Our Family in 2009

George

• going on his 8th year at MIE and still loves it
• worked with 11 year old Scouts at church
  
• spends many hours on hobby projects...many can be seen right here on this blog!
  

Anna

• spends many hours homeschooling kids and wondering how her house gets so dirty and will it EVER be clean again
• joined Weight Watchers to lose that last 15 baby pounds (or maybe 30:)
• directs the choir at Church
  

Levi

• turned 6 and is in 1st grade
• loves taking piano lessons from Grandma and building things like Legoes and robots
• loves his homeschool gym and swim class and learning computer programming with Daddy
  

Natalie

• just turned 5, is in Kindergarten and is a great reader
  
• loves playing with her brothers (most of the time) and takes care of the younger boys
• loves to play the piano and to play with her neighbor friends
  

Sam

• just turned 3 and wants to do what the older kids are doing or he wants to do it "by himself"
• loves to have his 'puter time where he plays games on the computer
• is NOT interested in growing up...he often mentions his old crib and pacifier and says, "I not big, I little!"
  

Seth

• turned 1 in March and started to climb on everything!
• finally old enough to go in to the Nursery at church and loves the Child Watch at the YMCA
• calls Sam "Mamo", Nat "Wa-wee", and Levi "By-by" and is a cutie:)

It has been a good year around here. Feel free to read the blog for all of our activities:) I am so thankful for this time to look back and appreciate what we have and resolve to do better next year. I am thankful for our Savior and the ultimate Sacrifice that he gave. What a blessing to us all! To all of you, my dear friends and family, a late Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year!

Christmas Eve Movie Making

George here. Fun being home with the kids the past couple days. We made some movies of us pretending to be city-destroying-monsters. Tonight I added background music and sound effects to Levi's. Can't wait for the kids to see it tomorrow! You can see it to:

Snow!

We got about 2 inches or more today and everyone went outside to play while I stayed in and made cupcakes for Sam's birthday. I do believe that it took me, from beginning to end, 45 minutes to get everyone out the door into the snow. Luckily, George is pretty good at getting ready himself so that helped. :) I was just glad that it wasn't too cold and the kids could stay out for a while before getting too cold and coming in.

George initiated some snowman building. I was watching out the window and it was a cutie little snowman. Then, after a bit, I looked out again and the kids (and George) were all taking turns clobbering the snowman with a whiffle ball bat! It was really loud and the snow was flying and everyone was loving it! I had to laugh, though I am not sure that it was the typical snowy day activity:) That's my group...not very typical!

Comfort in the Night

Last night, I was putting the kids to bed and it was rough. Sam and Natalie are together in a room and I had put them down and was heading to Levi's room. Sam was pretty upset and crying loudly.

As I finished with Levi, I stood outside Sam's room, trying to decide if I should go in and I hear Natalie. First, she tried to shush him, like a mom would shush a newborn. That wasn't working so she started to ask him questions like, "How far away is your birthday, Sam? It's not very far away! What kind of cake are you going to have, chocolate or vanilla? Are you going to have a choo-choo cake?" It was so sweet! He was distracted for a bit, but then back to crying, so she said, "What's the matter Sam?" When he said he was sad because I left the room, she said, "Well, Mommy has to sleep in her bed, just like we have to sleep in ours!" When that didn't work, she went to bribery:) She said, "Sam, how about right when we wake up, we can go downstairs and play "Doggy". Do you want to do that?" He mumbled that he wanted to play "Race" and so she said, "Ok, Sam. Right when we get up, we are going right downstairs to play "Race" ok? So we better go to sleep!"

It was so sweet! Don't you think many kids would just yell at the crying sibling and go to the parents and tell on them? In fact, that is EXACTLY how I thought Natalie would have handled the situation. So I was thrilled that I got to hear this sweet exchange. It made me smile:)

Thanksgiving to Christmas

I cannot decide if this year went by fast or slow. Time is so relative, you know? The days drag and the weeks fly. I also wonder when it is I will get my life in order. A better schedule, more planned activities, things going exactly the way that I want them to. On the other hand, I love it that I can just do what I want. I can be so flexible and I REALLY enjoy that! I guess it's time for my year end review...to see how I have done this year, so I am in a pondering mood:)

Here's some things that we have done lately.

• We had Thanksgiving with the Jones side of the family. What an awesome thing. There were 30 of us...30! What a great thing to have all that family so close together. I LOVE all of my in-laws and the kids always have SO MUCH FUN with the cousins. What a treat for us. And of course, the food was fabulous. I only gained a pound that week..it could have been worse:)
• We toured the local food bank last week for school. What a cool thing. The kids enjoyed it, but I think I always get WAY more out of field trips then they do. I could ask a million questions and stay for hours...but then the kids' eyes glaze over and someone eventually starts screaming and we have to go:) But it was cool.
• I took all 4 kids to the Fabulous Friday homeschool book club this week. The book club was great. Taking all 4 kids was not. Seth managed to color all over himself, the floor and another young child with marker. He and Sam opened and closed every cabinet door repeatedly while taking things out and mouthing them. The kids made this cool snow (to go with the book) and Levi accidently dumped his all over the floor. As I was cleaning that up, Seth escaped out of the room and headed for the dreaded aisles of books...the place where you cannot ever find a 3 foot child. *sigh* Someday, all of my children will sit quietly and listen and obey and....*sigh*
• After that, I decided to take advantage of the free babysitting at the YMCA and work off some of my stress. That was GREAT! I do love the Y these days. Especially the free babysitting:)
• I went after Thanksgiving Day shopping. I went alone (which is fairly lame) but it was fun anyway. Fun to watch people and to laugh at all of us that are up at 4am for sales. Good times! I didn't get everything I wanted, but I got a lot!
• The Terminix guy has become a household name around here. He (they, really) have taken care of us and for that I am SO grateful. I would rather not share my house with anyone, uh...anything else!
• George and I have watched a few fun movies lately. We watched Monsters vs. Aliens with the kids (so I didn't really see that one), The Proposal (which had a yucky scene that we skipped), Star Trek (I really liked it!), The Notebook ( not as good as the book), and tonight, it was Passengers (this was a cool movie!!). We also saw this movie called Primer. After we watched it, we had no idea what we had just seen, so we got online to find out what it was all about and pretty much no one had any idea. It was about time-travel but as to how the storyline went, I got nothing. It was fun anyway!
• On the topic of movies, I went to see New Moon with a group of my Twihard friends. That was a blast. Don't know if I loved the movie or not, but had a great time!

This has been my life lately. We, of course, are doing school and have some fun things planned for the next couple of weeks. And then I plan to get a good chunk of the rest of the year planned:)

I feel very relaxed this Christmas season. It's a nice feeling, but I wonder if I am forgetting something...or if Christmas is really just closer than I think it is. I always feel such a let-down after Christmas, so I really want this time to go slow. The less busy I am, the more I can enjoy it, right? I don't think I will do piles of baking this year because of my losing weight goals. Presents are almost done. No big family get-togethers until New Years for the Jones' and I don't know about the Lyon side yet...only one brother close enough to get together with. I hope we can work something out to see them! I hope all of you enjoy this time to be with family and celebrate the birth of our Savior.