January Thoughts

One of the problems I have discovered with maintaining a blog is not the time or technology issues, but my past as an English teacher. Once people are aware that I formerly taught English there expectations of my grammatical abilities often become unrealistic. This situation causes me to have writer's block over the silliest things, particularly when one considers that my readership consists of mainly myself and my children (whom realistically are only checking to make sure that they are evenly represented in pictures). So if anyone else ever reads this and discovers my grammatical shortcomings, work thru it I have!

With that off my brain, we are deep in to the crazy days of January! The weather alternates between below zero with windchill and sunny almost pleasant winter days. We really need more snow but that seems not to be in the cards, instead bad air and ice are the order of the month. I always get restless in January and with homeschooling most of my running is on the treadmill so I need alternate outlets. Therefore we are rearranging furniture, cleaning out cupboards (again), and gearing up to repaint the princess' room. I am also measuring for curtains since Brenton got rid of the ones that came with the house and it has been five years since. I figure that if I get really good curtains that I can justify replacing the always nasty, dirty blinds with reflective film of some sort. I hat cleaning blinds!

Another reason for insufficent blog development is we played like crazy during the winter holidays. Our neighbors built an outdoor ice rink in their yard and we have been to skate several times with groups of neighbors. Liam taught himself to skate fairly well, Hugh decided that snowboots are much faster, and he convinced Moira to ditch the idea of skates to chase him and his friends that much better. Of course Cody was a natural and Brenton learned as a kid, I do not skate where I come from one puts ice in their glass they do not walk on it! The little kids really enjoy the big toy (Brenton) as he puts them on plastic sleds and hauls them all over the ice. The night Brenton decided to play hockey with the teenagers about put him under, getting up for work the next day was no picnic! We also spent New Year's Day at Uncle Jake's house helping with some wiring, and sledding on his hill. We also had fun watching Tivoed episodes of "So you think you can dance" with Rachel and Lily. Hugh showed some of his own moves when we turned on Irish dance videos from You Tube. There is also a 'midget' sledhill in our driveway so we have been busy not to mention the fact that the kids have been keeping up with school and trying out all the new gadgets they received over the holidays. Moira is already better at button holes than I am. Well I am off to work on verb tenses and persuade Hugh to practice writing a few more 't's. Off to the races we are....

Merry Christmas Eve!

What a wonderful week we have had and there was even sunshine mixed in with the snow! Really the weather is getting colder but it was a pretty week. One of the highlights was when Hugh called me to come see the 'twinkles' in the snow, he was referring to the ice crystals on top of the snow crust. A silly source of entertainment the last few days has been to watch the 8 month old Golden Retriever (Bear)stare out various windows at the wild kittens. After awhile he whimpers, but the best is how the kittens purposely taunt the poor thing by casually moving from one window area to another. The funniest was yesterday morning when Bear and Twinkle (the house cat) were staring out the living room window with their chins on their paws as the wild kittens sunned themselves on the front steps.

The kids and I spent all morning making gluten free caramel popcorn for Brenton's twelve brothers and sisters. Several nieces, nephews, and one sister have trouble with gluten, combine that with my lack of holiday organizational skills and you arrive at one gluten free treat for all! This time around at least. Cody and Moira did most of the stickier work while Liam kept Hugh entertained with various games involving Lego guns. Though they thought the air popper was amazing! The dogs even helped by keeping the floor relatively clean. Brenton got home in time to play chauffeur and drove us all over town to deliver the baskets. We even caught up with the families in Cache Valley. After a lovely pizza dinner (not cooked by me) we watched "The First Christmas" and read the Christmas scriptures before banishing four giggle children to bed for the first of several times. Hope everyone had a good time today and that tomorrow is perfect for you.

Moira and I are going to figure out how to post a slide show tomorrow so tune in to be amazed by our techiness!

 

 

Family Photo

 

family photos

Oops the pictures are to big to load so I will have to wait for the in-house techie to come home and help. Sorry but I warned any readers that I am not a techie!

Already needing to catch up....

Hello, Thanksgiving was fun and oh so busy! The weather in Northern Utah was absolutely gorgeous and that is over, it was .3 degrees on the shed thermometer this morning! After a fun dinner at the in-laws we came home to just chill a bit and work on sewing baby blankets for a charity my grandmother works with in Phoenix. The best part of the day for me was when my brother-in-law, Jake, came and took our family pictures. He was the best! And the pictures turned out great if I do say so myself. The biggest bonus with having Jake as our photographer was that the kids adore him and he is so tolerant! Of course the 'no charge' part rocked as well. Brenton spent much of his weekend working somewhere for someone other than me! The Irish dancers, Moira, Liam, and Hugh had their first public performance on Saturday. They did great, when Hugh forgot the steps he just jumped up and down and smiled at the crowd. Liam and Moira did very well, and are already scheming as to how many feis (Irish dance competitions)they can con us into. We hope all of you are enjoying the Holiday season and that it is not too hectic. Enjoy these pictures, and Brenton swears he wasn't pinching Hugh in the last photo.