Christmas Eve Nativity

11 Kids (6 and under), 1 Mary, 1 baby Jesus, 1 angel, 2 kings, 1 Joseph, 5 shepherds
Chaos. But fun!

Ode to Hand-Me-Downs

I love you oh-so-much, hand-me-downs
I love the way you feel
For dressing up or dressing down
I always feel surreal
Someone loved you once, I think
Then got sick of you or grew
But I love you NOW because
you I never knew
I can play dress-up all day long
dance and jump and sing princess songs
Because I have you, and someone did a good deed,
We feel like spoiled princesses indeed.

For Julie and all the others who have donated to my princesses!

Silly Kid

This is Liam's "cheesers". He often does this while eating. Suddenly he'll stop and look at you and then pull this face. It's hilarious. Last week we had a babysitter. While she was here, Liam colored all over the wall I had just painted. I took him and showed him the wall. I crouched down next to him and said, "Oh no Liam! Look at the wall. We don't color on the walls. What a mess. What do you say to mommy?" He looked up at me pulled a cheesers and said, "You welcome!" and ran off happily to play.

Family Night at the Car Wash

One of our favorite and most inexpensive family night activities is taking the van to the Supersonic Car Wash. As mundane as it sounds, I decided to make a short photo journal of our "regular" car wash experience. First, we get in the van (duh), then we drive to the car wash. Just prior to entering the car wash, at least one child begins to scream hysterically because it's "too loud." Then eventually everyone calms down and we get to see how clean our van is in a BIG mirror. Finally, we vacuum out the interior and the van is all ready to become afflicted with the children for the following week(s). So as to prove to myself that the van actually IS clean sometimes, I took a final photo just before we left. Ironically, there is a large storm forecast for tomorrow, and two more the rest of the week. Well, at least it looked clean for when we went to "The Shopko" to do a little Christmas shopping. Fortunately for us, the kids only screamed in the van and not in the store. Woohoo!!! I am flattered if you got all the way to the end of this little muse. Come back frequently for equally engaging and coma-inducing narratives from the same author.

Aren't they cute?

This is Thea and Ben on their first day of kindergarten. What a great day for them but traumatic for mommy. Ben went to preschool but it was in a ward member's basement. It's different when you drop them off at a big school and leave them at the mercy of their teacher, bigger kids, and new friends.