Howie turns 5

I am a little late with this post, but better late than never. While many were celebrating Black Friday, we were celebrating Howie's 5th birthday. Well, to be honest, after Matt and I celebrated Black Friday with our early morning shopping excursions, we celebrated Howie's birthday. He was asleep so he didn't know. For some reason, big birthday parties don't appeal to our kids. Howie opted for a day of family activities like:

eating Krispy Kreme for breakfast
going to Chuck E. Cheese for lunch
going to Cici's for dinner
renting a Mario movie from Redbox

We usually do a little scavenger hunt with presents, but Howie decided he wanted to open his at Chuck E. Cheese. I don't know if I should feel bad that our kids never have "real" birthday parties or if I should milk this for as long as I can. I'll ponder that. Here are a couple of pictures, I'm realizing that I didn't take very many. Happy Birthday Howie!





You'll notice the same Mario Brothers mushrooms that Donovan had for his birthday.

A change in Nina's schedule

I know this might come as a surprise to many of you, but I just wanted to inform you that Nina's schedule has suddenly become very, very open. She would really be able to accommodate a number of requests of her time. She is available every morning, noon and night. She will be permitted to do sleepovers - one night, one weekend, or the whole month of December - any of those would work. I can assure you that it has nothing to do with any of the following:
-making our babysitter cry last weekend
-dumping out a whole jar of coriander in the basement
-filling an entire couch cushion with an array of designs. Her medium was a black pen.
-unwinding the thread from all of my bobbins and wrapping the thread around Star Wars figures
-dumping out all of her hair clips, ribbons and rubberbands
-about 15 accidents in the past 3 days. (she takes a diaper off when we put one on her) When asked why she didn't go in the toilet: "Because I love you mom."
-a steady stream of "I hate you mom" or "my mom is stupid" comments
-unwinding 4 spools of new thread
-dumping cups of water out of her bath
-swirls of purple crayon on most walls in the basement and in the stairway

We only want to offer her many opportunities to socialize and share her love and talents with others. We know the demand for her presence will be high, so we will have to be fair and say first come, first served.

Week in review

On Monday, Donovan came home from school with the news that his friend Dino pulled out his loose tooth during class. That makes number 5 for Donovan. His school gave him this little plastic tooth for safekeeping.


On Tuesday Donovan had his Glee Club performance. They sang 4 songs and during most of them Donovan kept motioning for me to take a picture of him. The pictures turned out too dark since we were way in the back, but here is a nice blurry one of him afterwards.



On Wednesday we all watched the United States National Team play Guatemala in a World Cup Qualifier.




On Saturday we celebrated the November birthdays from my siblings' and our family. Howie and Cohen were our honorees. Howie was delighted to get a Bakugan battle arena. Don't ask me.

Sweet sibling conversation

Nina - Donovan, I had a yucky poop.

Donovan - I had one too.

Nina - Can I see your poop?

Donovan - yeah, can I see your poop?

Nina - Gross! We are twinners. We have twin gross poops.

Cameron is 6 months old

Cameron has accomplished a few things in his half a year of life:
-he can sit on his own
-he can roll out of "tummy time" position in record time
-he has visited 6 states
-he has attended numerous sporting events
-he smiles at anyone who will look at him
-he has survived his 3 older siblings

Cameron is still working on a few other things:
-sleeping through the night
-cutting his first tooth
-rolling to his stomach
-communicating to Nina that waffles, cookie dough and popcorn are not appropriate foods for him yet


GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Cougars!



We made the trip to Colorado Springs to watch BYU beat Air Force yesterday.

What do you do

when this shows up at your door?




Now before you answer, consider these factors:
-it is 9:40 pm
-you have already put your kids to bed
-a certain 6 month old hasn't slept more than 4 hours in a row in his entire life
-you are DEAD tired

It was a hard choice for me too.

Come and Gone

This past weekend was a whirlwind of fun as Grandma and Grandpa Marshall came to visit. The time flew by as Ben and Pam played with, hid, sought, tagged, hugged and kissed the kids. We were all sad to see them leave this morning and we can't wait to visit them in Virginia next summer!




Doing some early Christmas crafts. This is something the Virginia cousins get to do with Grandma and Grandpa at their house. We were lucky they brought the fun to share with us too.




Cameron has grown just a bit since the last time Pam saw him.



Bowling and Chuck E. Cheese were just a couple of fun activities. We also played mini golf, walked to the park, fished (surprise, surprise) and ate lots of great food.

Welcome Haley!

My sister Jill and her husband Adam welcomed their third girl to their family yesterday. My other sisters, Jennifer and Kelly, and I visited Jill last night and brought the necessary recovery items: See's Candy, milkshakes and clothes. Congratulations guys, thanks for a reason to celebrate!

One hard part about being a parent

With all the crazies out there in the world you can't be too cautious, especially when it comes to protecting your children. So when our kids came home from trick-or-treating, we had to inspect all that candy that came from total strangers. Sadly, we found many pieces that we thought were unsafe for our kids. We removed those iffy treats and put them aside for further inspection.


You can clearly see how dangerous the candy on the left looks. Matt and I will be sure to dispose of them safely.



Cameron wasn't sure he agreed with our safety measures.