Monday, December 20, 2010
Joey came home in the middle of the day with an amazing surprise! He received one of his company’s employee awards this year! And what did he receive – AN IPAD! And not just any iPad – the best one that they have out right now. WOW! He was so excited and I’m just so proud of him. He totally deserves it. It is so fun to see him enjoying it!
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
It snowed again – and it was the best snowman-making snow – so of course we had to get out in it today! It’s fun having the kids home during the day. We made our Frosty and made snow angels and had a snowball fight and just had so much fun. Unfortunately, it got warmer later in the day, and some of the snow melted away, along with our Frosty. I was so glad we didn’t delay in getting out there and playing!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Today’s activity was to read and watch the movie of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever! So in between playing and cleaning, we read the book and before bedtime we had it done, so we got to watch the movie! It was so fun!
Thursday, December 23, 2010
We did laundry and cleaning today and the kids got to play games on Joey’s little computer. They loved it!
Friday, December 24, 2010
What an amazing day today. Joey completely surprised me this year – many times he is quite the grinch around Christmas – but this season, he has been so wonderful. I think its because as a family, we have really focused on teaching the kids the real meaning of Christmas – we have been reading scriptures every night and the kids have really responded to Jesus and the Christmas story. Joey went shopping and came home with Uncle Aaron and a whole list of fun things to do today. I did some cooking so that all I had to do was stick the potatoes in for tomorrow’s Christmas dinner and did some last minute cleaning. I also made up a batch of swirl cookies for Santa. We played games, and did puzzles, and watched movies, and read books and just spent the whole day together. We were glad to have Aaron join us. We also took the Trax up to temple square and saw the lights and the wonderful nativity scene they had there. There was such a wonderful spirit on the temple grounds and it was so fun being there on Christmas Eve. On the way home, we picked up Chinese food from our favorite place – Mings Garden – and then we came home and ate it. We opened our new pajamas and got a picture of us in them before bedtime.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
It was a fabulous Christmas! The kids had so much fun. From Santa, JJ got Buzz and Beth got a Rapunzel doll. And they also received from us – Jessie, Woody, and Bulls-eye, lots of games, movies, and other fun things and we just spent the whole day playing. The Toy Story movies have meant a lot to me and the kids so it was so fun to see Beth and JJ play with their new Toy Story characters! Joey surprised us all with the Wii Sports Resort Game and he gave me the Wii Fit Plus – which I have wanted for a long time! It was a great day!
Sunday, December 26, 2010
It’s just so much fun to have new things to play with! It was a relaxing day – just spent at church and together.
Beth got one more day to shine. Her teacher crowned her the Birthday Princess for the day at school and of course that just made her so excited. She wore her crown all day!
I can’t believe how much snow we got and in April! Crazy weather! Joey made this cute little snowman on the roof of our van. The kids thought it was the best thing ever! Of course the snow didn’t last too long, it was pretty much gone by the end of the day.
Since it was JJ’s spring break this week, I decided that we should do something fun. So I took the kids to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. The kids really loved seeing all the dinosaur (and other ancient life) bones and they were able to “dig” for bones in the digging quarry and they were able to participate in the Junior Lab creating fossil molds and uncovering fossil fish with air scribes. Plus we were able to see a 3D movie on their Mammoth Screen! It was a great way to spend an afternoon!
Joey spends a lot of time listening to audiobooks on his iPod. One morning , he left his old iPod nano laying on the kitchen table, and JJ picked up. Confusing it for the normal, larger iPod, he assumed that it must look so much smaller because he had become a giant, and ran to his Dad, laughing and exclaiming “Dad, Dad, look! I GREW!”
We spent a lot of time playing outside today. Really great weather! JJ has been really having a hard time lately. We are hoping it’s just a stage, but he has been having episodes of really bad behavior, hurting his sister, talking back, potty accidents, and just throwing fits. We have been trying lots of things to try and help him get control of himself. Joey thought that maybe running around would help him a bit since he is always so busy. So Joey took 4 pieces of wood and put them on our lawn and had the kids run “ladders.” We started timing them and they had a blast. Now they have to run a ladder everytime they want to spend some time playing outside or when they need to calm down. So far it seems to be working! Beth also got to play some soccer with her Dad for awhile. She loves kicking the ball around – I know absolutely nothing about soccer, so we will probably have to find her a team to play on in a couple of years.
