Eventful week

This past week was pretty eventful for us.  We had a delicious Thanksgiving feast on Thursday with a couple of my brothers and their families.  Then Josh had to leave on another run on the truck, so Loren came and spent the night with me.  We had a fun girls night, painting all the girls nails, and then watching Sense and Sensibility. 

Friday I did some Christmas shopping, and packed so we would be ready to leave on Saturday for a quick trip to Idaho for Josh's niece's blessing.  Josh got home from work at about 5 am on Saturday morning, slept for a couple of hours, and then we left for Idaho.  Our kids are excellent travelers, and we can make it all 5 1/2 hours without stopping.  Even Alex can go that long without eating and never complain.

We had a fun weekend with family.  Josh and Mitch even found some time to ride horses!  Here is a video of Mitch riding Josh's horse, Buddy. 

Also while we were there, we discovered that Alex is getting her bottom two front teeth.  On Sunday, Mitch wasn't feeling well.  He had some sort of stomach bug, but we weren't sure if he had a virus or if he ate something bad.  He felt better by the next morning, and we thought all was well.  Monday night we were all packed up, the kids had their coats on and we were saying goodbye when Sami puked all over.  Apparently Mitch had a virus and Sam had it too.  So we ended up staying another night since I didn't want to deal with puke in the car. 

Tuesday we took our time getting ready to leave, making sure no one else was going to get sick, and in the meantime we played a lot at Josh's parents house.  They had been trying to talk us into taking one of their puppies home with us, and we had done a good job resisting, until Tuesday afternoon.  Then one of the puppies seemed to take a liking to me, and pretty soon we were talking about taking her home with us.  After a lot of discussion of the pros and cons, Josh and I decided we'd take her home with us, so we went a bought a pet carrier and we finally got on the road.

By the time we made it to Mountain Home, Josh was feeling really sick, so we switched places and I drove the rest of the way home.

On Wednesday we built a pen for the puppy, and decided to name her Nutmeg.  On Wednesday night we had a huge windstorm that lasted most of Thursday as well.  The wind was strong and bitterly cold.  We felt pretty bad for our poor puppy who had just lost her mother and brothers to cuddle with, and we decided we better get her a warm house.  We took a trip to the pet store and got a house and all the other odds and ends we needed, and now she's much more comfortable.  Here are some pictures with her and the kids, and one with her in her house.

The kids are excited to have a puppy, and we think she's pretty cute!

Only a year late...

I've had a few people kindly remind me that it has been over a year since I last updated the blog, so I guess I better do it. The longer I wait, the harder it gets to do because there is simply too much to write!

 

I guess we'll start at the top. Josh started driving truck over the road again about a year ago. He started driving for Pride Transport. It was a pretty good company to work for, but it was very hard on our family to have him gone so much. He was generally gone for about a week and a half at a time, then home for a day or two, and then gone again. So in June of this year he left Pride and started driving for FritoLay. He is only gone a day or so at a time, and it has been much better for our family. Plus we get a discount on chips at the company store! :)

Tania is still working at Primary Childrens and loving it. She switched from full time (3 shifts/week) to part time (2 shifts/week) when Josh started driving again. Sometimes that feels like too much still because the weeks keep going too fast!

Mitch is almost 9 and in 4th grade. We decided to put Mitch in Online school this year, and we keep wondering why it took us so long to do that. The curriculum is much more challenging and he has learned so much more this year than he has learned all the previous years combined. He didn't learn much of anything in 3rd grade, and had a teacher that wouldn't communicate with us at all. It was very frustrating for everyone, and so we thought we'd try this method. It is essentially a charter school because it is a free public school. They sent us all the books and everything we need for science experiments (which accompany just about every lesson) and art. Some of the lessons are online and some are in the books they sent us. We are his "Learning Coaches" and there are teachers online available to help with anything. Some of the classes are taught in online "classrooms" where they have a powerpoint/white board and microphones. He loves it and we are so happy he is actually being challenged and learning to buckle down and do his work.

Lizzy is 4. She is a very strong little girl, and she loves to do pull-ups on Josh's pull-up bar. She has a best friend that lives across the street from us. She and Sami both love to play with Eden. It is so cute to watch them play together. They have so much fun. Lizzy is still a very girly girl. She wears a skirt every day. She has to be forced into wearing pants. She loves to get her hair done and her nails painted.

Sami is 2. She and Lizzy have lots of fun together.


They share just about everything, even a bunk bed. And since everything Lizzy grows out of becomes Sami's, they share clothes and toys for the most part too. She has little to no interest in potty training, much to our dismay. She is a very cute, spunky little redhead.

Alex is the newest addition to our family.

She was born the first part of May. She came out with lots of dark, curly hair and darker skin. If I hadn't seen her be born, I would've thought maybe they switched babies on us. She loves to be held. Even if she is hungry, as long as she's being held, she is happy as a clam. Her skin has lightened up since she was born, and she is starting to look more and more like Mitch all the time.

Life keeps going faster and faster the older I get. Hopefully one of these days I'll get caught up...

October 2011

Every October we go down to Thanksgiving Point. They have a corn maze and lots of fall festivities. We didn't do the corn maze this year, but the kids had a blast with all the other stuff they had. Mitch loved the pedal carts, and even the girls liked the rides Tania gave them.

The kids (including Josh) also loved the duck races.

The girls' favorite part is the Princess area, where they have lots of dressups to try on and a princess pumpkin carriage to sit in. This year they even had a stage where they could dance, but the girls were to nervous to do much dancing.

For our neighborhood Halloween party, we all dressed up. Here are our costumes:

Happy Halloween!!