We've been taking more videos with my camera and the kids all love to watch them(mostly they love to watch themselves).  Here's a video of each of the kids, I hope they work and I hope you all enjoy them.

Claire loves to sing and dance(almost as much as Eden).  Here's a song she made up around Christmas.  Let's see if you can understand the lyrics...

(If you want to wish me a Merry Christmas, if you want to wish me a Merry Christmas then you've got to do it.  If you want to have a Merry Christmas you've got to do your home-work!)

You've got to love Claire.  She is a hoot and brings us lots of laughs.

 Richy's always full of fun ideas and ways to get the kids active.  We had my brother Tom and his family here  for Thanksgiving and this is something we did one evening.

Here's Porter.  He tried and tried and tried until...

Now you can understand why he was so "tough" at the end.

Paige had a different idea...

I don't know how many times she went over, but they all looked almost exactly like this(she's always so fun).

Lincoln's such a handsome kid!  He LOVES to be active and use up all his energy.

gotta love background noise!

This video of Eden is from Christmas 2011.  I know it's old, but we just love the video.

I get a kick out of her.  We have another vid of her ripping off the wrapping paper with her teeth and sounding like Stitch, but I just had to share her reaction to her gift from Jonas(hope I got that right).

Last is Bella Boo.  The full video is one and a half minutes of Lincoln and Eden putting on a show.  This is what happened during the middle of it...(keep your eye on Bella)

Ninja Vanish.
Bella's ninja instincts kicked in the moment she noticed she was on camera.

We hope you've enjoyed the show!!!

when will this ever work...aahhhh!!!

I've been trying to download videos because we thought it would be awesome, but both times I tried the blog froze while downloading the last video and I had to close the internet.  AAAHHHHH!!!!!

I'm going to try again, but I'm totally done trying for the night.  I did click SAVE, but I can't find where it saves stuff.  If you know please tell me.

Here's a sneak peak at one of our fun activities...

Now the question is...what is he doing and how did he do it?

Hi one and all.  This is Mom!  I am trying to keep everyone informed on how dad and I are doing.  First I am doing much better.  My back just hurts the normal hurt now.  I stopped taking the muscle relaxer because it made me really depressed.  I was so down that I didn't want to do anything.  I didn't even want to knit.  I went to work and cried part of the day, not because I was hurting but because I was very depressed.  Dr Mansfield wanted me to go to a different doctor and have shots in my back to releave the presser so I made an appointment for the first day available March 22nd.  Then it dawned on me that it was over a month away and I spent the rest of the day crying.  I finally decided to make an appointment with Dr Mansfield to go in and talk about the MIR of both my lower back and my neck which was taken several years ago.  The reason for the neck is because my hands go numb.  But when they saw that I had tumors on my thyroid they said, "We don't care that you have a lot of problems with your neck that is causing the numbness in your hands.  We need to find out about these tumors."  Well I decided that I want to know what is the problem with the neck and the back and I want someone to explain the MIRs to me.  Then I want to know if I can do some exercises that will take care of the problems for both areas.  It seems silly to me to wait for over a month to get my back feeling better.  Now for dad.  As you know his blood sugar drops all of the time.  He finally had the test done to see why it drops and the test came back saying that he is producing way too much insulin.  Dr Mansfield sent him to Dr Wahlens assistant David today.  We had a good visit.  He is running another blood test, scheduled dad to see a diatian, wants dad to eat 6 small meals a day, cut down on carbs and exercise more.  He said that because dad is over weight his body doesn't produce the insulin as fast as it should when he eats, so then it over produces the insulin after the blood sugar has gone back down which causes his blood sugar to drop way to low and his insulin doesn't come back down like it should.  Dad said that he would exercise more!  So hopefully both dad and I will lose weight and get fit!

I just wanted to say that we loved our visit to Washington and Kentucky.  We love our Sunday family dinners too!  You all are the best.  I love to see how the grandkids adore their grandpa.  And dad is in heaven when they want to be with him.    Next time I will try to do pictures to share.

Love you all tons.  Mom

Fun in February

We were so blessed to have mom and dad come to see us for Baby Abraham's blessing at the beginning of the month!  It was such a treat to have them here.  The kids were beyond thrilled to have their grandparents to climb all over and pester.  I think the grandparents were pretty thrilled to be climbed all over and pestered, too. :)

Mom was feeling left out that Dad was getting all the attention, so she opened up the water works.  Eliza took pity on her, but Bolton was having too much fun.   Good thing she was pretending.

To entertain ourselves after they left, we played with the funny setting on our "photo booth" on the computer.  These are the "squirrel" and "frog" settings.  Soooo FUNNY!

  

We are SOOOOOooooo excited that we are moving so much closer to y'all!  We will be in California and if anyone wants to visit we will be happy to have you!  You can even go have a romantic weekend in San Fransisco or Monterey or something and leave the kids with us.  Its going to be so great to be within a day's drive!!!  I can hardly wait!

We will be visiting Utah in July, not certain when we'll get there, but we will for sure be there the 15, 16, & 17.  So, maybe we can plan something fun?  When will Dave and Adrienne be in town? I know Mom and Dad were interested in doing family photos again this year, we'll need to figure out the best time to do that.  YAY!!!  Love y'all

Our 2012 Year in Review: H & S family

A few random highlights from last year. And someday I will have Kim personally 

tutor me on the finer points of blogger formatting. A side note: My apologies to
posting late, I had temporarily lost my post. Apparently, I also need a lesson
in delay timed posting. 

The obligatory hike to Intermittent
Spings during Thanksgiving.

On our way to the Renaissance Festival
Stay tuned for more Ren Faire later on in this post!

Halloween 2012
Skye: Zombie Princess
Gavin: Ghost
Spencer: The 10th Doctor on Dr Who

Archery @ RenFaire

Leopard Slug found in our backyard.
These are apparently common in the
Northwest, but I've never seen them in Utah.
Sidenote: Their slime does not come off your hands
with normal dish soap (I tried 3 times!) You have to
scrub it off with a towel.

Date night with Dennis to see the Avengers.

Porter, Spencer, and Ethan at Renfaire.

Renfaire: Posing with a skeleton in a hanging cage. I told the kids
that if they didn't behave, they would end up in the hang cage as well.
Eden later asked if I would really do that to them. I assured her
that I was just teasing. I did feel a little guilty that she
took it rather seriously...she was well behaved though.

Ethan playing last game of La Roca soccer.

Renfaire: Note the look of incredulity on Sean's face. His
penchant for snarky comments were put to excessive use
while we tarried at what he termed the "freak fest".

La Roca- last game.

What you can't see is the deep & nasty bite mark on the under
side of his lip. This is a result of a surprise high bounce on the
trampoline.

A day at Pineview. Spencer on a boat.

Rainy 24th of July parade.

First day of school.

Spencer on a beach.

First day of preschool.

Adventures in Yellowstone. I'll have to blog about this separately
sometime. Or, better idea, make Sean do it!

My personal favorite. Skye is "falling" into a steam vent.

This one is for David. The sign reads "Leather Pool".
They named a pool after me, David!

Getting frisky in Yellowstone.

Planking in Yellowstone.

The Grand Tetons mocking me from a distance.

My bro took this shot of me in "Joseph" doing the  candlestick with
Joseph.  I was pleased to see my costume hadn't hiked up to
my skivvies (which it sometimes did), nobody wants to see that.
Also, my wig didn't fly off and I wasn't dropped (both of which had
happened before), another plus.

I'll leave you all with this picture of  "Christmas Cinnamon Rolls",
or, "New Year's Resolution  Busters" as they since have become known.
Just to remind you all how hungry y'all are.
THE END....or is it?!!

Summer in Washington

Terrific news!  We are FINALLY ready to sell our Utah house and our realtor has recommended that we list it for much more than we had expected. Wahoo!  Truthfully, I can't wait to see the pictures they took online because I haven't seen everything redone yet.

I was going to post pictures here for those of you that haven't seen our apartment yet, but I can't find them.  I guess I'll have to take them again.  That will have to wait until our house is all clean.  I'm working again so...well, just don't hold your breath on that one.

Instead, here are pictures of some of the fun things we've done here (well, May to July). I may be just a wee bit behind on my blogging.

First, a super windy hike up Badger Mountain.

See, it's not all ugly.  But, yeah, most of it is ugly.  

I just really loved these two girls sitting here together.  

Next-the POOL!  We've had a lot of fun.  Jack is totally fearless with his jacket on.  Unfortunately, he's also becoming totally fearless without his jacket. I'm not sure where Dalton was this day; he must have been playing with friends.

The kids just really loved Jack's feet in this picture.  He's still walking fine, in case you were wondering. 

We got to watch fireworks on the riverbank this year.  Unfortunately, we ended up being too far away from the show, so the best part was just hanging out on the bank together.

Dalton was in Utah this week, but we were thinking of him. Dave constantly teases Dalton by calling these "Canadian Geese" (they're Canada Geese).  So this one's for Dalton. 

And last but not least, we also had a fun stake pioneer activity.  They asked kids to dress up as pioneers.

We tried to dress Jack up as a pioneer boy.

But that didn't last too long.

The girls were super cute in their bonnets.

Though Lucy's 'street style' showed through in the end.

And Dalton (who I hardly ever seem to have pictures of) was too cool (sigh) to dress up, but was happy to come and eat the food.  :)

Love you and miss you all!