Christmas Pictures

A friend in my ward did a fundraiser for a family who had lost their home in a fire. I thought it was a great opportunity to get some pictures of the kids, while supporting a great cause.

Blake was super grumpy and refused to sit still. And of course the moments when she would cooperate, Will would be doing something crazy. It's a miracle that we even got a few that look half way decent!

Photo credit: Amber Thompson Photography 

Goodbye November

Tomorrow is December. November has been an extremely trying month, full of major financial setbacks, so I am happy to leave it behind and move forward. However, I'm slightly terrified for what the next month or so could bring.

Just barely over two weeks ago, my niece Danielle had a little baby girl. The following week, Cindy and I went down to Cedar to see her. They had to induce her early due to a rare growing disorder, so she was less than five pounds. She was seriously the tiniest little baby I have ever seen in person. And she was so still, hardly ever moving. Most of the time, it was hard to believe that she was real!

While we were down there, I got to take some 5 generation pictures with my grandma, my mom, Kim, Danielle, and baby McKinley. It's weird to think that my sister is a grandma and that I am a great aunt.

These pictures don't do her justice at all. She is so tiny!

Our visit wasn't long as I wanted to be home Sunday for Lance's birthday. It was a pretty normal day, unfortunately. Lance said he wanted socks for his birthday, so he got socks. Birthday's just aren't the same when you grow up, are they? When I told Will to go grab daddy's presents to give to him, he misunderstood and went and opened most of them up. Poor Lance.

The following day, Monday November 24th, Lance started his new job at Enterprise. He put his 2 week notice in at the DI a few weeks ago and started at Enterprise immediately when that two weeks was up. He is doing a Management Training Program and hopes to work his way up the company latter a bit. It is a complete 180 change in directions and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I will probably do a separate post entirely about this switch in jobs.

The day before Thanksgiving was a bit of a rough one for the kids. They always play hard and are constantly doing crazy stunts so it doesn't surprise me when accidents happen. At one point in the day, the kids were playing who knows what in Blake's room. I was sitting outside the room on the couch, working on a project when Blake started screaming and Will was saying sorry. She walked out screaming with a small mark of blood near her eye. We cuddled for a bit and eventually she was good as new.

Then later that night, Will tripped over a cord and fell into something and hit his lip pretty good. It wasn't quite split, but there was blood and it got huge. By the next day or so, there was deep purple bruising on the inside.

It was a bit of a rough start to the holiday.

Lance worked the day before and after Thanksgiving, so we did a day trip up to Logan for the holiday. We got there just after 9 in the morning, and Sharon was getting ready to throw the turkey in the oven. We played some games, watched football, played football, looked at Black Friday ads, decorated the Christmas tree, and mostly just hung out.

We tried to get a family picture or two, and as you can tell, Blake wasn't too thrilled about the idea. Her face cracks me up.

Here is a picture from Thanksgiving 2011. It's fun to see how far we have come in 3 years.

The food was great. The company was excellent. The holiday was a success. Thanks to the Hintons!

We left in the evening in time to get home and put the kids to bed. I dragged the kids to one store the next day, but I wasn't able to do much more Black Friday shopping than that.

Goodbye Novemeber!

Christmas Program Preview

A family recently moved into our ward that is incredibly gifted musically. They got called as choir directors and suddenly or choir is amazing. It is so fun to be a part of and I am super excited for our Christmas program. It's really going to be something special.

The primary will be joining us on the closing number and the all of the kids are in love with the song. I taught Will the words and he sings right along with them. It's a fast song, and he knows the words and is able to keep up. Here is a little sample. He is awesome.

I took this video shortly after he learned the song. He has gotten even better now.

I especially love his little "Gloria in excelsies dieo" line.

And finally, singing along with the audio version. It's quick!

During primary, we have started bringing the kids who will be in sunbeams next year in for singing time to help them adjust a little better. I was such a proud mommy on Sunday when Will came into primary and sang every word of this song. Even some of the adults haven't mastered it yet.


*Would love to have everyone come see our Christmas program. The Sunday before Christmas. I'm not lying, it's going to be good.

Hope They Call Me On A Mission

Will loves to sing and and is really good at memorizing songs. He loves the primary songs about missionaries, especially this one.

Halloween Week

Every year I say I'm going to go all out for Halloween and come up with some really great costume ideas as a family. And every year, October comes and I can't think of a single idea. Or I'm just too lazy to actually do it.

So I decided to abandon finding outfits for the entire family, and just focus on the kids (mostly Will) since Blake doesn't really understand what is going on.



With his obsession with trains, I thought it was only fitting for him to be a train engineer. I saw this super cute idea on Pinterest and decided that is what we would do. I showed the picture to Will and he asked me for days when we were going to make. If you want a tutorial or how I did it, click on that link.

Love her little grumpy face.

We finally started the week of Halloween and worked on it for a little bit each day. Through out the week, we also tried being festive with how the kids dressed.

We probably could have easily finished it in one day, but we just painted a little section every day and slowly pieced it all together. Blake's red struggled a bit more, and I even had to throw her's away and start over at one point. Three cans of paint later, hers was done. The blue was much better and only took one can of paint.

The lid on the smokestack comes off so that you can put your candy inside of that. But Will wanted to put his candy in a bag.

We had to do some shopping around to find some overalls and the hat. I found the hat at the train station souvenir shop in Ogden, and we found the overalls at the DI. They were several sizes too small, but we made them work. And luckily it was super warm on Halloween, so it wasn't a problem wearing floods.

Will couldn't wait to play with it. I let him walk around in it for a few minutes, then I made him wait until Halloween.

Then a couple of hours before we were going trick or treating, I took the kids over to a railroad track to take some pictures. I'm in love with how they turned out.

 Blake was not a fan of her train and kept asking me to take it off. I got a few pictures then she didn't wear it the rest of the night.

 

 Blake was supposed to be a coal shoveler or just the coal to fuel the trains. But her outfit wasn't obvious and took some explaining.

 Choo-choo!

 Lance had to work, so we had some friends meet up with us to go trick-or treating. There were a lot of people that weren't home, but that didn't slow Will down. He was all but running from house to house, anxious for more candy.  And he biffed it several times. The light on the front ended up falling off, and the whole thing was pretty beat by the end.

The best part is the light on the front, because it turns on when you push it. Everyone loved Will's outfit and we got a ton of compliments on it. When it got dark, people could see him from a distance and see light and I could hear them commenting how cool they thought it was.

Took this picture at the end of the night, and the kids were ready to be done. We went inside, enjoyed some hot chocolate, and got ready for bed.

Happy Halloween!