Eli is 4!

Only 13 days after Natalie's, we had our second December birthday!  Eli was so excited to be 4.  Both of his preschool friends and pretty much all of his church friends had already turned 4 and he was quite sensitive to the fact that he was still only 3.  It was a great day!

Eli decided that he wanted those store-bought powdered donuts for his breakfast.  It sure made it easy for me.  I don't know that he actually ate any that morning, though.  He is funny about breakfast sometimes and doesn't eat much.  

We got to have preschool at our house on his birthday.  We had fun making tortilla snowflakes:

They loved them!  It was fun pulling that idea out again. (Remember when I made them with my tiny girls? So crazy that Lizzy was younger than Eli is now.)

Our neighbor's ginko tree was dropping leaves like crazy and it was just about perfect that day so we had to go and play in them.  It was so much fun!  We had leaf fights, made leaf angels, then built up a pile and jumped in.  Our favorite thing was getting big handfuls and throwing them up in the air.

So beautiful.  Ginko trees might be my very favorite:

That afternoon we made Eli's Daniel Tiger cake:

I freehanded that one and it turned out pretty delicious.

We had beef stroganoff for his birthday dinner, including an apple salad with raisins (his request).

He was so excited to open his presents and eat cake and ice cream.  I only got video of that so I took some screenshots.

He was so excited to get this Pigeon activity book he'd wanted for a long time:

He also loved this creature power suit to match the one Nate got for his birthday:

He was the perfect age this year.  He was so excited about everything he got.

Getting ready to blow out his candles:

Eli has had a great year.  He has grown so much!  He is getting older and slowly correcting so many of his cute phrases that we wish wouldn't go away.  Here's a few of my favorites that he still says:

-"Keen": king. He sometimes has trouble with the "ing" sound.

-He fairly recently figured out how to say his "l"s and the "th" sound.  He's still pretty proud of it and over-prounces them or excitedly tells me about how he can say different words now.  It is adorable.

-One day out of nowhere Eli said, "Yo, yo, what's up home slice? Yo, yo."  The other kids and I cracked up so of course he kept saying it over and over after that, hoping for the same response.  We think he got it from Studio C. :)

One of Eli's favorite things is to use force lightning, or air/earth/fire/water-bending on people (from Avatar).  He will often do it to adults he doesn't know that well, which is a bit awkward.  Luckily he's pretty cute so he can get away with it.

I mean--isn't this pretty terrifying?

This is one of my favorite looks Eli gives:

I'm so thankful for my little buddy.  I'm thankful for the time we have to hang out during the day while his siblings are at school.  He absolutely loves games so we play a lot of those--Go Fish, Memory, and Cover Your Assets.  He's good, too, so we are genuinely competing.  He also loves playing Wii with his brother--especially Mario games.  He loves watching Daniel Tiger, Wild Kratts, and Odd Squad.  

I love this picture I found on my phone:

He still loves cheese and yogurt.  And carrots!  He really loves carrots. 

He also loves marshmallows and can often be found sneaking some in the kitchen.  He's also been known to hide cookies and other things he steals under his pillow.  :)

Eli's very favorite days of the week are Mondays and Fridays.  This is because those are his days off from doing dinner chores.  He is often heard telling people, "Today is my day off!" or telling me, "I can't wait for tomorrow--it's my day off!" He really doesn't like doing chores.  But, when he decides to work, he's a good little helper.

We sure love our Eli.  He brings so much happiness and sunshine to our family.

Natalie is 10!

It's hard to believe that Natalie is now a full decade old.  How did that happen?  She is growing up fast.  I think she had a pretty good birthday.  It was a school day so it was a pretty normal day.  She picked a yummy breakfast--crepes with raspberries and nutella.  Delicious.  Eli and I took some chocolate Coscto muffins in to her class since they are pretty strict about store-bought food (boo).  

I finished working on her cake after school and we had an early dinner of roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy.  She opened her presents early, too.

Here are some of them:

She was excited to get another bow and arrow set from Nate.

This one's a lot better and shoots pretty far.  The kids even managed to shoot one over the house!

She also loved this new big stuffed dog:

She loves her stuffed animals and always wants more.

Eli gave her this snow globe since he had dropped her other one and broken it.  

Sadly, Elizabeth later dropped that one and broke it, too.  We don't have very good luck with snow globes, I guess.

We did all that stuff early so we could drive over to Menlo Park for a book signing with Natalie current favorite author--Shannon Messenger.  We were regretting the decision a bit during the drive.  We decided to all pack into Joe's Honda since it was only a few days after our accident.  That was a miserable drive.  Especially because Natalie had probably had a bit too much junk food (it being her birthday) and wasn't feeling great.  We didn't have her cake until the next day because she wasn't feeling well when we got home.

But, I think we were glad we went in the end.  She even got to ask her a question:

It was fun for the girls to get some inside information on the series they love so much (Keeper of the Lost Cities).  Sadly, it was late and we didn't really have time to stand in the very long line to get their books signed but we were able to purchase the new book in the series pre-signed. 

 The next night, we enjoyed Natalie's cake:

That's supposed to be the Hufflepuff crest.  It got a bit messed up when I transferred it.  Natalie took the test for which house you'd be and got Hufflepuff and she's proud of it.  She is definitely kind, hard-working, loyal and patient. :)

Natalie has had a great year.  She has learned and grown a lot.  She finished up a great year last year in 4th grade back in Idaho.  She was able to be in the gifted and talented class and really loved it.  She had some great teachers and loved the freedom she had in that class.  She came really far in math, loved teaching her class about the language roots of different words during her spelling bee studying, and really improved in her technology skills since they were on the computer a lot.  Her teacher told us that she recognized in Natalie a natural leader.  We can see that, too.  She considered running for student council here in CA but then changed her mind while I was in Hawaii.  Maybe next time.  

Natalie is an excellent public speaker.  She has a lot of confidence and projects well.  She is great at reading out loud and read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to all of us in the car recently.  She played some more soccer this past year and improved her skills, but I think she's decided to move on from soccer.  We're trying out swimming next.  She still is a voracious reader and an excellent speller.  She sadly got out in her class spelling bee on the word "coarse" because she didn't ask if it was a homonym and spelled "course".  She was bummed but had a really good attitude about it.  I was probably more upset than her. :)  Anyway, one of the girls who advanced in her class ended up dropping out so she got to move on (she was 3rd).  Then, she ended up winning her school spelling bee.  So, she is on to the district bee next.  She hasn't been working quite as hard to study this year so we'll see how she does.  

She still loves food and cooking.  She is getting better and better in the kitchen and helps me a lot.  She especially loves Mexican food and makes really delicious guacamole and pico de gallo.  She eats nachos almost every day.  For being as adventurous as she is with food (she will try anything) she is a creature of habit, too, and loves her nachos. :)

She is still a great sister and loves planning treasure hunts for her siblings to find prizes, often giving away her media time to them.  She still doesn't love video games much but she will play to make her siblings happy.  She still loves Studio C and knows every skit.  She still makes us laugh all the time and loves singing and playing the piano.  She has a beautiful voice and can hold her part really well when we try singing different parts.  She loves listening to music, too, and loves Hamilton with a passion.  :)  She also loves twenty-one pilots.  She still has that way of sitting and taking in music when it's playing, like she used to when she was a baby.  

We sure love Natalie.  Our family wouldn't be complete without her.

Culture Night: Iraq

We finally had another culture night in November.  Iraq was the country chosen and we decided to use it as an opportunity to share one of our favorite restaurants with our kids--dishdash.  They all loved it, too!  Eli mostly only ate the pita bread but he loved that.  I was again impressed with the kids' willingness to be adventurous and try new things.  It was a really nice evening outside on the patio (with the heaters :) enjoying good food, and talking about a different culture with our kids.  

Joe talked about Islam and we had a good discussion about that.  Elizabeth saved the day and helped Nate do his presentation on sports in Iraq.  He was not happy about doing it this time, for some reason, and kind of throwing a fit but she stepped in and soon they were laughing.  I thought these slides were funny:

 Lizzy's:

 Eli and I had a lot of fun using Google Translate to take a picture of our door mat from Target which looks like this:

We verified that the Arabic one did indeed say Hello. 

Then we decided to watch "Aladdin" because of the "Salaam and good morning to you!" line.  

It was a successful culture night! :)

Thanksgiving 2016

We had a great Thanksgiving.  We drove to Tooele to Jon and Jaime's new house where we all gathered with Tom and Lorna before they left on their mission.  Their house is beautiful!  We made it around 2am and had fun the first morning taking it easy.  This cutie warmed up to Joe pretty fast:

We had a fun kids talent show one night.  We've got some talented grandkids!

James sang a song and told jokes:

Lily and Joelle were flipping all over the place:

Maddy sang an adorable song:

Randon played his cello:

He's a natural musician!

Jace did some awesome karate moves:

Nate showed off his ninja warrior skills:

Eli did some of his cool spin moves:

Maggie did some gymnastics too:

Todd drew an awesome picture of a turkey:

Elizabeth, Natalie, and Joelle and Randon played on the piano:

I sure loved listening to my girls play Christmas songs this year.  They are getting so good.

One night, everyone went out to the movies to either see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them or Trolls.  Eli didn't want to see either so I stayed home with him and Toni stayed home with Archer.  We decided to go to McDonald's for dessert and to play in the play place.  

Archer cracked us up by sticking his whole cone in his mouth so he could do play:

We also celebrated the nearby birthdays:

Some other cute moments:

Eli spent the whole trip trying to choke everyone with his sith powers:

Maddy getting him back:

We had a little bit of good time with Tom and Lorna.  They were busy and stressed getting everything ready before they left on their mission to Chile but I'm glad we had that time with them.

It was a great trip.  We got up early to leave for home Sunday morning hoping to beat any bad weather over Donner Pass.  It turned out that we should have just slept in.  We were doing fine, there was some snow but the roads weren't too bad.  We got through a tough spot fine and were just happily driving along, listening to Christmas songs when we suddenly slid and couldn't recover.  We hit the front of our car on the left cement median, then spun and hit the back of our car on the right cement barrier.  It was terrifying of course and the kids were so so scared but I was of course just so grateful that we were all in one piece.  Joe hopped right out of the car to warn oncoming traffic.  Soon after, when it was just the kids and I in the car, Natalie suggested we say a prayer so I did and just felt so overwhelmed with gratitude that we were OK.  There were so many things to be grateful for in this experience.  Here are some of them:

-Everyone was wearing their seat belts.  Sometimes the kids get unbuckled without us knowing and I was just so grateful that hadn't happened.

-There were cement barriers there so we didn't go off the road.  Only about 70 feet earlier there weren't any.

-So many kind people stopped to help us.  They let our kids sit in their cars instead of standing out in the snow.  I didn't even have good jackets for everyone so I was so grateful.  They gave our kids gatorade and snacks and just talked to them.

-One couple--Nate and Melissa Waite--one of the first people to stop turned out to be LDS.  They saw our BYU sweatshirts.  Their son was serving in Chile on a mission! They lived in the Nevada and they delayed their trip for about 3 hours so they could drive some of us back to the tow place, while the rest of us rode in the tow truck.  They were both teachers and were so kind.  I just felt overwhelmed thinking about their kindness and we were all so grateful.

So, we drove to the tow place, where thankfully a rental car place offered to pick us up to take us to rent a car.  At first we thought there wouldn't be a car big enough for us but thankfully we found one.  After renting that car, we were back on our way.  We stopped to get lunch at Costa Vida in Elko since we were all starving by that point and we had a good talk about everything.  We even laughed a lot thinking about "Mele Kalikimaka" playing while all that was happening.  It was healing and I'm glad we took that time to talk.

Here are the pictures of our poor gray van:

That dent is not far from where Nate was sitting in the back.  So thankful that all he ended up with was a goose-egg on his head and nothing worse.

It was not the way I expected Thanksgiving to end, but it sure made me extra grateful for my family and all of our blessings.  It was such a relief to make it home safely that night.  We all took the next day off recovering from whiplash and other pains.  It was a process but we all healed well.  After a few weeks of figuring things out with just our Civic, we were able to get a new van and now things are back to normal.  It's funny how fast life gets back to normal after traumatic events like that.  I hope we can always remember and be grateful for each other and God's blessings and protection in difficult times.