Christmas of Course

Christmas at our house was wonderful! This was the first time in our 10 years of being married that Jason and I have spent the entire Christmas day with just our little family in our own home. It was absolutely fantastic. It was so relaxing! Which is what we needed after being up till 4:30 a.m. doing all the Santa stuff and finishing our projects (which got mostly finished). This is our Christmas tree with all of the presents before the carnage began. Notice all the Morrocan poofs. The kids now have their own favorite seats for movie watching.

Before we had our traditonal reading of the Christmas story from Luke 2, we talked about symbols of Christmas and what they mean and how we remember and celebrate the holiday.

I can't post all the pictures of the kids presents but here are a few highlights. The girls with the dollhouse we made them. Although we got it mostly finished we obviously didn't get it painted. The girls don't mind though, of course I did promise them they get to help with the interior decorating. They are excited to decorate the rooms especially the ones for the "High School musical" barbies they have. Thanks Cali, Trav and Gideon. They love them!
Jonas got one of his favorite presents from Grandpa Darryl. Here is his "Indiana Jonas" bag, it is awesome! He put it on as soon as he got it and only took it off to bathe. He even wore it to eat christmas dinner. It now carries all of his treasures including marbles, IndianaJones action figures, travel sized battleship, his "Junior Special Agent FBI" badge, a bug vaccuum, and of course his toy gun which looks very similar to Indy's.

The boys also got swords that dad carved. I was skeptical at first, but he made them big enough they have to use two hand to lift them so they can't exactly swing them around, they are just fun to have.

Lydia and Adam also got something mom and dad made. They got rocking horses. The neat thing about them is that we made the pattern from a rocking horse Jason's great-great-grandpa made for Jason's mom when she was little. That rocking horse made it through her, all her kids and now the grandkids so we figured it was a pretty tried and true design. They got finished, although like the dollhouse they need a coat of paint or at least stained and varnished.

Another of the cool homemade presents was a monster truck track that Jonas made for Preston. He designed and built it himself with only a little help from mom and dad. He used the brad-nailer and built ramps and jumps, glued log piles, cars to crush, rocks, the dirt track, grass and even a water hazzard in it. It got played with all day long! Luckily Preston got some new monster trucks from Santa.

We have been abundantly blessed this year and are grateful for all we have been able to do and the blessings wer have recieved. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

They said I had to put a picture of me on here. I was taking all the pictures so this is the only one of me all day. And no I'm not going bald the hat is just weird.

The blowout

I know I don't post pictures very often, but here is one I took this morning. Lydia and Adam in the tub. Of course they needed a bath after I let my 2 yr old feed my 1 yr old oatmeal for breakfast!

Tuesday evening we were in the van heading to Jason's office to pick up a notebook for him. We had just gotten on the interstate when I noticed something was wrong with my van. Since I was in the left hand lane I made my way over to the far right lane and could tell I had a flat tire. By the time I reached the shoulder and came to a stop I was in the middle of an overpass with 4 lanes of traffic blowing by. I jumped out, saw that my back tire on the passenger side was completely shredded and immediately began calling for help. While it is true that I am a pretty handy person and a do it yourselfer, there were a couple problems here: #1 I had a van full of kids, #2 I have never changed a tire on this van and didn't even know how to get the spare down & #3 It was getting dark. Thankfully a super nice brother from our ward (who just happens to be a truck driver) came and saved the day (& us). I helped him change the tire, so now I am ready to take on any future blowouts. Well almost - I have to replace my spare first.

Just so you realize this was more then a flat I took a picture of the tire (& odie!)

Here is a picture of the all of us.

This is what I found when I got out to look!

Halloween and Home

Ok, so we got one single solitary picture of us at halloween. Emily is some kind of woodland princess, Jonas is "Indiana Jonas", Preston is his sidekick "Short-round", Adrianna is a kittycat princess, Lydia is a Moroccan Princess, Adam is a giraffe, Mom is the Moroccan queen and Dad was just dad handing out candy. We had a great time, our neighborhood really gets into the halloween stuff, so we have more candy than we know what to do with. We always put everyone's candy together in a big bowl so everybody can enjoy it. It took my largest stock pot to contain it this year. Luckily though I can put the lid on it and put it up when I want it away from little hands.

I am also going to show off the shelves in my "school room". For those of you who don't know, we have a five bedroom house. Three for the kids, one for Jason and I, and now one room for school. It's still a work in progress and I took this picture while we were still moving stuff in, so it's a little messy, but you get the idea.

Oh one more cute story. I was trying to get the kids to take baths one morning before school. Everyone else was done and only Jonas was left. He had been reading in the school roon for quite a while and I finally had to go in to try and force him out to take a shower. What I saw was him sitting on the floor with and illustrated book of the Old Testament on his lap and a group of toys in front of him. His excuse for not coming when I'd called him was "But mom I'm teaching Sunday school". As much as I wanted to say "Aww! You-are-so-adorable-and-that-is-the-cutest-thing-ever!" I smiled and said "I am so glad you are and I will let you keep teaching as soon as you are cleaned up because you know that Heavenly Father does not like unclean things." He gave me the look that said "I don't really think this is what He meant." But fortunately he didn't argue the point. So Here are pictures of his "text" and his class.

School projects

I know you are all shocked by the fact that I am posting again within a week of my last post and not a month, however fact is sometimes much stranger than fiction. On that note allow me to share some of the more interesting parts of our school days.

Emily had to read an article and a poem recently on the Plains Indians and the buffalo. She was supposed to write two reasons why there are fewer buffalo today than in the 1800's. Her answer was in big bold capital letters "THEY ARE DEAD" and if she knew what it meant I'm sure she would have added "DUH" to that. Ah, the attitude of a seven year old and the obvious stupidity of adults asking the questions. I just busted out laughing and had to call Jason at work with that answer.

We have gotten to do some fun things like our latest project. Jonas has been studying ancient Egypt and got to learn to write using hieroglyphs. The symbols originally stood for words, but then evolved into standing for sounds so there is a kind of modified alphabet he used. We made some "clay" that he carved names into, his own of course then mom, dad and Bobo. (Sorry "Grandpa Darryl" was a little too long for him). Of course all the other kids had to get in on the action too, so I took some pictures. Enjoy!

For Grandma and Grandpa

Ever since we had our "Christmas-in-July-with-a-Moroccan-Santa-Clause" in Nauvoo, Grandma and Grandpa have been begging for pictures of all the kids in their Moroccan outfits. Here they are (finally).

Randomness of Children

Ok some of the things my children do are just plain bizarre. Here are the pictures to prove it. I don't know what order these are in, but between taping a face shut, eating while sleeping, being told to smile nice and covering a face with shiny stickers my children always make me laugh. The gymnastics in the living room wasn't so hot, but she was trying to be a cheerleader. Someday I will write a meaningful post again.

Well, it's been a while...

I'm not even going to try and catch up on everything that happened since my last post. Here is a brief timeline though:
July 4th - Celebrated in Charleston
mid-July - Road Trip!!went to Nauvoo for Hillary and Jake's wedding
July 30 - Adrianna's birthday
Aug 14-17 - Guffey Family Reunion in Gatlinburg, TN
Aug 15 - Closed on our house!
Aug 20 - School started. Homeschool that is. It was a little rough at first, but is smoothing out slowly but surely.

Amidst all the big things were of course little things like a weekend trip to NC just for fun, Shiloh learning how to can peaches and pears (both grow very abundantly here and my kids can pick some pears), and of course our church callings. With all that in mind, I'm just going to randomly post my favorite pictures from over the course of the summer. I'll try to label them if I can recall details. Anyway, enjoy! Hopefully things will be settling into a routine now so I should have a few minutes now and then to get on and update my posts.

Part 3

Lydia's birthday was the 28th. We started the day by washing the cars as a family. Jason had more fun soaking the kids with the waterhose than anything. Although since it was 90 degrees at ten in the morning who could blame him.



We had a little family party for Lydia that evening. Jason made her birthday cake. He figured this would be the last time she wouldn't really have a strong opinion on the subject. It was an angel food cake with a cool whip frosting that had fruit in it, pineapple, bananas, strawberries and then blueberries on top. It was very, very good!




Lydia had been getting phone calls all day long with people singing happy birthday to her and by the end of the day she was singing it too. Our little dress up queen.

Part 2

So after the primary activity came Father's Day. Daddy got just what he always wanted, a new grill! Complete with accessories. We didn't get pictures of that though. Here is a picture of daddy with the kids at bedtime though.


Some time in the next couple of days I managed to get this shot. Lydia asleep in her food. Like mother, like daughter so I'm told (Ok I've seen the picture of me).


Then we went to Georgia to visit Skye and Ryan and Ryan's parents, Doug and Donna. We swam in their new pool.






Cami and Skye got a kick out of Adam's "baby Speedo".


Adam had a real knack for finding any hard plastic handles and chewing on them.



I have a couple more shots of him in various rafts but out of respect for myself and fear of my sisters I decided the public didn't really need to see those. Suffice it to say they aren't the most flattering pictures ever taken, although Adam looks adorable in all of them.

The swimming wore him out and while adam fell asleep on a chair...


Emily and Adrianna were helping Donna make an ice cream sandwich cake. It was Yummy!!!!



We had a great time and managed to learn how to make smocking for dresses and even found time to play a few board games with Skye and Ryan before we had to head back home