Computer is Fixed!

I contracted a virus on my computer a few days ago.  A program called "Internet Security" somehow attacked it, gave me a virus, and then tried to get me to buy their antivirus software.  Despite how legitimate the program looked they did not catch me in their sneaky snare! 

I hired a teenage computer guru from church to take a look at it.  He did a great job and returned the computer to me all cleaned up, and in a timely manner.  I was glad I took it to him rather than the computer repair place that would have cost me more than double.

I asked the young computer professional if he thought I should install an antivirus on the computer since ours had long expired.  His advice to me was to just not click on stuff on the internet (a little harder to do with kids!), and that an antivirus program usually just slows down your computer a lot.

What do you think?  Was his advice good?

Ai-Den!

I think Aiden is a little bit confused about Bryan's name.  He knows how to say it, but he constantly refers to both himself and Bryan as Ai-den.  I'm not worried about it.  I'm sure he'll figure it out.  In the mean time it makes me laugh to myself.

My computer seems to have gotten a virus, so until I get that figured out I'm using my OLD laptop, so no pictures for now!

Homeschool Update

Here is my conclusion: The hardest part is starting.

I had in my mind a vision of what I wanted to do with Amy to begin our homeschooling (even though she is not technically school-age), but giving up my time to begin doing it was sooooo hard.  It took me four months of seriously thinking about it (and more than a year of less seriously thinking about it) to actually schedule and DO our homeschooling.

Now we've been doing it seriously for two weeks and Amy and I are both loving it. The ideas for curriculum and activities come to me easily thanks to my kindergarten teaching experience.  Putting aside MY time and making it OUR time was hard, but it only took a few days to realize how fun and meaningful it is.  It's worth it and I'm glad we FINALLY got started!

I'll plan to post about our homeschooling activities and ups and downs on a regular basis.

Right now we're going through each of the letters.  Amy knows the name and sound of most of them, but we're still reviewing them one-by-one.  She doesn't know the lowercase letters quite as well.  Writing them is hard, but I don't stress it too much since she is only three.  This past two weeks we've learned about Max the Mouse who loves to munch, BoBo the bear's birthday, Silly Squinkies, and Andy who has Allergies.  (While I was teaching I assisted BYU with a research project called SEEL and helped develop hundreds of playful, fun, phonics lessons.  If you're interested you can view them here: http://education.byu.edu/seel.  It's free and printable!)

We've also worked on numeral recognition and AB patterns.  We've made pattern trains and Valentine wreaths with hearts in an AB pattern to give to our elderly neighbors.

Today when I didn't have much energy or anything planned we just did our alphabet train puzzle and played Candy Land.  But at least we didn't just not do it!

Snowman Prayers

We haven't had too many snow days this year, so when one came a few weeks ago Amy was ready to bundle up and make snow angels and a snowman.  I didn't think she'd last more than 5 minutes because she's never really liked the cold or the snow, but I guess she's growing up because she LOVED it!

 Amy's first snowman!  We set it up in front of the window because I thought it would be fun for the boys to look out the window and see it.  It actually ended up startling me all the time because I'd see someone looking into our house out of the corner of my eye!

 As the days went by our snowman bowed further and further, but it just wouldn't fall over!  This is after two days.

 And this is after 5 days.  It is still about 2 inches off of the ground!  We had fun observing it everyday.

Dan joked that the snowman was Muslim and was praying night and day for our family.  That's great!  We need all the prayers we can get, even snowman prayers!

We Don't Have Any Money

A funny story that I didn't want to forget. . .

Amy can be a bit of a drama queen.  She can make herself cry about anything, anytime, anywhere. For months she has been asking us to buy her a horse and we always reply that we don't have money to buy a horse.

About a month ago we were at church.  Dan and I were on one end of the pew and Amy was on the other end with Aiden, Bryan, both of my parents, and Aaron, and Jessica between us.  All of the sudden Amy starts bawling and crying -- quite loudly for all to hear!  "We don't have any money!  We don't have any money!"  By the time she made her way to me I realized she was making herself cry about a horse.  At least now the whole congregation knows that "We don't have any money."  But they have no idea that the whole ordeal was about wanting a horse.

January Wrap Up

I have so many blog posts in my mind.  I want to blog about the daily witty things, but always feel behind on blogging about the big events.  I never seem to let myself write about the little things if I'm behind on the big things.  So in an attempt to catch up so that I can move on, here's January all in one post!  :)

(My parents came to visit for a few days at the end of December.  I haven't uploaded the pictures onto the computer.  Another big post I need to catch up on...)

 

First in January came Daniel's birthday.  I made him a target cake with some tootsie roll bullets.  A very easy and fast cake.

 Jessi and the boys helped clean up the extra frosting.  :)  They sounded like little pigeons and kept saying, "Want more, want more, want more, want more...."

 The cake looked even more like a target after the candles!

Our next big January event was a very fun weekend visit from Kim and Liz.  Everyone in my family thinks these two are so much fun and so we were really grateful that they came to see us!

This one picture summarizes our weekend pretty well.  Kim and Liz love playing games and so do Aaron and I.  Jessi was happy to be included.  We spent HOURS and HOURS playing Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride.  They even played Candy Land with Amy!

 Aiden and Bryan found great playmates!

 That weekend was also Aaron's birthday.  Here's everyone "cleaning" up some more frosting!  Aaron opted for a super simple cake so that I would have more time to play board games.  :)  He's 14 now!

 Kim and Liz brought their dog Spider.  He is the calmest, most easy going dog I've ever met!  All of the kids LOVED him.

Christmas

Our Christmas morning started out pretty easy going since we waited until the afternoon when Aaron, Jessi, and Daniel got here to open presents.  Amy slept in and then it still took her forever to notice/remember that Santa had come!  (We had Santa put all the presents downstairs instead of under the tree so that the boys wouldn't get into them.)  Santa brought all of the little kids bikes so they got to play with those during the morning and open their stockings.  (Aiden, our bruiser, woke up with a bloody nose that morning.)

 

Finally time to open presents! We passed the camera around, hoping to get candid shots of everyone, but at least half of the pictures the kids took came out very blurry, and it turned out that everyone liked taking pictures of the little kids, so we have tons to those!  Oh well!  We WERE all there, having fun, and happy!

 

The kids also got a giant trampoline that took us two days to put together.  I don't seem to have any pictures of  the kids on it though!  We really felt spoiled with gifts on this Christmas.  Thanks so much to all the grandparents for helping make it wonderful for the kids!

My Christmas goals for next year:
-Make an advent calendar for the kids that has a small activity to do each day.  The activities will be something that will help us remember Jesus Christ and service.
-Make or buy a nativity that is for the kids.  Teach them to act out the nativity story.  Read the story from the scriptures.
-Teach the kids a few Christmas hymns.
-Coordinate a service project for the whole family to do together.

Amy Reads

The Best Big Brother Ever!

The pictures say it all!  We love Aaron!

I'll get to Christmas and all the January birthdays, etc. . .

Fall Catch Up

I have lots of pictures from the last few months that I haven't posted.  I'll dedicate this post to catching up with fall.  Long post with LOTS of pictures!

Way Back in October: Dan and I took the little kids to Park City to walk around and have lunch.  We stopped and played in the leaves for a while.  So much fun!  Here's a bunch of snapshots.  I love them and imagine they would look even better if I knew how to photoshop them!

Halloween Cookie Disaster: I tried to chase away some rainy day blues in October by bringing everyone to the table to mix up and roll out some Halloween cookies.  We used a package mix and it was a complete disaster as the dough was sooooo sticky!  We scraped it off the table and ended up doing drop cookies instead.  Despite the mess, we succeeded in chasing the blues away and had fun!

Dan's Birthday: For Dan's birthday cake I made a bag of gold.  I wish I could have given him a real bag!  Daniel gave him a big knife for his birthday so Dan used it to cut the cake. 

Also on Dan's birthday I had each of the kids paint a canvas for us to hang up in our living room.  I was tired of the old pictures we had on the wall and I wanted something that represented our family more.  I told them they could paint anything they wanted, but I painted the background and picked the color palette so that they would all match our decor.  I love the outcome.  It's bold and takes up most of the wall.  Modern, and still very meaningful.  Light and fun.  I think it makes a strong statement about what who we are.  (Top row: Daniel, Aiden, Aaron.  Bottom row: Jessi, Bryan, Amy (with some help!).

Thanksgiving: Dan's mother, Jan, came to visit for Thanksgiving weekend.  Some of the highlights of our weekend include lots of cuddling, story reading, and napping!  All of the kids (Aaron on down to Bryan) loved to hang out up in the girls bedroom with Grandma.  They just laid around reading, singing songs, cuddling, and even napping together!  I've never seen them all enjoy being so close for such long amounts of time!  The kids also enjoyed having Grandma Jan take them shopping at the mall.  :)

 Grandma was an instant hit with Bryan since she was always willing to read books with him!

 We also got to enjoy a brief visit from my brother Jason and Emy, Boston, and Story.  The kids had so much fun playing together!

 And that finishes up our fall.  Later this week I'll do Christmas Break!