Fabulous Five Year Old

 Look what cute five year old lost his third tooth. He's the only one in Kindergarten to have lost that many teeth. It helps that brothers knocked a few loose this year.

My new favorite face he makes. He likes to make this face when we're trying to read scriptures before bed. He's really good at making everyone laugh. Random fun fact he told me today in the car: Polar bears can smell seals through five feet of ice. Never a dull moment with this kiddo around.

Baby, It's Frickin' Cold Outside

Man alive, it's cold out. That's my biggest complaint about living here. I seriously love everything else (okay, maybe not the slow drivers), but we have nice, hot summers, school is across the street from our neighborhood, we have great neighbors, we don't live right in town, it's safe enough for my kids to play outside and roam around the neighborhood. What more could a girl want? No snow! I hate snow. I hate everything about snow. I grew up in Southern California where it was 81 degrees one Christmas Day when I was sixteen. Those weenies down there are complaining right now because it's 55. I used to be one of those weenies. Now, when it's 55 out here, we bust out the short sleeves. It's currently 13 out and it's almost 3 pm. Gag! I have to drive my kids to school. It literally takes five minutes to walk from our house, and I have to stinkin' drive them because your face is frozen before you even make it to the sidewalk. It's not even Christmas and I'm ready for winter to be over. Give me 100 degrees any day of the week and I'm a happy girl.

Our house finally looks like Christmas is coming. We got our delicious smelling tree on Saturday and JP appointed himself Mayor of the Christmas village and set it all up-including who's in charge of each building. We set up our beautiful, new Nativity set that we just inherited from B's bonus-mom. I've always wanted one like it. I've learned to play a few songs on the piano. (Yes, I'm in my thirties and taking piano lessons). I'm done shopping and everything gets wrapped as soon as it comes in the door. I go straight to my closet, lock the door, wrap, and then hide them in boxes or bags (yes, even though they're wrapped). I don't let them put them under the tree until Christmas Eve. Those little buggers are at the age now where they want to shake things and guess what it is. Sometimes, it's hard to disguise the shape too. I caved and let them each bring one down Sat. night. I've even resorted to wrapping small things in big boxes and stuffing the boxes with extra tissue paper, magazine paper, or other stuffing so even if they shake it, they won't hear something rolling around. Made cookies last night and the kids will frost after school. Gonna decorate the gingerbread house tonight and possibly attempt to make some sort of candy to give to the neighbors with our cookies.

My sister is coming down for the holiday and to celebrate my fluffy bunny nephew's first birthday. We were also excited to find out that they will be moving back next month from seven hours away. The boys couldn't be more tickled to see their cousin all the time. And I'm sure my sister won't mind having a babysitter close so she and her husband can finally go on a date again. Plus, Meme is coming after Christmas for the New Year and Grandma Susan is coming after that. Woot! All in all, it's gonna be a great holiday season at our house. (Well, except for the sucky snow and icy roads).

Snow Much Fun

I know, corny title, but it had to be done. So we got snow on Sunday. The kids were so excited. The past few years we get more snow than the year before, but this year it's only snowed like this once or twice. The snow was perfect for a snowman. B was the first one outside and started rolling it up from the back of the yard to the front. This became our result-


Check out Jo Jo throwing a snowball at it.

They also made a snow fort versus a picnic table. That was an all out battle to see who could get who the most. This was Jo Jo's first time ever playing in the snow. I'm so mad. I bought him snow boots in the Spring that were the size he's wearing now, but I could NOT get them on to save my life. I was so so bummed. Luckily we had rubber boots from the other boys visiting the farm that were the right size. He was a little leary at first about walking in the snow, but once he figured it out, it was all good.



I opted to stay inside and occasionally venture out in the doorway to video tape and take pictures.

Cute things Jo Jo has been saying lately-

Yesterday while we were driving he said, "I fine it the big truck. Here it comes, here it comes." I realized I always say that when I need to distract him and say, "Here it comes," so he can see where it is. We were also at an intersection and there was a truck that looked like B's waiting to go through the light (it was all the way across the road) and he said the same thing except instead of that first line, he said, "I fine it daddy's truck."

The other day he had Peanut's popper gun (the one from Cabela's that makes the obnoxious popping sound) and he was pointing it and said, "I shoot the birds." That night he was playing with it and proceeded to tell me, "I shoot the dog," and then the letters (while pointing it at their intials on the wall), then the bear, and then the birds again. When did he become such a big boy. I guess he never had a chance to be a baby with 3 big brothers.

Last night I was reading a book all about trucks to him. It's in cartoon form and the dumptruck on the front has dirt in it. So he points to the dirt and says, "chocolate." I'm so proud.

My other favorite is, "I need you" every time he wants to be held. Usually he inserts mama or daddy after it. It melts my heart every time and needless to say, he gets picked up.

Last week, I was having a particularly hard day with him. He was doing so many naughty things-climbing on the table and throwing chip crumbs and cereal on the floor, refusing to nap, throwing toys at his brother's head, jumping on the couch onto his brother's stomach, pulling chairs over to the couch to climb over it and jump. Finally I'd had enough and I said, "You're a brat." His reply, "You brat mommy." Nice.

Fun With Food

This is for the Fun with Food contest. You can learn about it at www.5minutesformom.com/4658/win-500-for-groceries-in-our-prego-fun-with-food-photo-contest. This is a photo of Peanut at a year old in our hotel room in California on our annual Disneyland trip. Somehow we didn't notice him grab a chocolate muffin from breakfast off the table until he was cramming it in his mouth.

Happy Halloween!!!

So bear with me because I took a million Halloween pictures-mostly of Cart-man in his pea pod costume. So I want to include several of them. I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but seriously people if you dress your dog up for Halloween, you need therapy. It's a dog for heaven's sake! Anyway, we ended up with three out of four of our pumpkin patch pumpkins molding so I only got to carve the small one this year. For those of you who weren't aware, that has become my job over the years. Daddio carved two pumpkins the first year we lived here, but that's been it. So I spent the day doing laundry in between carving and baking cookies for the neighborhood party. I picked the boys up from school and they ran home and got dressed and we were off to the party to play games and frost cookies and have pizza. We came home for about 45 minutes before trick-or-treating the entire neighborhood with friends. Peanut and Cart-man didn't quite last the entire time, but pretty close. There was only one house that Peanut wouldn't go to because it was "haunted." Not really, but they had fog and gravestones in their yard and noises. JP said, "This isn't scary," and then when the guy sitting still like a statue with make-up came up behind him he started speed walking right out of there. He never screamed or ran, though.

-As a side note, today was all red day at school because it's been fight against drugs week. So Bubba wanted some red pants and red hairspray. I got some red sweats at Walmart and then proceeded to go to FIVE stores to find the stupid hair stuff. It ended up being gel so it was spikey today. He thought that was pretty cool and was really appreciative of my hard work to find it.-

So my felt Tinkerbell costume actually turned out really well. I was proud of it. I also had some gold shimmer stuff to wear so I was sparkly. My baby pea pod is definitely the show stealer. Indiana Jones looked good, but gave up on carrying the whip pretty early on. Ninja's ties kept loosening and falling down. Tiger wouldn't wear his head and kept yanking his sleeves up. The costume was really too small so it was kind of funny anyway. Oh yeah, it was unseasonably warm this year, so next year I'm sure it will snow. It was in the sixties! It was the first year we didn't have to layer or wear beenies or gloves. We're so used to buying warm costumes, or things you can wear pajama pants under, but this year we were warm without it.

Wishing you all a fun and spooky holiday!

The Pumpkin Patch

Last Saturday we went out to the pumpkin patch that we have gone to for the last two years. This year they had a petting zoo and pony rides along with the usual rides they have. We let Bubba go thru the corn maze with Daddio while Peanut and JP did the little barrel train ride. They all went thru the straw maze, which the older two are really too tall to have any fun doing, but JP held Peanut's hand and took him thru the whole thing several times. Then we went on the hayride to the petting zoo. All three boys fed some fun animals. They had the usual sheep and goats, but they also had a coati (kind of looks like a raccoon, but climbs the cage like a monkey), a white donkey (which I've never seen before), a zebra, a camel, a big brahma bull, a llama, and two really mean emus. The two older boys were brave enough to feed the zebra, donkey, and camel (only after mom fed them half the food to demonstrate that it tickeled and would not bite my hand). Then, Peanut and JP decided to ride the ponies. JP's was named Pumpkin and Peanut's was named Casper because he was all white. Then we got back on the hayride to go pick out our pumpkins. Baby Cart-man passed out from all the bumping around, so I carried him around the field while the boys got a couple of pumpkins. It was such a fun day and super nice weather, unlike two years ago when we froze to death!