Turning point, Jakers, and some cuddly wuddlies

This is always a cool thing in our family. We put jack jack in his forward facing car seat!! We cleaned out our garage Thursday and in the process realized that a couple of our car seats had expired. So it seemed like the right time to move everyone up. Erika's new seat requires her to be 40 pounds so we weighed her and she was 39.8!! Bradley suggested that she eat a hamburger :) I love his wittiness!  We got rid of the car seat that Noah and Erika had as newborns.  Kind of a bummer, but I do love the one we had for Jack. We just won't have a back up one if we ever have another baby. Just look at how happy he is to be turned around!! So adorable!

JAKERS

We were invited to Johan's birthday party down in Springville, on Friday! Maija, Kirstin, Becky, Nancy and and all the kids all met up with us at Jakers. That was a really fun fall activity!  They had a corn pit, like a sand box, but corn feed instead. Pretty fun! Who knew. 

They buried Lukey!

Jack had a lot of fun, he got out of the stroller and participated in most of the fun! Crazy to think that my baby is old enough to do all this stuff now!

There were two mazes. This was the little kid one, there was a taller one for the older kids. Our kids loved those! Luke seemed to think the weren't hard enough. 

The giant hay pyramid was a lot of fun. 

You can see Luke, king of the mountain!

Kellly had a great time! But she did hurt her hip in the big slide. She touched it out though and still had a good time. 

There's Bradley jumping down from the tippy top!  He had a great time. He seemed like the cool big brother the whole time, taking his sibs around. He kept asking when he could pick out his pumpkin. 

Erika loved this place! All the animals, and the slide, she was in heaven!

I loved spending time with my cousins too. They're all such fun parents!

Noah ran around doing everything over and over again. He loved it. He was totally anxious to get his pumpkin too though. 

Nate was the fun dad, went down the slide and everything! So cute!

They loved feeding and playing with the horsies! I enjoy watching Charity with animals. She really has a way with them. Especially dogs and horses. So gentle. It's fun to watch her. She couldn't get enough of them. We were surprised to see them munching on pumpkins. 

After Jakers, we went over to Nancy's for some pizza and Oreo spiders. It was heavenly! I love spending time with them!! Nancy said I was adopted into the family and that since I was in the family I got one of the cute tie onesies they made for all the baby boys! So sweet!  Then she passed out old food storage stuff! And then we made our grand exit :) I always feel like such a huge group when I see how empty a place is after we load up our car. Oh well. They were all so sweet to us, didn't feel like it really mattered :). Love that too. 

CUDDLY WUDDLIES WITH MY JACK JACK

One of my favorite things is getting Jack down for his nap. He cries a few times and then he's out, and oh so cuddly. This particular time he had wrapped his cute, chubby arms around mine and was laying his head on my arm. It was so sweet! I loved it!! That's one of the perks of my job :) can't get enough of it all!

Journaling week of 10 –13–13

MY FIRST LESSON

I got to give my first lesson in relief society this week. It was on missionary work. I got up to give the lesson and just started bawling. I was so nervous. Everybody was really nice and I could tell that everybody was doing their best to help me out and making comments and stuff. And eventually I did catch my breath and I was able to talk and make sense of what I was saying. And I do think it went really well. I'm just grateful that I have this opportunity to improve this area and become stronger.  I'm really excited for next month's lesson and I feel like now that I've tackled the big hill of the first time I'll be able to do a little bit better job being less nervous. Hopefully.

10 – 13–13

NOAH'S BLUE SLIP

NOAH came home, just overjoyed and full of confidence when he announced that he had earned a blue slip at school for "following the class rules". I can just imagine how anxious he was to received one of those, having watched all of his older sibs receive them and the praise that comes with it. I was so glad that we had some ice cream in the freezer from Brad's party and were able to whip it out and "celebrate" for him. I loved it. He did too :) 10-14-13

BISHOP'S STOREHOUSE

Thanks to the government shutdown we are in a position where we don't know if we're going to have money this month. It's been a little bit stressful. Hopefully everything will work out and we won't have dug too deep of a whole. In the meantime we've been able to receive a lot of help from a lot of people and we're very grateful for the blessings that have been poured out to us. We had the blessing of being able to go get groceries from the bishops storehouse today and as embarrassing or humbling that is, it's been such a blessing and it was such a miracle. I now understand why using the church's welfare program is so much better than using the country's. We spent a lot of years on food stamps and wic and on programs that people are forced to contribute to that to participate in the church's program and witness the love and the spirit that is involved in giving charitably it's just such a difference.  I wish I could go back and do it the other way. It was fun to tell Erika that we were going to go to Jesus' store and get some of his food because he wanted us to have it. It meant so much to me to be able to experience. Hopefully things will clear up soon with the government and will be able to carry on with life and do things on our own soon, but in the meantime it was a blessing and I'm grateful for it.

10 –15-13

PACK MEETING

Bradley finished all of his requirements to earn his wolf badge! We had a really exciting pack meeting where he was awarded his wolf badge, 4 yellow beads, as well as a gold arrow point and three silver arrow points! We were so proud of him!! I got pictures with my camera, you will see those later. We just had to go celebrate! (And in the back of my mind, we were celebrating for the end if the government shutdown as well) 10-16-13

FALL BREAK

Wednesday night was the beginning of our break, we kicked it off with a big movie night with the kids and some friends. Popcorn everywhere :) I think they had a good time. 

The next thing we did, Thursday morning, was a big, family-sized cleaning of our garage. We've only lived here for 6 months, but our garage was a mess. We got it so clean and organized. Feels so good!

Thursday evening we went up to my dads for dinner and help with his phone. We still haven't been able to change his over to my line. 

Friday was Jakers down in Springville with the Mottishaw's, and then play play play with the friends for the rest of the evening. 

Then Nate and I went out to see Captain Phillips- pretty cool movie if you don't let yourself get distracted my hidden agendas and wrong details, we decided. 

I loved being with my sweetie. 10-18-13

COOLEST SITTERS ON THE BLOCK

Charity and Kelly are now favorites in the Widdison home! They felt pretty cool about that :). I'm so proud of them! They tended tonight again. 10-19-13

Bradley's big day!

Brad's birthday started out just like any birthday with the birthday sign and all the fun excitement from all the brothers and sisters. We had waffles for breakfast as per his request. And then they all left for school before he even opened his present. I had actually plan on letting him open it but he didn't remind me so it just sat on the mantle all day.  I hate that I didn't get to be with him all day on his birthday but I know he had a good day. Once he got home he was able to open a few presents we gave him a soccer ball and some racquetballs. He had wanted to go and buy his bike with his birthday money that he had received so we all went to Walmart and picked out his bike with him.  It seemed slightly uneventful since there was no party but we all had a good time and sang to him and made it a good day. 

Bradley and I have been planning his birthday party for a very long time. It was a Halloween/glow-in-the-dark party. We planned a lot of fun games we ended up playing hunt for the ghost, mommy wrap, glow-in-the-dark ring toss, glow-in-the-dark bowling, he had a jar full of M&Ms that the kids could guess and then we ended up playing murder in the dark and a couple other impromptu games since we had planned too much time for his party. But I think the boys had a good time. There was a lot of candy involved. I made a giant candy cake which was a lot of fun to make. It was fun to have Bradley all excited about it and telling me how wonderful it was.  His friends too. It's always interesting to me to see how kids act at birthday parties. But we had a lot of fun and I was really grateful for the chance to throw that party for him because I knew he was going to have so much fun. I love Bradley and I'm so excited that he is growing up to be the person that he is. And that he wants to be a good person and tries to make good choices to be so. I'm just glad I get to be his mom. 

The rest of the summer pics

Luke really loved the fire. He is mostly safe with it, but still makes me nervous!

Cute Kelly!

This is the tree that the woodpeckers were pecking in while we ate our food.

The kids really loved the fire everyone would stand around and just watch the fire together it was so much fun!

This one goes down in the books. This is when Isaac and Rachel were teaching us how to sing the bazooka song and the Hermie wormy song. They were so hilarious I will never forget Isaac's dance moves.

I love the laid-back family time that you get when you're camping.

Noah sat there and slept all through all the songs and everything it was so funny.

Love me some cute Erika. 

She caught a Caterpillar and kept it in this bottle the whole time.

This is the campout that Jack kept himself busy the whole time. He played in the dirt so much. He was just covered in dust and dirt. It was fun to watch him play with the cup and dumping the rocks and sand out. But what a mess.

He sure wore himself out

Nate top of the kids how to start a fire with Flint and Steele it was so fun.  Charity really got into that. They were all professional firestarters by the time we were done camping.

It was so fun to see how much Erika had taken to Hannah by the end of the camp out. They were best buds. I hope I got enough pictures of them spending time together. 

Everybody really got into the stick whittling.

Luke climbed pretty high in the tree.

Heather was so cute with Jack wanting to hold him and play with him even though he wasn't being very social. I think he finally warmed up to her near the end. Guess we'll have to see how it goes next time.

Our "hike" was a great success. The kids had a lot of fun climbing on the logs and playing in the water.

Everybody about Jack. 

Strike a pose

He's getting so grown up.

Nate and Rob talked all the kids into dunking themselves in the freezing cold water. It was a lot of fun to watch them torture themselves. We all enjoyed it.

Luke and Rachel spent a lot of time together. They seem to have a lot of fun and enjoyed being seven-year-olds together.

I still can't believe they were able to break the sticks like this it looks so painful.

And more staring at the fire :-).

Sleepyhead.

We were testing the theory about boiling water in a paper cup in a fire and sure enough the cup did not start melting until the water had completely burned out.

I love this man!

And this one too :-)

These pictures are all out of order now I'm not sure what happened when I was uploading them but either way sure they are.

Here they are with Nate's fish that he caught. 

Kelly was really anxious to get the fish herself.

She had been looking forward to this part at the mountain man rendezvous but they didn't have her do it!! She decided she would do it at our campout.

Eeew! Gross!

Look at her go.

Okay then you take over

I love how everyone's just standing around watching

Now it's Charity's turn.

Ulgh!!

JACK'S BIG DAY

Kelly was so nice to make Jack's sign for his birthday.

Apparently these guys can't get enough of the birthdays.

Here is our big one-year-old!

Loving the attention!

And the balloons

He was so cute and happy all day

He really loved all the attention.

Everything goes in the mouth still

He was a little apprehensive about the whoopie cushion. But Brad converted him.

I loved watching him open his present! He was so excited about it and couldn't wait to get on it.

I think his big brothers and sisters were as excited as he was to play with his new toy

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

Luke started second grade this year. He has Mrs. Featherstone.

Kelly is in fifth grade this year and has Mr. Paver and Mrs. Masterson.

Here's our big sixth-grader Charity has Mrs. Johnson this year.

And our big third-grader, Bradley, has Ms. Wood.

Look at my big kids I can't believe how much they've grown up! I don't know I had to wait a whole week for his first day but it eventually came.

JACK'S BIRTHDAY PARTY

Here's his little monster cake. I had been wanting to make this cake for a long time and thought it fitting for his birthday. I didn't put any teeth on it until Kelly mentioned that it would be cute with teeth that look like Jack's with the space in the middle. I think she's right.

And we had to have a small cake for Jack to eat and smash in his face. So I made this cute little car cake.

He had a pretty good turnout for his birthday we were all very happy with the guess that came.

He wasn't quite sure what to do with it

But he figured it out

FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

What a cute little guy. Noah has Mrs. Piper this year.

He was so brave and when in all by himself even though we all knew he was a little bit nervous he was so brave.

BALLOONS DOWN THE STREET

One morning we woke up to the sounds of hot air balloons filling up. So we ran outside and got a closer look at the balloons launching from our park down the street. It was so cool.

STATE FAIR 2013

Kelly put her art in the state fair again this year so we made sure to get tickets and go. This has become a family tradition that we all love and look forward to. We had a really good time this year the kids all got to go on rides and we watched a couple of shows it was pretty fun.u

They got to touch a Moonrock.

Here's Kelly's work of art