Winter Fun

We have had an unusually cold winter this year. It's a little gloomy sometimes. Today we made it up to 30 degrees for the first time in a month and a half and the sun is shining. It is beautiful. We all got ice skates for Christmas so we decided to put them to good use. Lauren was awesome. It was only her 2nd time on skates and she made it around the rink without falling. Dustin is a pro, mostly because his skates have double blades and are a lot easier to balance. Whitney and Katelyn had fun playing hockey with Todd. Falling down got old for the little kids after a while, so they spent a lot of time "resting" on the ground. Then they ditched the ice skating altogether and headed for the playground.

December Birthdays

Both Katelyn and Lauren have birthdays in December. Katelyn's is the 5th and Lauren's is the 11th. Thank goodness Lauren was a little over due or we could have had two birthdays on the same day because Lauren was due on Katelyn's birthday. It makes December a busy month at our house, but we love it.

Katelyn turned 10 this year. She was excited to be in double digits and because she could get her ears pierced. She didn't get a "friend" party this year, but the night before her birthday I took her and a friend to a stage production of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and we went out for ice cream afterward (even though it was freezing outside). Her birthday fell on a Saturday this year which she considered a bonus because then she didn't have to wait until Todd got home from work to open her presents and she didn't have to go to school on her birthday. We were all very proud that she didn't pass out when she got her ears pierced.

Lauren turned 6 this year. It is hard to believe she is 6 already. Wasn't she just born yesterday? Anyway, she is a big kindergartener now and loves every minute that she gets to spend at school. She got to have "friend" party this year and invited a few friends from church and from school. Recently, she fell in love with the Fancy Nancy book series so we had a Fancy Nancy Tea Party. We made fancy purses with jewels, sequins and ribbons. We had a Fancy Nancy pinata and played Fancy Nancy bingo. The little girls loved using my fancy dishes for their cake and ice cream. It was a very "fancy" party in case you couldn't tell. After her friends had gone home she gave me a big hug and told me it was the best birthday party EVER!

Halloween 2009 (continued)

As soon as the Halloween Superstore next to Target opened Dustin started trying to pick what he wanted to be for Halloween. He went from Cowboy to superhero and ended up as a skeleton. Don't ask me how we got to that point, but he wanted to be something SCARY. After wearing hand me down costumes for her whole life Katelyn finally got to pick her own costume. She has wanted to be a hippie for as long as I can remember and this year she got her wish. Lauren was supposed to be a Go-G0 Dancer, but she refused to wear the Go-Go boots. Oh well. We didn't get any pictures of Whitney because she spent Halloween at a friends house, but she was a Hobo.

Halloween 2009

We made our traditional trip to the pumpkin patch yesterday. It was a beautiful day, which have been hard to come by lately. In fact earlier in the week we had a couple of inches of snow and Dustin made his first snowman.

Dustin picked a pumpkin right away and spent the rest of the time fascinated by the dirt! Katelyn fell in love "at first sight" with her pumpkin which of course weighed more than Dustin. Lauren finally picked her pumpkin after picking and discarding about 30 pumpkins. Whitney wanted to see if the electrical fence surrounding the patch was turned on so she touched it. Yes, it was turned on! She said it shocked her, but thank goodness it didn't cause her to go into cardiac arrest. So then all the other kids, including Todd had to touch it too. Monkey see, monkey do.

First Days of School

Well, Whitney and Katelyn had their first day of school on Tuesday. I was soooo nervous for Whitney to go to Middle School. I've been having nightmares about forgetting my locker combination and where my classes are. She was pretty nervous too. She didn't even want to eat breakfast. After the first day though, she was fine. No big deal. I wasn't quite as nervous for Katelyn. She even has the same teacher as last year. Mrs. Hankins moved up to 4th grade and a lot of the kids from her 3rd grade class stayed with her.

Almost more traumatic than Middle School was Kindergarten. Lauren's first day was today. She has been so excited. She walked 10 feet ahead of me to the bus stop, she got on the bus and was so busy talking to her friend that she almost forgot to wave at me. She didn't even want me to meet her at the school to make sure she made it to her locker and class okay (the other girls wanted me to). I was a little teary on the way home from the bus stop.

Dustin started his first day of potty training boot camp today and has done great so far. It helped not having his sisters to distract him all day. KNOCK ON WOOD! Hopefully he can keep it up. His preschool starts on the 29th so he has to have it down by then. What will I do with all of them gone? Granted Dustin will only be gone for a couple of hours twice a week, but still I can't remember when I had no kids at home even for a short period. I've included a picture of one of Dustin's finest moments courtesy of Grandpa Nelson.

Summer Family Update

So this month I thought we could do a general family update of everyone and our recent adventures this summer.


Whitney is of course 12 now and went to Girl's camp this summer. Our stake decided to rough it a bit by tent camping (with indoor showers and toilets) and they had a great time. Whitney was put with all the other first year girls and had a lot of fun meeting new people her age. Here favorite parts were a skit where she was Milly Mays (sister to Billy Mays), doing tie dye shirts and making/eating hobo dinners. She is also now in to texting and facebooking so feel free to drop her a line.







Katelyn is loving drawing and doing crafts this summer. This summer some of her masterpieces included a poster of a deer she made for Faith in God requirments, a volcano made of tin foil and a paper cup, and making gak-think slime. She even went to art camp this summer stretched her own canvas to create a painting!



Lauren has decided that she likes jump off the boat. Seems like everytime that we stop the boat there are serveral requests to jump in the water. Lauren was a little scared at first but quickly decided that it could be very fun. Last Thursday when we went out she even asked for the ski rope and swam all the way to the end of the rope. Then asked me to start to boat and drag her around the lake with just her life jacket on--I abliged and her and Whitney had a great time! This was the girl that informed me at the beginning of the summer that she was not going to go on the tubes until she was 8 years old.






Dustin is still refusing to go on the potty. We have tried star wars guys, and candy and every thing else you can think of. We have even tried guilt, by saying "your sisters go on the potty" you can't go to preschool if your not potty trained. So Kelly decided to wait till the girls are at school. Well cross your fingers that we can get him potty trained!

Kelly has taken to running recently. Over the last five years plus she and a good friend have been speed walking several times a week. I asked her about running a 5k race with me and before I knew it she told me that she had run a 5k and I think a 10k just to see what she could do. She was quoted (or liberally quoted) as say "I don't need no stinkin' race to run a 5k. I can run it on my own and I don't have to overpay for a t-shirt that I will never wear." Turns out I'm not that practical so I'm still looking to overpay for a t-shirt that proves I actually got off my duff.

Todd (me) has been busy attending every youth camp available including LDS Encampment, Youth Palmyra trip and even Girls Camp. I also recently went on my annual golf trip and managed to play 90 holes of golf in two days. Yea, it is a bit crazy and obsessive but that is what the guys golf trip is all about. We even tried some "Happy Gilmore" drives on the 90th hole and it turns out that I hit two great drives with that shot and beat the 6+ previous drives I tried with the more conventional swing.

Hope you are having a great summer. We have one more month and are looking foward to more great adventures.

Palmyra

The youth in our ward recently took a trip to visit the church history sites in upstate New York and Kirtland, Ohio. Since Todd is the YM President, I got to tag along as a chaperone. Also, as hard as it may be to believe Whitney is 12 now so she got to go too. It was a great trip. We left Thursday, July 9th in the afternoon and got back around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 14th. That may not seem like a long time, but we saw a lot of things. The first day we visited Niagara Falls in the morning and then attended the Hill Cumorah Pageant in the evening. On Saturday, we were able to go to the Palmyra temple. An interesting thing about the Palmyra temple is that it is the only temple with a clear window. The window looks out over the Sacred Grove. The view was impressive. After we went to the temple we visited the Smith Farm. On Sunday we had the privilege of having Sacrament Meeting in the Sacred Grove. That was the highlight of the trip for me. We also visited the Grandin Building, where the first copies of the Book of Mormon were published, and the Whitmer Farm. The next day we drove to Kirtland, Ohio and visited the sites there which included the Kirtland Temple, Whitney Store, Isaac Morley Farm and the John Johnson Farm. I've been to quite a few church history sites. I've been to Nauvoo, Salt Lake City, Martin's Cove, Winter Quarters and more, but none of them made as deep an impression on me as the sites we visited on this trip.

We also had an opportunity to visit with my sister Cecily and her family who came from New York City to see us (and the pageant too). My little nephews made me miss Dustin who was at home with Grandma and Papa. By the way, my parents were awesome for coming out to Minnesota to watch the younger kids while we were gone. As Lauren likes to say, "You Rock!!"

Emily Johnson, Emily Chandler, Whitney and Ashley Hatcher on the top of the Hill Cumorah.

Whitney, Emily C., Emily J. and Cara Reiffer at Niagara Falls. Don't you love the fashionable ponchos. They kept everyone so dry. NOT!

Todd, Kelly, Tyler, Cecily, Scott and Ben at the Smith Farm.

Whitney and her friends in the Sacred Grove.

Todd and Kelly at the Palmyra Temple.