January 2016

January wasn't a very busy month, so I'm going to include it all in one post.

January 2nd, we had a Primary activity where the kids could meet their new primary teachers.  It was an ice cream party held in the afternoon.  We had a great turn out!

Sunday January 3rd

Since it was a new year, our church time changed from 9 am to 1 pm.  It had snowed though, so they actually cancelled church!!

 Looking down on our street from Maggie and Paige's window.

 The kids went out immediately to check it out and then came in to get dressed in warmer clothes. 

 Playing on the trampoline and making snow angels.

 For some reason, Paige was sprinkling snow on Bella.  

 going out into the forest

 They were in and out all day.  In the evening, it started raining and they were trying to finish their snowman.  They only made a little baby one, but it was cute.  

It went below freezing during the night and of course all the wet snow froze on the roads and sidewalks, so they cancelled school the next day too.  :)

They went back on Tuesday though.  

Thursday January 7th

Today was Paige's 11th birthday!!  She begged me to bring in cupcakes for her class, so I gave in.

 in her class, before handing them out.

 We didn't go out to eat that night because Maggie had basketball practice, but I did make her favorite meal and we opened presents.  

 She got a couple of books, 

 She got a Harry Potter t-shirt and some chocolate frogs--she was really into Harry Potter at the moment

 and she also got this big Calico Critters house.  She and Bella got some other Calico Critters for Christmas, too.

For her cake, she wanted a strawberry cheesecake.  

Here's her birthday questionnaire:

1.  What is your favorite color?  light Easter colors

2.  What is your favorite toy?  Calico critters

3.  What is your favorite fruit?  raspberries

4.  What is your favorite TV show?  Liv and Maddie; Studio C

5.  What is your favorite movie?  Aladdin

6.  What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?  pasta

7.  What is your favorite outfit?  dark jeans, snow boots, long sleeve shirt

8.  What is your favorite game?  Battleship or headbands

9.  What is your favorite animal?  horse, turtle, dog

10.  What is your favorite snack?  pretzels

11.  What is your favorite song?  Compass by Lady Antebellum

12.  Who is your best friend?  Hailey Jones, Ashley Noel, Brooke Nelson, Lilly Hunter, Ella Scharosch

13.  What is your favorite book?  Harry Potter

14.  What is your favorite cereal?  Reeces Puffs

15.  What is your favorite thing to do outside?  jump on the trampoline

16.  What is your favorite drink?  root beer

17.  What is your favorite holiday?  Christmas

18.  What do you like to sleep with at night?  Shelly the bear

19.  What is your favorite thing for dinner?  Sweet pork tacos

20.  What do you want to be when you grow up?  a teacher

21.  What food do I not like?  veggitables

22.  What is something that I do well?  math

23.  What is something I need to practice?  math

24.  My favorite place to go:  Mexico

25.  My favorite family activities:  Family home evening

26.  My favorite thing about home:  my room

27.  A place I want to visit:  Egypt

28:  My favorite part of the day:  Getting home from school

Friday January 8th

 At Maggie's basketball game...she gets to jump for the ball.

 getting some instruction from her coach

 looking good making a shot

Saturday January 9th

 Maggie and her friends Emma and Spencer at the Rose Gardens.  They've been going once a month and taking pictures.

 Maggie and Emma 'twinning' the next day at church

Wednesday January 13th

 Garrett got free tickets to a Blazers basketball game so he took Maggie.

 Saturday January 16th

 Garrett got tickets to go see the BYU boys basketball team play somewhere--I can't remember.  He took Maggie and his dad to this game.  

 Monday January 18th

Since it was MLK, Jr day, Garrett put up some of the extra wood boards from the kitchen island in our master bathroom.  I've been wanting him to do that for a long time and I really like it!  Now, we just need to paint the other walls.  

Here's the finished island in the kitchen.  I don't think I ever posted a picture when he was done.  He finished over Christmas break. 

Wednesday January 20th

 the kids have taken my preschool stuff and started playing school with it up in the playroom.  I love it!

Friday January 29th

 Since Garrett is now in Young Men's, he was able to go on the snow camp out with the scouts. He said it was fun, but that would not be my cup of tea!!

 Looks pretty cold and miserable!!

 He got there a bit later than everyone else because he couldn't take the whole day off of work, so instead of digging out a cave, he dug out a trench and put a door over the top (an extra shed door that he brought with him.  Totally looks like a grave to me.  I couldn't have stayed in there, but he said he was warm and cozy.  

This is what it looked like in the morning.  Yuck!  He did say that it had snowed in the night, so when he tried to get out in the morning, the door was harder to open with all the snow on top of it.  Sounds scary to me! 

Christmas and New Years!!

Thursday December 24th

Christmas Eve!!

I had my girls help make rolls to go with our dinner

Garrett and Bella were working on making a hat.

We made a gingerbread house in the afternoon.

Instead of going out and buying more candy, I searched through our candy bucket and pulled out candy that no one was eating.  (I did buy gum drops, since we never have those and I love them on gingerbread houses.)

They had fun working on it.

And it served as our centerpiece for Christmas dinner.

Christmas Dinner

Opening jammies from Grandma and Grandpa Hansen

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!!

me and my little man listening to dad read from the Bible.

Bella and Noah acted out the Christmas story with our Little People set.

Reading "The Night Before Christmas"

Cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer

This year I made extra gingerbread and we just made gingerbread cookies instead of sugar cookies.

Garrett's hat that he finished.

One last picture before bed.

Friday December 25th

Christmas Day!

Everyone's piles of presents

Waiting to come down--I love that my kids don't wake up super early.  They woke up around 7:30 or 8 if I remember correctly.

Another picture before coming downstairs

Paige used all the money she had to buy her siblings a gift.  She had about $2 to spend on each person and she was so excited about finding something that each person would like.  I love all the hugs they gave her!

(I had a picture of Noah too, but it turned out blurry)

Playing after all the presents were opened...

Since we had finished watching "Lost", I got us all t-shirts with quotes from the show on them.  I had to exchange mine for a different color because it was too dark to read the quotes.  

Sunday December 27th

Coming out of church and we found it was snowing!!  Garrett had stayed home with Bella because she had thrown up the day before.  Ugh!  After church, we wanted to watch a movie as a family and Garrett decided to put on the first Narnia movie--we had never seen it and I had never read the books.  I was worried it would be too violent, but it was really good.  Then we decided to watch the second one and since we were going strong, we watched the third one too!  Talk about a movie marathon!!  I know that was a ton of TV, but it was really fun.  The first movie was definitely the best, though!

Tuesday December 29th

Garrett had the idea that we should go sledding up on Mt. Hood.  I was a bit reluctant at first, since I don't really enjoy being cold and wet, but after we got up there and started sledding, it turned out to be really fun!

These pictures are of our drive up to Mt. Hood.

We got a few pictures while we were up there, but our phones turned off if they were out too long and didn't want to turn back on.  Too cold?  It was weird.  

Noah would go down with us at the beginning, but by the end he was going down by himself.  

It's hard to tell, but this is the hill we were sledding down...it was pretty steep.  Bella loved going down on her knees.  There were other people that went up a lot higher than we did.  

It was a fun afternoon!  We left when it was starting to get dark--around 5 I think.  We stopped at Subway for dinner on the way home.  

Wednesday December 30th

In the afternoon, I had to go to the church to help put up bulletin boards for primary.  While I was doing that, Garrett took Maggie to the eye doctor because she was finally getting contacts!!  She's been so excited about this and has been practicing getting them in for awhile.  

After we all got home, we went out to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes and then headed over to the zoo to see the zoo lights.  

It was still pretty cold!!

We asked some random guy to take our picture and when he gave Lydia's phone back, there was this picture of him on it.  What a dork!!  It did make us laugh though!  Who does that?!?

These next pictures were taken on the train.

Thursday December 31st

New Years Eve!!

We spent the day going grocery shopping and making food.  We took it all over to Jim and Georgia's house because Jim doesn't like to drive in the dark and the rain.  So we ate New year's dinner with them and then came back to our house later that night.  We of course played games together and listened to pandora.  

Maggie was going to a stake dance.  I had to get a picture of her without her glasses.  

I had some crackers and hats and annoying loud things to blow on, and of course confetti to ring in the new year.  I think we celebrated at 10 so the two younger kids could go to sleep.  

After we got them in bed, we watched "Hook", the movie with Robin Williams.  Paige had seen it recently and loved it.  I don't even think I stayed up to finish it with them.  I was a party pooper I guess!  

And that was 2015!!