Christmas, and trip to Utah

Sorry I haven't written for a while. Things have been a little crazy here at our house. We had an early Christmas at home, then went to Utah for Christmas and see my lil Bro Kip come home from his mission. Before we left....

Robert won an award at school for academics.


We got hit by a major snowstorm and almost weren't able to go to Utah



The kids got an early present from Mima and Papa of this horse that they made:)


We put up this huge picture in our living room. Rob's dad was super nice and made the frame and found the glass for us.

Christmas morning Robert got up early and got dressed before he even went down to see the toys! It was so fun to hear him open up every toy saying "this is the best present ever!"

That night Rob fell asleep early and I started to pack to leave for Utah in the morning. We weren't sure that we would be able to go, because the news said that i-84 would be closed indefinitely, but we hoped! In the morning Rob ran upstairs and said it was open, and we were off! We visited my sister Katie and our girls had fun being princesses!
We visited my Grandpa Boulter.
The kids got some fun presents from Grandma and Grandpa Webster! Austin got this cool Arc.
Robert got a Star Wars game. He has lOOOVVED this:)
Belly got this fun skirt, Which can also double as a great hat.At our house, anything can be used as a dress up right?Lindsay gave all of the grandkids some awesome mugs to paint.Monique scored with the hugs with the presents she gave the kids.It was fun to visit with our spunky Grandma Nan.Kip came home on the 27th. Mom had made signs for all of the grandkids to wear at the airport to greet him. It was so exciting to have him home:)
My mom made a bunch of awesome signs for the front of the house to welcome Kip home, including yellow paint in the snow.Then we opened presents. Here are the grandkids...
I think I see a bit of a Kip smile on Belly...
Lindsay was lucky enough to get to snuggle a sleepy Austy.We visited Ben and his family and the kids loved riding on Rocky's new toy...Tio sure eaned some points that night.

On Monday we took some family pics. Here is Bryan's fam
Ben's famOur fam. My kids really weren't into cooperating at the moment...
Ethan didn't really want to cooperate either, so here is one I took at home of Emily and Ethan.
Here's Katie's fam
Then, the parents, Kip and Lindsay...
We actually did take one of the whole family together, but I don't have it yet...

We had fun visiting with my friend Wendy and her family. All the kids had fun dressing up there.Austin has decided all of a sudden that he is in love with trains, as can be seen here.Robert started taking this costume off when he saw me about to take this picTanner got into the act too..
Bella had lots of fun playing with her twinner cousin Abby.And Robert did with his twinner cousin Liam, and fun cousin Harry, all swashbucklers! Rachel had fun entertaining the kids with Jeff's ratWe gave Heather's family some presents for Christmas. They were grateful and gave us lots of loves!Lots of people seemed to be getting Wii's this year on both sides of our family. So, we had fun playing some of that too. Here is Nan and Shanna getting into it.
And, I just had to throw in this one of my beautiful enchantress..
Robert lost another tooth while we were there.And we visited my good friend Lupe on the way home:)
It was a great trip:) Sorry this was so long, but I had to catch up!!

Window, houses, visit.

Ok, so the pics this time are all messed up. I am sorry, I am not working on my own computer this time, so just use your imagination about where these should go........

So, first of all I wanted to mention Robert's new favorite phrase; "Easy as cheese." He says this all the time! If I ask him to do some homework that he likes or a task he likes to do around the house (i.e. feed the plants, turn on Christmas lights), he will get a big smile on his face and say, "No problem, it's easy as cheese."

I asked him about this cheese phrase, I said, "Isn't the phrase normally 'easy as pie.'" He responded, "Yes, but I don't like pie, but I really like cheese. So, I say easy as cheese."

Isabelle's favorite word on the other hand is "Bubba". I just bearly put two and two together the other day that my mom's name for Kip (lil bro coming home from mission in two weeks!) is Bubba! I swear with both of their affinities for belly buttons and Bubba, they are spiritually connected! (Or something). Isabelle uses the word Bubba in a funny way though. If she is mad at you, she will call you "a Bubba". If she didn't like something she will call it, "a Bubba". (i.e. "We can't stay at the park! That's a Bubba!")

Austin just likes to say "Mama" all day long. I can't say that I mind that at all. He comes up to me multiple times every day, grabs my legs and hugs them saying "Mama, Mama," over and over. All of the naughty things he does (like write on our hard wood floor in red marker this week) just melt away when he sweet talks me like that. He does say many other words. I feel like he picks up new words just about every day! We have even had him say a few prayers. I love it when he folds his arms too. He pretty much squishes both of his hands up to his neck and squints his eyes, for prayers.

So, as for the happenings this week. Isabelle made gingerbread houses at preschool and Austin got to help. She did a great job and had lots of fun. Austin loved eating the candy, and putting some on too.

We got some cute curtains up in our bedroom and I am so excited about our new window! (still)

We tried to see the Christmas ships in Portland with very little seeing, oh well. The outing was still fun.

We went to Philomath to celebrate Nan's birthday with her and it snowed while we were here! We are snowed in this weekend!

Also, we are coming up to Utah soon for Christmas, and to see my Bro Kip come home from his mission!

Tomorrow is my Dad's birthday! Happy Birthday Dad!

Christmastime, and painting

So, for FHE this week we got our Christmas tree. Robert had been asking for days and was so excited. It was so fun to see how excited he was to pull the decorations out of the boxes and want to participate. He has such a good memory about his ornaments and what was in the decorations box.



We were also excited this week because we finally completed painting our bedroom. We waited to take the blinds down for the last. I have hated those blinds the whole time we were in that room, and when we took them down, we realized that there was a beautiful window underneath! I didn't want to cover them back up! So, we decided to keep the turquoise blinds down and just put up some curtains that we can move over and see the window whenever we wanted. So, here is a before and after of our window.
We are so happy with our new window! And our new room!

As of other pics, I let the kids do some painting on Sat and they were in heaven.



Austin struck again, this time it was moonsand madness. We really don't know how he gets to these things. I was sure the moonsand was in the kitchen. At least this one was easy to clean up.
I hosted at our Stake's nativity festival. They had a really cute kids room there where the kids could dress up like part of the nativity. Isabelle decided that she would rather be a donkey than Mary, but was very upset that she couldn't be an angel.

Thanksgiving

We did a few things to celebrate Thanksgiving this week. On Monday we had an FHE on Thanksgiving. I told the story of the pilgrims and read some scriptures on being grateful. I had printed off a bunch of little turkeys that said "I am thankful for..." and each of us filled in the blank on a bunch of these papers. We then stuck the paper turkeys all over the house so that each time we saw them all week we could remember all that we have and to be grateful. It ended up being so fun and the kids loved it. It was fun to hear what the kids came up with:

Robert- treasure boxes, clothes, pirate swords, candy, dad
Isabelle- sippy cups, superheros, princesses, teddy bears
Mom- our home, my marriage, the gospel, family, hot water
Dad- technology (I love technology.....), our savior, kids, wife
etc....

On Wednesday I was making bread, so I had the kids form it into a fun shape. I was going for the Thanksgiving theme, (this really is suppose to be a turkey)
but Robert and Isabelle did their own thing. Robert made a rabbit and
Isabelle had me help her make a princess. When I took the bread out of the oven Isabelle thought that it looked like the princess had a skirt on rather than a dress, so she didn't want to eat it anymore. Notice the sour expression on her face, the fact that the plate is not on her placemat. She didn't want to be in this picture either. Oh, kids are fun.


For Thanksgiving Day, Rob's parents Nan and Bob were here. It was so nice to share the load of all of the meal with Nan. I made my pies the night before and half of the stuffing, so all I had to do on Thanksgiving was the turkey stuff and mashed potatoes! I also made these little cornucopias for everyone which turned out kind of fun.

Rob got a newspaper Thanksgiving day (since we don't subscribe) so we could get in on all of the good Black Friday deals. We scoured the pages all day on Thursday. Then, Rob and I got up a little before 5 am on Friday to go Christmas shopping. I ended up going to like 3 or 4 stores, and waited in some pretty long lines. But, I think that it was worth it and we are almost done with Christmas! (A weight off my shoulders!)
Later that day we went to Omsi and watched the Polar Express at the Imax theater there with Rob's parents, then hung out with the Hutchies!

The next day we had a sitter for most of the day so Rob and I could do some more shopping, then we spent that night with the Russons! What a fun week!