves to be mine (or anybody's) little helper.  Here he is sweeping the floor after it had just been swept into a pile..... good thing he is so cute.  

In the Oven

One of Myles' favorite foods is bread.  In fact, one of his first words was bread.  He loves my homemade wheat bread and since most commercial breads have milk in them, that is a good thing.  (Actually all my kids love my bread so that is a good thing and it makes me want to keep making it for them.) Well Myles knows when I am making bread and he loves to watch the mixed mix up the dough.  But, his favorite part of making bread is watching it in the oven.  The recipe I use calls for the bread to rise in the oven and then you turn the oven on and bake it without taking the bread out.  Myles watches the bread while it is rising and baking in the oven and when the timer goes off he always goes running for the oven.

It takes all of his patience to wait for the baked bread to cool enough for me to slice it for him.  This boy loves his bread.

Frozen Bubbles

There have been a few Facebook posts lately about frozen bubbles and how cool they are.  Well we decided to take advantage of the super freezing temperatures to see if we could actually make frozen bubbles ourselves.  

WE DID!!

We did it on one of the super cold days that we had recently.  Monday when the kids were home from school because of the cold. (The high temp for the day way -15 with a windchill of -35) Jake was the only one brave enough to actually go outside the rest of us watched from the doorway.  And he could only stay out for a few minutes before he was too cold.  It was hard to get pictures of them too because of how fast they popped or blew away in the wind.  (that didn't help the cold department either)  

But it was cool to know that if it is cold enough you can blow bubbles and they freeze almost instantly.  

December

We had a rough December in the health department, especially Myles.  But it was still a good month. Here is a little of what we did.

This was the last pouch of baby food that Myles ate.  Or more correctly squished all over.  Usually he would just suck the baby food out of them but on this day he decided it would be a good idea to squeeze it and this is what happened.  I was debating buying anymore anyway since he rarely had it anyway and this sealed the deal.  I just laughed when he did it though. It was so unexpected and funny.  

Theses two are the best of friends.  Ashton loves being a big brother to this little guy and they are always having a good time.

Ashton was playing some game with him and as you can see he was loving it.

We made cinnamon rolls from scratch one day which was really fun.....until the monkey on the table (Myles) grabbed the knife you can see in the background and cut his hand.

Here is is snuggling with mom after a hard afternoon in the ER.  He also had an ear infection we found out while we were there.  This all happened as he was recovering from RSV.  

He kinda cooperated for some fun Christmas pictures in front of the tree after he finally stopped 

un-decorating it.  

Abbie and Ashton wrote letters to Santa.

And we were visited by our very own elf on the shelf, Frisbee.  

The kids had fun trying to find him each morning.  And he delighted them by moving almost every night.  

Ashton got a kit of science experiments in a book order and we took an evening to do some of them.  It was really fun and inspired Santa to get us a subscription to the Magic School Bus monthly experiment club.  

Finding out all the details of what he needed to do.

On Christmas Eve the kids opened their Christmas jammies from Grandma Dawn and these awesome blankets that I had Lexie make for each of them.  They were a total hit.  More on Christmas latter though.  It really deserves it's own post.

We survived some terribly cold temperatures by staying inside as much as possible. 

And here is Myles again with another ear infection to end the month and year....poor little guy.

Christmas

We had a great Christmas.  Here are a few pictures of how we celebrated.

Christmas Eve jammies from Grandma Dawn and blankets from Mom and Dad (sewn by Lexie)

We skyped with Grandma and Grandpa on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Opening presents...

Christmas morning we were found by Santa and had lots of presents under the tree to open.  We were greatly blessed.  

Abbie with her crayon roll that Ashton made for her.  The older kids all made each other's gifts again this year.  They were all a big hit. 

Skyping with Grandma and Grandpa

Ashton with Skylands 

Myles reading his book from Grandma June and Grandpa Larry

Ashton had his first lego set built within an hour of having everything opened.

Playing nintendo monopoly

Me with my new kindle.  Super excited.