Christmas!!!

So Christmas was alot of fun this year!!! It started early this year since my brother Sam, His Wife Emily, and their daughter Ava came the week before Christmas and left to see Emily's parents on Christmas Eve.

We headed up for the cabin on Wednesday. Tyler had to put in a shower door so we left around noon when he was done working. The kids love going up to my parents cabin. They love the snow, the love the family, and pretty much everything they can do up there they love. I think the thing they love the most is having the aunts, uncles, and grandma and grandpa up there to play with. I must get boring sometimes because these people always seem like soooooo much more fun then me!!!!!! The Boys out snowmobiling Mom, Dad, Dave, and new puppy Hailey Sam, Emily, and Ava US Nate, Kim, Boston, and baby girl Sean, and Rachel

We all had a great time sledding down the hill, snowmobiling, swimming, going down the slide at the swimming pool, talking, talking, talking, and playing games together. Oh, and opening up presents from grandma and grandpa is always sooooo much fun!!!!!

Heading home is never much fun but we all came back on Friday anyway!!!! Which for me always leads to cleaning out the car and then doing tonz of laundry!!!! Our christmas morning was awesome!!!! The kids loved their presents. And even though like every year my dad wasn't sure Santa would make it. He used his regular magic and suprised us all by making his way out of all that snow and coming around anyway!!!!!!

This week everyone is out of school and Tyler is Home!!! This does not mean he is not working though!!! He makes phone calls for work, And most of important of all he is working on the basement!!!! It is always great to get more of the work down there done!!! It does always mean a ton of work for Tyler, and some work for me though!!!!!! Tyler always does an awesome job on projects like this!! So hopefully i will get around to posting pictures along the way!!!! We are hoping to get as far along as we can on Creedance's room. Finished would be nice but I'm not sure if that is practical or not since we like to go off on side tangents and work on other things along the way too!!!!!

Pearson trying to help!!!

Anyway, I hope you all had a GREAT Christmas, And hope that you have a wonderful NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!

NO Real Excuse!!!

So all the people I know have really good excuses when they don't blog frequently. Me I have no real excuse!!! There are tonz of things i could blog about, I mean I have 4 wonderful children that do things all the time that would be wonderful to blog about!!! My life is always crazy and i have wonderful stories that i could tell about all of the stupid/crazy things i do all of the time! I don't always have a ton a time to get on but i really could do it when the kids are napping and i am suppose to be cleaning but am usally reading a book! So am i going to push myself and blog more? I truthfully hope so, but i know me pretty well and if i can remember that i want to i will but if i fall a little behind in other things or uhmm... lets say i might forget because i'm really bad about things that way, then i will probably slip! But here is for hoping that i can get going again!!!

Soccer

So here my boys are in all of their soccer glory!!! We have had a lot of ups and downs with this soccer playing. Their first day they were suppose to practice it was cold and so we tried to meet coaches which didn't go so great since they didn't have enough coaches for all of the players. Both of our boys started on teams that had coaches but we only got to meet topher's. Practices are suppose to be tuesday and games are on Thursday. So we went to the field again on thursday and there was very little practicing going on. It took almost the whole time trying to figure out where we were suppose to be. We finally found Topher's coach. We couldn't figure out where t.j. was suppose to be though. They had actually moved him teams and he has two teenage girls coaching him. This wouldn't be so bad, but they don't really know at all how to work with children or even very much about soccer. T.j. doesn't really notice but sometimes it makes me crazy. I guess i could coach but I'm not sure what to do with Pearson and Creedance, so i guess i just let it go!!! Topher didn't really like his first game last week. He played his cousins team which wasn't really the problem. He had to guard a kid his cousin calls the midget. But what this kid lacks in size he makes up for in aggresiveness. Topher got hurt twice and decided he did not like games. It all ended up being better today at his game though. He scored five goals and is in love with soccer again!!!!

T.j.'s game started 20 minutes late, do to the coaches and most of the kids on the team being late!!! He did awesome though. He usually doesn't run very much(harder for him than most). But today he was all over the field. He even tried to get to the ball, which i have been trying to get him to do since the beginning and he has not seemed interested at all. He was very excited when his Grandma and Grandpa Hopkins showed up to watch him and maybe that is why he tried harder!!!!

In my last post i wrote that Toph is riding a motorbike by himself. I finally got Tyler to switch the pictures from raw to jpg so i can put them on!!! So here they are!!!

Oh were to begin!

Obviously i am not good at staying caught up on my blog!!! We have done so much since the last time i stopped to blog. Thing is, I don't seem to have any extra time to actually sit down and blog! I will be lucky if i get most of this one done since the kids will be home from school soon and Pearson will be up from his nap!!! Atleast we don't have a list of things to do today like we do most days.

Lets see i probably won't keep things in the right order but we will start with T.J. starting preschool!!! He loves school and wishes he could go every day. He has come up with a solution and thinks that if he can't go to his teachers house she should just come to ours. He will not let me tell him the reasons this won't work so i will let him pretend i guess! Pearson thought he should be able to go to school too and was so excited, though i'm not sure he knew why. It's a good thing he was content to stay with mom!We went up to my parents cabin for a weekend a little while ago. We played hard! Topher can now ride a motorbike all by himself. We stained one side of the cabin. We went into Yellostone Park. We even went on a hike with all of the kids. This is us at Fairy falls. Pearson and Tj didn't do to much hiking but i think they had a good time anyway! Thanks to my dad who ended up toting T.j. most of the time!!!!

Tj at one of the times he was actually walking on the hike!!

Oh we have also taken another trip to shriners to make it so T.j.'s foot doesn't move so much. It was going side way and flipping everywhere so they have added a strap to hold it on tight and now it can't move!!! That is when me and t.j. don't manage to break it off!!!!

Oh here is a picture of T.j. riding his bike without training wheels. We are so proud of him for doing it since it is alot harder for him then some of the other kids!!(Sorry about the weird line on some of the pic's something is wrong with my camera!)I have been canning like crazy and taking the kids to all of their functions! oh yeah we went to the Pocatello Pump last weekend and we camped out for a couple of nights!!! it was alot of fun! Here is a picture of me and pearson on a little hike we took. I took a ton a pic's of kids and tyler climbing but i took them with his camera and will have to wait to down load them or more correctly until Tyler downloads them onto the computer.

Back to school and lots of others!!!!!

Ah... Back to school i thought i would be so excited that they were going back since they were making me absolutely crazy last week with torchering each other but alas, i'm at home crying missing them!!! Some times i wonder if there is something wrong with me!!! I'm sure they are doing fine and having a good time so i will try to chill out and play with the kids i have at home still. This year Creedance got Mrs. Stanger as a first grade teacher! We hear she is awesome and Tyler knew her when he was younger, so her year should be great! Doesn't she look so cute in her new outfit! Topher is in Mrs. Andrus' class this year! We hear she is kind of strict but that she really pushes the kids and Topher really needs to be pushed so that school isn't so boring. So hopefully he does well in her class. It was raining this morning pretty good so we started are pic's inside!But the rain stopped just enough to get some pictures outside! Then they threw on their jacktets, and they are still young enough that they let me walk them over to the school and get them into the gym to find there teachers! First day of school must always be crazy!!!Ok, on to a different topic than school so that i will think about something else! Topher is in scouting!!!!! He doesn't turn 8 until November but the scout leader invited him to start coming this summer! He loves it, and has already earned a bunch of the awards or whatever you would call them!! He has a great leader and i'm sure he is learning alot! He thinks that now that he is a scout he should get a pocket knife for his birthday!One of Pearson's new hang out spots is in the dryer! He thinks it is soooo cool and and a great place to hang out. He loves to climb in and out and in and out. And i am left trying to get the dry clothes out inbetween and then have to fight for it to get the wet clothes in and be able to close the door!! It is sure a good thing he is sooooo cute!!!Now on to Pearson's Birthday! Yes i found the pictures and am actually getting around to blogging about it. Although it will now be hidden under the back to school name, i'm just excited that i am getting it done. The day of Pearson's birthday he was quite happy and fun. We put him down for a nap though right before his party and he woke up quite the bear. He kept crying and pulling at his ear and did not want me to put him down at all. The presents seemed cool but i was not allowed to go very far and he would growl at the other kids if they got to close!!! He loved all his gifts!! Thanks everyone!This year i did a monkey theme for him!!! The cake turned out pretty good, if i do say so myself. Pearson thought it was good to! I had to keep putting more and more on his plate or he would scream if there was not a piece there that he could grab!!!This was probably his favorite part of the whole night!!! He loves baths!!! And the new bath toys just made it that much better!!!!The next day I was able to get a picture of him in his monkey birthday hat!(this was after taking him to the doctor where we found out he did not have an ear infection)The kids thought the monkey hats were the greatest and i had a bunch of monkey clowns running around for the next couple of days.

T.j. doesn't start preschool until the middle of next week so i'm sure i'll post about that and creedance's dance stuff as soon as i get some more pictures.

Bad Mom!!!!

So to start out with i have to tell you about a conversation that i overheard with some kids T.j. was playing with today!
So t.j. was walking up the stairs at dance tech and i was at the top! this is what i heard.
Little Boy 1: "So what is wrong with your foot?"
Little Boy 2: " Well his dad was kind of mad and he cut it off like this" Said while acting if sawing off T.j.'s foot!
I laughed so hard! Most people would think that is horrible but i loved the smile on T.j.'s face as the other kid just stared amazed! I hope T.j. set him straight but i'm not sure he did. Hope the kid doesn't have nightmares! Hopefully he is just really good for his dad from now on!!

So the plan was to post the rest about Pearsons Birthday and other fun things that we have been up to but Pearson won't stop screaming and i can't get the pictures to load onto the computer so alas as a bad mom would do would be to keep postponing and hope to post the pictures of his birthday before he turns two!!! I'm off to put kids to bed!!

Redfish

I was so excited to be going on vacation this year!!! Tyler has been soooo busy that we haven't done a whole lot of camping this year! I forced him to leave a day early for redfish! He did work in the morning but was home around noon and we finished loading the bus! I can't believe how much we fit in there! It was way weighted down.The kids are all ready to go.Our first stop was the seventeen mile cave. There wasn't very much light down there but the kids thought it was pretty awesome to go into a cave anyway. They were already for a break by then because of the road construction out that way. We stopped that night just after sun valley the bus decided it was tired and didnt want to work.No worries though because it made it to the top of galena with no problems the next day. Tyler was really sad that someone had stolen the summit sign though because he wanted people to see that his bus had made it that high!!

The rest of that day was filled with putting up camp, playing at the beach and making sure all the grandkids made their first trip to the "lodge" to buy treats with the money some earned from grandma Waddoups! My dad can hardly believe the rate at which the grandkids could earn money he decided to make his own work chart and tried to make $5 for taking a nap! I'm pretty sure that he didn't get the money in the end!

One of the craziest things about the beach is the amount of ash that has gotten into a select part of the sand. My kids were basically black all week. Pearson i wasn't sure if he actually had legs under all the ash! Everyone thought it was rather funny and i hated trying to put sunscreen on them when i wasn't even sure if it was getting to their skin?

The kids loved the beach though they played there whenever they weren't on their bikes or at the lodge(which happened daily if not more than once a day!!!!) Some where brave enough to be buried! but watch out for sand in your face because Pearson was always near by. The kids did great at going behind the boat tooo! Topher and Cree both tried skiing! Cree actually did it for awhile but then let go of the rope! Cree kneeboarded with her cousin and T.j. started kneeboarding but didn't want to go out very deep so he just let go of the rope!!! Alll three kids also road in the tubes. Another fun adventure of redfish is going to the fish hatchery!! Some would perfer not to go but the kids love it! Grandpa always brings enough quarters to make sure the kids get to feed the fish and they just love it!!!!The aftenoon hike is always fun to grandpa drives us to the other end of the lake in the boat we hike up to the lily ponds and the waterfalls come back down and jump off the cliff!!!! I stayed back at camp this year with Pearson and T.j. so they could take a nap but the others had a great time! Sadly i can't access the pictures of the cliff jumping but it did happen!!!We sat around the fire alot!! It was always cold in the morning and evening but plenty warm during the day!!!!!! Oh the hot pots are always so much fun the water is warm and we have to soak!!! I did not get to participate because my awesome baby camper lost it there!!! He loved campiing and playing in the lake but when we got near that warm water he cried and screamed and i finally took him back up to the car while the others enjoyed!!!