Happy Birthday Big D!!!

Dallin is 6 today! We've always called him "our little tax break." :-) Almost 2 years ago, he fell while climbing on he bathroom counter and hurt one of his teeth that Drostan ended up having to pull out at his office so he's had a space there ever since. Well, last night, he had a tooth that has been VERY loose and he decided he wanted Daddy to pull it so the Tooth Fairy could come on his birthday. I decided to take a video of it. Talk about a brave little guy! He did great!

The red washcloth is a tip I learned from my Mom. You use that after a tooth is pulled and the child never has to see any blood. Works like a charm! Thanks Mom!!!

Christmas 2008

We had such a nice day. Christmas Eve, Drostan's Mom and her husband Mike came over for dinner. Of course I had to have a blonde moment and as I was buying the last minute things for dinner, I locked my keys in the van, clear across town and Drostan had to come and bail me out so needless to say, we didn't eat until almost 7. We read the Christmas story from the Bible and wore the costumes my mom had made for us last year and then got the kids in bed so Santa could come. We finally fell into bed around 12:45am and got woken up at 7 to go open presents!

We always line up on the stairs, youngest to oldest...

The kids had a lot of fun. Kyle's favorite gift was a huge Dinosaur Lego set...

Dallin got a HUGE stuffed tiger...

...that he had on his back the rest of the day.

And Megan got a dog that barks and rolls over. She was in heaven!

Jaron had so much fun opening the presents...

...and playing with his new blocks.

Drostan got a new trainer for his bike so he can start doing some spinning in the garage during the winter and mom got a bunch of books and some money for some new clothes. 

Last year, we started a tradition of putting some presents for Jesus into some little golden boxes. They were things that we would try to work on during the year and it was fun to see how we did. We made some new commitments for this next year and I hope we do a bit better this time.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!!!

Closet doors and little hands don't mix

Megan's hand got smooshed in the closet door when Kyle was trying to keep her out so he could get ready for bed. Poor thing. She could bend it and straighten it just fine after the initial screams so I don't think anything is broken but it sure looks sore. These pictures don't do it justice at all. Seriously, no matter how many times you tell a child not to close doors because someone's hand could get smooshed, they still don't listen. I know he didn't mean to. I just wish kids didn't have to learn through trial and error sometimes.

Late night hair cuts

The older boys and Drostan are a couple weeks overdue for hair cuts and even though it was 9pm, we decided to try to get them done. Dallin went first and then we sent him up to shower. About 20 minutes later, Drostan went up to check on him and he was just barely getting out and getting dressed.

Drostan: "Buddy, that was a long shower."
Dallin: "Yeah, I kind of fell asleep for a while."

Poor thing. :-)

Edit: This morning, I asked him about it and he said he decided to lie down in the shower for a minute and that's when he fell asleep. lol

Jaron's words

I've been meaning to keep track of the words Jaron can say since he's been a little slow in that department so I thought I'd just make a blog post of it. He's 19 months now and has just finally started to mimic us when we try to get him to say something in the past 2 weeks. So, here is our list so far. I'll probably add more as I think of them:

Mom, Dad, Doggie, Dallin, Kyle, Megan, baby, all done, more, num nums, cheese (for pictures), cracker, kuh kuhs (dirty bum), bath, hand, hug, shoes, socks, no, don't, please, Amen, go, nana (banana), bread, up, down, bye bye, ouchie, "drink" (it's a strange throat noise but I know what it means), truck, phone, ball, yogurt, hot, cold, I want, coat...

That's all I can think of for now....

Kyle's piano recital

These things are just so cute. His teacher (our great friend Jocelyn) has about 15 students and at least half of them are beginners. The recitals are so fun and actually, pretty short since all the kids' pieces are pretty short. lol He was so cute tonight, I just had to share for those family members who couldn't make it.

Here he is introducing his piece...

And here he is with his teacher Jocelyn. (lookin' pretty hawt for being 20 wks pregnant with her 4th!)

The decorated tree...

I really need a new camera. This one just doesn't do the tree justice. Oh well. Here is our lovely, rustic tree. The kids had a ball decorating it... oh, that was after it fell over once and got water everywhere. It's now tied up and tacked to the picture hooks on the wall. lol

Adventures in Christmas trees

We've been wanting to start the tradition of cutting down our own Christmas tree for years but one thing or another has come up and we've always just ended up at the tree lot down the street. Well, today, we finally got to go and do it! After basketball games for the boys in the morning and a baptism, we were finally leaving at about 2pm. A little later than we wanted but we were excited to go. We drove for about 2 hours and decided on a spot to start hiking.


We had brought snow boots in case of snow but it's been a pretty dry winter so far. We went up over a little ridge and thought we spotted the perfect tree. Of course it was WAY up high on the mountain and I didn't think there was anyway to get it down but Drostan and the boys wanted to check it out.

You can barely see the guys on the hill under the tree I've pointed out. Yeah, kind of crazy. It ended up being 2 trees together so we kept looking. I put the baby in a hiking back pack and I was trying to help Megan on the steep ups and downs. We spotted a couple more trees and hiked around for about 1.5 hours before finally finding the perfect tree. Of course it was on a VERY steep hill and it was pretty scary getting everyone down. Drostan and the boys slid down first and then he came back up half way to take Megan down since I was still trying to balance the baby and myself and her and I am not as experienced as he is in mountain climbing... oh, and remember, I have SNOW boots on. Not the best idea. This picture doesn't even do it justice but you can see the road below them to the right. Crazy steep!

After another trip up for Drostan to take the baby so I could get down, we finally all made it to even ground. We had brought some soup and hot chocolate and a camp stove so we tried to make a little dinner but it was almost 6 at this point and the sun was down and it was getting COLD! Poor Jaron just didn't understand why his hands were so cold. We ended up with the truck on and Jaron and Megan staying warm in there and the rest of us trying to pack everything up and get down the mountain.

All in all, it really was a fun and memorable trip and we have a beautiful tree to show for it! Drostan ended up cutting off about 2 feet from the bottom and about a foot from the top to get it in our house and be able to put a star on top. I'll have to take another pic when we get it all decorated!