Merry Christmas to All

Three days til Christmas. Sigh... This year has gone by so quickly. What have we been up to?

Well Matt works very hard providing for our family. He plays with the kids and is very helpful holding the baby when he is home. He loves playing XBOX with Gideon and teasing Eden and having Larke sit on his lap. He is now 1st Counselor in the Elder's Quarum and that takes some of his time as well. I'm glad that he turns 30 in January. I'm tired of being in a different decade.

I have had a good but hard year. I've spent the 1st half of the year being pregnant with our 4th kid and the 2nd half getting used to having 4 kids. I have some good days and some not so good. I spend alot of time being tired, but I am so grateful for our Children. They are my joy. They need me and I need them. They teach me constantly and remind me everyday why life is worth all the ups and downs. I have been in the Young Women Presidency in our Ward this year. It has been a challenging and fun calling. I am still doing lunch with ladies in my Ward on Thursdays and getting lots of fun recipes. Also I started doing Preschool with Eden and another little girl in the Ward. So her Mom and I take turns teaching the girls stuff and getting them ready for Kindergarden next year.

Gideon is turning 7 in April. He is in 1st grade and loving it. He loves reading and amazes me everyday with his progress. He has had his 1st girlfriend, it lasted a day and then they both moved on. It sure did throw me for a loop seeing him walking out of school holding hands with a little girl in his class. Gideon is very helpful most of the time and is a terrific big brother. He loves reading, video games, and playing with his sisters!

Eden is turning 5 in March. She has been doing dance this year and enjoys it a lot. Eden has a little bit of a hard time not getting offended when the teacher tells her she needs to do anything different than how she is doing it. It has been good for her to learn that she can't always be in charge. She enjoys doing our small at home preschool and loves thinking about how she will be big enough for Kindergarden next year. She still loves dressing up and rarely will dress in anything but skirts. She loves her siblings, enjoys using her imagination, and singing.

Larke turned 3 in September has gone through some big changes this year. Since Rush was born in July she has exploded in speech and she has become potty trained. She has also taken dance this year and is learning how to be nice to the other kids. Larke has always been precocious, but recently has been somewhat of a bully. I really hope she grows out of this phase soon. She still loves to snuggle and she loves to follow Eden and Gideon around. She loves playing with Rush and being a big sister.

Rushmore was born July 9th and since about 2 and 1/2 months of age has been a very pleasant baby. We don't need to talk about the first 2 and 1/2 months, I don't remember much about them anyway except being tired. There were moments of sweet smiles and snuggles, but he is such a happy baby now that I have smiles all the time to brighten my days. He loves me, which is very satisfying. He of course loves his Dad and siblings too, but I get to claim to be favorite as it should be. I am so glad he is part of our family. He is such a sweet boy.

I hope all of you are having a Merry Christmas. I hope all of you are taking some time to enjoy the season. It is such a beautiful time of the year. I love the giving and the getting. It is fun and joyous. I am grateful to the Savior of mankind. I'm grateful for all the times this year when I didn't think I could do one more thing and God strengthened me. I am grateful for all the prayers he has answered and all the love shown to me. This is truly a wonderful life.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

New Pictures For My Wall

I was so happy with how our pictures turned out. A huge thanks to Karen for taking them for us. If you want to know which pictures I chose you will just have to come to my house and see.

Twins

I love this picture of the girls. They look so pretty.

So the girls received matching dresses from their Grandma Jones yesterday to wear for Christmas time. Gideon was so jealous that the girls were twins that he insisted that he match with Rush today for church. He said that they could be twins and that maybe people would even have a hard time telling them apart. So he wore a tie and we clipped a pacifier to Rush so that people could tell them apart. We did try to explain that the fact that Gideon is atleast 4 times as big as Rush would clue people in. Can you tell them apart? Love the dresses Grandma Jones! Thanks for sending them.

My Favorite Overalls

I love this boy! But I especially love him in these overalls. Isn't he cute. It might be the hat too.

Dancing Queens!

So both girls are doing dance this year. They are both really enjoying it. It is fun to see Larke getting started and to see how much better Eden is this year. Larke danced to I'm a little tea pot, she showed us pencil roll, princess walking and a rocking chair. I am grateful that Miss Karen is patient because Larke can be a handful and she is just learning how to follow instructions. Eden is doing tap as well as ballet this year and she enjoys making big noises with her feet. She still has a hard time when she doesn't get her way. Last week when I came to pick her up Eden was crying because they curtsied towards the wall instead of the mirror where she wanted to watch herself. Eden also gets to participate in a Christmas program on the 21st of December and she is very excited. I hope that Larke doesn't throw too much of a fit not being up there too and I hope Eden doesn't chicken out.

Meet Frosty

So it snowed here right before Halloween. We got a beautiful day with between 50-60 degree weather so Gideon and I made a snowman together. The girls helped a little bit. It didn't last very long since it was so warm out but it was still fun. I love that Larke is out there with no coat. I promise she had one on earlier, but she just would not keep it on that day.

Our Pumpkins

So the kids and I went to the pumpkin patch while Matt was out of town. When he came back we decorated them with our pumpkin sized potato head pieces. I know that some may think our pumpkins are lame and I will admit that it is lazy, but I found that I was doing all the work and I felt like this was something that our small kids could handle. I did mean to carve a pumpkin with Gideon this year but it didn't happen. Next year we are going to have to do it.

Happy Halloween

We had alot of fun dressing up this year with a Star Wars theme. Matt was Luke on Dagobah with Rush as Yoda on his back. Larke was RD22 or how ever you want to say it. Gideon was Darth Vader (I like his mean face) and Eden was Princess Leia. I was a generic smuggler bad girl with a red wig. Matt likes to say that I was Hannah Solo. For those of you out there that really know Star Wars lore you can call me Mara Jade. Matt and I made our own gun holsters and rearranged belts to use. Matt sewed the backpack and I fixed Rush's yoda outfit which is actually a dog costume so I had to do some changing there. All in all I think we all really enjoyed dressing up together. Even Larke warmed up to it after initially balking.

ATLANTIS

These are pictures from our trip to Atlantis in the Bahamas. It was alot of fun. Thanks to LeAnn and Eric, Phil and Jenny and Natalie and Zach who all watched our kids while we were gone. It made the trip better knowing that our kids were in good hands. We spent a little time at the beach. Most of the time we spent riding the water rides and the lazy river. The lazy river was a mile long and would go between rapids and slow and waves and slow and there was a fork in the river that you could take to a couple of different tube rides. You didn't even have to get off the tube to be able to ride the ride. It was the coolest lazy river that I've ever seen. The weather was gorgeous. It was really hard to return to snow.