New Pics of My Girls

This is a bit of a repeat if you also read our craft blog, Cheap Cheap Chickadee, but here are some pics of my cute girls. My friend, Sundi sent me a link to some fun shirts sold on etsy. Matching Big Sis and Lil Sis shirts. Too cute, right? So, of course, I had to make some...



And while I was trying to get Zoe to smile and look good for the camera, I noticed our wee monkey was trying to do some smiling of her own...



I love that picture! Especially since she is sporting a Frohawk(...Fohawk?...whatever they're called).




Molly smiled for "real" for the first time last Saturday. I was holding her all swaddled up and Ryan said something about her being hot. Well, she smiled at that! Silly girl.

I sure do love those boys of mine. And I definitely wouldn't trade them for a house full of girls. But I am very very happy we had another girl!

Camping Chaos!

Last weekend we took a camping trip down to the Wahweap and stayed in the Tommy Cabin. I use the word "cabin" loosely. The kids were THRILLED to finally get there. While dad set up stuff, we explored a bit and I tried to snap some good pics before a swarm of gnats ate us. Camping is the best, right?

There is a huge rock to the side of the cabin. It's an amazing wonderland for our boys. They played on that for hours. It really is huge. Here is a just a small portion of it....

We brought two four-wheelers with us and Friday Ryan's dad came down with another one. We went on a fun ride and hiked up a canyon looking for some petroglyphs Franz had heard about.

Amazingly enough, we found them. You can't see them too good in this next picture. But Ryan is climbing up to get a better look at them. They look kinda fake, but Ryan said up close they looked real. We also found bits of pottery, an arrowhead, and old bits of charcoal from fires. Of course, we couldn't keep any of it, so we took a picture instead....

We continued on up the canyon for a ways. There were fun rocks to climb on, ponds to throw stuff in and treasures to find. Great fun for busy boys. And Zoe enjoyed being packed the whole by her sweet dad.

This rock was very cool. You can't really see it in this picture, but it reminded me of the bark of a ponderosa tree. And it makes a great chair, eh?

Friday evening I went for a walk with Sam and Zoe. We found a neat rock with a great view. Well, the whole place has great views. And, of course, I had to snap more pics.

Saturday we wanted to get out early since there was supposed to be a storm. After breakfast (pancakes with a wee bit of strawberry jam since...er...someone...okay...*I* forgot to pack the syrup)I took the kids on a four-wheeler to some sand dunes nearby so Ryan could finish getting everything in the truck. But while we were there rolling around in the sand and filling our pockets with the lovely stuff, the wind REALLY picked up and I herded them back onto the four-wheeler. When the raindrops began to fall I picked up the pace and luckily came upon Ryan coming to get us. And then we were out of there.

Ryan had to advise three worried tourists in vehicles about the slick muddy roads, but only had to help one of them out of a ditch(while it was hailing) What a great guy, right?

We sure love to go camping. We always have the best times (even if there were way too many gnats) We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, enjoyed Ryan's dutch oven potatoes and cobbler, took walks, explored cool looking rocks, laughed at silly jokes and loved every minute of being together without chores, homework or stuff we had to do.

Ice Fishing Fun

Ryan took the boys ice fishing with his dad on Monday. They had an amazingly super fantastic day. The boys couldn't stop talking about the great time they had!

Sam caught one fish. Weston helped Grandpa bring in a trout. And Emmett caught THREE fish!

Zoe and I stayed home since I figured she'd get pretty cold and bored out there all day, but now I wish we would have gone! I would have loved to have been there to see the joy on their faces as they reeled in their catches.

They only had a few small problems. Emmett dropped one of Grandpa's tools down the hole after his dad said, "Don't drop that down the hole."

Luckily, Grandpa Franz had a camera and Ryan used it to locate the tool and fish it out.

The only other problem made its appearance later...

Ryan forgot about the sun reflecting off the snow and so the boys look like they had some massive allergic reaction! But they would tell you it was totally worth it. In fact, why don't I ask them about it....

Me: "Weston what was your favorite part about ice fishing?"

Weston: "Catching the fish with Grandpa."

Me: "Emmett, how about you?"

Emmett: "Catching all three of my fish."

Me: "Sam, what was your favorite part about ice fishing?"

Sam: "That I caught a fish!"

Tonight Ryan will be cooking up some of the stinky...er...I mean...YUMMY fish. Mmmmm! Sounds good, right?

Edited to add: The fish was surprisingly very very good. In the dinner prayer Sam said, "...Please help us not to cry if we don't like the food."

After they dug in and decided they quite liked it, Emmett said, "I thought this was going to be bad. But...it's not that bad. It's good!"

hahahahahahaha!

Christmas Chaos

(ahhhhh!) I can't get my pics where I want them! okay...moving on....)

So, because we're slightly nuts, we decided to do a mostly handmade Christmas. Here are some of the highlights...

That first pic of Sam and his super cool monster beanbag game that Weston had a blast making for him!

And then there's Zoe holding the funky mouse I made for her. I had such fun making it! But she's hardly played with it since she opened it. So sad!

I made Ryan a magnetic scrabble board so we can always be playing a game together!

Weston has been playing with us, too. It's really fun.

I had really been wanting something to help organize my dangly earrings, so Ryan came up with this cool thing. It's just what I wanted (he left it unfinished because he wasn't sure if I wanted it stained or painted. I think I'll paint it black and hang it in my bathroom)....

Ryan also spoiled me with a gift card to Jo-Ann's and a pasta machine! Okay. That sounds strange, eh? Well, I really wanted the pasta machine so I could try a new craft....polymer clay pendants! Hmmmm....they're much cooler than they sound.

That "handy" board there in the corner is a wood hot pad that Ryan helped Sam make. Now Sam will always be holding my pots! (He's our little helper...he LOVES to help us)

Weston helped Ryan make me a wood knife holder to sit on the kitchen counter. Very cool! When Ryan asked Emmett what he wanted to make for me, he said, "A notebook!" :) Ryan got a binder and Emmett filled it with paper. Then he drew a picture for the front of the binder and wrote a sweet letter for the back. Unfortunatly I misplaced it! I wanted to share his letter....I'll have to edit this when I find it.

One of the best gifts our family recieved was from my mom. She made us this gorgeous flannel quilt. It's so soft and perfect for snuggling up with the family and watching Spongebob (that was how we first used it anyways!)....

Sam, our little hero, was happy to open this gift that I whipped up for him just a couple days before Christmas...

Weston LOVES playing chess and he's in a chess club at school. So, I stenciled him a chess shirt. He LOVED LOVED LOVED it! I was so surprised at the reaction it got. He promptly put it on and proclaimed he would wear it every Wednesday to school since that is chess club day. This made me quite happy.

Also, for one of his gifts, I put together a beginning sewing kit for him in a manly tool box. I put in supplies (scissors, measuring tape, pins, felt, etc.) and a beginning sewing project book. Christmas day he made a little felt mouse. He's so good!

Emmett had been wishing for a dinosaur shirt. This is what I came up with....

Emmett modge podged this board for Weston to hang in his bedroom. He picked out photos he thought Weston would like, like shots from his baptism, a silly pic of him and his cousin, Natassha and other fun pictures.....

The boys helped make this bow holder for Zoe...

And then here's the whole gang proudly displaying some of our favorite gifts (I was so concerned with getting all the kids situated that I didn't think about holding up MY favorite gifts, but if I had remembered to grab them, I would have been holding the earring board Ryan gave me and the quilt from my mom)...

Zoe got that sweet little rocking chair from Santa. She loves it. When she finds Sam sitting in it, she screams and pushes him until he gets up. Ryan is wearing his wicked cool tye-dyed shirt that Sam made for him (Weston and Emmett tye-dyed him some socks to match :). Oh, and I also stenciled him a couple of funny shirts. One said, "Never trust a man with a mustache." And the other was a picture of a man with furry arms and it simply said "The Second Amendment" ha!

Originally we were all wearing the jammies with monster snowmen on the front that I made for us, but Ryan and the boys put their new shirts on. Oh, and Zoe is sporting the little corduroy coat she got with a new outfit. She loves that coat and insists on wearing it with many many outfits that don't possibly match! Like...red velvet! ha!

Oh! One of the best things we ever bought was our gift to the whole family. We bought a 9-in-1 game table. It has pool, foosball, air hockey, baseball, chess....and many others. WE'VE LOVED IT! It's been such a great thing for our family.

We had a really great Christmas! The boys many other gifts, but I was so happy to see their joy over the handmade gifts. And they loved making them for each other even more.

We had such a great Christmas break. We went sledding and played games and laughed and ate too much. We read books and watched home videos and drank hot cocoa and had candlelit dinners. I was sad to see the boys go back to school and Ryan go back to work, but very grateful for the wonderful memories we made.

OH, and I must say....we opened so many great gifts that I couldn't mention them all, so, thank you to our friends and family for spoiling us. You all always do too much....

especially the cheese grater from my brother. ha!

(okay...actually he gave us a COMPUTER he built. Can you believe it?? He gave us a COMPUTER! very cool. BUT he wrapped up a fancy shmancy cheese grater for us since the last time he was in our kitchen he saw that our's was woefully inadequate.)