Bio-hazard, Thanksgiving, Christmas Tree Jubilee, School Changes, Football, Museum

Here's an attempt at keeping up with our happenings for this week.  Last Saturday Aaron got some cheap seat tickets for the BYU football game.  He took Josh, Daniel and Sarah along with him to the game.  While they were gone I took Matthew and Noah to visit the Union Station Museums in Ogden-aka the train museum.  Matthew was so excited.  I even got Matthew to slow down and actually read about a few of the exhibits.

Noah came along for the ride.

 Checking out the old style rail car set up:

 Playing with the interactive exhibits:

 Driving the train:

 Checking out all the model trains:

 Aaron and the kids had fun at the game:

 They got down to Provo early enough to do some of the tailgating activities.  They had some drift trikes the kids raced.  Here's Sarah racing some other little kid:

 Josh won his race against Daniel, but he still had fun:

 This week Noah had his Thanksgiving feast/party on Tuesday.  I was able to go and help.  It was so fun to see all the kids wearing their pilgrim hats.  Each kid brought a baggy with a cup of ingredients to add to the friendship mix they made.  Some kids brought different cereal, others brought crackers, etc.  Noah brought some chocolate chips.  They mixed all the bags together and then the kids got to munch on their friendship mix while they watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special.  The kindergarten teacher even made corn bread muffins and had all the kids shake some cream to make butter to put on the muffins.  All the kids had a fun day.  Noah thought it was fun even though his face says otherwise in the picture:

This last week and a half has been an interesting one.  Daniel has been in a Spectrum classroom which is a program for the high ability learner kids.  From day one of this school year he has HATED this program and has disliked the teacher.  I told him to give it a longer try so he did.  I kept asking him if he had learned to like it every few weeks and his answer never changed.  As time went on Aaron and I really didn't like the way the teacher ran her classroom especially discipline-wise.  She was so strict that if Daniel got anything wrong on any assignment or stepped out of line he would stay in from recess and prep periods as punishment.  For example one day Daniel said he got in trouble for just talking to another kid in the bathroom.  REALLY?!  Daniel started coming home in tears from school because he hated it so much.  It came to a point last week that she pulled Daniel to the back of the classroom to ream him out because he didn't get an assignment completed.  Daniel came home in tears and told me that the teacher had said that he was the dumbest kid in the classroom right now because he didn't get his assignment completed.  She also made him write a note to us in her words not Daniel's saying how he was so irresponsible for not getting his assignment completed.  Daniel couldn't stand up for himself because if any kid spoke up to the teacher they would get in even more trouble.  Aaron and I were really upset about what had happened.  Daniel just in tears begged us to pull him out of that class because he hated it so much.  We emailed back and forth with the teacher and ultimately decided to pull Daniel out of the class because no kid should have to feel like that, ever!  When we told Daniel our decision he was so relieved.  The rest of the week you could just tell a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders--the poor kid.  When I went in to the office to fill out the paperwork to switch classes for Daniel his old teacher walked right by me and didn't even say a word to me.  All I can say is I wish I would have pulled him out sooner!  Anyway, he met his new teacher Friday of last week and Daniel said she seemed nice.  His new teacher went out of town all of last week so he will really get to know what his new class will be like starting Monday.  I am pretty sure Daniel will like it a lot more than his old class--that's the only way it could have gone.

This week was a short week school-wise.  The kids only went Monday and Tuesday and then had the rest of the week off.  For fun on Wednesday I took the kids down to the Clark Planetarium.  Aaron had to work so it was just me and the kids, but we had fun checking out all the exhibits.  We even got to watch an IMAX 3-D movie called the Last Reef about the ocean reefs.  It was a pretty neat show. We also saw a Christmas movie, too.  Here's Josh and Sarah playing with their tornado:

 Matthew checking out this thing that I forgot the name of:

 Sarah and Matthew:

 Checking out the Mars landscape:

 The next morning, Thanksgiving morning, I couldn't sleep so I finally gave up and got out of bed at 4 am.  I was checking out all the Black Friday ads when Noah came wandering out of his room.  I guess he couldn't sleep either.  Every morning I love how he tries to snuggle his pillow pet, suck his finger and walk at the same time.  There's been a few times he will run into the wall because he can't really see where he is going.  I guess the poor kid couldn't sleep, either.

He was only half awake, but gave me lubs the rest of the morning.  Sarah came out of her room shortly after and gave me lubs, too.  I loved getting lubs, but the extremely early morning for them caused them to become 'Chuckles' later that day.  Oh well, the early morning lubs were worth it.

We did wake up to a white Thanksgiving.  As soon as Aaron woke up Matthew started pestering him about snow blowing our driveway and sidewalk.  Matthew LOVES the snow blower.  When the rest of the kids saw Matthew bundling up to go outside with Aaron they all wanted to outside, too.  Here's Noah all bundled up looking like the kid from Christmas Story:

 While they were outside snow blowing I started preparing Thanksgiving dinner.  I started cooking the turkey and preparing the mashed potatoes.  We hosted dinner this year.  My brother Bryan and his family, my sister Johanna and her family and G&G T came for dinner.  All in all there were 20 people.  We did miss my other sister Jennifer and her family in Ohio, though.  Dinner was really yummy!!

 Remember Noah's early morning?  Right after dinner Noah decided to lay down for a bit right on the hard kitchen floor.  He never did fall asleep all the way, but he was tired especially after eating dinner.

 It was nice to visit with everyone and have the cousins play together.  I love Thanksgiving.  There are so many things I am thankful for especially my family!

Later that evening after everyone had left Aaron and I decided to go do some Black Friday shopping. Our old bank cards had expired so we got some new ones in the mail last week.  These new ones have the new chip in them, but we didn't get to decide where the chip went on the card.  Poor Josh's face got blacked out by the new chip placement--the poor kid.  I showed Josh the card and then kiddingly told him he wasn't part of our family anymore because the bank decided so--haha!  I will need to get a new family picture card so Josh can be part of our family again--haha!

 We got to Walmart right after the Black Friday deals had started.  There were people everywhere!!  As we were trying to worm our way through a main aisle some Walmart employees started closing off the aisle and not letting any customers by.  When I looked closer I saw why--someone had had a huge poop accident all over the floor.  YUCK!!  It was everywhere!!  I guess someone made the decision of getting a good deal win out over the decision to use the bathroom.  I hope that money savings was worth it--GROSS!!  Aaron and I picked up a few things, even though we had to take a detour to avoid the bio hazard.  On our way out of the store we ran into one of the managers who is in our ward.  We told him what had happened and he just smiled and said he wasn't surprised.  He then added with a funny smile, "Welcome to Walmart!".

Friday we went and visited the Christmas Tree Jubilee in Ogden.  We go to this every year and love it.  There are so many beautiful trees there.  The Christmas Tree Jubilee is a fundraiser for special needs kids in the Weber School district to help them get supplies to be successful in school.  Here we are looking at the trees:

We came too early before Santa got there, but it was still neat to see all the decorated trees.  Later that evening we had the Einzingers over for dinner and a game night.  It was lots of fun.  The kids all had a great time playing with their friends.  The adults had fun playing games and laughing until midnight.  It has been a fun Thanksgiving break!

Morning with Grandparents, Veteran's Day, Sick, Family Pictures

The past week has been pretty low key.  Here's some of the happenings with our family.  Last Friday was morning with Grandparent's at the elementary school.  The kids were so excited when G&G T came and picked them  up for school.  The kids loved showing them their classrooms and some of their school work.  Here Daniel had to design a turkey costume that would keep the turkey safe from Thanksgiving.  His turkey was a hybrid from Star Wars and a Ninja.  If that can't keep the turkey safe I don't know what can.

 Noah--I really don't know what he is doing exactly.  I guess he's just winging it:

 Sarah showing off her money knowledge:

They all had donuts:

 Then they read books together until school started:

 We were pleasantly surprised when Josh brought his Honor Roll certificate home a few days ago.  Wahoo!  Honor Roll is for kids with a 3.6 or higher GPA. Because he was on the Honor Roll he got to attend a special assembly for all the Honor Roll kids.  He was excited to go, but was bummed that he didn't win any of the drawings for the different prizes they gave away.  I told him that he has three more tries at the drawings if he keeps his grades up. Hopefully, that will keep his motivation up so he will make it to the next assembly and win a prize then.  I am keeping my fingers crossed :).

Daniel, Sarah and Noah had their primary program Sunday.  I love watching the primary program.  Those kids are so cute and sweet.  One of the songs in the program was Follow the Prophet.  They had different families with multiple siblings sing each different verse.  Daniel, Sarah and Noah got to sing verse 8 about Jonah.  I was nervous when it was their turn to sing because Noah got up to the pulpit and moved the microphone to be right in front of his mouth.  However, he didn't scream into the microphone so we were able to hear Daniel and Sarah sing along with him.  They were fun to watch.

Sarah and I are having a girls day in today.  Poor Sarah spiked a fever yesterday afternoon and complained of not feeling well in addition to having a soar throat.  Luckily, she doesn't have a fever this morning, but she says she still doesn't feel very good so she is staying home from school.  I don't mind because I love getting snuggles.

Last Wednesday was Veteran's Day.  That meant Aaron had it off from work which was awesome.  It also meant that Josh, Daniel and Aaron had to get up at 5:50 am to put out flags on people's lawns to celebrate. So much for sleeping in for Aaron on his day off--haha!  After we got all the kids to school we were able to go to the temple and then have breakfast together without any kids.  That was nice!!  Then we did a bit of Christmas shopping, too.  It was a fun day date.  I must add that I am thankful for all the Veteran's that have served and that are presently serving, too.

Saturday we decided to take some family pictures.  That is always stressful for Aaron and me, however, this time we didn't get into any arguments which is a really big deal.  Usually we end up arguing oh I mean discussing about how to do it the right way.  We take our own pictures because I have a hard time paying a lot of money for a photographer when I can take the pictures myself.  They may not have that professional quality, but they capture what the kids are like at that point in time which I am ok with most times.  I am sure we looked a bit ridiculous getting everyone set up then pushing the button on the camera while I try to run and get into place before the picture gets taken.  A few of the pictures we didn't make it in time, but that's the beauty of doing it yourself--you can get unlimited retries!!  We did try out a remote control for the camera in a few of the group shots as well which was nice.   Aaron wanted everyone to wear their BYU shirts so that's what we did :).  We took the pictures around Union Station in Ogden (aka the train museum).  Since we were outside right next to the Frontrunner tracks we had to stop every time a train went by so Matthew could watch it.  That kid and his train obsession!!  Anyway, here's what we got after 90 minutes of trying:

 I still can't believe Josh and Matthew are taller than me.  It is a reminder of how big they are getting when I see the family pictures!

The kids:

 Noah was being a stinker and I was trying to make him smile.  He decided to give me a smooch instead.  I can't get mad because I got a smooch on the cheek out of the deal.

Matthew--I love his post braces smile!!

 

Josh:

Daniel:

 

Sarah:

 

Noah:

 

The happy couple because we know we are almost done with taking pictures--haha!:

Phew!  Glad to have the family pictures out of the way for at least another year!!  I am also glad to say our marriage is still intact, too--haha!!

Halloween, Planetarium Visit, Jack-O-Lanterns, Lagoon, Snow, YWIE

It's been a fun past 10 days.  Here's the catch up on our family happenings.  Last Thursday the elementary kids all had their school Halloween parade and their Halloween class parties.  Daniel, Sarah and Noah were so excited to wear their costumes to school.  It was fun watching all the kids parading around the school showing off their costumes.  When Noah, the bat, saw us watching him he ran over to give G&G T a big hug, but skipped by Aaron and me.  How do you like that ;)?!

 Sarah loved being Elsa:

 Daniel was a skeleton:

 I love seeing the Halloween parade every year.  I will miss it when I don't have kids in elementary school anymore.  Friday was the end of the term so the teachers got a professional day to put in grades which meant there was no school for anyone in the school district.  Since we had a full free day we went and played.  Aaron had to work so it was just me and the kids.  We spent the day at the Clark Planetarium.  It has been a while since we have been there so it was fun to see all the new exhibits and some of the old ones, too.  They have a tornado exhibit where you can experiment with wind shear and something else I can't remember to make your own tornado.  It was pretty interesting.

 Nice tornado, Daniel:

Another favorite exhibit was the static electricity ball.  Unfortunately, Josh and Daniel figured out that if you put one hand on the ball and touched someone else it would shock them.  They would sit quietly waiting for one of us to walk by when they would jump out and touch us to shock us.  It would only work if they had one hand on the static electricity ball at all times so as long as you stayed outside of 3 feet around the ball you were safe.  However, they were patient and sometimes you would forget and get zapped.  The stinkers!!  Good thing the Planetarium wasn't very busy that day!

We then saw an IMAX 3D movie on the Journey to Space.  It was awesome because it was only us and maybe 10 other people in the whole theater for the movie.

 After the movie we played with the Newton's Daydream exhibit.  It is a two story tall exhibit that moves small balls around different tracks hitting bells, drums and other things to make noise.  It was really interesting to watch.

 When we got home from the planetarium I was pleasantly surprised to find Aaron had cleaned the bathrooms for me.  Oh I love my husband!!  I was really dreading that job and he did it for me.  That made my day!!  After dinner it was time to carve pumpkins.  Aaron and I don't mind carving pumpkins, but both of us HATE scooping out all the pumpkin guts.  Luckily, Josh was a moderately willing recruit to get the job done.

The kids all designed their jack-o-lanterns:

 Then Aaron and I tried to carve them:

 Daniel is the one who got a hold of the camera to take pictures.  He was all about getting everyone to pose with their pumpkins:

 Later that night we wanted to watch a Halloween type movie.  We decided on Ghostbusters because it mixes scary with humor so we thought the kids would like it.  I do know that Sarah and Daniel are some tender hearts and don't really enjoy being super scared so we thought this movie would be great.  Unfortunately, it ended up really scaring Sarah.  Even a week later Sarah is having a hard time going to bed at night and sleeping all night without nightmares.  I feel awful because I didn't think it would be that scary for them--I guess I was really wrong.  Josh really loved the movie which wasn't a surprise because nothing scares that kid!

The next day, Saturday, which happened to be Halloween as well we went to Lagoon for the last day of the season.  We had a lot of fun.  We let everyone pick their favorite ride and we all went on it.  Cannibal seemed to be a family favorite for this year as well as the Sky Tram which was mine.  I am getting lame in my old age I guess.  While Aaron took Josh and Matthew on Colossus the other three kids went on this ride:

 Of course the kids couldn't pass by a photo op without getting a picture:

 The kids liked this ride, too:

 We really had a fun season with our passes this year.  I think we got our monies worth out of them!  Here are all of walking back out to the car for the last time this year:

When we got home it was time to get everyone ready to go trick or treating.  After everyone was ready to go we stopped by Daniel's teacher's house first.  She is a single lady who has never been married so she loves to have all her students stop by to trick or treat.  She had fun seeing Daniel and his siblings.  We also stopped by G&G T to let the kids show off their costumes.  When we got back home it was time to go out trick or treating in our neighborhood.  I do know that some people believe kids should stop going when they get too old, but Matthew doesn't quite understand why he wouldn't ever be allowed to go trick or treating so we let him go again this year.  It comes as no surprise he was a train conductor.

As we got started trick or treating we stopped by our neighbor's house who really is a train engineer.  He is so nice to Matthew.  A few weeks ago he sent his kids over to give Matthew a 2016 Union Pacific calendar.  Oh Matthew was so excited!!  When we stopped by their house the neighbor saw Matthew and said, "Oh Matthew I have the perfect thing for your uniform!"  He went and gave him a really nice Union Pacific pocket watch along with some Halloween candy.  Matthew was pretty excited.  I was so grateful!  People can be so awesome!

Noah was a bat.  All the boys have worn this costume.  I am sad that this will be the last year it will fit anyone, but Noah sure did look cute coming from a biased mom!

 Daniel was a skeleton:

 Sarah was Elsa and I tried my hand at some face paint to complete the costume.  Sarah was just excited to be able to wear makeup!

 We let Josh go out trick or treating, too.  He was a ghoul.

 Here's everyone before we started trick or treating.  Here's all our jack-o-lanterns, too:

 During the weekend Daniel's allergist had a Halloween contest.  You entered your Halloween pictures on Facebook on their Facebook page.  After the weekend they had a drawing for a $25 Fandango movie gift card.  I was excited to get a phone call Wednesday afternoon letting me know that this picture won the gift card.  Wahoo!!  Now we just have to wait for a family friendly movie to come out that we all want to see before we can use it.

The kids got all kinds of candy.  A few of them also came home with some non candy items namely these noise makers--ugh!!  After a few hours we had to confiscate them for safety reasons--haha!

It has snowed a few times this week.  Every year you know it will happen at one point, but it always comes before I am ready!!  The kids were all really excited to wake up and see it snowing, though.  Sarah got dressed and ready for the day really fast so she could go out and play in it.  She brought me the first snowball of the season to show me.

 Sometimes among all the chaos of having five kids (six if you include my husband--haha), a house to clean, cooking, laundry, homework, etc. I get lost in the monotony.  However, when one of my kids makes something like this and hands it to me just because it makes my day!!  Thanks Sarah!

 The past month has been pretty crazy for me.  Our wards Young Women in Excellence was coming up and I was in charge of planning it on top of all the other things that were going on.  Luckily, I had lots of good people that helped a ton!  All the girls got assigned a part of the program as well as the Stake President and the bishop.  The girl's also brought a Personal Progress project to show.  Our theme was Heroes.  We pulled 8 women from the scriptures to showed a particular value and spotlighted them.  I wanted it to be a nice program for all the girls and their parents.  It seemed to have turned out really well which was a big relief.  Wednesday day before the program I was on edge and trying to get stuff together.  Aaron surprised me by bringing me some lunch because he knew I hadn't eaten and probably wouldn't have a chance to eat.  Again that was so sweet!  Anyway, here's what our set up looked like before the program started:

 The women examples that we used were Hannah was Faith, Emma Smith was Divine Nature, Rebekah was Individual Worth, Mothers of the Stripling Warriors was Knowledge, Daughters in the Wilderness were examples for Choice and Accountability, Ruth was Good Works, Esther was Integrity and Mary was Virtue.  We had the Hero's pictures as well as the framed scriptures that go along with the Young Women Values.

 I also was able to find flowers to represent all the Young Women Value colors which was interesting to find.

 We have some really talented and awesome girls in our ward.  All their projects were really neat to see.

 After the program we had cheesecake for dessert with toppings I made for every value color.  There was white chocolate for Faith (white), Blueberry for Divine Nature (blue), Strawberry for Individual Worth (red), Kiwi for Knowledge (green), Peach for Choice and Accountability (orange), pineapple for Good Works (yellow), Blackberry for Integrity (purple), and caramel for Virtue (gold).

 It was a crazy week getting all of this put together so I wasn't too fun to live with, however, now it's done we are back to having some fun again.