O Christmas Tree

When my visiting teachers were here a few days ago they were laughing at our Christmas tree. One of them said I should take a picture of it to remind us of our Christmas 2006 tree. So I thought I would take it one step further and put it on my blog. Can you tell we have a toddler living in our house? (And an almost 4 yr old?)

Santa Claus Visits

Friday night was our ward Christmas party which included a visit from Santa. It was fun for Kevin and Ethan but not so much for Jake. Luckily Santa was a good sport. And Darren was ready with the camera for a good shot.














Now for a little story without a picture. We were sitting in Sacrament Meeting today singing the opening song (which was Joy to the World). Ethan turned to me and said, "Mom is this song Joy to the World, Barney's dead?" You can tell what Kevin has been teaching him.

Bird guest

So this morning was a typical Saturday morning. Ethan woke up early and wanted to watch TV. So Darren, being the good dad he is, took Ethan downstairs and put Bugs Life on for him. Then he came back to bed. A little while later we heard him screaming at the top of his lungs. I was afraid he had thrown up since Jake had been doing that all day Friday. When I got down there he looked terrified and said "There's a bird in our house!" I believed him because that's an odd thing to make up but I didn't see a bird. So I was trying to get him to tell me where it went when, all of a sudden, a bird came flying into the family room. I screamed. It was scared and kept flying back and forth between the rooms downstairs. We didn't dare try to go upstairs because that's where the bird was. So I called Darren on the intercom on our phone. I don't know what he was expecting me to say when he answered but it wasn't, "There's a bird down here." He said calmly, "That's wierd" and then came down to check it out. Turns out it was Northern Flicker (woodpecker). He got it to go upstairs and then managed to pin it up against the kitchen window with the tray to the highchair and caught it. When it was safely out of the house our morning returned back to normal. I don't know what I would have done if Darren hadn't been there. My knight in shining armour. I'm sure my mom will appreciate this story.

Tis the Season

After a few days of begging, the boys finally got me to get out the Christmas stuff. As soon as the Christmas tree was set up they were all gung ho about putting on the ornaments. I was thinking, "Wow this is great, they can do all the decorating." But they soon grew tired of it and I had to finish the rest.




















Kevin putting on an ornament.















Ethan pulling stuff out of the boxes.















Jake pulling things out of the boxes. Check out Jake's shiner he got a couple of days ago. (below)

Children's Museum

Darren has pretty much covered our Thanksgiving and I didn't take any pictures of Friday. But here are some pictures from our Saturday at the Children's Discovery Center and Temple Square.














Kevin and Carson piloting the life flight helicopter.




















Kevin climbing the rock wall.















Ethan dressed as a horse in his stall. He wasn't very excited to pose for me.















Carson, Kevin, and Ethan being news anchors.















Ethan giving Darren a ride in his car.















Kevin operating one of the machines in the water play area.















Ethan, Carson, and Kevin playing with the ball activities. This one Ethan is at was like the game, Plinko, on the Price is Right. I've always wanted to play that game so I tried it here. Unfortunately I didn't win 10,000 dollars.















Jake and Ethan pretending they are beavers.















Kevin, Jacob, and Ethan playing with the water.















Kevin and Ethan riding Nellie, the horse.















Darren took this picture while we were waiting for Parker to finish singing with the sister missionaries. I think it looks pretty cool and pretty realistic (meaning little boys have a hard time holding still.)

Dogpile

These picture don't really need much explanation. I have three wild boys and they do wild and crazy things. But they were having fun together on this particular day so I decided I'd better capture it on film.

A Sunday Bread Treat

Here is a real Sunday treat for you. I got this recipe from a basic skills Relief Society activity. I'm not really sure who to give credit to but it is delicious and pretty easy.

Refrigerator rolls

2 Tbsp yeast (2 packages)
1/2 cup warm water
1 Tbsp sugar
1 cup boiling water
1 cup shortening/margarine (or half and half)

Dissolve yeast and 1 Tbsp sugar in 1/2 cup warm water. Set aside. In large bowl, put boiling water and the shortening/margarine.

Add:
1 cup cold water
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp salt
4 eggs

Beat well and add yeast.

Beat about 8 cups flour (2 cups at a time). Dough will be quite sticky. Cover container and place in refrigerator overnight. Dough will keep about a week.

Take dough from refrigerator and shape as desired. Raise until double (3 hours) (perfect for while you are at church). Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes. For whole wheat rolls, substitute stone ground flour for 1/2 white flour.

Cousin lunch

We were jealous of the Utah "cousin dinners". So we decided to have our own Rexburg "cousin lunch". We went to Craigos and had a great time. The first person to name all the people in these pictures wins. Oh, and one more thing not related to this lunch. We are missing a library book that is due today called "Custard the Dragon and the Wicked Knight". Does anyone remember seeing that when they were here this past weekend?

My weekend photos

Whenever a lot of family members with blogs gets together for a fun weekend there are always similar stories and pictures shared on the various blogs. This is my version:
















Kevin and his brothers after the baptismal service. Jake looks like he's about to run away.




















Kevin and his dad before getting baptized.




















Sunday morning all of my boys were in white shirts and ties (except Jake). I couldn't resist taking a picture. Of course, Ethan's shirt was untucked before Sacrament Meeting even started and his tie was off 3 minutes after church started. But, he sure looked good before he left.




















The boys insisted on a silly one so here it is.





















Here's LaCee and Jake bonding.















Jake with his first ice cream cone.

















Some of our overnight guests - MaryAnn, Jared, LaCee, Ryan. Curtis, Shandy and Dexter were our other overnight guests but I didn't get a picture of them.















Here's the icecream scooper. You had to be careful. If you didn't watch him and tell him when to stop he would just keep making the ice cream cone higher.
















4 sisters and the ice cream party.

Boo at the Zoo

Yesterday we went to Boo at the Zoo at the Tautphus Park Zoo in Idaho Falls. A bunch of businesses set up booths at the zoo and you get to go trick or treating. It was a beautiful day. Probably the last nice day until spring. Kevin and Ethan found some of their kind. One of the businesses were all dressed up like Star Wars characters. It was pretty impressive. They even had an R2D2 and Darth Vader's voice was cool. So we had to take a picture with them. One of the ladies we ran into said, "You know, Darth Vader and Yoda would never go trick or treating together." A radio station was also sponsoring a trick or treat at an RV park. They made it sound pretty cool on the radio but when we got there, there were only 6 RV's to trick or treat at. So it's a good thing we still had the zoo to go to. Oh, and Darren's blog isn't working very well right now. So don't get after him for not updating until he gets it fixed. He has some photographs ready to go when it gets fixed. (And Jon's out of town so he can't help him.)

Pumpkins!!

All week the boys have been begging to carve the pumpkins and I finally gave in on Saturday. So here are some pictures of us hard at work. We should have waited until Darren got home because Kevin says Darren is better at carving pumpkins than I am.















Kevin was queasy about pulling the yucky stuff out of the pumpkin but he got brave.















Here's me pulling the yucky stuff out.















Our finished pumpkins. Kevin's is the one on the left.
















More yucky stuff.

Snow

We had our first real snow, as far as I'm concerned, today. Most of it is gone now so I'm glad we got these pictures this morning. Here we are on our way to work this morning. I took the picture of me by myself. Not the most attractive picture but it helps you see what it was like.

Kevin the acrobat

I'm afraid I don't have anything exciting to post this week. But I did find Kevin climbing the walls one day so this is what you get to see.

A Playful Saturday

Yesterday, the weather was beautiful so the boys and I took advantage of that. We spent some time outside and, since it's fall, a lot of our play involved all the leaves on our lawn. Be sure to check out Kevin's photos in the blog entry following.















Jake playing in the leaves















I thought I could get a darling picture of the boys sitting in the bright yellow leaves but Jake would not cooperate.















Kevin showing his acrobatics.















Kevin jumping in the big pile we made and Jake having fun, too.

Kevin's Photographs

The following are the photographs that Kevin took when we were playing outside yesterday. What do you think? Does he have some of his dad in him?