look familiar?

Just wanted to wish this big KID a

Happy 35th Birthday!

Love you babe...

while it lasted

the fresh new snow was fun today.

Ryan was having a good ol' time playing with his star wars characters out in the snow this morning. I really hope we get some more before this winter comes to an end, we haven't even had a school snow day yet.

Today Luke got to celebrate his birthday at school. He was so excited to share bags of cheetos with all of the kids and I kind of think he liked the special attention too. They were celebrating all the January birthdays today so the kids had an assortment of goodies (juice, donuts, cheetos and oreos), oh my!

Cody has had a great week at school too and finished it off with a 100% on his spelling test today.
(his words: because, lunch, bunch, crunch, year, fear, clear, near, sheep, Martin Luther King Jr.)

We are looking forward to just hanging out at the house this weekend. Heath still isn't over his cold/cough yet, not a fun way to celebrate your birthday, but hopefully we will still be able to take him out to dinner. I have so many projects that I need to be working on so hopefully I can stay focused and get some of them at least started this weekend.

In other news, no new pictures for awhile. I dropped my camera today and it broke (no it was not intentional even though I really have been wanting a new camera) but it has to be shipped off to get fixed. Not great timing with a birthday party next week!

Celebrate Good Times

Yesterday we celebrated the family January birthdays at our house. It was fun having everyone together again (minus Jim) without all the craziness of the holidays around us, it was a really relaxing and enjoyable day. After lunch and presents we thought that we would change it up a little and add a game to the party. What could be better than a pinata, but we didn't stick to the traditional way of playing (I stole the idea from my friend Krista), we did it Karate Kid style and had to kick the pinata instead and still be blindfolded. I knew this would lead to many hilarious photos and leave us laughing hysterically... I couldn't wait! Only a couple of us knew about it and we tried to be a little creative so besides candy and packs of gum we enlisted my dad to buy some lottery scratch off tickets and throw in some loose change so everyone could have a little fun.

Note to self: A pinata can only handle so much weight!

After Luke got his first birthday kick in on the pinata, it came crashing down leaving behind a huge hole in the top and that was the end of the pinata....no hilarious photos....no laughing hysterically, me standing there in shock and what just happened. Nobody seemed to mind though, the kids went crazy collecting their loot and the party continued.

This is only the beginning of the parties for Luke. He still gets to open presents from us on his actual birthday and then still have a friends party!

The boys always help each other open the gifts and love to check out the new toys that they soon will be playing with too. It's all about bionicles with Luke, he was dying to add this one to his collection.

A big present is on it's way in....what could it be?

A new bike from Grammy and Papa.. of course it's his favorite color green.

The birthday crew Heath turning 35 (on the 24th), Luke turning 6 (on the 29th) and my sister already 37 (on the 12th)

Let the fun begin

Good bye pinata

Game Night

Last night we hit the town to watch an Idaho Stampede basketball game. Heath got tickets from work to sit in the Qwest Suites so we thought we would make a fun family night out of it. The kids weren't all that thrilled to begin with but knew that they would be getting snacks at the game so it wasn't going to be all that bad. It's obvious that we need to get the boys out more because when they saw all the big buildings down town they thought that it looked like we were in New York City! We had a fun time at the game, enjoyed the expensive snacks and the kids even learned a little bit about the game, all in all .....a good night!

Ryan enjoying his dippin dots

Luke managed to make a huge mess (like always) with the popcorn

My new super cute boots that I got for Christmas. I realized these boots weren't made for walking!

The boys entertained themselves with this until the not so kid friendly lady came over and told them to stop and waited with her arms folded until they all sat back down. Ryan just looked at her and smiled and kept playing so I had to go rescue him.

Cody and his favorite shirt, it says...

If you can read this you are in my way...Seriously, I'm gonna need you to move over a little.

A little of what the kids have been saying lately...

Ryan was learning about the letter J in school this week and they read the story about Jack and the Beanstalk. He could never remember how to say it so usually he said something like, Back and the JeanJack.

Luke got his own snack the other day and when I saw it I just had to laugh. He made his own trail mix that consisted of chocolate chips, white chocolate chips and butterscotch chips!

Cody's new thing since Christmas break is movie ratings and what the letters stand for and what they all mean. One day he asked me what skee fee was and when I had no idea what he was talking about I told him to spell it (sci-fi) so that is where it all began. Now whenever we rent a movie that is the first thing he looks at and if a preview for a movie comes on TV he pauses it so he can read the full rating. He has asked me what everything means, so I have had to explain in a kid-friendly way what sexual content, nudity, sensuality, course language and so on all mean. When we watched Wolverine the other night he read that it had partial nudity on it and when he saw Wolverine without a shirt on, he said "Oh that must be why they said partial nudity."

When Cody got home from school on Friday he informed me that I had forgotten his homework folder (oops) and I had also forgotten to give him a quarter for popcorn Friday (double oops). He said it was okay because he was still able to get popcorn when I asked how, he told me this. He said that when he was in Jason's (Abigail's dad) car on the way to school he saw a quarter on the floor and thought to himself, "this might just come in handy" so he put it in his pocket without saying anything or even asking if he could have it. Now we owe them a popcorn.

Do you have what it takes?

To work out to one of Jillian Michael's videos...

you know the Biggest Loser's Jillian...
I don't...

I tried it last year and almost puked before I wanted to lay down and die.

Heath decided he would give it a try last night.
He had a little buddy that wanted to try it with him.

His little buddy didn't have a problem with any of it, he thought it was great fun!

I wish I thought working out was this much fun!

The Dump

Some days do you ever feel like doing this?

Screaming your head off!

It was time to get the kids out of the house so we headed to one of their favorite places to play, a place that the girls have named, "The Dump". Sounds fun, huh?

The Dump is a drainage area in our subdivision and for some reason it can provide hours of entertainment for these guys. Today they spent the whole time stomping and breaking the ice apart and throwing it down to watch it break, cheap entertainment.

We have a few that like to eat the ice.

The on again off again couple.

The kids didn't think it could get any better but to our surprise some neighbors stopped by and had a treat for all of the kids. Ring Pops!

Lucky kids!

The fresh air and spending time with friends made for a perfect day!

That's a wrap...

Our Christmas break has come to an end. All sixteen days of them. It was all so good though, we really had some great family time together! Here is a little of what we did to wrap up the last week of vacation.

• Heath, Cody and Luke picked Teresia up from the airport, they were so excited to go and get her. As soon as they got home we had another Christmas with her. The boys were spoiled like always and the evening was spent playing with all of our new toys and games.
  
• The boys still have their coughs.
  
• Heath and I started the new year off by going out on a date while Teresia was home with the boys. We did a little shopping, had some dinner and went out to a movie (The Blind Side), such a good movie and so fun dating my husband!
  
• I went out shopping the Christmas clearance sales and got some great decorations for next year.
  
• Heath, Cody and Luke went and watched Avatar, it's a long movie almost three hours but they all really enjoyed it.


• Luke has spent many hours creating and building his own Bionicles. He gives them a name and tells me all about them and then has me put them on a website where others can view them and vote on them. He checks them multiple times a day and is so proud that one of his has gotten nine votes.
  
• We had some great fun sledding and playing in the falling snow at night with the neighbors. Ryan rode behind Heath on the back of the four wheeler and ended up falling asleep.
  
• Cody has spent many hours with his nose in a book. Twice we have gone to Barnes and Noble to pick out new books and have gotten some great ones to add to our collection. Some of Cody's new reads are National Geographic weird but true, Farmers Almanac for Kids, Spy Eyewitness Book, Guinness World Records 2010, and some Star Wars chapter books. This kid is a book worm!
  
• The boys went to Toy's R Us to spend some Christmas money from Uncle Brent. They managed to find some new toys that we didn't own yet, so we added to the collection.
  
• We played a lot of Family Game Night and Toy Story Mania on the Wii.
  
• The boys and Tereisa put together a gingerbread house that their cousins in Mississippi sent them.
  
• We watched some new movies the boys got from Christmas, G-Force, Aliens in the Attack and Night of the Museum 2.
  
• We watched some old family videos of the kids that made me laugh but want to cry, my boys are just getting too big and that stuff seems like it happened so long ago.
  
• Ryan has played with his little Transformer figurines everyday. He holds one up in each hand and asks you who you want to win. You tell him who you would pick and if it happens to be the wrong one he tells you which one to say, funny kid.

It was nice not having a routine, staying in pajamas and doing whatever we felt like whenever we wanted to, but that's all coming to an end. Life is returning to normal, but that's not a bad thing, it's good!