Christmas Time!

Merry Christmas!

We weren't very good at taking pictures this year but here is what we got.

At our church Christmas party they had a kids room set up for them to take pictures with Santa. Our kids wanted nothing to do with sitting with the man in red but afterwards they were more than happy to check out the sleigh and take some brotherly pictures.

For Christmas Eve we went to some friends house for dinner. Evan came to us with this awesome lego creation. He wanted it documented so here it is.

Christmas morning was a nice and quiet. My brother came up to have breakfast with us and watch the kids open presents.

Legos are always a favorite!

We got Cooper a few gifts. He caught on very quickly on how to unwrap them. He had a great time tearing the paper up. He then took it upon himself to tear apart all packing boxes too. 

It really helped to minimize the space the boxes would have taken up in the garbage.

=-)

The girls are getting older and harder to shop for. This year they mostly just wanted money. Money as a gift isn't very fun though so we got them a few things (like a book, an outfit, etc) but they also got money. Uncle Bryan got them some money too. He came in with 60 ones and thew them in the air and the kids went after them. It was fun. They were happy campers!

 Nerf guns are always a favorite too! Although we all have to take cover around when this little man has the gun!

We went to my dad's for Christmas dinner and the kids opened some gifts there too.

Ninja Turtle legos!

Simon!

Although this is the new and improved Simon. Not only do you have to remember the order of the colors but you also have to remember the side of the color that was touched (there are 2 sides in each color) and sometimes it does a swipe action across the color. Too much for my brain these days. Just more evidence that the kids these days are way more advanced!

Karen's daughter, Lorraine, has a daughter, Payton. She is 2 and just adorable! When dessert was served Payton came over and climbed up into my lap. She is just too cute!

Merry Christmas to all of you! I hope you all had a wonderful time with family and friends!

Hailey's dance recital

December 19th

Hailey decided this summer that she wanted to do a dance class so we signed her up with Upstage. She has friends who do it too so it came highly recommended. She was super excited for the recital! She loved all the costumes! She had 4 dances so she got 4 costumes! Her favorite were the ones that twirled up when she spun, typical girl!

This was her first costume. This was before the show started.

I didn't get a picture of her 2nd costume because she changed out of it before I could get back stage at intermission. 

This was her favorite dress. It was very flowy and spun so nicely. We were able to take these pictures with her at intermission.

She is just growing up way to fast! She is such a fun girl - always bubbly and happy and smiley.

Well . . . almost always!

This was her last dance. The others I filmed for her but this one I decided to try to get some pictures.

This is the whole dance school. They did a great job. I hope that she continues with dance. It was fun watching the oldest kids (high schoolers) perform. It would be really neat to she her do those dances some day.

Way to go Hailey!

Belated Anniversary Trip

December 11 - 13

In October I asked our previous nanny (she quit in the beginning of the year because she got a full time offer) if she would be interested in staying with the kids one weekend while Kurt and I went away for an anniversary trip. We compared calendars and came up with the weekend of December 11th. Our anniversary is November 27th so it always falls right around Thanksgiving. This year our anniversary was on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and on that day we were headed back to our camping trip at Dillon's Beach. 

For 2 months we tried to figure out what to do on our trip. We just couldn't decide. Kurt wanted to fly to Hawaii or Whistler (where we spent our honeymoon). I was much more practical and thinking a trip to Tahoe or the beach. I didn't think Hawaii or Whistler were weekend trips. After much discussion (and coming right down to the wire) we decided to head to Santa Cruz. 

On all of our previous camping trips we have had the dog with us and have not been able to visit Point Lobos because they don't allow dogs. Our friends have just raved about it and how neat it is so we thought this would be a great opportunity to check it out. We stayed in a hotel in Scotts Valley which is on the north side of Santa Cruz.

We got up Saturday morning (Kurt let me sleep until 7!!!) and headed out to Point Lobos. It is about 1 hour 15 minutes away from our hotel so we stopped in a little town along the way for breakfast. It was about 8:15 and we couldn't find a restaurant open for breakfast yet! Apparently this was a sleepy town that didn't get up and moving early, definitely not a town for Kurt (he is a super crazy early bird)! We found a bagel place and got bagels for the road.

We continued driving down to Point Lobos. It was a beautiful drive along the coast. That weekend there was a very high surf warning so the waves were really big. We stopped along the way at a look out and it was so pretty. 

Well, we finally arrived at Point Lobos only to discover that the park was closed because of the high surf! Ahhhh! Seriously? 

So we drove around a little bit and checked out a neighborhood. We found an awesome house that backed right up to the Pacific Ocean ~ A-MAZ-ING! It was only $7.3 million. We definitely contemplated buying it! (NOT!)

Down the road we found a really pretty view. The waves were just amazing. This spot had a cool little inlet thing that caused the water to swirl and crash and splash all over. It was very fun to watch.

One of the reasons we wanted to go to Santa Cruz was because I wanted to hike around in Nisene Forest again. If you remember from our Santa Cruz camping trip in May, I loved Nisene Forest. I definitely wanted to check it out again so we decided to head there for the afternoon.

Our trusty, dusty GPS directions completely got us lost. Siri definitely disappointed. It took us down this little road and told us to continue on even though the road had come to a dead end - uhhhh. So we had to improvise. I searched the internet for the bike shop that was along the road that took us to Nisene. I was able to find it so once we got to the bike shop, we knew where to go.

Along our adventure of getting lost, we discovered that this community had these little libraries everywhere. They were so cute. Put a book in and you can take another one out. Heaven for Kayla! We took pictures of the little boxes and text them to Kayla. She says she is definitely moving here when she grows up!

We finally made it to Nisene and it was just as beautiful as it was in May. Love this place! It is just so green and lush and peaceful!

This was one big tree root system!

This picture was for the kids!

That's better!

A pretty big leaf!

These branches were fluorescent green! They were so pretty! 

 And a trip to Santa Cruz just isn't complete without a stop at Pizza My Heart. Super yummy pizza. Kurt always jokes about driving to Santa Cruz just for the pizza.

While we were walking back into the hotel that night, a car pulled up behind us and made our shadows appear on this storage door. Perfect ending to our perfect day.

Sunday morning we woke up to the wonderful sound of rain. We stayed in bed, listening to the rain, relaxing and watching a little bit of tv (we only have Netflix and no cable, so this was a treat - although we don't know how people watch tv with commercials. They drove us nuts!). It was so nice to just veg. No one yelling that they were hungry. No one fighting with a sibling. No one whining to go outside to go potty.  Just the two of us and quiet. Ahhh, so nice. But we did miss our kiddo's so eventually we got up, got dressed and headed home. It was a great way to celebrate 16 years together!

Other randomness

I can't believe it! I finally did it! I was so far behind in blogging but I now have officially gotten the blog caught up! Whew! That was a challenge but I am so glad that I did it.

Here are some other random happenings from around here this year:

 Earlier this year Trevor was running away from me. I can't remember why but it was probably something like I asked him to wash his hands or let me comb his hair or something and he took off laughing and screaming, playing "can't catch me". Well he ran right into the corner of our upstairs cabinet and split his head open. It barely bled, which I thought was weird for a head injury because those puppies can bleed like crazy. I took him to the doctor and the doctor said I could either take him to an Urgent Care and have them do stitches or he could just staple it. He left the room to do something and came back and just stapled his head before I had a chance to tell him my decision. I was leaning towards stitches because I thought those would have been better. I was rather upset that he just stapled him before I told him what I wanted to do. After talking to several parents, including a friend who is a PA, I felt much better. They all said the staple was the way to go. Sure didn't seem like it but it was quite simple. For stitches they would have had to give him shots to numb the area. The shots are just as bad as the staple so you might as well staple it and be done rather than going through the numbing, stitches and then removing the stitches, which would be hard in hair. So anyways, here he is with a staple in his head. Happy little guy. He may be #4 but he is the 1st of our kids to break a bone and to be stapled back together!

I took the kids to Barnes and Nobles one day. Oh man, were they in heaven! I love that my kids love books.

Love this kid and his fun personality!

A year ago, in December 2014, we decided to homeschool Kayla. She finished up the first semester and then after Christmas break, she stayed home. During this summer, Kurt and I debated on rather we should homeschool everyone this school year. It was a really tough decision but we decided to do it so I pulled them out of the school they went to. I knew that if we changed our minds it would be really hard to get them back in so it was really hard to actually pull them out. Our "classroom" was in the dining room, right when you walk in the front door.

It was always a disaster. 3 kids with all their text books plus all the teacher edition books that I get and we had a lot of books! We have since moved the school room upstairs into the bonus room, which had to be rearranged, which lead to the boys room being redone and then we split the girls up and gave them each their own room. It was a crazy time of moving everything. I will have to do a post about all the changes.

Cooper decided he wanted to get in on the learning!

We have been really happy that we pulled them out. We really love our evenings now. Before they were crazy and hectic and now we can just enjoy them. I really like the flexibility and lifestyle of homeschool but unfortunately, it has been really hard with trying to work too. September was okay because I call it the "honeymoon" phase. Everyone was excited and it was new and so it was fun. October hit and I really started to struggle. Running a business and homeschooling 3 kids is a lot to do. Not to mention running a house, grocery shopping, cooking meals, my calling at church, laundry . . . and I am drowning. 

The week before Thanksgiving I hit my wall and said "that's it! Everyone back to school." I got online and registered them for the charter school that they were at before. Hailey and Evan are on the waitlist. Hailey was/is #4 (not too bad) but Evan was #67!!!! 67! Are you kidding me! Sheesh. If we can get Hailey in then Evan will move up the list because students with siblings there get higher priority. So we are making homeschool work until they can get back in. But, honestly, I really don't want them to go back. I am really stuck because I don't want them to go back but I don't know if I can do homeschool either. We are just going to keep plugging along and maybe we will get it figured out.

Kayla has a health class this semester and so one week I had her plan all our PE activities. She planned walking to Costa Vida for lunch one day and walking to the movie theaters another. Those were fun days! Dad met us at the theater and then walked home with us. We had to go pick up his truck later. It was a great family experience. I love that about homeschool. Our kids seem closer to one another too. They still fight but there is a lot more laughing and playing together too.

It was hot on the way home so we had to go get a Jamba to cool off!

A new Bass Pro Shop opened by us this summer so we went to check it out. The boys thought this bear was pretty cool.

Kurt has been doing pretty good. When they did his CT scan in April for his check up, they noticed that his gallbladder looked weird so they referred him to have it checked out. They ran test and discovered that his gallbladder had a polyp in it. When polyps reach 8 mm they start watching them. When they get to 10 mm, it is automatic gallbladder removal surgery because the risk of cancer goes up the larger it gets. Kurt's was already at 15mm so that puppy needed to come out. Long story short, we changed surgeons in the middle of the process so we had to start all over again and the new doctor wanted to run her own tests so it wasn't until October that the surgery got scheduled.

Post op was pretty hard. His blood pressure was really high which freaked us out because of his aneurysm. His blood pressure needs to stay low so there isn't pressure on the aneurysm and with it that high, I started to really worry. After we got him home and pain meds balanced, he did good. It was a pretty quick recovery. We called his vascular doctor and requested another CT scan just to make sure that no damage was done to the aneurysm during that time of high blood pressure. We are currently waiting for the referral to be approved to get him scanned. Otherwise, he has been doing great and can't wait to be able to ski or ride his dirt bike or any of the other things he shouldn't do.  His doctor didn't seem to keen on okaying any of those activities so we will see.

The boys and I were at Costco a few weeks ago and spotted this guy. Every kids needs a bear twice the size of them, right?

Fun times!

Now let's see if I can keep the blog current! Fingers crossed!