Party Time!

Leah Bug had a bunch of friends over for a birthday party last night. The girls had way too much fun.

We made pizzas. No pictures of that but we cleared off the big kitchen island and stood around it and each girl made her own pizza. They had lots of fun doing that and the pizza turned out yummy.

We decorated "Pup Cakes", little cupcakes that looked like puppies.

We painted fingernails.

Aunt Jessi was essential to the fingernail painting, we could never have handled the kind of bulk painting we did without her and her artistic touch. They turned out cute. Leah's favorite color is green so most of the girls got green nails.


They played at the park quite a bit. I have another official announcement to make; I LOVE having the park right behind us!! Look at this:


Yes, our backyard has a park we don't have to mow. Although, Ryan did tell the kids that they will have to mow it sometimes, ha ha! It is awesome. Really really awesome.

So for those of you who wanted to know why/how we moved, here's the dealio. We needed a bigger house. We looked for about 8 months and it took so long because we wanted to stay in this same neighborhood for the school and the ward/stake. The house we found is perfect in absolutely every way except we are switching to another ward :( Don't make me cry about it again like I did in my talk last week in Sacrament meeting, I think the people in the front row got sogged from my tears. . . But the ward we are moving to is awesome too. They actually won Youth Olympics this year and as I told the YW last week when I taught my last lesson to them; We could have stayed in LPP if only we hadn't gotten 2nd in YO, we have to go where the winners are :), they should have gotten more points, 41 would have done it! Just kidding, ha ha.

So Long Cub Scouts, Hello Sprouts!

Jeffey got his Arrow of Light this week. He was pretty excited.

The arrow plaque is awesome and has been hung up in his new room.



It was a fun night. So we've moved into the new house and it has been lots of work but it has gone pretty well. I've still got more projects than I can shake a stick at, but we love the house, a lot a lot.

I planted some herbs from seeds a couple of days after we moved in and they are sprouting! I'm excited to have cilantro and basil so I can make make salsa and pesto. We discovered that there is a rosemary bush on the front porch so I've been making rosemary bread. I've been baking and cooking more than usual because, and I want this to be an official announcement; *I LOVE my kitchen*. A lot. I mean, I really loved our old house and I liked my kitchen a lot, but this kitchen. Oh my. Happiness.

So far I've got sprouts in all of them but one, but it will come too I'm sure. Anyways, stay tuned for more updates, we've got Leah's birthday coming up next week! And I will be better about posting now.

The Big 11

Our Baby Jeffey was born 11 years ago yesterday and, let me tell you, that was a crazy time!
Now he is all big and handsome and stuff. So for his big birthday celebration he had a sleepover with four of his cousins, they played the PS3 and stayed up late. In the morning they had donuts and chocolate milk and headed off to Flagstaff to play in the snow. The weather has been really cold lately and the snow is great up in Flag. Ryan took the boys and I stayed home with the rest of them. We had fun at home but a couple of the left behinds were mildly upset.
This is an old picture of the Bug but it gets the point across, I wasn't brave enough to photograph her yesterday to capture the sadness, but, yes, that is about how they were.

The boys had high adventure and good times. They didn't last very long with the sledding since it was 7 degrees out and they are wimpy AZ boys, but they had fun and got worn out so it was successful.

They came home to the cake I'd made. I totally thought of and made that cake all by myself and I am pretty proud of it. I rocked that cake hard. It is cake ball dinosaur eggs (Jeffey has historically asked for and gotten dinosaur/dragon cakes on his birthday) with a nest made of various things with melted chocolate and peanut butter holding it together (the nest was super yummy actually) and more cake ball "rocks" (or dinosaur poop as the boys said) around the bottom of the nest. I'm telling you, it was super cool and a big success.

The boys each had an egg then and there and the nest was re-filled for the New Years/Birthday party later on at Livingstone's. It was cool that they could have some of the cake and it didn't wreck it.

Upon interview the boy said that he had a great 11th birthday, he loved the snow, his presents and everything and he thought his cake was awesome. Hooray!

Have You Seen This Yet?

Coolest DVD cover ever. I have turned it around and around and around and it always says "The Princess Bride" whoever figured that out is a super genius.

I got one for Christmas :)

Christmas

It all started with the Nativity.

Tessa was excited to be Mary but she was a bit nervous about Oscar being Joseph. This year they had a script and got to read things, Jeff, Leah and Tessa all had a speaking part. It was lovely.

Here are the kids in our room waiting for Dad and Mom to get their act together enough to go out and open presents. The time was 5:20 am, they sweetly waited until 5:00 exactly to come in and wake us up and demand a start to the festivities. Peter wasn't sure what he was excited about but he knew he was excited.

The pajama pants this year were cow. Every year my tireless sister Lindsey makes us pajama pants, everyone gets a pair and she is amazingly accurate on size and length considering our varied sizes and lengths. It makes family picture taking on Christmas morning much more festive and interesting. I love this years fabric!

Buggie's bag was noticeably emptier than the other bags but only because her big gift was a tiny ipod, pre-loaded with her song list. We've had to shout to get her attention since then.

That's the face I was hoping to see. Let's just say he is looking forward to New Years.

Kay Kay was happy with her haul.

GG & GG Bateman sent gifts for the kids which they loved. See how they are each holding a pen to write on their little notebooks with? Well, when Peter opened his, out came a black sharpie! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Bateman! Arnon thinks you sent it because you wanted my blog entries to have a little more sparkle and jazz and you thought a two year old with a black sharpie was just the trick!
Jeffey had this look on his face all day. He was very pleased.

Tessa had a happy day, she loved her presents. We all got new sleeping bags and now we're ready for some camping! Jeffey is going to get to go on his first 11 year old scout overnight campout next week, it will be a snow campout and he will get home New Year's Eve which also happens to be his 11 year old birthday. He is pretty much in heaven right now.

Peter Mac loved Christmas. He got lots of Cars stuff and a big wheel and a yellow dump truck and a pack of gum which he promptly chewed.

I thought this was a cool picture with the movement and twinner in the background softly weeping. Cory helpfully dressed them exactly the same. I was cuddling with the sticky faced one on the couch and felt a little dumb asking his name so I didn't, I just noted the smudge on his nose and a few hours later I learned it was Ben that was so sweet and cuddly. Love you Benja!

We took these Christmas Eve when they put their bags out. So they are kind of out of order, but I like them.




Petey's bag was just finished about a week ago. But we don't need to dwell.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Before Christmas

Christmas Eve Ryan had a Speed Camp over at FK (Phoenix College) for the Shields boys, our kids and a couple other kids too. This was his third session with the kids and he is having fun teaching them to run faster and better.

The kids had fun and did well.
.It was the first one I'd been to and it was very fun to watch my sweetie teach. He is very talented. And cute.

Peter ran a lap around the track. He loved trying to keep up with the big kids and doing what they were doing.

These two were super speedy :)

Before we went to the track we visited GiGi, she gave us Christmas presents and batted a balloon around with the kids.

She is so much fun.

We love her a lot.

A lot a lot.

For Christmas I made ornaments for our kids and I decided that since I was starting in August that I'd make them for all nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters, parents, kid's teachers, visiting teaching people, and various and sundry others. I ended up making 42, if you didn't get one it doesn't mean I don't love you, I just ran out of aida cloth.

Here's some pictures of some that I made.

Jake and Cory's family. We call him Benja, I think it will be cute when he gets older, plus Benjamin wasn't going to even try to fit.

Lindsey and David's family.

Amanda and Oliver's, Amanda is a long name to stitch with that big old fat "m", so she is Nunu. The picture is blurry because I took it while we were riding in the van, who knows why.

This is a riding in the van picture too but it wasn't blurry, who knows why. These are for Whitny's family.

My visiting teaching girls. They liked 'em.

I may be too lazy to turn it the right side up. But these are for the kid's teachers. They liked theirs too.

Our missionaries got some too. My parents like theirs. We'll talk to Justin today and see if he got his package yet. All of our missionaries are due to finish up their missions at the end of February and we are excited to see them again!

So that is that. I took tons of pictures last night and today of our Christmas festivities. I'll get around to posting them soon.

Love you all, Merry Christmas!!