Thank you hairy much

On Sunday I walked up the stairs to see Sunshine brushing Cloudburst's hair. He tries to be such a tough guy, but he is really a softie.

And Sunrise, oh Sunrise.  What a phase you are going through.  I came upstairs to find he had discovered the Vaseline.  And thought it was shampoo.  Which needed to be applied several times.

Do you know that it is impossible to get that stuff out of anything???

Buds

Tornado and Sunrise get to spend quite a bit of time together these days, now that Sunshine and Cloudburst are at school every day.  They have fun building things with Trio blocks, coloring (preferably on paper) and following me around.

They both love to help with laundry, of all things.  Ohhh, I am definitely encouraging this.  Sunrise will take things out of the washer and put them in the dryer, while checking the light to make sure it's still there in that fun hidden corner.  Tornado can now switch loads over and get a new one started.  He has learned this from waking up with wet sheets, unfortunately.

Sunrise is moving into the "little brother" role nicely, now that he's started knocking over Tornado's towers, swiping his beautifully colored papers, and asking "where Dallin?" when he can't find him.  It's fun to watch these two little friends.

New banks

We've been doing allowance for almost 2 years now, and the kids can also earn money for doing extra jobs around the house (pulling bags of weeds, washing and folding loads of laundry, cleaning kitchen chairs, etc.) They can get a "match" for money they put in savings, and then they also put 10% in tithing and 10% in a mission fund. For a while I have been using small tupperware containers for the kids to hold their savings, tithing and mission funds. After they came raining down from the cabinet again the other day, I finally upgraded... to fishing tackle boxes!

The banks lay nice and flat now, and they organize everything very nicely. The kids love to get them down and carefully count everything in them.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Quotable

Me: "Cloudburst, quit bugging your brother.  You're being a pill."

Cloudburst: "I'm not a pill, I don't even know what that means!  You can't swallow me and I am not tastable!"

***
I just finished telling the kids that I saw an accident and called the police about it.  Sunrise said, "You talked to the police?  Did you tell them you're the Bishop's woman?"

***
Sunshine: "Black Widow spiders are not nice.  But Daddy Long Legs are nice."

Cloudburst: "Why aren't the Mommy Long Legs nice?"

***
Looking at our garden, Sunshine: "This is like having our own vegetable place!"

***
Tornado: "You're a coo-koo head." (said multiple times a day)

***
After I got annoyed with Sunrise for spilling water on the newspaper I was reading, he responded with "You just spoke to me with a sentence that sounded like it had an exclamation point at the end!"

Christmas #2

Thunder's brother and family left a couple of days before Christmas, so it was us along with Nana and Papa for Christmas morning here.

I always love seeing the kids when they peek downstairs.  This year they all woke up at 3am ("Heavens no!"), 5am ("Back to bed!"), and then for good around 7.  Sunshine got a giant remote control car that can flip over and switch wheel positions.  You can also see Cloudburst's one desire- a play kitchen.  Yes, she is 7 years old, but that's what she really wanted!

For months and months, Tornado has talked of nothing but Stinky the Garbage Truck!  He was so happy to see this smelly friend!

Here is the only picture of me, the hazards of being the family photographer.

All of our kids have a fold-out couch in their rooms for sleepovers (and a place to sleep in the middle of the night if they wet the bed) and Sunrise finally got his!

Some new jammies, socks and a new stealth gun.

Sunrise was really only interested in the chocolate in the stockings.  He hid small pieces and kept finding them and eating them throughout the day.

And here is Thunder's amazing brain at work!  This game is called MindFlex, and it really does read the intensity of your brain waves.  Depending on how "hard" you are thinking, it turns on a fan below the little blue ball.

Like every year, we all feel so blessed.  We were able to be surrounded by family this week and talk to others we miss on the phone.  And we feel truly grateful for the Gospel for our little family.  We hope you all had a truly wonderful Christmas!

Christmas #1

We were lucky again this year to have Thunder's family come join us for Christmas.  His brother, wife and two kids came for 3 days, and Nana and Papa came for a week.  Here are our kids dressed up for church the week before Christmas.

You can see that Sunrise was thrilled to have his picture taken!

Thunder took advantage of the snow and took his dad and brother out for a muddy spin on the Rhino.

After all, what's better than being splashed with freezing mud??

Cousin R1!

Uncle K with Tornado and Sunshine, chillin and watching a movie.

The cousins had fun making a snow fort together.  Don't believe Sunshine's face for a minute... he loved it out there.

We also had a kids' craft one morning, where each kid got a Christmas moose and got to make a nametag out of Shrinky Dinks.  Shrinky Dinks are so fun! Even if one falls on the floor of the oven, smokes, and gets all melted everywhere, they are awesome.

Cousin R2, rockin out!

Here is everyone assembled for Christmas dinner, a few days before actual Christmas day.  We fried our turkey again, and it was ahhhmmaaaaazing.  We also had mashed potatoes, corn, sweet potato casserole and rolls.

We also opened presents with Uncle K and Aunt V's family before they had to leave the next day.  It was awesome craziness!

We stayed up late getting everything opened, packed and ready for them to go home the next day.  It was such a wonderful visit, and as usual, too short!

Daddy's bday

Lucky for him, Thunder's birthday fell on a Saturday this year.  The kids took advantage of the school-free time and made plans to "kidnap" Thunder and "make" him go on a clue hunt to find his presents.

The little bandits woke him up and demanded that he get out of bed and follow the clues they made all by themselves.

After several clues upstairs, he was finally led downstairs...

... to a royal spot to open presents!  We've talked forever about getting a giant beanbag, and this was finally the year that one came our home.  It is moved, jumped on and slept on constantly every day and the kids love it.  Oh, and Thunder gets to occasionally use it,too.

The kids and I also found a fun gourmet popcorn shop down in Orem.  Thunder enjoyed sampling our finds.

We made a fun cake together in the shape of a basketball, since we went to a BYU game all together as a family.  I did have a big fancy cake made and served at our company party this year.

Cake and ice cream from Arctic Circle, just Dad's style!

Here we are before the game started.  It was a great game. Happy birthday Thunder, you deserve it!

It's time...

...Christmas time, that is!  Our tree is up, the boxes are finally put away and only 8 ornaments have been smashed (we're on pace for one every two days or so).

And our dear elf, Alex, has returned.  The kids were informed that Alex would return on December 1, and Sunshine was up promptly at 5:30 AM to go find his hiding spot.  And then he woke everyone else up to tell them the happy news.  Ah, what a lovely time of day to wake up.  Alex goes to the North Pole each night, and returns each morning in a different spot.

Have a Super Halloween!

This year we had a superhero theme.  Well, actually it seems like we have that theme almost every year. Hmm.

We had Supergirl...

... Wolverine, and....

...Ironman.  With a headache, apparently.

Off to the rescue!

Or at least off to the trunk or treat!

The ward put on a killer spook alley that required crawling from the RS room to the primary room.  It was a fun night, which was good since the next night it rained for hours!

And oh yes! I almost forgot our little Robin.  Quite a group, eh?