More random funny photos

Here are just a bunch of funny photos I don't know what to do with.

 Rudolph - Joshua made this mask all by himself.

I really don't know how to label this one.

 Lukas takes his baby everywhere he goes. It is so funny. He's always telling me how Baby is getting hurt and he needs a sippy or a blanky.

 Her royal highness waiting for dinner.

 nobody likes to hold a crying baby, I suppose

 Joshua, at 5 years old, is already practicing forging my signature

 roasted butternut and shallot soup really is that good.

Deep conversations between brothers.

4 babies

Here are the 3 month photos. Kaleb doesn't hold his head up so well yet (that's probably my fault since he HATES tummy time and therefore I don't care for it either) so I've put two photos of him up, just for fun. In case you've never seen a post like this from me before, these are the photos of my children that I took on the day they were exactly 3 months old. I think it's fun to see how much they look alike and not alike. Their personalities are definitely completely different.

I wish I had a cuter 3 month photo of Joshua and a smiling 3 month photo of Abigail but they were still adorable babies - and still are adorable children.

February Birthdays

Since Lukas' birthday is the 10th and Abigail's is the 16th, it is just easier to celebrate just once sometime in between. This year we celebrated on the 15th since Derek's dad was already going to be down at our house (Derek took the day off work and he and his dad took down a HUGE old dead tree in our backyard - YEA!) and then his mom came down in the afternoon. Our celebration looked like this.

Valentine

Every year for Valentine's Day we make sugar cookies and decorate them. This year we invited some new friends over to help us decorate. One little boy, after 2 cookies, told his mom he was full and went to go play. Then the older boys decided they wanted to go play too, and Abigail of course followed. So Melanie and I decorated the cookies on our own - and Lukas ate the frosting. The next day my kids and I went and delivered the cookies. I really enjoy this tradition.

I had Joshua hand make the valentines for his class this year. There are only 16 kids in his class and 2 teachers so I figured it wouldn't take too long. It took about 3 days. Some of his valentines were a little scary looking, but at that point in the process I was just happy they were getting done at all.

We had the same breakfast as last year - heart eggs in toast. This year, however, they turned out much better.

I gave my kids conversation hearts as a little gift but I've decided to give up that tradition. Joshua already got way too much candy from school (in my mind, 2 pieces is plenty - a month) and we had just made all those cookies - plus the next day we were going to celebrate birthdays which means a lot of cake. As I see it, Valentine's week at our house is always going to be sugary but I'm going to try and tone it down a little next time. Note that we didn't actually ourselves eat many of the 104 cookies we made, I think we each had three. But still, having them in the house and smelling all the candy and the frosting, it kind of makes your teeth hurt. All that sugar. Ugh.

LOVE at HOME

I know I haven't mentioned this yet, but we have a theme for our family this year. It is "I'm trying to be like Jesus."  We have an FHE poster (for those Mondays and Sundays - yes, we do FHE twice a week - where we didnt' really have time to plan anything else) where we pull a question out of one envelope, answer how we would be like Jesus in that situation, and then put the slip in the happy face envelope. This is really fun. We also have a sticker poster where when the kids do something extra kind or loving and caring they receive a sticker. So many stickers earns them little toys and stuff like that - I already had a big bag full of little toys that a friend gave me, leftovers from her kids - so this doesn't cost me any money, it actually cleans out my closet. We'll, it moves the mess from my closet to the mess that is the kids toy dresser.  Each morning and evening for devotional we sing a song. January's song was, believe it or not, "I'm trying to be like Jesus."  For morning devotional we would find a scripture verse and read it and relate how it shows us how we can be like Jesus. In the evening we just read one verse from the Book of Mormon. We've been doing this for almost a year now and I think we are half way done with 1st Nephi :)

Anyway, the main reason for this post is about this months theme. We're still trying to be like Jesus, but in February we are focusing on loving each other as Jesus loves us. Thus, our song for the month is "Love one Another" and we are finding fun morning scriptures that have to do with love.

Yesterday for our Sunday FHE (we do two because on Sundays we have more time and can do more of a spiritual lesson or activity, whereas on Mondays we have much less time and often incorporate work projects into the activity) we read 1 John 3:16 and 18. We talked about having a house full of love and how we need to not only SAY loving things but we need to DO loving things and show our love for each other. Then we did this awesome project together.

 

A fair amount of engineering went into making sure the house didn't collapse. In the end the roof did start sliding off, but so slowly that the icing had enough time to dry before it completely fell off the house. Maybe you can tell in the last photo.

How much candy can you dump into the chimney? thankfully this chimney doesn't open up into the house. (Derek and Joshua have a secret plan for next year for our Christmas candy houses - they are going to fill Joshua's house to the top with M&Ms after they've put it together. This was practice, I guess.

This was such a fun FHE and even if you didn't have a gingerbread house set laying around or you didn't want to spend 10 dollars on candy you could make a house out of a cardboard box and decorate it with hearts and loving words. Then, instead of filling your chimney with as much candy as possible, you could writing loving things about each other and dump them through the chimney and maybe read them at the end of the month.

Just one Girl

Abigail is the only girl in our house - well, besides me but I'm mom so that doesn't count. I think she is trying to make up for the lack of sisters by being as girly as she possibly can. I would say playing in front of the bathroom mirror wearing a pink princess dress and crown and her favorite pink sweater and pink shirt under that, not to mention the princess Rapunzel hairdo and the flowery clips in her hair while holding her baby doll is doing pretty good.

I didn't think she could get any more girly... but then she found some chocolate.

I hope she gets her wish and gets a real little sister some day, and not too far away that she will be too old and not want to play with her.