Model Rockets

***Guest Post By Jeff

This week has been busy and with all the gifts opened by the kids, I think I was the most excited about opening the model rocket kit.  During the previous day I spent time putting together the rocket and attempted to get Lincoln and Jackson interested by showing them the various parts and pieces.  After many failed attempts of asking the boys to help me with the project I finished building the rocket on my own.

                We set off to the large park next to Grandma Madison’s house and hiked to the far south end.  There was a strong wind of 15+ MPH which is not ideal model rocket weather.  We were committed and excited to see our rockets lift off.  After 10min of setup and selecting the smallest engine for our first launch, we successfully launched both rockets.  Of course neither of them went as high as we wanted so we installed the medium engine and nearly lost one of the rockets as the wind carried it across the field and nearly out of reach.

                Both Lincoln and Jack are now excited about launching the rockets and want to know when we can use the largest engine to send the rocket to outer space…   Stay tuned for more rocket adventures.

Running to catch the rocket as it floats back to earth with it's parachute working well

Harrison enjoyed the swings at the park after a nice run 

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Last week we had freezing rain that built up quite a bit of ice.  Lucky for me, I didn't have to go anywhere, so I just enjoyed the beauty of it.  The kids loved all of the icicles hanging from every surface.  The roads stayed clear enough for travel in the days following, but everything else stayed coated for days.  So beautiful!

(I'm also grateful for all of the workers who trimmed trees through the summer so that none of the trees fell and knocked out the power!)

Harrison's Fourth Birthday

Harrison didn't think it was fair that he had only had three birthdays when Lincoln had had ten already, so we decided to let him have another one.

He wanted to have a pet party because he loves his stuffed animals so much, so all of the kids got to adopt a pet, name it and make a leash and tag for it.

I had them eat cereal out of a dog bowl with no hands, but Harrison is much too proper to participate.  He just sat and ate his calmly with his fingers while the others raced to finish first.  Several came and went while he sat and quietly ate.  So funny.

We are so proud of our little miracle munchkin.  He is always making us smile with the things he says and does.  I need to do a better job of recording more of that again.  Today he said, " Mom, I learned about not eating the bowl when I was a baby.  I've learned more stuff since then.  How many minutes have I learned about stuff?"

He is very bright, artistic (teachers are always amazed at his motor skills) and aware of what is happening around him. He loves to go to school and always wants to know what day of the week it is so that he knows what to expect.  He still loves his blanket and that poor thing shows it. He likes to organize things and struggles being the youngest - he would love to be able to keep up with "the brothers."  

Getting in the Christmas Spirit

It helps that it is cold outside.  I don't really like that the cold is literally blowing inside though... I see some changes in our front door in the near future!

Jeff always tries to convince me to get a real tree and it was easy this year - we couldn't find our fake one.  Did we give it away in Wisconsin? Did we leave it at our old house?  Who knows; Jeff wins this year!

This is one of my favorite Christmas traditions now... the hats on the pictures.

Christmas cookies were fun to make while the kids were out of school.

...and last night we had our ward Christmas party.  It was all decked out as a night in Bethlehem and everyone dressed up.  It was a lot of fun.  My kids were dressed up when we went in, but it didn't last two minutes.  Ah well.

I've also had some very enjoyable shopping trips with both Jeff and my mom.  

Shopping is a lot more fun with a friend!

Sledding Just Isn't the Same!

We got pretty spoiled with our awesome sledding hill in our backyard in Wisconsin... Jack decided to create his own sledding hill on the driveway.  Not quite the same.  On the plus side he never got tired of climbing the hill.

Puzzles

Growing up we always had company or were company over the holidays.  We played lots of board games and there was always a puzzle out.  Over the break days of Thanksgiving I had a million things I could/should be doing, but to make it feel like a holiday I got out a puzzle.  I was hoping to have a little more help from the boys, as one of the best parts of putting a puzzle together is the time you spend together at the table.  Even if it's quiet time.

Lincoln helped me a little at the beginning and again at the end, but I spent the hours in between drawn into finding the right pieces and putting them in the right places.  As soon as it was finished I got out a second puzzle and have been spending some good time with this one as well.  It feels like home and family to be doing a puzzle.  I have Christmas music playing, or I listen to a book or a talk. It is a good time of reflection.  Organizing relaxes me and a puzzle is something I can organize into a finished piece.

I feel like I'm trying to do the same with my life.  The ordinary day hasn't felt ordinary for such a long time.  I've come a long way toward getting my pieces back in place, but there are still some tricky areas that take more focus and attention. As I work on my puzzle I've started with the easy parts.  Get the frame done - start with the basics. Put the obvious ones into place.  As you do that some of the other pieces become easier to distinguish and as you stare at the patterns and colors and shapes, you begin to know it intimately. You can pick up a random piece from the box and know exactly where it belongs.  You've done the work, followed the pattern so many times that it comes naturally it to put it into place without struggle.

As I listened to a talk about the atonement and how it becomes real to each of us as we need it to be real - usually in a time of great loss or trial more of my personal puzzle became clear.  I found that I had finished up some of the simpler parts and learned that it is time to move forward to more difficult ones.

I'm feeling a change of heart and I'm ready to pick up a few more pieces.

Lincoln is 10

I just learned yesterday that this is actually a jammy shirt handed down from cousin Isaac, who is standing behind him.  I tried to figure out whose jammy shorts were left behind at our house and learned that they are paired with this shirt as jammies.  Oops!  Who knew?!

We celebrated Lincoln's birthday this evening with a great group of cousins and had a wonderful time.  The whole group plays Minecraft, so it made it a lot of fun.  I created a game with all of the resources, etc so that the kids had to play to earn their dinner.  The had to collect all of the resources needed to get each food item.  It took a good hour, but they seemed to really enjoy doing it and really got into it. 

The adults enjoyed chatting and eating Turkey Soup and Ham and Bean Soup with the Thanksgiving leftovers.  Yum.  After they finished their game/dinner we played "Don't Mine at Night," which was basically musical chairs, except instead of stopping the music you turn out the lights.  We finished the night with a TNT explosion with the Diet Coke/Mentos combination.  Jeff was showered in stickiness.  Ew!  It was a hit with the kids though!

Jeff made the rice krispie treats while I was picking up my mom from the airport.  I forgot to tell him to make them green.  Oh well, it is an albino creeper.  :)

I can't believe I have a child that is a whole decade old.  He keeps reminding me of that.  

I sure love my Lincoln.

Thanksgiving

We hosted Thanksgiving this year and had a wonderful time. We have lots of family that is striving hard to eat healthier and we had an abundance of delicious vegetable options!  My mom would have loved the spread, but she flew down to be with John and Bettina.  

We are so grateful for amazing family and friends.  We are abundantly blessed.

We had our first "kid table"

Which was covered in butcher paper so that the kids could color on it.

We borrowed lots of tables and chairs to make room for the rest of the family in here.

Aimee brought everything to decorate the tables.  

And Jeff worked hard as always cooking and serving - his favorite place to be!

Before and after dinner there was a mini turkey trot, lots of trampoline jumping, chatter, oreo turkey crafts, pie eating and Reese's Pieces swiping.  

P.S.  Raise your hand if you left your jacket over here - my best guess is Isaac.

Halloween

I realized about 4pm that I never bought candy for Halloween night.  I had bought some for the trunk or treat and the school parties, but somehow missed it for trick or treating.  I've had a cold all week, so that probably had something to do with it.  I also forgot to take the kids to a birthday party, but I digress.

Jeff got home from the airport just in time to take us all to dinner and candy shopping.  I ran into the closest grocery store to find that all they had was Christmas candy!  I went next door to the Dollar General where I fought amongst all of the other very last minute Halloween candy purchasers for the last remains of it.  I actually found some decent stuff and we headed home for trick or treating.  We had talked about having one of us stay behind to pass out candy, but when it came down to it, we all wanted to go together and our candy never got passed out.  We had only one group of trick or treaters after we got back (our neighbors) and I told them to load up - they took more than half of it - to my delight!

The kids were really funny to watch this year.  Harrison had forgotten all about what trick or treating was (he had just had surgery last year and a trip to Oklahoma for dad's funeral).  He thought it was great fun and was really good at saying "trick or treat" at first.  We have a lot of older people in our neighborhood and they had the good candy at EVERY house. He noticed and instead of saying trick or treat he started saying, "I like Reese's Pieces."

Jack just wanted to go with the neighbors, but it was a little chaotic with such a big group, and let's face it, my kids are a little high maintenance at each door.  It wasn't working.  Lincoln was in full character as a creeper and held his arms behind his back.  He told every household about how he didn't have arms and these poor older people were really confused.  They couldn't figure out how to get the candy into his bag. He thought they would all study his shirt with the anatomy of a creeper on it and figure it out.  Not so.  We had to work with him at how to take whatever they offered, though he wouldn't ever put his hands out. He would say "no thank you" to any candies he didn't prefer and just keep standing there.  What a mess!

Fall Break at Orr Family Farm

We hadn't visited the Orr Family Farm before and thought we would give it a try this year.  They were hit by the tornado this spring and have worked hard at rebuilding. It was a really fun day... not really what I expected of a "farm," but fun nonetheless.

I got my exercise climbing this hill and stairs again and again with Harrison.

They had these fun go carts that you pedal like a bicycle. The kids rode these over and over again too.

Jackson jumped on these huge trampolines for at least an hour.  Lincoln was in heaven with the sand surrounding the trampolines.  He played there just as long.

We had a little hayride over to where they had the pumpkins.

Lincoln liked the one behind him because it was square like minecraft.

There was also a barn with actual animals in it, but we didn't find time for that.  :)

Branson with Grandma

Last weekend the kids had Friday and Monday off, so we decided to join Jeff on his work trip to Arkansas and then head up to Branson for a fun-filled time!  This time we brought Grandma along, who is celebrating her semi-retirement.  She is only working part-time now and is enjoying her new free time!  Our trip started off a little rough with a very cranky Harrison.  He was mad that Grandma made him wash his hands after using the bathroom and threw a monster-sized tantrum about it.  These are fairly new for him, but he's definitely decided that he knows what he wants and that is that!  A few days later I took him to the bathroom and he threw another tantrum because he only wanted to wash his hands and not actually use the potty!  Goodness gracious!

In between the tantrums though, we had a great time!

Harrison has always been nervous about riding most of the rides, even the kiddie rides, so I was proud of him for trying some new things this go around.  He rode the swings and was scared.  He said, "it made me couldn't breathe" and then declared it his favorite.

After we had finished the day I was up at the entrance with the big kids waiting for Jeff, Grandma and Harrison.  We were next to this set up for photos and I offered to take lots of pictures of families for them.  Lincoln was being a stinker and kept trying to photo bomb all of them.  I laughed at how all of the families could manage to site down, pose and move on; mine wasn't so easy.  This is the best we got.  

The next day we decided to explore some caves.  Before our tour we found a river where we skipped rocks for a few minutes.  The kids could've stayed there for hours.  

Jackson complained all day about going to the caves because he "didn't want to walk."  As much convincing as we tried, we couldn't get him out of his funky attitude until we got there.  He was fascinated by the caves and had a million questions for the guides.  We all really enjoyed hearing the history of the second cave - it had been used to make whiskey during the prohibition and was later used as a dance club! You could see that it had been damaged by all of the people in it over the years, especially compared to the other cave which was just discovered 10 years ago.  I was amazed at how long it takes to create the formations.

The next night we stayed in the same resort that we had gone to previously with Granny and Papa. We got in kind of late, so we just did some of the activities around the lodge the next morning and then headed home.  It makes me laugh how much the kids enjoy shuffleboard.