Half of a year!

I can't tell you how much it pains me to say this, but Jack has hit his six month mark!!  He is growing up SO FAST!!  I have to admit, I'm loving every stage he is hitting as he grows.  He is doing so many new things.  He's tried eating solids (I say tried, because he spits out whatever I feed him and then clenches his jaw shut so that nothing else can go in- but we'll keep trying :) ).  He has been rolling around like a crazy person, getting wherever he needs to when he's on the floor.  He can ALMOST sit up, he just tips over a lot.  But he has the ability, just not the control.  He likes it too.  He loves playing with toys.  Most of his baby holders entertain him for a good 15 minutes, if not more :).  He smiles like crazy.  He looks around at people almost waiting for, or expecting them to smile :).  It's cute.  Like he knows he's cute and can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to smile at him :).  I love it!  He sleeps okay, not as good as before, but I think that may be a result of his not getting enough to eat anymore.  Which is why I've been trying everything I can think of to feed him.  But I really can't complain still.  He sleeps better than most babies I know ;).  He is generally very happy!  Gooing and Gaaahing.  It's fun to listen to him "sing" with Nate.  He gets really happy when his big sibs pause their busy little lives to play with him.  Even if it's just a few minutes.  He gets very excited.  He is still a wiggle worm!  (that's an understatement)  I wonder when all this pent up energy is finally going to be able to have it's time.  He will be EVERYWHERE!!!  We'll look forward to that I guess :).  ANyway.  I'm really happy that he is so healthy and happy and that he is ours.  I don't know what our family would have done without the little guy.  He is just such a little light.

Fugitive Slave Law

Wednesday was Charity's much anticipated, History Fair Open House!  Even though she'd stayed up till midnight Monday night, putting her display together for grading and her class presentation, she was still up till midnight Tuesday night as well, putting on the finishing touches for the judging that would go on on Wednesday!  It was insane!!  But I'm glad she is so motivated to do a good job.  She did her project on the Fugitive Slave Law.  We all learned SO much about this topic during the past 2 months!  Nate and Charity especially.  She really knows way more than she should :). I was so proud of her and her hard work!!  She did a fantastic job!  I need to get a better picture of her display, but she was so tired, she didn't really even want this one.  She was bummed that she didn't win to go on to the next level, but I think she was mostly relieved that the whole thing was over.  

Charity's Day of Days!

Tuesday was a pretty hectic day, for the most part.  It was Charity's Constitution Bowl!  She had spent the last month or so, cramming 96ish (I think she only made it to 72, but still, wow!) questions and answers about the Constitution.  She had signed up to do this all on her own, completely optional, and was put in a team of about 6 kids her age.  This was an extra curricular thing, but happened to be during school hours, so that was pretty cool.  We had to go to Adelaide Elementary dressed in Sunday best.  I brought Jack with me, but left Erika and Noah home with Grandma Hatch for the day.  Signing in was a little stressful when we learned that half of her team were sitting in class 15 minutes before the thing was supposed to start.  We were afraid her team was going to have to forfeit and that was scary, but luckily they let us shuffle the teams around a little and then a lot of the kids actually showed up, so it all worked out.  The Bowl was pretty cool.  It was double elimination.  Charity's team struggled their first round with people not quite knowing how to buzz in, and they were up against a pretty tough team.  They lost that round and then lost their second round as well.  The second round was a lot closer and a bigger disappointment when they got out.  Some of those kids just knew their stuff SO WELL!!  They were able to buzz in two words into the question and get them right!  It was amazing.  I think our kids realized that they needed to have studied a little more, and luckily they will have another year, another shot at it next year, when they know more what to expect.  This was the first time our school has participated so nobody really knew what was going on, and they didn't get enough coaching or help from their teachers.  So now we know, and now we will be all set for next time!  I got to sit and talk with Tiffany Skelton through the whole thing, so that was fun for me :).  And Jack slept! until the last half hour or so.  So it was nice.  They got out so early on that we thought they would want to leave, but they liked missing school I think, and I figured they'd earned the morning off.  So we let them play on the playground and basically just do as they pleased for the last 2ish hours, until the awards were given at the end.  They got a participation certificate and cheered for the teams that won.  Hopefully they had fun.  I was overall, very proud of our kids, Charity especially.  She knew most of her stuff and had done so well in the competition.  It was a good experience.
We stopped at Wendy's to get the kids some lunch since they'd missed lunch time.  I bet they felt cool coming to school late, with fast food!  Good times.  Nice work Charity!  I hope she tries again next year.

So after that, we were able to rest a little, but not for long because I had had to make my dinners and deliver them.  Then it was time for Charity's next big thing, the SPELLING BEE!  We all headed on over to Bountiful High, yes,we took the whole to a district spelling bee, don't judge me like the people behind us did. Charity was pretty nervous but she did so great!  She lasted three rounds. Her first word was"podium" second word was "celebration" and her third word, the one she got out on, was "professional".  She gave it an extra "F".  We were so proud of her though and she was proud of herself as well.  Grandpa Hatch and Steve and Jauslin had come to watch and we all went out to Dairy Queen afterward to celebrate.  What a neat experience!

Journaling

And now it's been a week since I blogged.  Wow.


- Monday was President's day.  No school.  I had ideas in mind for some fun things to do that day, but it all came to a screeching hault when I found out how much work Charity still had left to do on her History Fair project which was due the next day.  We spent MOST of the day working on that with her.  Took a trip over to Grandma's to use her Word.  Unfortunately, our Word was dumped a few years ago when our computer was having trouble and so doing her homework has become next to impossible here at home.  It really stinks actually.  But at least there are other options.  Most of the things she has to do she's been able to do on her Open Office on her laptop, but a few things still require using someone else's.  Either way, we finished her project, and all was well.

In the evening, we headed up to Nate's Parents' house to have dinner and FHE with the Beckstead's!  This is something we've had as almost a tradition ( I think we've missed a few years) and something we always enjoy and look forward to.  Becky put together a really nice dinner and lesson.  We all drew our favorite person from the scriptures on a paper bag and then everyone had to guess who it was.  Kelly helped Luke and they both drew Joseph Smith with the gold plates and the barrel of beans he had hid the plates in.  Charity and Bradley, independent of each other, both drew Enos.  Nate did Ammon who we just read about in Family Study.  And Noah did Noah :).  We played a few games, I think the kids really loved the game Shark.  We finally got Darren out at the end.  We showed them our Quelf game, played that for a little while, watched Casey make a fool of himself :) Then a few rounds of It Came To Pass.  Nate let everyone have a free Root Beer Float, not counting it as a strike.  The whole night was just a lot of fun.  Even Noah and Erika had fun running around, surprising Grandma and Grandpa.  Good times.  Wish I'd brought my camera.   2-18-13

- Friday Nate got to go with the kids to school at 8:00 and have "Dads and Donuts"  I don't know what they did, but the kids were SO EXCITED for this!!  Even Luke was basing how fun his day was going to be off of this and his birthday table lunch.  It was much anticipated event!  I hope Nate felt the love :).

Then later in the day, Nate, the littles and I were able to go the school and have lunch with Luke for his birthday. That was a lot of fun! Bradley was having lunch with his friend Skylr at the same time so he sat there with us.  I love being able to spend some of the school day with our kids.

While we were there, we found out that Mrs. Davis (Kelly's teacher) was going to be doing the No Missing Work Party on her own because none of the parents had signed up for it.  We figured since we were there, that we'd volunteer.  She consented.  We waited a half hour and then for the activity we played the SHark game we'd played at Becky's.  Nate did a group and I did a group.  Nate's group had more fun, go figure.  But I think it was a success.

That night we had our family game night.  We all went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner.  That was a lot of fun.  We had a really nice waitress and everyone kept changing places the whole time :).  Then we went to the store, picked out a new game, LIFE, and grabbed some snacks (and the stuff for me to make my dinners on Monday) to munch on while we played.  I have ALWAYS (at least since I was 12) wanted that game!  I don't think I've ever played it the correct way though :).  IT was a fun game.  LONG, but really fun for everyone.  Erika and Noah lost interested fairly early on, but they stayed in the room with us, which was more than I could have asked I think.  Everyone did pretty well.  I think Bradley won.  He kept getting the Spin to Win money.  It was a good time though.  I love spending time together as a family.  We were glad Charity came home from her night out with her friends to play with us.  2-22-13

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STAR PARTY!!!

We had our first Star Party yesterday.  It was a big hit!  I began telling the kids about it earlier in the week.  I began heavy bribing with the stars to get their numbers up.  I really wanted to keep it low-maintenance so that I wouldn't feel overwhelmed to do it again, but at the same time, make it something exciting and new.  Nate totally helped with that, when he went to get the prices for the auction, he came home with like 10 times what I would have gotten :).  He's so much fun!  Kelly helped :).  The kids were excitedly doing all of their jobs and room cleaning, showers were a breeze with the 50 star bonus.  Some of them even folded their clothes willingly!  It was awesome!  It was babystepping to 6:00 for some of them :) but it was a lot of fun to watch them and see how excited they were.  I knew I had to make it a big deal.
So what we did is we paid stars to play games.  When you won a game, you got tickets.  The tickets were then used to buy things in our auction.  The leftover stars were used to buy a ticket to the movie and popcorn and drinks.
I had Charity, Kelly, Bradley and Noah (Luke didn't want to) choose and kind of run the games.
Our first game was Charity's Ball Toss.  This was a lot of fun because we did it in the hallway to the front door.  The bouncy balls were able to bounce around quite a bit off of the walls and door and stuff before finally landing in the bowls.  It was pretty intense!  And kind of difficult!  I didn't get any.  This game was my favorite because everyone was cheering each other on and getting all happy and excited for each other.  I LOVED the good Sportsmanship!
Next we did Kelly's Hershey Kiss game.  She had put stickers on the bottoms of some of the kisses and the kids got to choose two and get tickets based on what kind of sticker was on the bottom.  Nobody got the "z"s :).  But it was still fun.
Then we did Bradley's cracker game.  This was a lot tougher with the small ritz crackers we were using.  But Bradley won that, and then Kelly won it the second time.  That was pretty fun too.
After that we played Charity's second game, the marshmallow straw game.  You sit in a circle, everyone has a bowl and a straw.  You go around the circle, rolling the dice, when you get a 7, 11 or doubles, you get a chance to suck up as many marshmallows as you can, one (or two, and sometimes 3, if you're Luke) at a time, and put them in your bowl.  This was a fast-paced, high-emotion game.  In fact, as the night went on, tensions rose.  I knew this would happen and had tried to prep and threaten a substantial amount in order to avoid it, but I guess we all knew it was inevitable.  I will say that the kids did really good most of the night.  We're still learning how to be good sports, and to deal with disappointment.  I try to cut everyone some slack, and hopefully we get enough exposure to both, we will be able to combat it.  This game was a breaking point for some of the kids.  But it was still pretty fun.  We survived :).
Next was Noah's paper airplane game.  This was fun, but it was so soon after the other game, that we were still having aftershocks from the drama.  Noah loved it :).  He was super happy that it was his game!  Then we did Kelly's second game, "It Came To Pass" card game.  We had a few crazy rounds of this game.  Bradley was killing it!  Both rounds that we played went REALLY fast!  I couldn't believe it!  It was okay though because our second dinner was ready to eat!  Yes, I said "second".  I got all caught up in the fun and burned our first one.  That was a total bummer because it was smelling REALLY good!!!  I've never scraped such a thick layer of crusted on sauce out of a pan in my whole life!  And I've scraped a lot of burnt food.  At least we were having fun though :).  Fettucine Alfredo was our back-up and it was yummy.
Following dinner, we had the most important part of the whole night- THE AUCTION!!!  The kids had been eye-balling the prizes all day, so this was a very much-anticipated event!  I let them help me choose which things we would auction off (I couldn't sell ALL of it at once!!  There was SO much!  We'll use it on the next one).  There were some cool water bottles, fish crackers, pringles, donuts, sticky hand, some princess and Spider-man toys... lots of good stuff.  I added my little cards I had made with Date Nights, Choice of Family Activity, Day of no jobs... etc.
It was a really fun auction.  I couldn't believe how generous everyone was being to each other!  I had to tell them to just buy stuff for themselves because they would be bidding against someone forever, and then tell the other person to stop bidding because they're getting it for THEM!  It was hilarious.  Gave me chills when I thought about how how much they love each other.  When the Princess and Spider-man toys came up, everyone played along for a minute, just bidding to look like they wanted it, but it was obvious they were all letting Erika get the one and Noah could get the other.  So cute!  There was a sad moment when Noah wanted some cheese Fish crackers, but I think we managed the disappointment okay. I want my kids to learn how to handle those situations.  They happen so much at school.  Well, in LIFE!  I hate it when I'm doing a party in one of the kids' classes and we have to deal with all the crying or pouting kids because they didn't get their way!  And these are upper-grade kids still acting like that!!  Blows my mind.  I so hope my kids don't do that at school!  So anyway.  They had a good time at the auction.  I loved that Charity spent almost all of her tickets on the "Mom cleans your room" card.  Makes me laugh.  It was a lot of fun.
After the auction, I sold tickets to the movie and the popcorn and drinks.  Then we tiredly dragged ourselves went downstairs (it was past our bedtime BEFORE we started the movie!).  Erika had bought the "Choose the movie" card at the auction and she had chosen "Chipmunks II Chipwrecked" so that's what we watched!  I think it was a good choice for everyone, either that or they were really good at not saying otherwise.  They all seemed happy about it.  I LOVED this part of our party.  Everyone was happy.  Everyone was sharing.  Bradley and Kelly were sitting on the mat with their goodies combined, in a basket, to share, while sitting under the same blanket!  It was priceless!  Noah and Luke were being buds.  Everyone was pleasant!  I think someone knocked over Erika's popcorn and everyone jumped up to help, Bradley quickly offered her his cup, and I just watched in amazement.  They really are so good to each other!  I love these moments for me to just savor.  I love my kids.
I think the party was a success.  Overall, I was happy with it.  I think we will attempt to do it again soon.  That and a few other ideas I have planned for using stars.  Just an excuse for me to spoil them and do something special.  Next time I will take pictures!  I was too lazy to find the camera.

I heart HEART DAY!

Valentine's Day was a really fun day!!  Busy, but fun!  We woke up to Nate's amazing heart ham and egg sandwiches.  So yummy!  Then Nate took the kids to school with their Valentine's boxes in tow.  I was so pleased with how this normally overwhelming project, went this year.  

Tuesday night, Bradley got a head start on his Valentine's box.  He knew exactly what he wanted to make and I was happy he was planning ahead and not waiting til the last minute.  I helped him a little, but this is what we came up with.  SO CUTE!!!  He loves bunnies!  Wish I'd gotten a picture of the cute puff ball tail we'd made.  He also took care of writing out his Paper Airplane valentines all on his own.

Kelly also had hers planned out way ahead of time and had it finished Tuesday.  She had googled it and found a fun "Iopd" box idea.  She did such a cute job on it!!  Very creative!  I love this girl's initiative, I did nothing to help.  Same with her cute little Valentine's, I'm not even sure when she did them all, she just did it on her own.

Luke made his Kitty bag at school, so I didn't have to do that.  My favorite part about getting ready for Valentine's day was watching Luke write out his Valentine's.  He had the list of the kids, and his Kitten/ Puppy Valentine's there in front of him.  He would pick up a valentine, stare at it for a few minutes, thoughtfully deciding which kid that Valentine would be perfect for.  Then, even though it is certainly not his favorite thing, he wrote out each person's name!  Along with From Luke. It was THE sweetest thing!!  He is such a thoughtful little guy.  I loved being part of that with him.  I think this was his first time doing that!  Last year I think he wrote a few and then had me write the rest.  And we just wrote his name. :)

Charity has had her hands full with so many other projects lately.  She was somewhat unmotivated, and frankly out of time to make a Valentine's box.  She had asked me to write out her Valentine's which I said I would, but then she ended up taking them to bed with her and doing them herself.  Kelly, having seen how disappointed Charity was about not being able to make one, decided to make one for her!  She googled another picture of something she thought would be good, and then stayed up late to finish it!  It was really cute!  She had put so much thought and love into it too.  I'm not sure why I don't have a picture... I'll have to do that.  She surprised Charity with it and Charity was pleased.  I love it when they think of each other on their own and find ways to serve one another.

So once Nate left with the kids, to school, I texted him a shopping list so that I could keep him out of the house long enough to make his present :).  I'm a last minute kind of girl.  I had bought a bunch of Nate's favorite snacks and made them into a bouquet.  It was a lot of fun.  When Nate got home, he found it and seemed to like it :)  

As I was getting ready and showering, Nate whipped out a beautiful bouquet and gift back for me!  Erika helped me "find" it :).  I was surprised with a sweet gift, a beautiful necklace with a heart and blue diamonds.  I LOVE it!!  Nate's always so thoughtful!  I love that about him.  

After gift giving, and reviewing our schedule, I decided with the evening's happenings, it would be better to go out on our date (my turn to plan) during the day, for lunch than wait for dinner.  Plus this way we avoid the rush.  So I frantically found us a sitter- THANKS AGAIN, A MILLION TIMES OVER, SARAH!!- we quickly picked up Noah at his friend's house (he'd been there all of a half hour), dropped he and Erika off at the Hatch's and we were able to go on our date.  We went down to Draper to The Good Wood BBQ Co. for some yummy BBQ. It was a nice time.  We hurried back to make it to Bradley's class in time for his party.  Nate dropped me off at the school and picked up Noah and Erika.  

The party was a big hit!  I was happy with how our food station went.  We made little kiss mice and had donuts and pink "Sweetheart Floats"- that's what we decided to call them while we were dishing them up.  I think Bradley liked it and that's all that matters to me.  He held Jack the majority of the party, until Jack got fussy.  He sure is proud of his little brother.  It was adorable.  

He got to play a couple games, and make these cute "Love Goggles" at his party.

School was out, everyone had had a good time celebrating with their classes.  Lukey was especially enthusiastic about it and when he got home, I found him going through his Valentine's.  He was so caught up in them!  It was so sweet!!  He knew that each kid had made that Valentine especially for him and he was taking them all very personally, it was adorable!!  He read each one.  I loved it!

I kind of wish I'd gone all out a little for the kids this year, I didn't really do anything for them, but I've found it to be overwhelming when I try to do too much.  This was a relax and take it easy year :).  We did get some heart pizzas from Papa Murphy's to top the day off :).  That was fun.  There was just a happy feel to the evening. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed the day.

 I love Valentine's Day!!  

Random Pictures

You can't really tell in this picture, but Kelly still had her black eye, aka: Make up, on.  I sitll think we should have just put some make up on the other eye to even things up.

I love having pictures of these three together.  They're such buds these days.  I hope it lasts.

Cute Kelly in her new outfit, my favorite thing about this outfit was when she was trying it on and raving about how cute it was, she goes, "It's SO CUTE!!!  *annonymous friend here* is going to be so jealous!!"  I just loved that she had found something she loved so much!  

Journaling

- Monday night we went to Smith's to go on a mini-shopping spree (that's what it felt like) to get the things everyone's been needing for the last little while.  It was a very productive shopping trip.  Most of what we were looking for was on sale!  So that was nice.  I thought it was a lot of fun.  And that's saying a lot.

- The girls finally went to Activity days on Tuesday.  We've missed a bunch of them recently.  The annoying thing being that we simply forgot about it.  Not that we had anything better to do, because we didn't!  So frustrating.  But they did have a good time!  Frosted heart cookies.  They are always so happy when they come home.  I am sad for next month when they split up and Charity goes into the older group!  It will be fun for them to have something of their own I guess though.  And it's only a matter of time before Kelly moves up too.  2-12-13


-Wednesday was our honorary FHE.  Since the Jazz game we had wanted to go to was actually an away game, Nate just did a lesson.  It was a pretty fun one.  We all were assigned a part of a face to draw.  Noah had shown us how amazingly he can draw eyes earlier that day when he and I were making his "Valentimes box", so Nate asked him to draw an eye.  Luke was assigned the hair.  Bradley the ear.  Kelly an eye.  Charity the mouth.  I had the nose and Nate had the other ear.  We all placed our pictures together to make a face and realized that even though the face wasn't perfect, together, we had still made a pretty good face.  He likened this to our family.  We all play a certain role.  We were all put in this family for a reason and together, we make a pretty cool family.  We might look a little strange, or not be perfect, but this is OUR family and we make it the best.  I loved telling the kids about how important they are to our family.  How each one has a special responsibility and that Heavenly Father sent them to our family at the time that would be best for them and for our family.  It was neat.  I think the kids liked it.  Kelly wowed us with her fruit salad she had learned to make the day before at Activity days.  She sure latched onto that recipe and was so excited to share it with us!  It was really yummy.  Something for Kelly to add to her repetoir.  it was a nice evening.

- Friday evening, Nate and Charity worked on her History Fair Project.  We were all pretty tired, but I dragged everyone downstairs to clean up the Toy room with me!  It was a much quicker process with everyone's help!  I was offering excessive amounts of stars for help and since our Star Party was coming up, they were all very willing and able helpers!  I loved it!  That's big.

Journaling

-We had our Chinese New Year celebration at my Mom's on Saturday.  Simon made yummy food and we all sat around and talked.  I was feeling like crap and then had to deal with disappointed kids since we ended up not being able to go swimming, so the evening was a bit of a drag, but we managed to squeeze in a movie night.  I think things went fine.  Wasn't my favorite day though.  2-9-13

- At Stake Conference on Sunday, we got to hear Charity, Kelly, and Bradley sing in the Children's choir!!  They've been working on these songs for about a month now and it sounded so beautiful!  Like angels.  As most people have said.  They really did great!  I missed watching them for their first song, the Missionary medley, but I could hear it from the Mother's Lounge.  I was glad I got to watch them sing the next one.  I love watching my kids perform.  They are naturals!  And it was fun to see how reverent they were during the whole 2 hours (not counting the hour BEFORE the meeting started when they were practicing!).  They were great!

- Sunday was a rough day for me, for some reason.  I need to start charting my crappy days to see if it could be hormone related.  It's hard to tell when I'm not having a period.  Sorry if that was tmi for anyone, but I don't really care :).  I was really down.  Could have been from not feeling good too.  Either way.  I was grateful for Stake Conference.  It was a very nice meeting.  I LOVED President Lake's talk.  He talked a lot about having faith in Heavenly Father's plan and his timing.  I struggle with this as most of you know, and it was a nice reminder.  A nice little boost.  To be able to remember that things go the way they do for a reason and that things usually end up better than I could have planned.  It was a good thing for me to hear that day.  I loved seeing everyone from the Ward Canyon ward too.  Something about those people just brings a smile to my face.  I love them.  I love this ward too!  Don't get me wrong, it's just a rare occurance to see so many of them at once.  It really lightened my day and my mood.  I was grateful for their smiles and love.  And I did leave the meeting with a smile on my face and a better attitude.  I've been trying so hard to control my moods lately and have a better attitude after reading about attitudes in.... darn, I can't think of where it was that I read it... but during my scripture study.  About how when we are not having a good attitude, we are letting Satan take control.  I don't want to do that.  Seems like ever since I started focusing on it, it's been harder... not sure why that is.  But anyway.  I feel better today, I guess that's good :).

- Sunday night was Steve's Birthday Party up at my Dad's.  It was just us, Steve, Jauslin, Dad and Dawn.  We had a lot of fun though!  My Dad got party favors, noise makers and such for the kids.  We had pizza, ice cream cake, watched clips of our favorite home videos, watched some "Brain Games" on tv, and played a few rounds of pool... I can't believe how good Bradley is!!!  It's crazy!... the whole night was a lot of fun for everyone!  Good times.  Glad Steve could turn 25 so that we could all get together :).  Happy Birthday to him.  2-10-13

- Monday, Nate took the day off so that he could help me.  I think he was probably still worried about my attitude from the day before, and thoughtfully wanted to give me a helping hand.  He ended up filling in for me in Luke's class for his 100 day party.  That was a lot of fun for him and Luke.  Then he helped me with Jack while I made my Mango Chicken and Coconut Jasmine Rice for my dinner exchange.  Which turned out really good btw.  That night we were supposed to go swimming but once again, we let the kids down.  Nate and I had the idea to go to a Jazz game so we decided Wednesday would be our FHE for that.  Unfortunately, we found out later that the Wednesday night game is an away game, so that got ruined too... we'll just have to go swimming Wednesday night I think!  Anyway.  It was a pretty lazy day otherwise.  Which turned out to be a really good thing because Erika was sick all night Monday night.  She was on fire with a pretty high temp.  She seemed okay most of the day Tuesday though, just needed to be cuddled a lot.  It worked out nice that Heavenly Father helped Jack sleep better for the first part of the night so that when Erika came down for the last half, I was able to take care of her without too much trouble.  I was pretty tired though.  It's always funny to remember back on the weird stuff I say or do with my sick kids in the night.  Hopefully nobody else remembers.  She has a habit of rubbing arms or sides, or faces, or hair, or WHATEVER else she can get her hands on in the night when she's sleeping with you.  It's a little on the nerve-racking side for me, but it's still such a sweet habit.  I am grateful for the nights when she sleeps in her own bed :). She "prise"s me with that every once in a while!  :)   2-11-13

Ahhhhhh....

"aaaahhhhhhhh" just accurately describes how I feel about this evening.  So many things just felt good.  Here's why:
1. ice cream.  good stuff.
2. Erika voluntarily went to bed and actually stayed in it, and went to sleep a half hour before "bed time" (I use quotation marks because nobody else even went to bed at bed time tonight, it was almost an hour and half later that they were all down... so a half hour before is pretty amazing!)  She's our toughest competitor when it comes to bedtime stalling.  She was tired.  That is a good thing at night.
3. Luke decided he was going to do a book report!  They are optional and I guess he's seen a few kids do them at school, so he wanted to do one!!  This kid does not love reading, and only reads scriptures with us after a lot of begging and pleading. So this was pretty monumental!  He read the whole book, Robot Zot, and then helped me fill out the Book Report worksheet to describe what happened in the book!   It was amazing!  I'm still in awe.  He loved it even.  Took lots of time to draw his picture on the back.  Oh, I'm just so excited for him!  I hope he loves doing it and does a whole bunch more!
4. Bradley's prayer.  He blessed the girls to feel good about their science fair projects and that they would be "proud of their work".  What a cool little brother and how insightful of him to know that they might need a prayer for that.  He really is impressing me a lot lately!  All day in fact.  He helped the younger boys, help him, clean their room.  He was doing Simon Says to get them to do it and they were all having so much fun!  I loved it!  He did too :) he said, "I hardly had to do anything!"  What a cool kid.
5. Noah was happy.
6. Charity was getting all anxious and excited for her Maturation program tomorrow, I can't wait!!
7. Interviews with the kids went so well.  We were interviewing them to find out what jobs they want this month, but I loved being able to sit and talk with them just the three of us!  They are always so happy with the attention and I feel like it's very productive and worthwhile.  I enjoy it immensely!  Hopefully jobs can go even better this month.  They really did well last month overall.  We'll see.

I loved this evening.  And now it's time to go to bed :).

Jounaling

- Saturday was Spectrum testing for Bradley and Charity.  (I'm still kicking myself for not just registering Kelly for it... I kept waiting for her teacher to send home the form... )  They were at opposite ends of the district unfortunately, so Nate took Charity, I took Bradley, Kelly babysat, and then Nate hurried off to work.  I think they did well, they were both exhausted afterward!  I can't imagine what it would be like to have my kids in different schools, away from each other.  I secretly hope they don't pass.  But either way.  I know they're smart.  I don't need a test to tell me that.  So do they.

-  Monday we took the car in for what we thought was an alignment problem and found out that it was actually the tire separating.  There was a big bubble formed between teh outer and inner layer of the tire.  It was a pretty big deal I guess, and a miracle that it didn't pop/shred on the freeway during one of the many times we drove it.  We're SO blessed.  Then Gary, our Elder's Quorum President, who manages the Big-O gave us a KILLER deal on some really nice heavy duty tires.  I mean a REALLY good deal.  Another blessing.  I really like that Heavenly Father takes such good care of us.  I am not sure we deserve it, but I'll take it regardless!  I spent the day trying to get a chance to clean my house.  I did get about 9 loads of laudnry folded, a couple more washed and dried, a couple loads of dishes done, and a few other random chores, but seriously, it is hard to do housework with a baby.  Even when I don't have a car or anywhere to go.
After school, I took Luke to his well-child visit.  It was nice to hear that he is still growing, even though he doesn't eat.  And then we had his 5 warts frozen off.  Poor kid!!!  I hated seeing him go through that.  I hope with all the hope in my little heart, that he doesn't have to go back to have anything else done to them!  2-4-13

- Since our car was all better, we were able to drive out to South Jordan for Grandpa Russ's 68th birthday.  We all met at IHOP for dinner.  Everyone (with the exception of the out-of-towners) was there!  It was lots of fun.  2-4-13

- We found out this week that come April, Nate will be losing a day a week.  This will bring our monthly income down about 20%.  It's only supposed to be until October, so hopefully it's not too bad, but it's a little frustrating with all that we've had planned.  A house, Disneyland... etc... I am trying to not look at it as a wo is us kind of thing, but it is a huge bummer.  At least he still has a job though.  He will also be losing all of his annual leave, and personal leave.  Just sick leave will be left.  We'll see how it goes I guess.  Hopefully it doesn't really happen.  Who knows with the Government.

- I spent most of the day Tuesday driving my Mom around because she was stuck at home and babysitting.  We brought them home with us.  Then that night, we had Chris and Stephanie over for dinner.  Good food, good convo, and good news- they're having a baby!  Due early September.  We're excited for them.

- Wednesday was 8 Cow Woman night.  For Relief Society.  It was a lot of fun.  I wish I had a talent to show off.  And I think I might try to get back into couponing again.  We'll see.  It's like a part time job and I don't know if I'm up for that.

- Thursday was the Science Fair!  Kelly's been working on her project for a few weeks.  She did one where she tested plants growth with different liquids.  She found oiut that Coke helped it grow as much as water did.  And the lemon juice, energy drink and carrot juice did not.  She was so cute about her project, did the WHOLE THING! all by herself.  I was SO impressed!  I can't believe how much initiative that girl has.  Charity did a project as well (they both did them by choice, they were not required).  Hers was testing the resistance of different metals to electricity.  Very cool.  She had a good time.  She did a great job as well!  Hers required a little more help from Nate, but she did well.  We missed the drawing and announcement of the winners, but Charity won something in the drawing.  I think they should do winners for the 4th and 5th graders, even though they do not have to compete, and cannot move on.  Just for fun.  Oh well.  Kelly was slightly disappointed.  It was a little anticlimactic for her I think.  But she's still planning on doing one next year, so I think it was okay!  I'm so proud of them for doing extra curricular activies like this.  I love it!  They're just so awesome.  We went out to ice cream to celebrate!  Grandpa Hatch joined us even though he'd missed the Fair.
2-7-13

Luke is SEVEN!!

Luke has always been my little baby Luke.  He is such a sweetheart!  I have loved watching him these last couple years, with starting school and all, and seeing how much he has grown.  He is such a neat kid.  I am thrilled with how well he is doing in school.  His reading has just picked up like crazy.  He rarely needs help with words even during Scriptures!  It's amazing.  I love that he has lots of friends, that the kids love him.  I knew he would do well socially.  He is such a fun kid.  I love how sweet and gentle Lukey is.  He is a good little boy and always tries to please his Mom.  He'll go to great lengths to try to do what he thinks I want him to do.  It's adorable.  He's very energetic.  He has really loved playing with Buddy.  They're kind of the same age right now, so they get along really well.  They wrestle.  He's totally sweet with his baby brother and as always, very respectful and loyal to his brothers and sisters.  He is just very pleasant to have around.  He loves his wii games.  Mario is of course his favorite.  He would choose to play Mario over anything else I think :).  He does love playing outside a lot though.  Especially on his scooter and now his motor scooter.  He loves to snack.  Anything snacky is good.  All veggies are not so good.  He still hates potatoes.  He has gotten pickier with his eating but we're letting him earn snacks for the next day by eating his dinner and he's done really well so far.  He is always hungry.  His best friend is Carter.  Friends are really important to Luke.  He does what he can to make his friends happy.  It's fun to watch him share and be really generous with his compliments to his friends.  He gets very attached to friends as well.  He has a lot of love for each one.  He LOVES playing board games.  Monopoly especially.  He loves the buying stuff part.  And he quits playing if he can't have Boardwalk :).  He feels like the cheaper properties are not even worth having.  I see this kid going big :).  Luke is a precious little piece of our family.  He is the very center.  It's nice to have him on our side and to have him playing on our team.  He is a kind and loving little person.  I love him so much!  Happy Birthday Luke!

Jackie Boy

Look at those beautiful eyes!!

I keep wondering if they will stay blue.

And of course the one day I think of, and have the time to take pictures, he has a scratch from Buddy under his nose.  Buddy jumped up on Nate tonight while Jack was in his arms. So sad!!  But he's still cute :).  And stuff under the nose has rarely stopped me from posting pictures in the past- right :)

Whenever he smiles his whole body convulses, so it's difficult to get a good shot :).  He's SUCH a fun little boy!

He's always got to have something in his mouth.  I wonder when he's going to start REALLY sucking on his fingers.  I keep wishing i could get him on a binky... he has other plans apparently :). 

Luke's Real Birthday

Luke's actual birthday was on Sunday.  This is a tricky day for birthdays at our house, but I think he was spoiled good enough :).  He woke up to his streamers, sign, and Nate did a cool blockade in front of his bedroom door with the crepe paper.  He had to bust through it in the morning :).  That was something new!  He got all dressed for church and we let him open one present.  He chose to open the one from Bradley (the only one that was wrapped :) ), and he got his beloved silly putty :).  This was the one thing he told me he wanted for his birthday.  Funny kid.  

After church he got to open 3 more presents from Kelly, Nate and I, the family, and then I surprised him with my "gift", a game of Monopoly.  Not the game, just me playing the game with him :).  He was happy about that.  We had a lot of fun.  

What a goofball!!  Demonstrating how much fun the box can be!

Testing out the new game before Daddy had to go to work.

After that we went up to Grandpa Hatch's house for his Superbowl party!  Lots of goodies, lots of ipad fun, and lots of goodies!  I must say that I do not want to watch the Superbowl ever again.  There is far too much smut for how little I like the actual game.  I especially won't be watching it with my kids again anytime soon.  I'm glad they were all distracted, but even at the end, on the way home, Bradley informed me that we were not keeping the Sabbath day Holy and he was unable to feel the Spirit.  I failed as a Mom that night.  I will not make the same mistake again.
Grandpa and Steve both spoiled Lukey with gifts, two new wii games!  Wahoo!!  Luke was thrilled :).  I love watching him enjoy HIS day.

When we got home, we realized that Luke had not had a chance to blow out candles yet, with the different cakes and parties, none of them were fire friendly.  So we put some candles in a piece of bread and he blew them out :). Ya gotta blow out candles!

Luke's Birthday Parties

Friday was a pretty big day for us.  Nate and I spent the morning getting things ready for Luke's birthday party and then went and did a No-Missing-Work Party for Kelly's class real quick in the middle of it before hurrying back to get things going.  Luke requested an Angry Birds party, so we got the idea to do a lifesize version of Angry Birds.  We needed lots of space, so I reserved the church.  Luke was so cute when planning things.  He was very particular about who he was going to invite, and then a couple days later had 2 more people he wanted to invite.  One was a new friend he had just become friends with and the other was a kid who "doesn't ever get invited to birthday parties".  I thought it was so sweet of him to invite someone because of that.  He is such a sweet boy and such a good friend at school.  I love that about him!  He was kind of picky about what we were going to do at his party.  I had a hard time coming up with ideas he agreed with.  He thought of doing a bowling game, and then pinterest helped us with the pinata replacement.  (I'm so sick of pinatas!  I needed a different way to pack the kids' bags with candy that would be just as fun)  We decided on a dart game with balloons filled with candy.  A little dangerous, but it ended up being a lot of fun!  And nobody even came close to getting hurt.  Luke was totally dying to play it the whole time :).  And when our Angry Birds game wasn't all that we'd dreamt it would be, the balloons were a great recovery.  I'm really sad I didn't take more pictures!  The party was a crazy blur, and I really didn't have a free second with holding Jack, fixing the cake, and just plain running around like a crazy person.  I was slightly bummed that I'd not had more time for the cake, the balloon idea I'd had, and a few other things, but overall, the party was a success.  I knew it had been when I heard that one of the boys ran out to his Mom's car saying, "That was an AWESOME PARTY!  We got to use SHARP DARTS!!!"  hahaha.... yeah.  It was awesome :).  I love how easy little boys are to please.  They make these parties fun.  I know Luke had fun and that was most important :).

I loved watching him open his presents!  He was so good at showing his appreciation even for the gifts that weren't necessarily his favorite.  Very polite!

Luke's best friend Carter knows him too well!  Got him a stuffed Angry Bird :).  So cool.

After his friend party, we hurried home to unload boxes and balloons and gifts, and headed off to Carl's Jr. for his family party.  This was an interesting party.  We were so grateful to have Sarah and her boys, Nate's parents and Mom and Simon there.  It was super laid back and we didn't even bring our own ice cream and cake as planned since so few people were coming, we figured the ice cream sandwiches they sell there would be perfect, and saved myself the trouble.  I thought it was a lot of fun to sit and talk.  Everyone seemed to have a good enough time.  Luke informed me at the last minute (like, as I was telling him it was time to go, after at least an hour and a half of playing) that he doesn't like that playground.  Funny boy.  We've been having a lot of talks lately about how we have to choose to be happy and enjoy things because we want to.  It's not taking :).  But I think he had enough fun.  He just gets bored and all the fun he just had goes out the window.  He's normal.  And our big day was over.

Bradley's Bobcat

 Bradley's Pack Meeting was on January 29th.  This one was a big deal!  He got to be the announcer for the Pledge.  That was pretty cool!

He was presented with his Bowling Belt Loop.

AAAAAAND!  He received his first rank, his BOBCAT!!!!  Wahoo!!!  We were SO proud of him!!  

 He pinned on my very first scout pin, SO exciting!  I have been dreaming up ways to display my pins ever since.  If anyone has any good ideas, let me know, but so far, I think I'm going to make a ribbon sash with each boy's name (I'm planning on all four of them giving me lots :) ).  I love it!

Then they did a few Arrow of Light advancements, which I could totally see the wheels in Bradley's head turning... thinking about when he gets his.  

And then they did Cookie Face :).  

My little Bradley looks so grown up!

Bradley has been SO into Scouts already!  He went over to the newest Scout, his friend Sam's house the other day to help him with his acheivements to earn his Bobcat.  What a cool kid!!  I can tell this is right up his alley, he will go far!

We went out for ice cream to celebrate!  YAY BRADLEY!!