December Craziness

Yup, it's that time of year again. No, not Christmas. Primary everything! It was nice to get the Primary program over, but then comes all of the end of year stuff that has to get done. Parent folders (not done), teacher binders (not even started), birthday gifts for next year (barely started), Santa's Breakfast (done!), Teacher Board Meeting (almost done), etc. I'm very much looking forward to a December when I will no longer be Primary president. It will be nice to enjoy the holidays without all the Primary stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love being in Primary. I just don't like everything that has to be done at the end of the year.

Needless to say, I haven't had much time to blog or even take pictures. We did get a chance to put up Christmas lights and even got a tree - from WiseBuys, $9.98! The boys have had so much fun helping decorate. Jack likes to continually remove the Christmas tree ornaments and rearrange them. Thankfully, I put all the breakable ones out of his reach.


On Saturday, we had our ward Santa's Breakfast. It was a lot of work but a huge success. I miraculously guessed right and bought the right amount of food and we had well over 100 people show up. Santa came, and the boys got to tell him what they want for Christmas. Owen asked for a scooter and skateboard, and at the last minute a red dinosaur! Great, that was not on his list a week ago. He is constantly adding to his Christmas list, so I hope he is not disappointed when he doesn't get everything he asked for.

Jack told us he wanted to ask Santa for a puppy. That's right, a real puppy. Thanks to the Walmart ad that showed kids opening a box with a real puppy. Unfortunately, Santa is not bringing a puppy this year, or any year for that matter. Jack says it so cute though I seriously thought Robby was going to run out and buy a puppy. (Sorry, but I no longer have any kids in diapers and I'm not going to clean up after a dog!) Jack screamed as soon as we sat him on Santa's lap so he never got to tell him what he wanted. I'll add the picture on the blog as soon as I get it. It's pretty funny.

Catching Up

Seriously, I don't know how you guys keep your blogs up! It's 10 o'clock on Friday night and I finally have a few minutes to put up a few pictures. Can we just say Primary Program?! And yes, this is my THIRD primary program as primary president.

Anyway, here's a few pics of what we've been up to lately. Halloween costumes took up a big chunk of my time this month. The boys decided (with persuasion) that they wanted to be bicyclists. Here are their very authentic-looking Tour de France jerseys . Owen's is the green one and Jack's is yellow.






All ready to race!


We've been so busy this month that I finally got the Halloween decorations out on the 29th. When I got them out I found a couple of kits that I had bought on clearance last year to make spiders and a pirate ship. So we had a Family Craft Night to make our Halloween decorations. Even Robby got in on glue gun fun.


Here are some of the finished products.


On a rainy day this month I made play dough and let the boys go at it. They had a blast and probably played for a couple of hours. Jack especially loved it since play dough is something we usually do while he is napping. Surprisingly, the mess wasn't too bad. Homemade play dough is way easier to clean up than the store bought stuff.





Finally, Owen started a soccer class this month. Several of his friends are in the class and so far he loves it.



Hopefully, things will slow down soon and I can do a better job of posting. But I'm not getting my hopes up.

Good kisser

Beware those with young daughters! Jack is quite the kisser these days.

Ocean Isle Beach

We spent the last two weeks of August at Ocean Isle Beach, NC. It was amazing. My parent's have an awesome beach house and we had so much fun with them and my oldest brother and his family. We had two whole weeks with nothing to worry about except putting on enough sunscreen. I even learned to knit (so fun!) while I was there.

Here some of the pictures from the trip.


Can you see a theme to what Jack's favorite thing to do was?

Owen discovered the boogie boards. We were surprised at how brave he was.

This is Owen making sand angels. And yes, this is the same kid that doesn't like to be dirty and won't even finger paint. Go figure.

The whole family in the water. Even Jack loved the ocean this year so it was fun for all of us to get in.

Family picture. My hair is crazy because it was so windy that day!

All the kids hanging out on the deck, eating Otter Pops.

My dad took tons more pictures but I haven't had a chance to go through them all yet.

Big News

Woohoo! Jack is potty trained. We were mean and started potty training him the day before his 2nd birthday. I wasn't planning on it so early, but he started telling me he needed to poop and would lead me to the bathroom. Needless to say, I wasn't going to miss this window of opportunity. I had an awesome picture of him on the potty wearing all his bike gear but I can't find it anywhere. When I find it, I will add it to the post. Something to embarrass him with later.

Happy Birthday Jack!

Last Sunday we celebrated Jack's 2nd birthday. He was clueless about the whole thing. It didn't start out well when he was terrified of his cake and then he got a toy that he was scared of. Poor kid. Eventually he got into everything once all the cousins got there.

Here's Jack and the "terrifying" cake. He kept crying and saying, "Away, away!"


Grandma and Grandpa got a pinata for Jack's party. As you can see Jack wasn't thrilled about it.


Owen and the other kids loved it!

Jack opening his presents.


One of Jack's favorite presents was Mr. Potato Heads that have animal faces. Once he opened this Owen tried to take over opening the other presents.

Here he is with his Mr. Potato Head.

Jack's big present from both sets of grandparents was a Skuut bike. It's a pedal-less bike. It is supposed to teach kids how to balance on a bike so they never have to use training wheels. We'll let you know how it works.

Of course, you need safety gear to ride a bike. Thanks Tommy and Kelsey!

Here's Jack blowing (spitting) out the candles. Happy Birthday Jack!

Just for fun, here's a couple pictures from Jack's past birthdays.

Ocean Isle or Bust!

Tomorrow we leave for Ocean Isle for two weeks for a much needed vacation. It's been a rough year and we definitely need a break. Please no hurricanes! I swear I will post lots of updates when we return.

Here's a couple of pictures just for fun though. This is what the boys do whenever Robby washes the car. They never help. They just get in the buckets. Robby has finally learned to give them each their own bucket so they don't fight. Then he uses a different one to wash the car so the kids don't get in the dirty, greasy water. Robby is even nice and fills the buckets with warm water. Although they would get in them even if the water was ice cold.




By the way, they do have swimsuits on. I promise they were not running around in the driveway naked.



I am not sure why, but the other night this is how we found Owen when we went to bed. The next morning he had no recollection of falling asleep on the floor outside his door.

4th of July

For the 3rd year in a row we headed up to Portland for 4th of July weekend. We got smart this year and flew to avoid the long drive and got to stay for a long weekend. My whole family was able to come for the weekend. So of course that means family picture time!

Here's the whole gang. Maddy broke her arm the week before on her razor scooter. Fortunately for the family picture, she didn't get her purple cast until the next week.


Just our little family.


Here is a rare picture of Owen actually posing for the camera. He usually refuses to join in any serious pictures.


Jack, on the other hand, has no problems with the camera. He loves to ham it up and yell, "cheese!"

The whole weekend was crazy! With 11 adults and 10 kids it was nuts. Luckily, my parents live down the street from my brother Jeff and my other brother Scott lives about a mile away so at least everyone didn't have to sleep in the same house. We stayed at Jeff's house, so every night and morning we would walk back and forth to my parents house.


Owen discovered he could pull Jack on the back of the tricycle and couldn't wait to do it every night and morning.

And of course it wouldn't be 4th of July without a parade. We went the afternoon before and staked out a great spot to watch the Hillsboro parade. We were lucky enough to have a nice shady spot. The kids had a blast filling their bags with all of the candy that the people threw from the floats. I think they enjoyed collecting all the candy more than actually eating it.


Here's everyone watching the parade from our awesome spot.


I made all of the grandkids matching shirts to wear to the parade. We numbered them from oldest to youngest. It made it easy to figure out who was missing at times.


Front view of the kids in their matching shirts.


The kids spent most of their time playing in my parents backyard with water balloons, water guns, buckets and hoses.

My nephew Zack told my sister he couldn't wait to get to my parents' house so he could feed the ducks with them. We have no idea where he got this idea but of course we had to go feed the ducks as a result.


Okay, so we actually fed geese not ducks but I don't think the kids realized. And no one fell in so it was a good day.


Here is Jack saying "two." This is his word that means whatever he wants it to. Either he wants to do something too or he wants more of something.


My dad had a fabulous idea to take a picture of the kids on this bridge. It looks pleasant enough but I think it took 30 minutes and 100 pictures before we actually got all the kids to stay still and face the camera. (This is the kids minus 1. Poor Harrison missed the photo shoot.)

All in all it was a fun, but crazy weekend. We had fun and it was great to see everyone but is nice to be back home in our relatively quiet house.

Eppies Great Race

Robby competed in the Eppies for the third year today. Two years ago he participated with a team and just did the bike part. Last year and this year he did the whole race by himself. Eppies consists of a 6-mile run, a 13-mile bike, and 6-mile kayak. Last year he finished in 2 hours and 16 minutes and his unofficial time for this year is 2 hours 8 minutes. Robby's parents took me and the boys to go watch him finish. We didn't get to see him run or bike but we got to see him finish up in the kayak.


Robby coming into the finish. Owen and Robby's parents found a great spot on the bank of the river and watched all the kayakers as they came in (and played in the water).



Robby right after he finished.



Owen and Grandpa watching the kayakers as they came into the finish.



The whole family after the race. The boys had a lot of fun after the race because there was a bounce house, cotton candy, hot dogs and popcorn. Luckily, there was a lot of shade since it was almost 100° by the time we left.

We are so proud of Robby. He worked really hard for this race and did really well. I am so grateful for a husband that likes to be active and that keeps me active as well.