Entrepeneur

This is Jarod in his "store." He has been open for business for about three days now. He has this little table set up in his room back in the corner. You can't see it, but there is a sign hanging above him that says "employees only." Can you guess what the name tag on his shirt says? You guessed it - EMPLOYEE. He tells us all when he is open and we have to come in and buy things from his room. Apparently he is selling off all his possessions. And he expects real money, too. I think he has raked in about 5 bucks so far (because we are all a bunch of suckers of course).

What an imagination!!!

Superhero Daddy

Well, we had a little "drama" this morning. Dean (despite my repeated warnings NOT to do it) started his truck to warm it up while he ate breakfast. When he went out to get in the truck, he saw it driving down the street. Someone had stolen his truck!!! He ran in the house, dumped my purse looking for my keys and took off in my van chasing after them while I called the police.

Mr. Superhero caught up with them in front of WinCo's as they were waiting at the red light. He pulled my BRAND NEW van sideways in front of the truck so they couldn't drive off and jumped out and started yelling at the lady (yes, a lady) to get out of his truck. She threw the truck in reverse and rammed the car behind her (which turned out to be her accomplice). When she figured out that she couldn't get away she jumped out of the truck and ran off.

So Dean got his truck back with very little damage to the back bumper and we spent the next half hour with the police giving statements. Lucky he didn't get pulled over driving the truck home because we had reported it stolen and he took off so fast he didn't grab his drivers license!

Dean promises never to leave his truck running again!

(And no, they didn't catch the theif. Bummer)

Fun in the Snow

The last time it snowed, we took our new sled to an empty parking lot and pulled it around with the truck. The kids thought that was GREAT.

The kids built a little "jump" and Dean would speed up as he drove past it. Here is Jarod getting some nice powder.

DJ taking the jump on his knees.

Wait a minute? Where did Lindsie and Cheyenne go?



Looks like they didn't quite make it.

Lindsie tries it again solo . . . and makes the jump!

Who is this masked man? Apparently when you are freezing, eating snow makes it so much better.

Looks like a couple of criminals. But where is the sled? I'm pretty sure it's on the other side of the parking lot following the truck . . . without riders!

Lindsie tried really hard to jump on behind DJ, only to face plant!

Deacon

Today was DJ's first time to pass the sacrament in church and then collect fast offerings after church. We are very proud of his desire to serve his Heavenly Father and to please Him in every way.

And doesn't he look COOL in that awesome suit! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

Happy Birthday DJ!! . . . (sort of)

Poor DJ. His birthday falls so close to Christmas that sometimes his parties get put off. This year he had his party on the 29th. Why do they always have to be slumber parties???? Five 12 year old boys. . . . it's amazing I am still alive (and they are, too)!!

First they went to see the movie Sherlock Holmes. Then they came back to our house for pizza and cake. And apparently balloons up the nose.

Blowing out the candles. DJ likes cheesecake, so that is what he chose for his cake.

This can only be trouble.

While we were busy celebrating his birthday, my neighbor called to tell me that his wife was sick and he needed to take her to the doctor and could I please watch his three kids? SURE! What' s a few more, right??? Well . . . he ended up having to take her to the emergency room. You know what they do in the emergency room? KEEP YOU ALL NIGHT. So I had TEN CHILDREN at my house, including an 8 week old baby, all night and half of the next day. Needless to say, nobody got much sleep, especially me. The baby did really good and slept most of the night, amazingly, but I was so worried about him waking up that I kept waking myself up. I forgot what it's like to have a baby around.

Can anyone say BIRTH CONTROL??!?!?!?

Christmas

Holy cow! Two posts in two days! I must be off work.

Here are some Christmas pictures. We had a fun day today.

It was especially fun to Skype with Grandma and Grandpa and talk to Marcia! All of our great missionaries! We love and miss you.

Since we don't have family to hang out with on Christmas with everyone gone, we decided to go to the movies and see Alvin and the Chipmunks, the Squeakquel. It was cute, but boy there were a LOT of big families with a LOT of kids there. We were surprised to see it so crowded on Christmas! It was fun.

My little dress-up man now has a new favorite costume. Ho-ho-ho. Would you like to sit on his lap and tell him what you want for Christmas? Sad story - this year he refused to sit on Santa's lap. He says he is "too big" for that. I have to keep him a baby a little longer somehow!!!!

We couldn't have found a more perfect shirt for Lindsie to wear on Christmas.



Making Christmas candy for the neighbors. We made chocolate cinnamon Santas. That was fun!

Wait a minute . . . where did everybody go!! The chocolates are all made and everyone disappears when it's time to clean the mess! FIGURES!!! : )

Chrismas morning - the "before" picture.

Checking out gifts from Santa.

The "after" picture. What a mess!

Rockstars. Daddy is the biggest rockstar, but he disappears when the camera comes out. Grandma and Grandpa heard him singing this morning! Too funny. What a good dad - he really gets into it with the kids.

Catch Up

Ok, so no, I didn't disappear. I just forgot how much work it is to work full time and still do all the other things I like to do (like keeping my blog up to date!) So here are some pictures. And I HATE this new program that blog uses because I can't get it to work right and when I try to use the old version, my pictures come up as HTML language instead of images. So if anybody has any tips for me I'll take them!!

Here we are playing at Jason's house. My kids think they are quite the little "rockers" now. Guess we have to buy Rock Band for Christmas. Thanks Jason. Just kidding. It really is a fun game. Even us boring adults gave it a shot and liked it. So hopefully my kids don't look at this blog until after Christmas.

Take a look at tongue boy here. Everytime he is concentrating, his tongue is hanging out. His bottom lip is always chapped! He looks like Michael Jordan when he plays basketball with that tongue hanging out! But that is for a later blog.

Ok, I sort of got a picture of Amy at the Christmas party. I don't think she is hiding from the camera, I just think she is talking to Darren. But that's the closest I got of a picture of her. Andy Rebecca, you managed to stay off camera it appears. I'll try twice as hard on Sunday to get you on film!

Here is Carter who apparently REALLY enjoyed his cupcake.

And then there's my grouchy face brother giving me the evil eye.

Here's the fam enjoying the yummy food. Don't think anyone left hungry!

These are the gifts from Grandma and Grandpa all wrapped up and ready to go.

And here they are unwrapped. I think they turned out really nice. Hopefully I'll get mine soon!

Hey, I think maybe I'm starting to get the hang of this blog. A little. At least I have figured out how to get text in between the pictures!

Here we are decorating the tree. We actually went to a tree farm and cut our own tree after we went to the Festival of Trees at Southtowne. It was really fun! I can't find the pictures of that, though. We have too many memory cards floating around.

All done!!

Mommy's birthday. And yes, Jason, I am older than you. That just makes me smarter and better looking.