Valentine's Day Gift

Last Saturday was a beautiful, serene day! We went to the St. Louis Temple without children!! It's the first time we've done it! Don't get me wrong...we've enjoyed taking them along for the road trip and we've done some fun things along the way. But usually Jon or I go into the temple while the other of us goes to the park, or somewhere for lunch with the kids, then we switch.
This time, some dear friends of ours agreed to have them stay at their house. So we dropped them off a little after 6am and carpooled with some friends who were also going and we had a QUIET, calm, enjoyable drive. Then at the temple, I was able to go in with my dear husband! Wow, what a sweet blessing. The best Valentine's gift ever.

Dear Sisters...

Please excuse my blog absence. I could use lots of excuses...camera issues, pregnancy barfness issues, don't want to do my laundry...that sort of thing. The guilt has piled up and really, when you don't want to do laundry, this really is a great alternative.
So...a lot has happened since I last wrote. Mary turned 2. She's so cute (but I think she's also the most terrible 2 I've had)! I guess that's awful to say that about my little pumpkin, but lately she's taken to having daily temper tantrums. We put her in her room and she screams so hard it sounds like there's going to be mushroom cloud in there when we open up the door. Before I put her in I try talking calmly to her, singing to her, distracting her, whatever I can think of. Putting on a movie usually works but we can't be watching movies all day at the whim of the 2 year old!
Then we had a lovely Christmas! I think the Serpent Spiral K'Nex set was the most exciting gift of the season. Jon and the boys built the roller coaster (as tall as Nathan) and it graced our front room for the next week and a half!
Danny and Nater stayed up past midnight on New Year's Eve (Jon however didn't make it).
Then we found out we are expecting #5 baby!!!
Followed by my birthday (#34), Jon's birthday (#33)(yeah, I'm the older woman), then Natey's birthday (#6). We had a great pirate party!! Jon was the pied piper and led the very eager children around the yard looking for secret treasure map clues and finally the hidden treasure chest. What a great dad!

And now, I guess you could say I'm pretty much in early pregnancy blah land! It's all part of the bliss I guess!
I love you gals!
Toodle-oo!

Nursery, nursery, nursery...

Three weeks ago I was released from my calling as Relief Society teacher and was extended a calling to be the Nursery Leader. I have to say that for the first few moments I felt disappointed that it wasn't a "greater" calling, but that initial vanity left me quite quickly and was replaced with a happy, excited, grateful feeling.
For a while the previous nursery leader had no "official" helpers, only parents who would sit in. As a result, it was very difficult for her to have an organized program since there were sometimes over 18 children in there.
We have since started using our new stake center (which is joyfully a maximum of 5minutes away), had a ward split and a new one created, and had some serious reorganization. Now there are 3 of us called to work in the nursery and I think we are really clicking! We still have up to 16 kiddos in there, but in January almost half of them will be sweet little Sunbeams. For our lesson we split and I take all of the Sunbeams-to-Be (plus Mary Jane because well, you know my girl). Man they are so cute! Today we were learning about how we can pray to Heavenly Father.
We switched around our schedule so it goes like this:
Check In/puzzles or coloring
Circle Time (that's get the wiggles out game/song time)
Lesson Time (split)
Snack Time (always a favorite)
Music Time (Beth did it with puppets today which they LOVED!)
Free Play Time
Clean Up
Story Time/Check Out
I love the new nursery manual, "Behold Your Little Ones." It's perfect for Family Home Evening with small children and is so simple that the bigger ones can help with the lesson planning. It really directs them towards their Father in Heaven.
Anyway, now I'm home and I am pooped! I've got all the kids down for Sunday quiet time and Jon's asleep already. Ringers are off--and I'm going to take a much needed nap!

Homemade Bread!

OK, so when Jon saw me staging and taking the bread photo, he said, "Wow, that can only be a blog picture!" Right he was!
Well, we finally got a wheat grinder! I'm probably more excited than I ought to be, but I've been wanting one forever! We did a group order with some people in the stake and were able to save $50 (a penny saved is a penny earned!) It's a Blendtec Kitchen Mill and it grinds up loads of other stuff...dry beans, rice, popcorn (for cornmeal), etc., etc.
I mainly want it to grind up wheat though. Now I just need to get some since I ground up the wheat from one of my two cans! That's our next home storage installment!
I made four loaves in loaf pans and then did the other four on cookie sheets.




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And I had LOTS of EXCELLENT help! (Yes, Lib, I purposefully made sure the blue dough cutter was in the picture...thank you, I love it!)

Good ol' Halloween

Two Sheriffs, Dorothy, and a Red Dinosaur...

Our little pumpkin carvers.



Last night, I took the kids out trick-or-treating while Jon manned the door. We never go any further than around the block, patroning both sides of the street naturally, and we ALWAYS get SO MUCH candy! Of course, it is the only time I see a few of those neighbors. By the time we got within 5 houses of our own...Joseph and Mary Jane would sit down for a while on the neighbors steps and required some prodding to get up. They like to walk but aren't used to carrying (ie dragging) heavy bags along the way! I offered to carry them or their bags but they (especially Mary Jane) WOULD NOT have it! They only let me hold their little hands and Toto (Emily) in his basket. This morning, Joseph informed Jon that he wanted to go out trick-or-treating again today! (No, thanks!)

Aaaah Weddings!

Jon's getting pretty good at the art of self portrait!







All dressed up!


Weddings are soooo much fun!


Dreaming of trains! Who wouldn't?

















My sister's wedding was absolutely beautiful! Fantastic job wedding planners, Jill (bride), Lib (sis), and Mom (mom)! Here's some sad news...I just loaded all of my pictures onto my computer and am now realizing that I don't have any pictures of the bride and groom! Crazy! And, well, it WAS crazy trying to wrastle four children into being sweet and cute for that amount of time! Can't wait to check out your pics Veronica--queen of great pictures! Love you Jill and Mike! Congratulations!

All I Want For Christmas...

Bye, bye baby...
Danny lost his two front teeth! I get a kick out of his ssss sounds! Cute boy.