Let it Snow, Let is Snow, Let it Snow

I feel just like the song says, "and since there's no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!" I know some of you were traveling for Thanksgiving so the snow was not as welcomed but for my family we didn't have to go anywhere more then a couple of miles away so we just enjoyed it! In the pict. below Shari is standing in a snow drift but she isn't all the way to the ground.


Monday night a blizzard moved through and so school was canceled on Tues. and Wed. and Shari already had the rest of the week off for Thanksgiving. We really couldn't go anywhere for a couple of days so we just had fun together. We watched Christmas movies, played games, and made treats! Oh, and of course, played in the snow.

And since we finally had enough snow to snowmoble at our house we had to go get a new sled. Unfortunely it started to get really cold the end of the week so they spent more time playing in the sled at the house then outside.

Snow drift in the driveway.

Jonas wasn't to sure what to think about the snow at first but after a little while he got the hang of it. Obviously we don't have very many boy snow clothes yet! Pink gloves, purple pants, and pink boots that are at least 1 size to big. He didn't seem to mind though!

Jonas loves to sit up at the counter with the big kids. He is reading a book that he just got from Grandma great!

Just found out NO SCHOOL tomorrow either!! Sounds like a good time to make cinnamon rolls!

Long Time...

I wish I could say that I have not blogged for so long because we have been vacationing in Hawaii or some other exotic place but it has been life as usual at our house. Because I haven't blogged or looked at my friends blogs in so long I have been on the computer for well over an hour. I found out that two of my friends were pregnant and one other friend that I did know was pregnant found out she was having a girl. WOW I need to check blogs more often. I do enjoy seeing what everyone is up to especially our friends and family that live far away and we don't get to see often enough.
Shari is busy being a first grader and loves school. At the beginning of school she started taking gymnastics from her Aunt Jen who opened a gym here in town. She loves it and is doing well at it. Also just last week she started playing basketball. There first and second game was on Saturday. The first game Shari came off the court (in the middle of the game) crying. Her team had only had one practice and they really didn't know what they were suppose to be doing. If Shari wasn't crying I probably would have been laughing. The second game 30 minutes later was much better and they were already starting to get the hang of things. It will be fun to watch them progress over the next month.

Jamie loves pre-school. And so does mom because usually I get at least one completely quiet hour while she is at school and Jonas is asleep. Jamie and Jonas have started playing together more and it is so fun to watch them. Jamie never really got bored with Shari at school because she plays so well by herself. She is content to have a handful of pencils as she sits at the table and plays house with them, never even leaving her chair. But now that Jonas is running around more she has gotten more involved with him!

Jonas is almost always a happy boy and when he is not he loves to snuggle so that is usually okay too. This is him with his cousin Brooke, who by the way is 6 months OLDER then him!! They have also started to be good friends, that is when they don't both want the same toy. Lucky at this house we figured that out fast with the girls and have 2 of most things. Here they are in the hats they found in the closet. I guess it's time to get a boy one too!

Bedtime or Playtime, sometimes it is hard to tell. Jonas loves to get into Shari's bed because she is on the top bunk! He has figured out how to get up the first stair by himself, I really hope he doesn't make it all the way anytime soon.

Jonas's new favorite thing to do it to push the kitchen chairs all around. He likes to push the buttons on the microwave, try to turn the water on in the sink and today he helped me cook on the stove. Gotta watch those fingers though.

Halloween was fun at our house. We went out to my mom's early in the day and had a treasure hunt but I forgot my camera. The kids had a lot of fun with their cousins. Later we went to the annual Trunk or Treat. Jonas was a dinosaur.

Shari was a cute rock star. They had a parade at her school but again no camera.

And Jamie was a butterfly, however when she went to her party at pre-school (pict. below) she was so upset about her butterfly wings not fitting just right that we were late for school and lucky that the picture doesn't show the red eyes and tears we had just minutes before. Jamie is funny like that. She was SO excited about her party that I think she got alittle to anxious and then were everything wasn't just right she cried and cried. I almost had to find a new costume right then and there but since we didn't really have anything else she decided just to leave the wings home.

With the holiday's approaching I am getting very excited. I almost have all of my Christmas shopping done and hoping to spend the month of December enjoying the holidays in other ways. Hope everyone is well and happy.

Back to School

Two weeks ago Shari started the 1st grade! I don't know how it happened but I only got two pictures and neither one is very good. Maybe we will have to play dress up and do it again another day. Shari was very excited to start the first grade but came home alittle overwhelmed. In kindergarden they almost never went to recess and now they had multiple recesses with tons of kids she didn't know.Things are getting better now as she is making new friends and learning the routine. We have all been worried about Shari being able to get up and ready for school without major drama and tears but she has been amazing. The rule is that she had to be all ready for school and then if there is extra time she can watch a cartoon. She has surprised us all by usually being the one who wakes us up and is ready with time to spare!

Jamie started pre-school this week and loved it! It is a small class with only 6 kids, one who she was already friends with, so it will be fun for her to make new friends.

She was alittle bit nervous but there were no tears as she went to class. When I picked her up she said, "mom, I talked to somebody."

As for her bandaged thumb we think she may have broke it when she shut it in the car door last weekend. It is still swollen and her fingernail is completely black. I have not broke the news to her that she will probably be getting a new thumbnail when that one falls off, ouch!

As for Jonas he misses the girls when they are at school, he is really used to having someone to play with. At FHE the other night Jonas wanted a cookie so Josh gave him one, but immediately wanted another one so Josh gave him another one, still not satisfied he wined for more. Seeing that his hands were full Josh put the third cookie right in his mouth. Finally just what he wanted!!

Mom's babies are growing up and I'm not so sure I like it. I think I got a glimpse of the hardest part of being a mom when I had to send Shari to school that second day when I knew she was scared and nervous and didn't have any friends to play with. Making your kids do something that you know can be very scary and hard. I can't imagine what it is like sending a son on a mission not only because you will miss them but more because as their mom you know there will be hard days but you have to send them anyway and you can't just make it all better.

Last Minute Vacation

Since Shari is starting 1st grade on Monday and Jamie is starting Pre-school in a couple of weeks we decided to take one more last minute vacation to Park City. We have wanted to ride the Alpine slide for awhile so we finally did it. It was a lot more fun then I had expected.

This is Jamie and dad wanting in line to go down the slide.

Josh and Jamie at the bottom of the slide. They are on the middle slide in the middle of two other people. They had a good time!

At the same place as the slide are some other activities too. Below are pictures of the girls jumping on trampolines with bungy- cords. Shari was brave right away and stared doing back flips she even did a double back!! And since she is starting gymnastics in a couple of weeks she thought this was pretty cool!!

Jamie was happy to just jumped up and down!

Getting ready!!

This was riding up the lift to go down the slide.

Next year Shari will be old enough to ride by herself but this was just getting ready. Jonas wasn't old enough to go on the slide so we just took turns

Jonas LOVES to push things, anything he can find that will move; chairs, laundry baskets, boxes, well I decided why not get some use out of it! He really did vaccum a lot of the front room. After awhile he just got frusterated though because he couldn't pull it back very easily.

Part of a toy being used as a hat!! What a cutie.

Camping at Bear Lake

A couple of weeks ago we went camping at Bear Lake with some really good friends. We had a GREAT time. I hadn't been to Bear Lake since I was little and I really didn't remember much about it, but it was even better then anything I did remember.

We went to two caves. This is the minitoka cave, it was really neat. It was 421 steps in to the cave and 421 back out and 1300 feet long. It is 40 degree's year round it there so it was pretty cold. Shari liked it, Jamie liked it but got cold, and Jonas feel asleep and poor Josh carried him most of the way.

Jamie and Grace coloring!

Shari and Megan coloring, with Jonas finding a spot in the shade!

Happy Campers!

We also went the Ice Cave. We went there first so we were not disappointed by it in comparison to the Minitonka cave but it was really nothing compared to that. We had fun though. Because of a book I had read that had the Ice Cave in it (Wrong Number- highly recommend!) we knew there was a little hole that opened up into a bigger cave. It was alittle scary to crawl through at first but eventually we all made it.



The beach was BEAUTIFUL! and so much fun. You can walk out into the water forever before it gets deep. The beach was my favorite part.

The kids played in the sand for hours. Shari spent most of the time along the edge of the water looking for sea shells. What she found was snail shells but that was good enough for her. She filled half a bucket full.

Jamie spent most of her time in the water but alittle time building sand castles. Her favorite thing was to try to jump over the waves, or just to run out into the water and then fall onto her knees.

We brought Jonas's walker because he loves pushing things and sure enough he loved pushing his walker in and out of the water. He would push it into the water as far as he could and then he would turn around push it back out and do it again over and over.

The kids must be on their knees here because they never went out far enough to go above their waste.

This was the ride home. I was alittle sick and Jonas was alittle sad so I just kept handing him food to keep him happy, finally I turned around to check on him and this is what I found!

My Uncle Paul

Yesterday my Uncle Paul passed away and I felt like I should write down some of my wonderful memories of him. I have alot of fond memories which is kindof ironic because he always lived far from us but when we would go to visit he always made it so much fun.
My first memories are from when he lived in Seattle and we would go visit him and his family. The first thing we would alway do is sit down and plan out what we were going to do. We planned in great detail of what time we would leave, arrive at destination, stop for lunch, and arrive home. I always loved this part. In fact a few years ago Uncle Paul was at my mom's house and I was doing some planning of my own and Uncle Paul said something about me being a girl after his own heart! When we visited Seattle we always when to the ocean and would ride a ferry.
Years later Paul and Janice moved to Arizona and we we able to visit them there a few times to. We always had fun when we went to visit them. They always had fun things planned for us to do. Janice had all boys but when we came to visit she always had fun places she thought us girls would like to shop.
Then a few years ago Paul lived here. I had the pleasure of taking him dinner every night for awhile. I always enjoyed the few minutes we spent together every day. Some days were really quick drop offs but some days he would tell me all about his day and show me some "trinket" he had bought. My girls usually came with me to take dinner and they enjoyed it to. One time he gave them a little stuffed animal or something (I don't quit remember) but they thought that was really cool.
I really love my Uncle Paul and Aunt Janice and imagine they had a wonderful reunion in heaven yesterday!

Comments

THANKS to all of you who have posted a comment on my "thoughts on Sharing." I have really enjoyed reading what each of you have had to say about this. I had a good discussion about this topic with my kids as well and we came up with a few things...
1. It okay to choose not to share but it is never okay not to be nice. When they don't want to share their toy they have to be polite in the way their tell someone and then they have to try to help the other person find something they can play with.
2. The reason we share is so that everyone can be happy. So if they choose not to share they still have to make sure everyone is still happy. Kind of goes with #1, they will probably need to find a toy the others can play with.
Now this works fine when you are at home or somewhere there are a lot of toys BUT I find that the problem is usually when you are in a more public place and your kids can just go find another toy to make their friends happy. So this is when the parents jump in. We have to teach our kids to share but just as important we have to teach our kids how to respond when others choose NOT to share. (this may be harder then teaching them to share?) I think we have a tendency to think someone who is not sharing is being mean and we relay that to our kids when trying to console them. But we need to teach our kids that it is okay for someone to choose not to share with them (just as it is okay for them not to share), they are still good friends but it is still their choice.
Well, after I had this discussion with my girls a funny thing happened. Jamie said, "mom can I have a friend over so I can do that."
"Do what," I asked.
"Share my toys!"

Well, good luck to all of you. Please feel free to continue to post on this subject I like having this "discussion" with you. I really appreciate the advice I get from those of you who have "been there, done that" and I enjoy the comments for those of you who are in the same stage as me just trying to decide how to do the right thing.
I will say one more thing. The past couple of weeks I have really tried to remember that my kids are just kids and not be so hard on them, and I have thought a lot about the balloon story and tried to remember that if it's important to my kids, even if it seems unimportant to me, it is still IMPORTANT. As I have done this I have gotten along better with my kids and have had more fun with them!