366 Laughs- January 23rd 2016

1/23/16

Cub Scout Pinewood Derby!

With most of the family down and out sick, only the Cub Scouts and Dad attended.
Timothy got 3rd place!  And Samuel got to participate even though he's no longer a Cub Scout, having turned 11.






And for your enjoyment, here's a Doc (from Back to the Future) hanging from the ceiling fan.

366 Laughs- January 8th 2016

1/8/16

Emilie being "half Sith".  She's cute though, even when she's trying to scare her brothers.



Timothy bought these Magz with Christmas money.  They were well worth it.  Look at that!
Plus the accidentally photobombing Nathanael.



Christopher with most of his Superman collection.  He really and truly loves Superman.

Some of these new ones he got for Christmas or bought with Christmas money.  He also loves Polar bears.

366 Laughs- January 2nd, 2016

1/2/16

Tonight our laughs came from decorating cookies that we've needed to make since Christmas when Tom got his ABC (already been chewed) cookie cutters.  Here's a recap:



So since our Kitchenaid is still out of commission, I picked up some clearance Christmas cookie icing (say that 3 times fast) at Target and one color was red... lots of bloody dismemberment, apparently.



But there was a lot of creativity, too.  It was fun.  Benjamin even did some after he got home from work and before heading to bed.  Which we are all doing early as we start 8 am church tomorrow!


BYU!  He made a "Y" out of white sprinkles.

I love the happy fish.  Those feet have problems.

Yay!  Cookies!  Yeah, she didn't understand decorating quite yet.

She was very careful with her decorating.

Samuel is having fun.

Timothy did a lot with gore...


Emilie's zombie... Tom was more meticulous.


Liberty decorating a butterfly.  The rest got scary.

That's where those feet came from.

Nathanael autographed his first few.  I guess they're collector's editions.

365 Joys- December 24th 2015

12/24/15

Christmas Eve!


We had the Sister missionaries over for dinner, so Benjamin was entertaining his little sisters as we got everything ready.

Just some cool kids.







Christmas Eve Pajamas!





Ginny REALLY loved her new Frozen princess nightgown.










Our manger was filled with straw, thanks to secret acts of service between members of our family.




Merry Christmas to you and yours!

365 Joys- December 22nd 2015

12/22/2015

Star Wars day for our family!

I brought some of the kids in the afternoon, and Tom took the older kids later in the evening (after Benjamin got off work.)

We loved it!

(our nearest theatre does $5 Tuesdays...)

Liberty is an awesome Jedi.  See, girls can use the Force, too!

My troop.

No, Juliana and Ginny didn't go.  They would have if we'd all been able to go together... but we gave Jules the choice and she chose staying at home and watching Wonder Pets.  Ginny took a nap.

Emilie being a Sith.

365 Joys- December 18th 2015

12/18/15

Again, we were talking about favorite memories from the year and Timothy's was going to see Jurassic World with me.

One of our Christmas presents to our children last Christmas was that they each got to choose a movie to go see with Mom or Dad.  

Here he is with our Bluray.

365 Joys- December 16th 2015

12/16/15

So we get free products (and toys) to offer honest reviews about the product.  Liberty received this Monster High (which I can't stand) Mega Bloks set which has lights and music and as it is a building set, I said ok.

A whole bag of pieces was missing.  Liberty was distraught.  This was her first big building experience and it was so frustrating to try and find the pieces only to realize they weren't even there.This never happens with Lego.  I contacted the company and after several emails were exchanged, they replaced the parts.  It was not a big deal and the shipped them super fast, free.  There's even a place on the site to do this.

So here she is, finally building the set.  And she really did build it herself.  With only small amounts of help.  Here's Samuel stepping in to do something she really had given up on.



The boys got involved even though this was clearly a "girl" set.






Kudos to Mega Bloks for a happy (reviewer) customer!





Here's a pose by Emilie.

365 Joys- December 14th 2015

12/14/15

For Family Home Evening, Emilie and some of her siblings gave us a surprise Nativity.

Emilie was the angel, the Narrator, and the planner/plotter.

Timothy was Joseph and Liberty was Mary, and there's baby Jesus.

Nathanael was the innkeeper.  "No room" he peeked around to say.  And he made sure we followed the Joseph Smith translation, where it says "inns".

Samuel and Juliana were very excited shepherds.  Or at least Juliana was the excited one.

This shepherd ran ahead to see Jesus before the angel even said anything.

The angel told the shepherds not to be afraid but to find the baby.

Here we go.  Right on time. 

No King Herod isn't the same guy as the shepherd.  How could you ask that?
Here come our wise men.  With gifts.  Looking for the baby Christ child.

This little wise person got frankincense or myrrh all over her.

Herod says to make sure to come back and let him know the good news.  Nah, think the wise men.

The wise men come bearing gifts.

The star the wise men followed.

Toothless wise man.

I think Nathanael is sad that it's over.