I NEVER THOUGHT

I would be THAT MOM!!!
Tonight I found myself so completely embarrassed at the grocery store. I never thought I would be that mom that walked out of the grocery store with 2 CARTS FULL OF GROCERIES! Oh my goodness, I am so completely embarrassed. I do have to realize I have 4 very hungry and growing boys at home and that is what it is probably going to be like but maybe I should start grocery shopping weekly. That was humiliating! And to make things worse....you know when you get to the cashier and she smiles and says, 'did you find everything you needed?'. Nope, not tonight! She smiled and said 'well I guess you found all you needed, right?'
Oh what joys to come. I know it is only going to get worse when they are teenagers!!! YIKES!

We are thankful

We are thankful this year for so many things. We both were so bothered with the fact Christmas music started the day after Halloween, be decided to make sure we didn't miss making sure to count our blessings and let each other know what and whom we are thankful.

It worked out really good. I liked to pass by in the hall and glance at the cute things the boys thought of to be thankful for here are a few(we tried to do one every day in November):

Jaxon - food, dentists/doctors (he didn't have a cavity at his visit or I am sure he would not have put that one down!), cousins, house, community, indians, police, dad, mom, clothes, transportation, roads, pilgrims, firemen.....

Kaden - trees, bible, windows, school, trucks, mom, books, songs, computers, Tyson, Zeke, Dad, Jaxon, cups, cousins, school, thanksgiving, indians, Book of Mormon...

BLACK FRIDAY!!

Woo Hoo! What fun! Really, I don't know why it is fun other than the fact I get to spend the whole morning with ALL my sisters this year. Mandy was in town this year and she is always so much fun to shop with. Usually because she is the one spending so much money! (love you Mandy!) This year it was pretty even. We were not in as big of a hurry as we have been in the past (we have been doing this for at least 10-11 years) and because of that I lost out on a few deals I was hoping for, but it was still a blast and we ended up scoring on Amazon anyway.
For those of you who don't brave the Black Friday mayhem let me just tell you it takes a lot of planning.....

But after the meticulous planning where, what and who it pays off in the end! We saved $290 this year! It is worth waking up at 4:00 am for that! - am I cheap!?

A scary sight - And it is not even Halloween!

Gregg was a good boy and put the lights up on the house. I wanted everyone to see how stressful it is for me to sit at the bottom and watch this horrifying sight, I swear he was going to fall.

It looks beautiful, even though I know you did it for the boys and not for me!! Thanks!

Wow How the time flies!!!

I can't believe it is already December. I only blogged two little things in November. I guess that is how it goes when you are preoccupied with things. I have been spending almost every spare minute getting our Christmas village up and ready with Gregg. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. We still need to add a few finishing touches (it hasn't even snowed yet in the North Pole or in the City). So after that I am hoping we are done and can enjoy the work.
Gregg and I started this fetish last year. Gregg has always wanted a train under the Christmas tree. So last year when he mentioned it AGAIN for the upteenth time, I said okay get one BUT it has to be a Lionel. My dear old Grampa whom I miss dearly (but honestly believe he is still watching over me)had a whole bunch of Lionel trains. I think when he passed they ended up with my sister (lucky girl)! So anyway, Gregg and I decided on the Polar Express train. But then naturally we needed a North Pole village to go along with it. So it started from there. Gregg being the man he is doesn't do anything little. So he found and bought and found and bought. We went from one little house to a whopping 39 pieces to our village in 1 YEAR!!! No that was not cheap! Luckily he was a really good shopper and found deals. But it still hurt the pocket book a little.
So first we had to get the basics. I found this lady in CA that builds platforms for Dept 56 villages and fell in love with them. I wanted so badly to purchase one from her, but it would have cost $600! Me being the do-it-yourself er that I am I thought we can do it our self. We still have not found how to do resin (that was my favorite part of her platforms). If anyone knows and can give us a hint I would be so happy! It really makes the whole scene so much prettier.

I cut each block out separately then glued them to make it look like ice block walls.

We actually ended up taking this one out and building it again. The blocks were not stacked just right. It looked a little uneven.

The whole house has been completely a mess while we have been working on this! It drives me crazy!!!

Please notice the hard work Gregg specifically did. The shelf in the back has his favorite thing on it. The houses sit on top of a large tunnel for the train. And those houses spell out NORTH POLE! It is hard to see, but it was one of Gregg's favorite things.

Notice the large bare spot, left open for my beautiful resin pond one day. We actually attempted to do one on a scrap and it was not so good (twice I might add).

Our very busy city.

Baptism

Jaxon got baptized. It was again, one to remember, that is all I will say. And by the photo Gregg looks so happy....Jaxon was excited. Zeke, well he was just 'bubbling over' with excitement and I will just leave things at that.

He was baptized and confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He is such an amazing example to me. He really has a strong spirit and I hope it stays with him all his life. He is a good boy who tries his best to do just what he is supposed to. I am so proud of him and for the good example he is to me. We are working on finishing the Book of Mormon (we are almost finished), and if you know Jaxon he is just like his dad and has almost a photographic memory. Jaxon implied when we were done that was all we needed to do. I said nope when we are done we read it again then again and again. He said okay so when we read it 4 times we will have everything memorized and we won't need to read it again right? I said well no we need to keep reading it all the time because during different times in our life we learn different lessons when we read it. He thought for a minute and just rescinded his comment. I could see what was going on in his head (just like his dad) 'Yeah Whatever!'. We will see! He is still a great example and I know if I am teaching a lesson for FHE he will have all of the stories memorized to the point he could teach everyone in the family what the story was about and what we learn from it.

Sad little halloween

So this Halloween was not much to be had. And it is apparent due to my week delay in getting it posted.

We had quite a lot of things going on and there were a lot of shall we say issues this year?! So needless to say we did not get the whole Star Wars theme thing going and I guess that was okay. But to make things worse this is the first year I have been a Mom of two children in Elementary school. I did the whole room mother thing for BOTH classes. While this kept me quite preoccupied (I was at school the entire day!!--with Zeke!) I did not do the good mom thing and get any pictures as I should have. Jaxon stopped in the Halloween parade this year enough to get a picture.....



He wanted to be a Football player. Kaden on the other hand let me get this......



That was all I was able to get during the waking hours!! I have been running like crazy the past couple of weeks and the only time I have felt like I have been able to sit back and think about things are when the kids are in bed.

So I got some other photos of random Halloween things.....
For Jaxon's class I was in charge of the craft. I love this and love trying to find new and different things to do for the class. This is what I found.



This was a larger version. I did smaller ones for the kids. They had fun with it. But surprisingly there were a lot of kids that did not like getting their fingers dirty (I thought it was only my weird boys who did not like having dirty hands).

Then of course there were the pumpkins.....I just love Halloween. Even though it went by so fast I was not able to get photos we had a ball from all of the parties at school to the cousin party and Nana & Papa's, I think it was one to remember!