Happy Thanksgiving!

Last night for family home evening we made turkeys and wrote down what we were thankful for on their tail feathers. If you really think about that it doesn't make any sense at all.

Anyway this is what Tyler is thankful for:

1-Scriptures

2-House

3-Church

4-Family

5-Me

6-Gem

7-Levi

8-June

I was a little skeptical of his list because I feel like 5-8 were all included in number 4. Whatever.

My thankfulness list included.

1-Bedtime

2-Scriptures

3-Preschool

4-Grocery Stores

5-Church

6-House

7-Tyler

8-Tyler's Job

Finally we have Gem's list. For the first four she drew, she looked at my turkey and said "what does that say?" and then drew whatever it said. But eventually I did get her to think of some of her own.

So from left to right (as near as I can remember) Gem is thankful for

1-Levi

2- I don't remember; I guess a squiggly line

3-Food (as represented by a drawing of one pea)

4-Her bed

5-Church

6-Our House

7-Daddy

8-Grocery Store

I felt she really captured the Thanksgiving spirit in her turkey face. It looks like it knows it is going to be eaten.

Big Babies

Today June turned 5 months old! And on Saturday Levi will be 16 months old! We are celebrating by not going to the doctor!!!! Yes, that is right no baby at our house has to go in for a baby check up this month. Between the two of them, and Levi's pneumonia, and flu shots for everyone, I feel like we live at the doctor's office. Those forty dollar co-pays are really starting to add up, but I can't even imagine how awful it would be if it wasn't for those forty dollar co-pays.

Levi is getting to be so big. His mouth is just exploding with teeth, it is a wonder he can even chew on anything without crying in pain. He thinks he is a big kid, and he likes to push the baby doll around in the baby stroller, and help me with the laundry. He is a just a little mommy.

June is getting big too. I have gotten out the 12-month and 18-month clothes for her. I don't feel like she deserves them because she doesn't even roll over yet, but I guess she has to wear something. She really loves to eat sweet potatoes and really hates to eat plain oatmeal.

A Couple Gem-isms

I haven't posted any funny things that Gem has said lately, but that doesn't mean she has stopped saying them. So for today I thought of three funny things about Gem to share with you.

1- Lately she has begun saying "you already told me that". For example if I say "Gem when you finish all your jobs you can have a treat", then five minutes later when she still hasn't started her jobs I reiterate by saying "Gem when you finish all your jobs you can have a treat". She looks at me as though I must be incredibly stupid and says "you already told me that." Usually I get a "you already told me that" at least once a day.

2- Last night while saying her prayers. "Please bless that mommy and daddy can go away so I can be in charge of the babies." Yah, I don't think so.

3- Finally my little brother has kindly shown Gem how to play MarioKart on the Wii. So now all Gem ever wants to do is play "the racing game". I have, in fact, on two occasions, seen her get first place. The only problem is she plays for hours, and I being the great, involved mother that I am, think to myself, well maybe it is a little better than just watching tv, and so I do nothing.

June Jumps

June is finally turning into a fun little person. She likes to jump in the jumper. Sorry about the sound, Levi cries through the whole video. Also sorry for the weird light, it was night time. So the point is if you are picky just don't watch the video.

Some Videos

First off some snow fell last Friday night, so Saturday morning I realized we weren't really prepared for winter. So I made a list of everything we needed and headed to the store. Two hundred dollars later everyone was ready to play in the snow :( It's just money right? Anyway at least Levi looks pretty good.
Turn up the volume for this one and you can hear how Gem's snow angel turned out.

Just wasting some time on a Sunday morning. It is really stress free not having church until 1:00.

Gem

It seems like I only ever talk about Levi on the blog, but I really do have two other children.

Yesterday was a good day with Gem. I was able to give her a haircut. It was only the second haircut of her whole life, besides bang trims. She sat on the counter and watched Dragon Tales the whole time I was cutting her hair. I think I did pretty good for my very first time cutting girl hair.

Last night for Family Home Evening we wanted to talk about giving to people. We weren't sure how it was going to go over. We explained that not everyone gets presents on Christmas, but we could help some boys and girls to get presents if we

give them some of our toys. So we went down into the playroom and told Gem we wanted to think of ten of our toys to give other boys and girls as presents. Without even blinking Gem started to pick out her favorite toys to give to other people. We explained that we have lots of baby dolls and two baby strollers,

and so maybe someone else wants a baby doll and a baby stroller. So she helped me pick out the

best baby doll and some clothes and accessories to give to someone else. She also gave away one of her laptop toy computers, and some blocks and various other toys. Then she picked up her stuffed Sleeping Beauty and said "maybe someone would want to play

with Rose". I was really surprised because she loves all of her princesses. So I thought maybe she didn't understand that we were giving these toys away. So I told her that if she gave Rose away she wouldn't be able to play with her anymore. She looked at me and said "It's ok, I have Cinderella I can play with, and someone else can play with Rose, and then we can both play with a

princess." I hope we can teach all of our children to be as generous as Gem.

Two Pictures

I just don't have anything to say about this.

This is how I feel

I can't begin to express the level of barely-hanging-on in our household at this moment in time. This picture vividly describes my home. I found this stack of papers on the couch, with two bites taken out of it. Yes, my son apparently tracked down a perfectly good stack of papers, and decided to snack on it.

You know, I really do try to take care of everyone who lives with me, and yet I have 3 1/2 (Tyler doesn't mean to work against me so I only count him as a half.)people working against me twenty four hours a day, every day of my life.

Today has actually been a light day, besides June getting me out of bed by screaming louder than I think I can scream, and Levi falling off the kitchen table. So far so good.

Halloween

Here is Gem already to go to preschool in her princess costume. I made the costume for Halloween last year. Unfortunately when I got it out of the closet an hour before preschool, I realized it needed some major repair work. I patched a few holes, and re hemmed the bottom quickly before eight thirty in the morning. Now that Halloween is over I am relegating this costume to the dress up box.

When I picked her up from preschool she was pretty sad that Halloween was over so then I had to tell her that she still got to go trick or treating that night with daddy and that Halloween wasn't over yet.

Here are the kids ready to go trick or treating. They had a great time trick or treating with daddy and grandma and grandpa Ross. Levi is sporting a crayon costume that was worn by his daddy ages and ages ago.

After trick or treating they had to go visit the other grandma and grandpa, but at this point they were pretty tired. In the last picture Levi looks a little drunken, but still desperately hanging on to the little pumpkin that someone had given him at one of the very first houses.