Merry Christmas!

We wish you a Merry Christmas!

We had a great Christmas this year. We decided to stay home this year. My Mom, two sisters and a niece came to visit us on Christmas afternoon and stayed for several days.

We ended up celebrating Christmas on Monday the 26th so that Grandma, Aunt Brittany, Aunt Tasha, and Mikayla could be with us.







There aren't a lot of Christmas pictures, but we did get a few.

I made quilts for the children for Christmas, but pictures of those will have to come in a different post because pictures haven't been taken yet.

We were also able to go to a rest home- we sang to and visited with a few people there and hope that made their Christmas a little merrier.

Hyrum got glasses!

This was a rough transition for Hyrum- going from never wearing glasses to having to wear them all the time.

He sure looks good in them. He's gradually getting better and better about keeping them on and not being so rough in them. He's started taking them off and handing them to me or putting them on his dresser when he knows he's going to be rough-housing. That's very responsible for a three year old!

Brigham lost something

Brigham are you really old enough to loose teeth? I don't remember loosing teeth until 1st grade, you're not even in Kindergarten yet! Oh well. I guess you were ready because that new tooth sure came up fast!

Happy Brithday, Daddy!

Timothy had a great 33rd birthday, including three presents carefully wrapped and labeled by his three children.





Happy Birthday, Daddy! We love you so much!

Lunch anyone?

Brigham and Rebekah worked really hard to make lunch for their babies and themselves.

Looks pretty tasty- cars, tinker toys, syrup, milk pears, even a few little dolls!

Any takers?

Sleep!

One evening I found Rebekah sleeping like this.

She had a hands propping her head up. I wonder what she was looking at when she drifted off to sleep!

Not too long after the above mentioned incedent I found Hyrum sleeping half off his bed with his head resting between the bed and a chair next to his bed. Luckily I found him before he found the floor! I just thought this was funny and wanted to share!

Happy Halloween!

We had a good Halloween. The children weren't feeling very well for the church activity- so we jsut went to the dinner dressed up and then went home. We had to skip out on the games and trunk-or-treat. On Halloween we took them to three houses for trick-or-treating. Just the three families that are kind of like grandparents to the children. I was glad they didn't get a ton of candy and they were glad they got about 10 pieces of candy!

The children didn't have much say in what they dressed up as for Halloween. They either got to wear the costume I bought at the after Halloween sale in 2010 or they got to pick something from the dress up box. Luckily they all chose the costumes I bought after Halloween last year.

Rebekah was a Renaissance Princess

Brigham was a Fire fighter

Hyrum was a doctor

The end.

I can't believe my baby is THREE!

Hyrum just had a birthday and now he is three years old! Wow how the time flies.

He's been very interested in fire trucks lately. So I decided to make him a fire truck cake. He really liked it and kept asking to go and look at it. (I kept it locked in my bedroom so that little curious fingers didn't ruin it before the party.)

Here he is opening presents... He got a bunch of Little People sets we almost have enough to make Little People town.
One of Hyrum's latest skills is riding a bike with training wheels. He's been stealing Birgham and Rebekah's bikes to practice. So, when I saw one at a yard sale earlier this week I had to get it for him! He loves it!

Random info about Hyrum:

♪ He is really enjoying having the other two chilren in school so he gets time by himslef to play and gets Mommy Time regularly.
♪ He is getting close to being potty trained!
♪ He is ALL boy- he likes trucks, cars, dinosaurs, balls, etc.
♪ He counts like this: 1, 2, 11, 12, 14, 18! And he's so proud of it. (It's the same number pattern almost every time.)
♪ He knows all his colors
♪ He's just starting to get interested in letters and numbers
♪ The phrase we hear a lot from him recently is "I'm not little, see, I'm bigger!" (as he stands up with his arms in the air.)
♪ He's wearing the clothes Brigham just grew out of 6 months ago and is only one shoes size behind Brigham. I'm thinking they'll be the same size before long!
♪ Hyrum is very friendly and love to say, "Hi" to people he sees.
♪ He always has a smile on his face!

We sure love our little Hyrum boy! We're so glad he's in our family!

First Day of school Pictures

Rebekah was excited, but nervous about going to school, now she loves it.

Brigham pretended to not like school for the first week. We'd ask him how school was and he'd get smile on his face, and then try to hide the smile!

school

Sorry to all of you who check my blog regularly. I haven't posted in almost a month. I'm on the computer that doesn't have the most recent pictures, so this will be a photoless post.

Brigham and Rebekah started school and are enjoying it. They are going to a local Head Start. (Yes, we're poor enough to qualify for Head Start, but that's what happens when Mom stays home and Dad's in school.) They have two amazing teachers and a good group of children in their class. Their teacher informs me that they are some of the better behaved children in the class and that she could tell I "work" with my children. I took that as a compliment!

Timothy has also started school. He's teaching two music labs and working on his dissertation. He's hoping to graduate with his PhD in June! This coming June, 2012! It will be weird not having him in school soon, because he's been in school our whole married life and longer!

We're also in the process of looking for and applying for jobs for the next school year. He want to teach and a community college or university, teaching music theory. If you know of any community colleges or Universities near you that have a music department, please let us know! (Especially if you want us to move near you!) The CC's aren't as good about posting their jobs on academic job sites so we may end up looking them up independently, but I haven't found a central location for lists of community colleges. (Sometimes they hide so as not to be noticed, I guess.)

Already FIVE and enjoying being alive

We're excited to announce that our Brigham is now 5 years old!

We almost can't believe he's 5 already. Where does the time go?Here he is opening presents on his big day.

This is the cake I made for him. He requested orange and chocolate cupcakes, so I decided to take a little liberty with that request and I made a lion with cupcakes for the mane. He seemed to like it and I hear the orange and brown cake tasted good!


A little about our sweet five year old:
☺He loves learning (at least on his own terms)
☺He has an amazing imagination
☺He is very good at cleaning his room
☺He has a great sense of humor and in his own five years I think he's told more jokes than I have in my whole life.
☺He just missed the cut-off for going to Kindergarten this year. So, next year he and Rebekah will be in Kindergarten together.
☺He is becoming a great reader. (Lately he's been reading the old classic "Dick and Jane" books, and has gotten through half of the collection.)
☺ He recently was introduced to playing a computer game at starfall.com and he really enjoys doing that.
☺His spelling is getting good too.
He spelled this word almost by himself (I gave him one clue) Can you tell what it says? (it's actually two words)It says "FUniEOtOPus" Which really means "funny octopus" I think he did a great job spelling it!
☺Brigham is a joy to have around and we LOVE having him in our family.

Happy fifth Birthday, Brigham!

Look Who's FOUR!

Rebekah had her birthday last week, and what an event that was!

A huge flower cake

A party outside

Brothers in the ball pit!

And new clothes with a doll to match!

Some random info about our beautiful girl:
♥She loves to help
♥She pretends to be shy in large group settings, but in home-like settings, she's very outgoing and lively.
♥She is very strong (she can knock me over if I'm not looking and she bowled over both her brothers in one shot today.)
♥She is learning to sound out words and is getting good at spelling them too!
♥She can count to 13.
♥She can say her Alphabet forward and backward.
♥She knows at least 2 articles of faith, but could probably recite most of them with a few little prompts.
♥She loves acting out scripture stories.
♥She is observant and notices when someone needs something, sometimes before they even notice themselves.
♥She is the best little table washer in our household. She can get the kitchen table clean in 5 seconds flat. (And it's cleaner than when her brothers spend 5 minutes cleaning it.)
♥Her favorite toy right now is her doll house, if we let her she would sit in front of it for hours at a time. (assuming her brothers didn't come in and bother her)
♥Her favorite clothes are anything Mom doesn't like. (She seems to lean towards tom-boy type clothes.)
♥Her favorite foods are pancakes, quesedillas, and macaroni and cheese.
♥She is a great blessing to our family, and we sure love this little four year old!

A tired girl

Rebekah fell asleep at the dinner table for the first time that I can remember. It was kinda funny. She nodded for a few minutes and then finally just gave up and laid her head down. She must have been very tired.

Camping trip

note: So as not to disclose our location to unwanted readers this post may have obscure descriptions.


This past week we decided to go on a family camping trip again. (I don't think I mentioned our first one to a state park near some water falls not too far away.) This was our second one with just our family at a state park. Because we have adopted children from the foster care system we get free access to state parks for 5 years including free camping. That's why we've been choosing state parks. This time we chose a state park almost 3 hours drive from our house. We chose this location because it was within 20 minutes of a temple Timothy and I hadn't been to before.



We were able to set-up camp and walk by a river and roast hotdogs and marshmallows. The children had napped in the van on the way there and even thought we put them to bed late it still took about 3 hours to get them to sleep. (That was the VERY frustrating part about the camping trip.) In the morning we packed up and got into church clothes and drove to the temple.

Timothy and I took turns doing a session while the other stayed out with the children. It was kind of a long day and we still had a 3 hour drive home. But, it was worth it. And it was nice to see this smaller temple that we hadn't seen before. They are all so beautiful and full of the spirit.

"I love to see the temple"

Making messes

Homemade play-dough

The children wanted to help me make play-dough. Their old play-dough had been drying out from being played with so much and also got left out a few times. We love making our own play-dough. It's cheap and we love the consistency of it, and there's only one color which means no fighting over colors!After we make play-dough we get to play with it!

Play-dough Recipe

1/2 cup salt
1 cup flour
2 tsp. cream of tarter
1 Tblsp. vegetable oil
1 cup water
food coloring

Combine all dry ingredients and oil in a saucepan. Add food coloring to the water until desired color is reached. Gradually add water to other ingredients. Cook over low heat stirring continually until dough forms a ball and is no longer sticky. Cool and store in an air-tight container. (From an old Young Women Leader- Paige Nemrow)

Homemade finger-paint

We had this big long piece of brown paper that had been used as packing material in a package we got. I ironed it and then it was just begging to be finger-painted. So, I looked up a recipe online and made some finger-paint. We made 5 different colors.
And had a fun and messy time painting away!And making hand prints, then smearing them.

Finger-paint recipe

• One-cup flour
• 1 1/4 cups hot water
• 1 1/2 cups cold water
• Two-tablespoons salt
• Food coloring or tempera paint

Mix the flour, salt, and cold water in a saucepan. Beat the mixtures (with whisk or rotary beater) until smooth. Add the hot water and boil it until the mixture is thick. Beat until smooth. Add food coloring to add color. Store this in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
(http://www.everythingpreschool.com/recipes/paint/finger.htm)

I enjoy doing things like this with my children, but I just don't do it enough. I wish I did it more often. I've found when I take time to involve them in an activity with me our whole day goes much more smoothly.