A Brand New Year!

Lovely White Christmas

We woke up to the best Christmas present ever!
SNOW SNOW SNOW!

No one could convince Hazel to come inside, not when there
was snow to eat!

This was Miriam's little snowman, or snow bird :)

Always unique when Eliza-Jane is involved.

catch some hearts Mi-Mi

Lucy Love

I love this because Lucy knew she and Daddy were making sillies

Eliza LOVES trying to see her breath

no explanation needed here...pure sugar...pure joy 

We love you little snowman

Sweet sweet orange juice

Jacob is getting really good at origami

Hazel had a major strawberry crave...satisfied!

This one cracks me up!

Jacob saying goodbye to Daisy (Hazel never touched Daisy much,
but she sobbed when she left)

yep...jelly bean goodness

Jared has energy for cookies, not I

Get those jelly bean buggies of your teeth girls!

Lucy would not go in the snow at first b/c it upset her that
it got all over her feet, but now she LOVES it.

CHEESE...I love snow!

Just make sure you don't leave me alone with the toothpaste...yum!

2014...what an adventure.  Still not quite sure what happened this year :)  The kids are growing up and we can almost go to the store and count on not having a melt down (almost).  Four out of the five kids can put on their own shoes and coats, buckle their seatbelts, and clear their plates after dinner without spilling (sort of...I did clean up 3 glasses of OJ yesterday).

Jacob is our sponge for knowledge, and admittedly has a teasing spot for his 4 younger sisters.  The girls all rely on him to fix and build fun things for them.  He loves 3D modeling, karate, Boy time with Daddy, and garlic bread.

Miriam is our mini Mom.  She is a great one to have around.  She loves playing dolls, drawing silly pictures, going to the store with Mom, and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

Hazel is always the cautious one these days, always keeps Mom in line.  She can be trusted to know where things are and is usually willing to fetch them for us.  She loves playing play dough, dolls, drawing pictures, and is always ready for some yummy strawberries and salmon.

Eliza-Jane has become the bold one of the family.  Willing to talk to anyone about anything.  She likes meeting new people, studying animals, looking at the microscope with Jacob and playing anything with Lucy.

Lucy is a sweet ball of darlingness.  She is at that fun stage where she knows what she wants and how to say most of the words involved, but it comes out something like this, "Mommy hair look funny".  She love noodles, being tickled, playing pickle pickle...tickle tickle.  She does not like movies...yet.

Jared and I are getting older...everyday...maybe not wiser, but definitely older :)

We feel blessed by God to have 5 healthy children, a warm house (well as warm as a 1950's home can try to be), and each other.

My Early Christmas Present

So I must be painfully honest.  We tried puppyhood, I lasted 4 days.  Trying to homeschool, help Jared make it through the Christmas rush, and just being a mom overwhelmed me as I tried to attend to the constant needs of house training a pup, giving her attention, training her not to nip...  It was a beautiful experience, but our little puppy is now in a good home with a 12 year old boy :)

Caring for a puppy is like caring for a newborn babe.  I made the final decision when I ignored Lucy to put the puppy down for her nap...

So here's to being imperfect and fickle, but knowing our little puppy has a great home has eased my mind in getting my early Christmas present of a little less responsibility :)

Who destroyed Jerusalem?

Family scripture study was very insight the other night.  We were having Eliza tell us the story of when Lehi and his family left Jerusalem.  She did amazing, smart little girl.  She got all the details, so we decided to take it a bit further and ask her, who would have destroyed Jerusalem?

She was very thoughtful for a while and then she said, "I think it was Laman and Lemuel!"

Of course the evil duo Laman and Lemuel would be the only ones capable of destroying an entire city.  Those murmuring city wrecking brothers!  We all had a great laugh.

Lights at temple square (it was 50 degrees!!)

I still ask myself if we are crazy....we got a puppy!

Yes, I thought for sure Lucy would not like the dog, so I told Jared, if Lucy likes the puppy we can get one....SHE LOVES HER!  Welcome little Daisy..Sugar...Chomper...Feathers...Spike...pickles...(name pending)

A trip to aquarium especially for our Zoologist Eliza_Jane 

Who wouldn't want a hug a whale!

Lucy Darling

Lucy has been keeping us on our toes lately...Miriam and I sat down one day and made a Lucy Book, it really made us chuckle.

Lucy loves to dance, she hops on one leg and says...A-Datsing!!!

Whenever she wants something, she grabs it, runs away as fast as she can and says, "I NEED IT!"

Yeah, she doesn't like dogs...at all.

Every night she cries to go up on the top bunk...sigh

She loves her binkies...we just have to find them all the time :)

The first snowfall--photo by Jacob

This was from the first snowfall of the winter, and with the way the weather is going, it just may be the last this year.  Upper 50's for a week or so now.  Great for going to the park!

Nocturnal

Eliza has been quite adamant lately about being nocturnal.  She claims never to sleep at night, only during the day.  We have all been chuckling as our little nocturnal creature is almost always the 1st one asleep.  Here's to childhood dreams :)

HOME

Lucy is growing and her vocabulary is exploding.  Eliza is even trying to teach her to say DIPLODOCUS (one of her favorite dinosaurs).  Lucy makes a pretty good attempt and knows that it is a dinosaur.

I have been puzzled however, by her definition of the word "HOME."  At first it seemed obvious that she knew it was our house, as whenever we return from being out and about she says, "Made it home!" as we pull into the driveway.  The other night however, as I was putting her to bed early because she is giving up her nap, she cried and cried for HOME.  I was puzzled, but I knew she meant "Let me be with everyone else!"  Whenever the family is separated and we are reunited she sighs and says, HOME.

It is a great reminder to us that home is where we are!