Random Kid Pictures

Here is a catch up post. The kids are constantly asking me to take pictures of their "cool" creations. The boys are especially guilty of this. So when I unload my pictures onto the computer, I find that I have a lot of pictures of the kids posing with things, or holding something for us to see. This first picture is an exception. We were taking Alyssa out on the tennis courts until the end of November and then within a week, she broke the strings on both of her rackets. Apparently this is going to be a common occurrence with her since this is the third racket within 1 tennis season that she has had to have restrung.

Ashley had to teach an FHE lesson on Psalm 23(the lord is my shepherd) for a school extra credit assignment. She did a great job planning it all out. Her treat was a marshmallow and pretzel sheep.

Ashley had a Christmas Choir concert in December. Most people watched it online, but I went since she had a solo in one of the songs. They were all socially distanced and most were wearing masks. She did a great job.

Now, here come the random pictures...

A heart shaped chicken nugget.

A lollipop of lollipops

Balanced markers

A magic track car running and balancing on it's back two wheels

I asked Camden to write out the alphabet for practice and he went above and beyond

A design on the Blockus Board

The boys made a bat cave on their bunk bed

A train track creation

The game Suspend - All of the sticks balancing

Camden's Tom Turkey in a Luigi disguise

A cereal man

Another angle on the bat cave

A lego creation

A dino egg bath bomb

A really big chicken tender

A chicken star

Crazy hair day at school

You're welcome for all the randomness

 

Holiday Fun

We had a nice holiday season. We had Thanksgiving here at home and made a last minute invite to Danny's sister's family to join us. It was a small group. We ate, played games, and let the kids enjoy some cousin time. 

Our house elf, Peter, made an appearance this year. He started in the jar to be COVID-safe. They kids were excited to have him around all month. 

One of our neighbors did a traveling Santa on the first Saturday of December. They had a sleigh that they pulled behind a truck and made their way throughout the Jordan Willows subdivision. The kids were excited to see Santa and get a candy cane. 

Santa also made an appearance at our house on Christmas Eve. The kids got to sit on his lap and tell him what they want for Christmas. He also delivered some gifts from Gawbie and Grandpa.

We had the Kilgore's over, again, on Christmas Eve. We had dinner, played games, did a gift exchange, and then had a visit from Santa. We also opened some Christmas gifts while we were together. The little ones sure love Ashley. They all wanted to sit next to her on the couch.

The kids got new jammies on Christmas Eve. We opted for non matching ones this year. 

We slept until 7 on Christmas morning. After finally getting the birthday girl out of bed, we took our usual picture on the stairs and headed downstairs. 

We had a lot of gifts this year. We give our kids a budget for buying gifts for the family. Some of them like to buy multiple gifts with that budget in order to give more. As a result, we ended up with a lot of gifts, some of which were worth a dollar or less. 

We had our usual waffle breakfast in between stockings and gifts. I think we were opening gifts until about 11. And then everyone enjoyed their gifts for the next few days.

Basketball

Tyler and Camden got to play basketball with the city league during the months of November and December. When they started, neither of them even knew how to dribble a ball. They definitely learned a lot during the season. Although, I think their favorite part was being with their friends. 

By the end of the season, Camden was the most aggressive defender on the court and he was even able to make a few shots during the game.

2 of the boys on his team are also in his class at school, so that was also fun for him.

Tyler got to be on the team with his friend, Tanner, who also happens to be in our ward and in his class this year. Tanner's dad was their coach so Danny got to sub as a coach for a couple of Tyler's games. Tyler was the smallest kid on the court and got a bit distracted(like he is with anything he does) at times. But I think he still had fun and we saw some improvement with his skills by the end of the season.

He was definitely best at defending. They had colored wristbands to mark the child from the other team that they would be guarding and he stuck to his person better than anyone else, when he was actually thinking about it.

They did have a 2 week shutdown right before Thanksgiving. As a result, their season ended up being one game less than it was supposed to be. But we are glad that they were able to play as much as they did. And they seemed to have fun with it.

Halloween

I know this is a little late in coming, but we just unloaded some pictures off of our phones and found these Halloween pictures that I never posted. Even in the midst of the pandemic, we let our kids go trick or treating this year(Alyssa just went over to a friends house to hang out). Danny created a social distanced set up to hand out candy and the neighbors loved it.

He stood at the top of the ladder and dropped candy down the blue candy chute.

Tyler was a storm trooper this year. He has developed a new love of Star Wars, thanks to his 2nd grade teacher. 

Camden still loves Super Mario Brothers and Luigi is his favorite character. 

Ashley was a character from her favorite book series, "A Series of Unfortunate Events." She is Violet.

Alyssa dressed up with her friends as crooks.

They had fun trick or treating and we managed to stay healthy in the weeks following so I was glad that we let them go.

Alyssa's Garbage Can Cleaning Service

Alyssa decided she wanted to earn a little bit of cash, so she offered up a garbage can cleaning service to our neighbors. We had a pressure washer that we borrowed from the Convention Center and she cleaned each can for $5. I think she learned that it was a really gross job, but she stuck with it for a good 4 or 5 hours one afternoon and made like $150. Danny was the driver, and she paid Ashley $20 to go with him and help load and unload garbage cans. We were proud of her for doing most of the hard work. 

 

Carving Pumpkins

We almost forgot to carve pumpkins this year. The kids wanted to carve them the night we brought them home from the pumpkin patch. But I told them it was too early and that they would rot before Halloween. My plan was to carve them the weekend before Halloween, but that weekend came and went and must have been busy because I totally spaced it. The Thursday before Halloween arrived and the pumpkins still hadn't been carved, so I told the kids we were doing it after dinner, or not at all. When they brought them inside, we were sad to realize that most of the pumpkins were soft and sad looking. I guess our first hard freeze got to them. It was pretty gross, but we carved them anyways.

A scary face(with Forky eyes) - Tyler

A character from Ashley's imaginary game - Tyler

A normal pumpkin face with "BOO" for the mouth(Camden came up with that on his own)

And Luigi(from Super Mario Bros. That is Camden's favorite character right now)

Now that I'm looking at these pictures, I'm realizing that I didn't even take pictures of Ashley and Alyssa's pumpkins. They finished carving theirs after the boys and I was already busy getting the boys cleaned up and ready for bed. The boys ended up with 4 pumpkins each. A big and a little from the pumpkin patch, a medium sized one from school, and a little one from their friend's birthday party. They painted the small ones and carved the bigger ones. Ashley carved a dog with it's owner. Alyssa made a pretty ordinary triangle eyed pumpkin face.

Pumpkin Patch Fun

I took the kids to the pumpkin patch across Main Street from our neighborhood, again this year, to pick out pumpkins. They have the best price for pumpkins around and the owners are so nice. The kids posed for a picture after they had picked their pumpkins. I really like how the picture turned out. 

The kids talked us into taking them to Cornbelly's again this year(Alyssa opted to go with her tennis team instead of with us this year). We picked a day later in the month of October than usual and I think we all regretted it a little. While it was nice having fewer crowds, it was not so nice having wind and cold. We all had, at least 3 layers on and were all a little cold once the sun went down. The most annoying part about it is that the day before we went was in the 60's with no wind. The day that we went was in the 40's, with wind. But we made the most of it and I think the kids still had fun.

It wouldn't be a visit to Cornbelly's without a picture in one of the many face signs.

We got everyone hot chocolate/hot apple cider after the sun went down to warm us up a little. The warmth it brought didn't last nearly long enough.

The boys had fun in this little play area that was set up like a miniature town. There was a castle, a post office, a grocery store, a city jail, an ice cream shop, a car repair shop, etc. I liked being able to duck into the little buildings with them for a few minutes to find some protection from the chilly wind.

Cornbelly's has about 100 play areas. This is one of the kids favorites. There are stacked up hay bales that have 3 or 4 different kinds of slides off of them There are also rope ladders and stairs to climb up to the top. They especially love sliding down head first. 

I didn't get any pictures, but we also played numerous games involving balls, they had fun on the mini ropes course and the zip lines, we rode on a couple of different trains, they went through mazes(not including the giant corn maze- we managed to skip that one this year because of the cold), we watched pig races, and a dog show, and played mini golf to end the night. They asked about going back multiple times in the week following our visit. Next year, I think we will go earlier in the month, or just pay for the season pass so we can spread the fun out over the entire month in small doses.

I took the three younger kids to the Scarecrow festival at Thanksgiving Point. Tyler liked all of the Star Wars Themed scarecrows. 

This one was Ashley's favorite(mine too), depicting a 2020 business meeting.

Camden liked the Super Mario themed scarecrows. There happened to be 3 this year.

It was beautiful weather and the gardens are always refreshing to walk through. So many wonderful smells and sights. The kids favorite part is rolling down the grassy hills. Ashley made herself sick from rolling too much. One time down the hill would have been too much for me, so I totally get it. I guess that is part of getting older. We ended the afternoon with some ice cream and a couple of lawn games that they had set up(tic tac toe with pumpkins and gourds, connect four, tetherball, and jenga).