pictures of the kids, dog and chickens

Abbie can push the shopping cart by herself:

The boys on a frog at the Salt Lake Aquarium:

 Katherine on a frog (she has to do everything her brothers do):

 Manzo's dad being bad chewing on something. He got caught here:

 Manzo with his dog mommy:

 One day we went up Payson canyon and explored. It was such a beautiful day!:

 She was eating snow:

 The little orange dot is Nathan (and Alex) climbing the big hill:

The chicken coop. Notice there are chickens in the chicken wire and some escaped:

 These are the Barred Rock chickens:

 The red chickens are the Rhode Island Red:

 Manzo with human mommy. Notice he's trying to eat me:

 Crazies:

 The cute fur ball:

 He's so little!

 I haven't taken enough pictures of Abbie so I took a lot:

 This is the cutest smile she gives me whenever she sees me. All I have to do is call her name and when she sees me she smiles like this!:

 The unpotty trained in the house:

 Making friends:

 Only one little bottom tooth (adorable!)

 Heart shaped pizzas with heart shaped pepperonis for Val. Day:

 Katherine went on a date with Todd to BYU's Cinderella ballet. Here they are eating ice cream:

 I curled her hair for their date:

 Here she is anxiously waiting for it to start. She sat mesmerized for the whole 2 hour production!!

Happy 10th Anniversary!

Feb. 9, 2011 was our 10th anniversary! For our anniversary, I wanted to get Todd a Bosch mixer and surprise him. So I went all the way to Orem to the Bosch store on a day that he was out, so he wouldn't even know I was going anywhere. I picked it out and had it at the checkout when guess who walks around the corner: Todd!!!! I had NO idea how he knew where I was, except that he had me bugged or something. It just happened that he was meeting someone for lunch at a little South American restaurant next door, and Todd arrived early so he wanted to go in the Bosch store and look around for a little bit, and there I was.

He really likes his mixer and has been making lots and lots of bread, pizza dough, cinnamon rolls, etc. since he got it. I like his new mixer, too:). He surprised me with a new sewing machine for our anniversary. Alex is taking a sewing class and knows more about it than I do! I'm very excited to make dresses, quiet books, doll clothes, skirts, aprons, etc. etc.!!!

Our new puppy!

Meet Almanzo-- "Manzo" for short! He's the cutest ball of fur you've ever seen! We picked him out a few weeks ago and he was ready to go today so Todd and Katherine went to pick him up tonight. Both boys are sick with the flu, or we would have all gone. We thought of lots of names: Cousteau (for Jaques Cousteau since our theme this year is explorers and we are doing marine biology), Flame (we just read Heleman 5 and we all loved it and Nephi and Lehi were in flames but were not burned), Diego (as in Dora and Diego), and Almanzo after the main character in Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Farmer Boy" book that we just read and all loved. Alex loved the book so much he read it in his Friday school, we read it as a family, and he read it again to himself. Reading that book made us want a farm and want animals, and that's what lead us to getting him. In the book his mom called him "Manzo" for short. Out of all the names, he seemed like a Manzo, and he would look when we called him Manzo.
He is full of energy and playful and hasn't been at all shy or scared since it came to our house. We are all so excited about our cute puppy!!!!

Boys Club today

 

For Boys Club we went on a nature walk at the path by the Spanish Fork "River" by our house. We all had a lot of fun. 

 We found a lot of dog, cat and bird tracks in the snow. Joseph pointed out that there is a tail drag in this bird track:

There were a few birds and bird nests we saw:

 The boys found a frozen river:

Then we brought home some sticks and made a fire and roasted pink heart marshmallows:

He made points on the sticks for the marshmallows for the others:

Joseph is craZy! No jacket, shorts, and NO shoes!

Marshmallows on each point:

farmer boy

Last week Nathan got 6 chickens. We're having a lot of fun with them. They're about 2 years old. They are very docile and nice, but a little naughty. They are eating some of their eggs. A lady was selling her 6 hens and her supplies so Nathan took the allowance he had saved up and got a small business loan from us and bought them. He was supposed to have built a coop with me, but it ended up that Todd built it. I started it, but it wasn't working, and so I stayed in with the girls and Todd did it. He did a great job. Nathan is taking care of the chickens and sells the eggs. I had to have a talk with those chickens about eating the profits. I gave him a business notebook where he writes details about all his sales.

Nathan could be a farm boy. He wants even more chickens and any other animal he could have. He LOVES animals. I would love to live in the country on lots of land and have lots of animals, too. We just finished the book "Farmer Boy" and it makes me want to live on a farm.

sewing

Tonight I borrowed a friend's sewing machine so that we could make bean bags for a service project for FHE (giving away bean bags to kids). That way they could learn a new skill and do service. The boys went with me to pick out the fabric, and then I taught them how to sew it and thread the machine (their very favorite part). Here is a bean bag that Alex sewed completely by himself. We're going to have to ask Grandma Judy how to do a hidden stitch to stitch up the hole, because I don't know how to do it. Nathan loved sewing but Alex REALLY loved it!

Then after the kids were in bed, I sewed some things. At 2am, Alex came down and scared me half to death! He had been reading "Superfudge" by Judy Bloom the whole time! He said he loves it. He never ever stays up late- he's always the first one asleep!

I sewed a dolly blanket and pillows. Katherine and I picked this out at the fabric store-I love the fabric!

Katherine saw this fabric with the ballerinas on it and HAD to have it! So I made her a little purse:

 Sat. we got a firepit and on Sun. we roasted hot dogs and smores in the backyard:

blah

I've been in a blah mood yesterday and today. I think it's because the kids have been really really cranky and I don't know why. Maybe it's also the weather, and my house being an overwhelming disaster, and maybe I need some adult attention. Todd and I even went on a date on Wed., but I've been feeling a little lonely. Or maybe just because of my blah mood. Gotta go- Katherine is screaming.

Here's a picture I found that Nathan drew of him playing Titan Quest on the computer:

Nathan lost a tooth and what's going on now

Me: What do you think the Tooth Fairy does with all those teeth?
Nathan: Maybe she builds her house with them because she doesn't have very good mushrooms. Remember that fairies live in mushrooms?

Nathan just lost his second tooth! Abbie just got her first tooth and Nathan just started loosing his teeth!

Abbie is like the Hungry Catapillar right now. She must be going through a growth spurt! But, she started sleeping through the night! She crawls around and just started pulling up. She is content crawling around exploring and only cries when her teeth hurt, she's poopy, hungry or tired. She is good entertaining herself. Right now I'm writing this and she's trying to stand up, smiling at me, waving a princess figurine around. She's naked except for her diaper.

The other day I bet Todd some money that he couldn't speak Spanish to the kids the whole day. He won. The kids thought he was a toy. They tried to get him to say something in English. Any kind of discipline was out the window. The kids (and Todd) laughed a lot that day. I took Katherine on a date that night and Alex said, "You're going to leave us with a Spanish speaking Daddy?"

Right now Nathan is lining up all the princess figurines and punching them which he said is "exploding them", complete with sound effects. Alex is reading books. He likes to read. Katherine is sleeping- she was screaming and crying for about 30 minutes straight so we put her to bed and she went right to sleep. That was at 6:30, I hope she stays asleep through the night. Katherine is now officially potty trained! She decided that she was going to potty train the day before we left for CA. She did really well while we were in CA. She had lots of #2 accidents but after an accident in the library that she wasn't happy about, and the other day when I said she had to clean herself up from now on (she was not happy about that) she's been doing really well. I'm very happy. Only one more left to go!!