December

Saturday December 5th

 We had our ward Christmas party this day--it was actually in the morning and it was a brunch. It was fun to do something different.  They had breakfast burritos with fruit and muffins.  Before they served the food, they had supplies to make gingerbread houses.  It was a cute idea, but we couldn't get ours to stay together. 

 With Santa

 The final masterpiece

 Primary kids singing.  Garrett was actually one of the speakers and he spoke on JOY.  I think it was about Jesus, Others and Yourself if I remember correctly.  He did great as usual!

 Later in the day we went to pick out our Christmas tree.

 Lydia helping to get it into the truck.

 The beautiful view from the tree lot

 These two--always taking selfies together.

 Watching the fire and drinking our hot cocoa.

 Traditional picture by the weird looking snowman

Garrett and I went to see "The Martian" that night.

Sunday December 6th

 After church, we drove out to Jim and Georgia's for linner.  We must've been waiting for Maggie to come out of church.  

 After coming home that night, we set up and decorated the Christmas tree.

 These two were having fun with the selfie stick

 Garrett putting the lights on while everyone else messes around.  

 Bella getting to help with the angel this year.

Monday December 7th

 Lydia's self portrait that she has been working on in school.  She's so good!

Wednesday December 9th

 We had been getting a lot of rain!  When it rains, some of the streets flood and the one that the middle and high school bus takes to get the schools started flooding.  Lydia took this picture as they were driving through it--she was a little freaked out by all the water.  I'm sure they closed this road soon after.  

Thursday December 10th

 We lost power around 3 or 4 in the afternoon and it stayed off till around 7 or 8 I think.  I'm not sure why it went out, but it was kind of fun.  I couldn't cook anything because our stove top and oven locks itself when the power goes out, so I had Garrett stop after work and bring something home for dinner.  

 We all hung out together downstairs, playing guitar, reading and playing games by candle and lantern light.  

We were playing apples to apples.

 Friday December 11th

 Noah decided he needed to do some exercising and lift some weights.  Such a funny kid!

 Saturday December 12th

 After cleaning the house all morning, we went out to lunch with Jim and Georgia and then they came back to our house to open Christmas presents from them.  They were going to Alaska for Christmas the next week, so this was our last chance before Christmas.  The kids opened her gifts like you do when you play the white elephant game.  Everyone drew a number and then could open a new present or steal one already opened.  It was fun, but did cause a little trouble later on.  

 Noah picked number one and ended up opening a scarf.  He was really disappointed and I don't think fully understood the game.  We told him to be patient and wait, but he wasn't happy.  

 Then Lydia opened a scarf.

 Then Paige opened this floral scarf...she wasn't feeling very good.  

 Then Maggie opened a NERF gun.  Look at Noah's face!!  Of course she traded with him. 

 Bella also opened a scarf.  Lydia and Bella wanted the same scarf, but grandma put a stop to the trading before Lydia was able to get it back, so she was kind of upset.  Ugh--go figure.  Grandma tried to do something fun and my kids were being ridiculous and getting upset.  Then about 5 minutes after we finished opening the gifts, Paige puked all over the bathroom floor.  At least it wasn't on the carpet, but she was SO close to the toilet!!  So, that started our two weeks of sickness.  I think it went through everyone except Garrett.  

Tuesday December 15th

 Maggie had her first choir concert this night.  They were going to sing someplace downtown Portland.  We weren't able to go to this concert because of mutual and stuff.  We were waiting to go to the one at her school in a couple of days.  Turns out though, that she started to feel sick at school and luckily made it home before she started throwing up.  So, she had to miss her other concert and she was really sad about it because they were singing different songs.  She also had to miss one of her basketball games the next day.  Lydia and I also got the flu the night before.  

Friday December 18th

Garrett got 4 tickets to see the new Star Wars for 9 am on Friday morning.  Maggie was supposed to go with us, but she was still feeling sick.  Lydia and I were better, although our stomachs still hurt.  We decided to go anyways and see the movie.  It was awesome!!  This was the last day of school before spring break and Paige was the only one who went to school.  We let Bella and Noah stay home with Maggie.  Noah actually threw up the next day, but he seemed totally fine after and was asking for food.  It was weird.  

Sunday December 20th

We all watched "Elf" this evening.

I'll do Christmas and finish up 2015 in the next post!!

Legoland Water Park and meeting up with Josh and Tanya

August 8th

Since Paige was still feeling sick, I decided to stay with her at the hotel, so she could sleep and try to get better.  Garrett took the other 4 and headed to Lego land to try out the Water parks.  

Paige slept for awhile, then she watched movies in bed most of the day.  I blogged and watched episodes of 24 on my computer.  

Meanwhile, the others had lots of fun!  I think they stayed at the water park most of the day, but then did a few other things in the afternoon.  

Here they are eating lunch

Hanging out in the kid area.

It looked like a pretty neat place, but I don't remember much about what they told me.  

I'm not sure why Bella is grumpy in this picture, but it's pretty common for her.

These were the actual sets used to film the Lego Movie.  They said it was awesome! (Of course)

Noah and Emmett

Then they rode some rides--The Safari Trek

And then they came home around 5.  

Noah fell asleep on the way home, so I came down to watch Bella and Lydia swim in the pool while Maggie went up to the room with Paige and Garrett stayed in the car while Noah slept.  When Noah woke up, they went swimming for a bit, too.  After they were done swimming, Garrett got Panda Express for dinner and we ate, then cleaned up and packed.  Then next day we were heading to Anaheim.

August 9th

This morning after breakfast and packing up, we headed out to the car to load everything up.  Much to our surprise and disgust, we found ants EVERYWHERE in our car.  In the snack bag, in the cooler, in bags, on the seats, up and down the seatbelts, on the floor, in the front console.  It was SO GROSS!  I got rid of all the snacks in the bag and we tried to wipe out the ants as best we could, but there were so many of them.  So, we had to ride in the car to a gas station that had a vacuum/car wash.  We got quarters and sucked those babies up.  We cleaned as best as we could with wipes and whatever we had and got rid of most of them, but even as we were driving, we'd see some here and there.  I'm not sure how they got in our car that quickly because they said they didn't see any in the car the day before driving to and from Lego land.  It was so weird.  

It took us about 2-3 hours to get to Anaheim and when we got there we ate lunch at Chipotle and then found our hotel.  Josh and Tanya were there already so we hung out with them and talked for a little while.  They live in Northern California and drove down to go to Disneyland with us.  They all decided to go swimming, but we were in desperate need of some clean clothes, so I had to go and find the laundry room in the hotel and do some laundry.  There were only 2 washers and dryers and it took awhile to get 2 loads of our clothes clean and dry.  I had to keep going back to check on availability and then people would leave stuff in there and not come back!  So finally, I had to take people's stuff out of the dryer so I could dry my last load because we were heading to dinner soon.  Such a pain!!

Maggie, Lydia, Garrett and Bella swimming at the hotel pool

Lydia, Maggie, Caleb, Garrett, Bella, Paige, Josh and Hannah.

After swimming, we went out to eat at this little Italian place.  It was nice and had pretty good food.  We went back to the hotel and went to bed.  The next morning we were heading to Disneyland!!