Mom's Birthday!

 

My Mom gave me another Yellow birthday this year!  Check out my awesome window greeting at their house! 

Aunt Jennifer and Cousin were there to help celebrate too.  Erik loves his Aunt!  

After a yummy dinner Mom cooked, I got yellow desserts! 

I took one of each of course! 

It was a fun night and I loved my new soft ice pack I got as a gift. 

Here are my birthday bowls and my pennant flags in my kitchen!

Hey Dad, this is a call out to you and your 101 uses for those big red rubber bands!  The kids didn't want to take their bags to Sunday School; Ella said we could use Grandpa Jim rubberbands instead!

 

Birthday Dinner and Bulletin Boards

My friend Angie and I share a birthday week so we went out to celebrate at Outback without kids! 

It was fun to have a complete conversation with friends and have my husband's undivided attention for a while. 

I changed the church bulletin boards from Christmas to Valentine's Day. 

I try to change them out 4 times a year. 

I also did a 12 foot board for the school library too!

Erik's Night at Applebees

Erik came home from school with a coupon for a free kids' meal at Applebees for good behavior!  He really, really wanted to go out that evening.  Camden really, really, did not want to! 

So we left Daddy on Duty and I had myself a dinner date with Erik!  We scored the cute booth for 2 in the back.  

He ordered from the very hungry, bigger kids portion side of the menu and ate every last bite!   

Then he ordered himself a sundae and ate all of that too, which is very unusual for Erik.  He had a great time and so did I. 

The next night was Camden's make up Christmas party for Cub Scouts.  They played Legos, watched a Lego movie, ate popcorn and had a great time.

Alderson Visit!

Ella, Erik, Cousin, Grandpa Jim, Grandma Jill, Camden

The Alderson Grandparents came over to visit on Friday before the kids went back to school.  We walked down to Abby's Pizza for lunch.  

They each got their own pizzas!  Yum. 

Erik 

Camden 

Ella 

Grandma got special permission to bring in ice cream cups for after the pizza!  (She was trying to get a new photo of all 4 grandkids for her new frame.) 

Grandpa surprised the kids with $2.00 in quarters each, to pay the games with! 

We came back for a 2 hour Minecraft playdate in the twins' room. 

I realized that Grandpa and Erik matched! Twinies. 

How cute are they?!!!

Flu Season in Full Swing!

It's been a rough December for keeping healthy this year!  Erik caught 4 different full blown viruses in December plus his surgery.  We saw a lot of fevers like this 103.9 around here!  Camden and I caught a couple of them with Erik.  Ella and Brian only caught one of them, but between all of us, someone was ill for the whole month! 

Erik's go to food has always been soup, but after a month we got creative.  They say you have to replace sodium levels while you are sick, so I introduced Cup O Noodles into the household.  Only the twins liked them though! 

I love kids can be sick and still need to have fun and play!  We improved a rest time with their new fort kit and put in their box of Kleenex and trash can inside! 

So funny!  It did give me an hour of peace though. 

Camden was the last to get the Flu.  He was in bed for 3 days which is unheard of for him!  He still doesn't want to eat much and he got sick Christmas Eve!  He will eat one good meal during the day but then complain about his tummy for the rest of the day.  Poor guy. 

As soon as all 3 were fever free, we headed to the local library and grabbed a container FULL of books to read. 

Ella has improved her reading by leaps and bounds this year.  She can read the story lines on her DS games by herself now too!  She is so proud. 

More reading..... 

Playing some DS with their increased energy! 

Erik even asked to vacuum to earn more Screen time on New Year's Eve.  (Please ignore the cord twisted around his neck!  I didn't see it until I viewed the picture!) 

Today is the first day everyone has been healthy since December 4th!  The Alderson Cousin and Grandparents are coming out to visit and have a Minecraft playdate!

Minute to Win it New Years!

We had our friends, the Sconfiemzas, over for a informal New Year's Eve celebration.  We had a Taco feed and the little kids ate in the kitchen! 

After dinner we started our Minute to Win it challenge:  Kids Vs. Adults!  The first challenge was to get the cookie from our forehead into your mouth without using your hands! 

The next challenge was to stack the cups up into a pyramid and then back down into a single stack in under a minute!  

This was by far the funniest challenge, you had 5 ping pong balls in the Kleenex box and you had to shake or dance them out of the box! 

Re-Stack was a hit with the kids; they had to restack the cups one by one without using a table or their laps until the black ringed cup was back up at the top.  

The Time stopper was sucking the smarties up with your straw and transferring them onto the numerals on the clock plate. 

Penny Panty hose was the most challenging as you couldn't use your hands to help the other arm.  You had to find another way to get your hands to the bottom to get the pennies out. 

Camden thought gravity might help while Ty did one arm at a time. 

In the end, the kids beat the adults by one challenge!  The prize was balloons and the kids danced around with them for a half an hour afterwards!

We turned on the TV about 30 minutes before the ET ball drop and the kids were very interested. 

I brought out the desserts and we ate again!  Sadly, we either missed the ball drop at 9pm or they were airing live this year?  We gave the kids their party horns and had our own count down!  I put the twins and myself to bed, but Camden was allowed to stay up with Daddy this year, although he didn't make it to midnight!