Our 1st Young Woman

Happy Birthday Miss BreAnna! February 11, 2012

Look what was inside of that box~ what a fun treat from BreAnna's Activity Day Leaders (they also sent a can of whip cream home with her to top these deligths off with!)  She felt so special. Both Gramma Sharon Conine and Cindy Adams were fabulous leaders, Bre is going to miss all of the fun activities her leaders planned. BreAnna is now TWELVE, our first young woman....what a fun time.  She graduated from primary and had her first New Beginnings for the young womans program last night at church.  She is growing up, oooohhhhh...too fast!

Bre had a slumber b-day party with some of her girl friends to celebrate her 12th b-day this year, I had to cut the invite list to a total of ten- I hate to disclude friends but for a mom's sanity you've got to draw the line some where.  The girls finally crashed around 4:00am, quite the long evening for this group of hyper girls.  They had a good time, the girls did a large range of girlly things because as we all know girls just want to have fun and from the looks of these pics, clearly they had themselves a good time partying the night away.  There was make your own pizza and caesar salads, played pictionary, the gummy bear guessing game, cupcake decorating, presents and ice cream, the white elephant game, make up, facials, and a bit of gymnastics and dancing.  Bre requested Krispy Kreme donuts at school earlier in the day so I'm sure after all of the sweets, these girls were high on sugar.  After some juice, fruit and cinnamon rolls for breakfast everyone was out the door by 9:30 am since Bre and her dance friends had performing group early in the morn.  The fun didn't stop there though, Bre and mom went out shopping so she could use her gift cards she received.  She picked out a cute black pencil skirt, her first real set of high heels and a cute necklace and earings to match.  Grandma Jackson had taken Bre shopping earlier in the week and she had already gotten some cute shirts to go with her Sunday outfit to wear to her first day of YW's the following morning.  We are so happy to have Bre in our family, she is a ball wit and fun energy!  It's fun watching her grow up and mature into a young woman.       

One of our Very Own ARTISTS

February 16, 2012

One Saturday afternoon when BreAnna had performing group at dance, Brooklynne and I went to the craft store to burn some time.  They were having a free paint your own canvas event so Brooklynne took advantage of getting her art on, she loved it- after she smeard her paint colors all over the canvas, I helped her to paint her hand white so she could make a hand print on her art work as her signature. It will be fun to look back on this little piece of art and for her to see how itty bitty her hand was down the road as she gets older.  Which as we can see, Brooke in G-ma's high heels, she is well on her way to growing up too fast.

No More A Top of Counter Experiences for Josh

February 16, 2012

 Josh as our independent man frequents getting himself up to the counter top helping himself to washing up at the sink, getting a glass for a drink or in this case just taking a peek at the cake sitting on the cake plate that sat on the upper counter ledge that wraps around our kitchen.  After he had his good look, he had planned to get down from the counter top just as easy as he had climbed up.  We leave a two-step stool in the kitchen so the kids can push it over to the get to the counter height so they can be independent souls as they wish, NOT to stand on climb on top of the counter but to get up to the counter height.  This time since Josh was up looking at the higher counter ledge he took it upon himself to get down over the high GRANITE ledge.  He went down over backwards as he hung his body over the ledge realizing it was a much higher fall down than the lower counter he gave himself a push off only he ducked his head down vs pushing it away from the counter top rim.  It's a rounded rim but it shows how hard his eye lid hit, it instantly cut it open.  I saw the whole thing happen, I was actually sitting in the living room on the phone with primary stuff.  I heard the loud thump and actually thought it was his head that hit, he didn't cry initially just stood there stunned, as he turned around and saw me now standing there, he started to cry so as I was escorting him to the kitchen on my ways to get an ice pack for the bump in reminder efforts of "see what happens when you climb on the counter tops" he looked up at me and the blood had covered his face. Trying to stay calm, I picked Josh up and now laid him on the counter top (yeh' a great place, especially right after I was in the works reminding him to stay off the counter top right?)  I needed to clear the blood to see where it was coming form and how bad it was, after we cleaned it down- I made sure he could see out of his eye and saw that we were indeed headed to the ER.  At this point (not shown in the pictures, those were after he had held a towel on the eye for quite some time.) I could actually see into the cut, it was wide open and it looked pretty deep.  It happened to be a busy day, all of the kids were home from school (we had just got back from a beautiful sun shiney day visit at the park) we had a cousin and two extra friends over so that would be nine children.  Josh actually stayed quite calm until all of the other kids were going crazy scaring him after seeing the cut and blood.  I sent the kids out of the kitchen then I called Matt, had him meet me at the hospital while I had the older kids watch the younger ones back at home.  After we got Josh all checked in and saw that stitches weren't going to work too well on the eyelid that they would use the glue technique, I let Matt take over and headed back home to finish our Monday routine of piano lessons, dance, dinner and FHE.  Josh was a trooper, he is quite a tough little kid- now he's got two black eyes on his record book, let's hope it stays that way.  

Come on Ride The Train~

February 16, 2012

Josh's Miss Cindy's Pre School class visited the Algona-Pacific Library for story time a few weeks back.  They had a fun hour of choo choo train stories, making train sounds, singing, reading what the different train horns mean and making their very own choo choo train. 

The Job is Done!

February 8, 2012

Officially potty trained, dry day and night for a week = a done deal!  No more diapers or pull ups to be bought for this little princess.

The Arts and Diversity

Feb. 8, 2012

Both Spencer and Ellie entered the Reflections contest back in December I believe, they both placed and moved onto state- the Lady in charge of the PTA Reflections contest from their school said that they will receive a medal at an assembly in the next little bit which will be fun for them.  Ellie and Spencer both came up with good ideas for their art projects with the theme of "Diversity" this year.   

Feeling the LOVE

It's "OFFICIAL," February has arrived!  Happy February 1st, the month of Love, Special Valentines, Chocolate and Conversation Hearts.  It's always fun for me to celebrate both the seasons and holidays alike- with decoration and traditions for all to look forward to, it makes the family smile and the home a happy place! 

3-2-1 Blast OFF!

February 1st, 2012

Josh had received some rocket kits from Santa for Christmas, since the weather hasn't been the best it wasn't until last Saturday late afternoon that Matt and him (with the rest of the boys) were able to launch off.  They spent quite awhile up to the table piecing and gluing all of the parts together to get the rocket ship ready to launch.  Then we realized that the starter button to launch the first rocket into the sky needed 4 AA batteries, (we had just bought a big super pack of these at Costco before Christmas) but AA batteries don't last two seconds around our home with Josh any where near.  He will get out all of his big trucks, cars, diggers, trains, hand held toys and games and go to town unscrewing the backs and replacing the toys and games all back to work in full functioning order.  Such a hands on Mr. Fix it our Joshie is!  So to launch the rocket, the kids salvaged batteries from the remotes around the home but as Josh pushed the blast off remote with the first attempt absolutely nothing happened- (launch off was at the field at the end of our neighborhood street) of course by this time we had an audience of not just us but the neighborhood spectators waiting for the big launch.  The boys had to go track down some different batteries since we figured that the ones we were using needed some more juice- and thank goodness that was the problem, the original ones they tried to use just didn't have enough energy in them to get the rocket off the ground but when replaced and it did blasted off- it was like "a bat out of heck," it blasted off so fast and went so high it was no where to be seen- it was really cool and a lot of fun to watch!  The boys started off with the little one and were able to launch it a handful of times since Santa had brought extra motors to launch it multiple times, the bigger one goes 1100 feet into the sky I believe, after the first one Matt and I had to get going since by this time it was into the evening and it was time for our Saturday night date but Josh is SUPER excited to launch the big one off.  He is anticipating it so much, now that we are into the week and Matt doesn't get home until after dark, Matt said that he'd come home during his lunch break this week to launch it off with Josh although the other kids weren't too happy to hear that since they want to watch also so we just may wait until the weekend again, we'll see!  I picked up some more batteries at Costco Monday so we will be set this time with fully charged batteries, then Matt must have bribed or threatened Josh that his room has to be cleaned in order to launch the big one off because first thing this morning, he was cleaning his little heart out and so willingly all on his own, he just came and got the vacuum, very impressive...it's amazing what a little motivation can do.