Some Sibling Love and Some Snowmen

Last night we had our older kids' siblings over for a little while. Our family daily activity was to make snowmen oreos

 I obviously did something wrong with the snowmen, because they did not turn out the same way that I saw here.at the Idea Room.  I so wanted them to turn out like that though.

Alas, ours turned out beautifully, albeit in a special way. It was good to have the kiddos all together and having some fun. There's been some tough times lately and it made my heart happy to see the tension easing and the love shining.

Tonathiu giving us his best chuck norris face. :)

Wow, Sap-tastic!

Monkeys? We gots 'em!

Barrel Of Monkeys!

This was in another bag for our daily countdown bag.
Holy Cow is this a fun little game. We were able to find this cute little game at Target for $5! It was a perfect addition to our family fun game time. It's easy for *all* of the kids, and all of them enjoy playing it. Something that is kind of hard to accomplish when you have a 5 yr old and a 12 yr old. Usually they don't enjoy the same things. :)

And, I totally kicked everyone's tookus on the very first game. Then, CaryJos figured out my strategies and he spanked me the second time around. If you're looking for a fun, easy, and quick game, go out and gets yourself a barrel or two.
:)

Yoalli's Singing Career part Dos

On Monday night we went to Temple Square to listen to Yoalli in part two of her concert series. She performed at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and it was spectacular. Seriously took my breath away. I hadn't been in the building before, yes apparently I live under a rock, and it was beautiful. There were other choirs performing as well and it was lovely to sit and listen to them while we waited for Yoalli's turn. This performance wasn't as much "Fun" as the concert in AF, but it was still wonderful. I'm so proud of my little boballi and all that she accomplishes. She told me that she was a bit nervous, but she prayed to Heavenly Father and he helped her to feel better. I'm grateful that she turns to Him when she's feeling uneasy or scared. After the concert, we toured the visitor's centers,

the Tabernacle,

all of the lovely light displays

and we ended at the Christus statue.

It was amazing sharing that experience with my children. As we walked up the ramp, Bug saw the statue and said, "Ooooh Mumma look at Jesus!"
I'm so grateful for all the time we were able to spend together as a family these past couple of weeks. We have definitely found some new traditions this year.

mOOObie

I'm playing catch up here, but I still want to document what we did :)

We watched this movie

and it was super good.
There were parts of it that scared the little girls, but everyone wants to watch it again and it has quickly become a family favorite.

Cookie Time! :)

Today was a day to give a little service and do something for others. We've been having a blast with our activities, and I figured we needed to share with our friends.

We made cookies and turtle brownies(holy crap are they good!)today and we will be delivering them after Tonathiu's court of honour to our friends. 

Happy Sunday :)

This is what happens when Daddy tells the Bug she can lick the bowl. 

She, literally, licked the bowl. :) 

Love her! :)

Saaaaturday!

I just love the weekends. I most especially love productive weekends! This Saturday our dear friend watched our kidlets for us while we went and finished shopping, wrapping, etc. It was kind of fabulous. I love her dearly.

After we finished with all of our stuffs, we came home and opened the 7th bag! Fantastic! Saturday's activity was making salt dough ornaments and painting them. Each of my kids are super creative and love making things, Love it!, so this was a perfect activity for our family.

We had never made salt dough ornaments before, but it was sooooo super easy and the kids loved it. Gabby said we most definitely had to do it again. :) I love my little bossy boots angel.

We had to let them cook in the oven for an hour and cool. By that time, it was bedtime and we have early church, so we opted to finish the ornaments on Sunday. I think it's a pretty good Sabbath activity, no?

This is Cuauhtli. That kid amazes me with his creativity. He built an igloo and snow fort with a penguin. We have a thing for penguins in our house. :) It turned out really great!

We had such a good time together. These activities have really made good family fun time possible, it gets so crazy around here.  I am loving all this time special whanau time! :)

Movie Night!

So, tonight's awesome family activity was Movie Night! At the theater even! We actually split up tonight to do the family activity. The boys one way. The girls another way. It was really good to have some girl time with my little loverlies.
I think it's good that we split up sometimes and do separate things. Bug sure doesn't like doing the things that Tonathiu enjoys, and vice-versa.

So, tonight I took the Boballi, Gabbers, and the Bug to Thanksgiving Point Megaplex to watch

It was a super cute movie and my girls loved it. I absolutely loved the chameleon and the horse. Disney did a great job with this Rapunzel tale, and it has probably taken its place as one of my favorite Disney flicks.

Cary and the boys went to Orem and saw

in 3D, no less.
Cary is a huge fan of the original and was a bit disappointed with this movie. He said for the first 30 minutes it was in 2D. Remind me why we paid all the extra cashola for the 3D tix please.
Also, he said that there was a bunch of blahblahblahblahblahblah. The man is not a fan of talking in movies. His favorite movies ever are Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. He will skip through all the talking and go straight for the "blowemups". I think He's watched those, in their entirety, once. Perhaps! Twice, But doubtful.
The boys had a blast at any rate and was talking non stop about it. I feigned interest for a little while. Then, bedtime saves the day again! oh yeah!

All in all each of us had a really good evening. And, Cary and I were able to spend time with our kids, which made it all worth it.
Talking And All.


*photos courtesy of Imdb.**

A Giveaway?! To Thanksgiving Point?!

I'm in!
I found this today and want to win it so badly, I could smack Cary.
Ok, I could smack him anyway, but I really want to win this.

I just started reading Jill's blog and she's pretty dang funny. She calls her kids jerks angels. I could be friends with a gal like that! ;)

She's funny, smart, a good writer, AND she's hosting a giveaway. What more can one ask for?
Head over to her blog and check it out. You could enter the giveaway too, but really why bother since I'm going to win it?
:)

Oh Christmas Lights!

A quick family photo before heading out to see da lights!

Last Night our activity was "going to see the Christmas Lights".

 **photos were taken with Cary's Iphone, but I think they turned out pretty good!**

I remember as a little girl my Dad would drive me and my mom around to look at Christmas lights. We would oooh and ahhhh while looking and I think my Dad would get ideas on what more he could do to our house. I remember driving in downtown Hot Springs. Every year this huge historic hotel would have santa and his reindeer on the top of their hotel. For whatever reason, that made it Christmastime for me. I still remember that old hotel and those reindeer "flying" on top of the hotel. I wonder if they still do that.

I still enjoy looking at lights and want our kidlets to enjoy it as well. Last night we all piled into the van and drove to Thanksgiving Point to look at the lights. $8 a car is a little pricey, but our kids really enjoyed it this year. It might have helped that I preplanned a little better this year. I made everyone their very own treat bag. I filled it with pretzels, marshmallows, and peanut M&M's. We also stuck a little Yoo-Hoo drink in the bag. The kids were surprised and so stoked.

Treats, Lights, Christmas Music, Family Time. It was a good night, indeed.

Eureka!

Continuing on with our 12 day/night of Christmas, we got the game "Pictureka"!
I had found a coupon for $5 off the game online at Bargain Divas and knew it had to be included in our activities. Our family loves playing games!
*bonus! I found it at Target for $5.04! Sweeet!*

I totally spaced getting photos of us while we were playing the game, but all of us had a lot of fun. It's a little card game that everyone could play, including the Bug. It has 4 variations you can play, and Daddy made up our very own version so that it would be easier for the littles to play.
One version is that you start with a letter of the alphabet, let's choose D, and you lay out four cards in 2 second intervals and everyone tries to find a word in one of the pictures that begins with the chosen letter. It allows for a lot of creativity and a lot of, "Ha! Yeah, right!" :)

We had a good time and played it for about an hour without anyone getting bored!

Mission. Accomplished.

Yoalli is hitting the Big Time!

I enrolled Yoalli in concert choir this year. The little girls didn't want to "sing those songs in front of people!", so they didn't. Oh, how a little attention changes things! :)
Yoalli has been practicing very hard each day at home and each week at choir practice. Last night was her first big show at the Tabernacle. She was a smashing success! The entire choir was really quite amazing and we all enjoyed it very much.

Yoalli was part of a trio that sang

Hanerot Hallalu, in Hebrew. It was really quite cool to hear them sing it so well. 

 

 

She also had a solo speaking part and did super well! She had practiced and practiced and memorized everything perfectly!  

 

 

We really enjoyed the performance and can't wait until the next one! :)

 

Love you, Boballi! Good Job! :)

This Morning...

Yep, She's snooping alright. She is reading every name on every tag on every pressie under the tree. She's shaking it and guessing what each thing is...hers...cuauhtli's....tonathiu's...Gab's....Yoalli's.....Daddy's....
I asked her, "What does that one sound like Bug?"
She replied, "Oooooh Mumma, that sounds like treasure!!"

Merry Christmas!

A Gingy Play-Land!

We're doing the 12 days of Christmas for our kidlets. I'm actually having as much fun as they are with it. I brought the bags out on Saturday night and they've been itching to open them and find out what's inside since that second!
Last night our activity was making our Gingerbread house, people, and tree. Each person got to be in charge of something and make it just the way they like it. I'm a little bit of a control freak so these activities are always a good lesson for me. Actually, last night I just let it go and let them at it. It turned out beautifully. We ended the night with hot cocoa with marshmallows of course! and peanut butter cookies. I love seeing their little marshmallow mustaches!
Too bad I didn't snap a picture of that for posterity!
Shoot!

A Giveaway at Our Thrifty Ideas

As I was perusing my google reader this morning, I stumbled on a post on the Robert's blog by Vanessa @ Our Thrifty Ideas.  She had the cutest idea for a magnet board, and it's by far the easiest one I've seen to make. Head over to the Robert's blog and have a look. You will agree!

She's also hosting a massive giveaway, which I entered, and you should too! She calls it the "Bah Humbug Giveaway" and it's loaded with tons of cute prizes. I have my eye on this stocking to win! Also, can I just tell you that the way she has it set up to enter the giveaway is genius. It's so simple and private. Love.

Anyway, head on over, you won't be sorry! :)

love notes

Cary and I email a lot. I like that we can send love notes back and forth. Well, let's be serious, most of the time they aren't love notes. Usually they are more like, "Yeah, thanks for unloading that dishwasher for me, buttface."
or   "Thanks for washing my wallet for the 2982357th time." my reply? "no problem, learn to take it out of your pants and it would stay dry!"
Yeah, very deep, emotional stuff goes on.

Today, however, was different and I had to blog it so that I could save it.

Cary wrote (to me, I might add!):
I need you for my heart to be happy
cannot be any other way


*melt*
It's words like those that keeps me from locking him out of the bedroom at night.
He's safe for another week or three.
:)
*post edit*
I wrote him back with :*) perfect words
and he wrote back with
Also, I farted.

Ahhhh. True. Love.

My Marriage

This was my "conversation" last night with my darling beloved. This was after he was charming me, naturally.

Me: Nicholas, I'm going to punch your lights out!
**Pow**
Him: Ahhhhhh! My Lights! They're Ouuutttt!

That's right ladies, he's taken.
Oy.

The Bugz Christmas Poem

I so love that she is such a ham! *note the end of the video!*

This is the poem that she had to remember and recite for her class this month. She wanted me to "video" her in front of our tree. :)