Whatcha been up to?

I took a little break from blogging and had planned to do a bunch of posts, but I just don't think that is going to happen...so it will have to be a nutshell. Here is what we have been doing...

My parents and Trevors parents were both out of town for Christmas. We do love visiting our families but also loved how relaxed and lazy we were able to be this year. On Christmas eve we took the kids to see BOLT (very cute) and then came home for homemade pizza and crepes for dessert. HEAVEN Then the kids opened their sibling exchange gifts and their new pajamas.

(I just have to say here how happy I am to have a picture with all of my kids smiling and actually looking at the camera. We have a whole years worth of photos from 2006 where every picture we tried to take of all five kids Cole is either squirming to get out of the picture or crying.)

The kids were so thrilled on Christmas day when I told them that we could stay in our pajamas all day. Whohoo! We had a wonderfully relaxing day. Our traditional Christmas morning breakfast is mountain man breakfast and cinnamon rolls.

Here are some of my favorite photos from Christmas day. (Trevor and I got a new camera for ourselves for Christmas so these pics are all taken with that.)

Cagney has been asking for a water baby since July and reminding us everyday how much she wanted one. So far she has named her DeeDee, Cutie, and just water baby.


Jared had a very Pokemon Christmas.

Miquelle is very quickly taking after Trevor when it comes to music. How they can remember songs and artists is beyond me. I know what I like, but five minutes after hearing it I can't remember what it was.


Miquelle playing Mario Cart on the new Wii.

Lots of nerf gun fights around here.

Gabe was very excited to give us the ornament that he made at school.


Cagney kissing her water baby before I could even get it out of the box.

Coco shares his Grandpa's love of trains.

Since Christmas day...
*Cagney has been dressed up like a princess everyday thanks to her new trunk of dress ups.
*Lots and lots of playing on the Wii.
*I have been working some odd shifts at work (odd meaning shifts I don't usually work) because of the holiday schedule.
*I'm enjoying the new hand weights that Trevor put in my stocking. I had a very heavy stocking this year.
*Jared put together his new Knex roller coaster.
*We have had tons of snow (a lot came on Christmas day). Since my parents are out of town and we are house sitting we have had two houses to keep shoveled. It has been a lot of work. But I'm sure the extra exercise was good considering all of the holiday goodies.
*Lots of Knex creations and pokemon battles and remote control vehicle playing for the boys.
*Things have been crazy with the kids all home from school. It has been fun too, but I'm looking forward to monday when everyone goes back to school! (I worked yesterday and someone asked me why I was in such a good mood, I told them it was because I was getting a break from all of the craziness at home!)
*New Years Eve we got together with good friends, had too much good food and played some really fun games. Learned a new game called Held. Really fun, but we didn't play it long enough to get very good (at least I didn't) and need to play it again. Learned a new dice game that I can't remember the name of. It was really fun and apparently we were swearing in Spanish during the game but no one knew for sure because no one spoke Spanish! And we played Wacky six, this is a fun one because we could play as couples. It was a really fun evening.