First Half of December

 

Gwen found some shaving cream and thought she was hilarious. Too bad we made her wash it off right after because missionaries were coming over.

Getting neighbor gifts ready!

If Benson ever is quiet, it means 1 of 2 things. 1: He's into mischief. 2. He's got himself a pile of books and is occupied reading.

This girl learned to tie shoes!! Wahoo!!! I've been feeling bad for not teaching her sooner. Those velcro straps are just so darn easy. But we took about 10 minute on Sunday, and she had it down!

Richie and the kids were delivering neighbor gifts on Sunday and had Gwen go up to the door of a friend to drop off bread. They have big dogs, but they are nice and they know Gwen. For some reason, when the door opened, one of them jumped out and bit Gwen. She held it together in front of our friend but when she got home she was sobbing. Once we got it cleaned up a bit, we could see that two of the puncture wounds were fairly deep. We weren't sure if we should take her in for stitches somewhere or not, so we called our neighbor Jeff who is a doctor. He graciously came over to check it out, decided it needed stitches, went home and came back with all the needed supplies, came back and stitched her up right at the kitchen table. With our insurance only being catastrophic, we were financially grateful for the help and also grateful in a million ways that Jeff is our neighbor! Saved us such headache.  Gwen was a champ and has enjoyed telling everyone the story. 

We've gotten pretty close to our ward's elders over the past few months. Elder Despain and Elder Kelley have been so wonderful, and we were all sad when we learned they were both being transferred. We had them over one more time to share a message and to make gingerbread houses. They made my kids feel so special and we all genuinely loved spending time with them. Hopefully we can stay in touch!

We ditched the science lesson one co-op day, and had a "bake" sale to raise money for my friend's niece. She's about Miles's age and has a rare muscle degenerative disease, and has recently found out she also has cancer. The kids made signs, we picked up doughnuts and hot chocolate, and stood outside in the cold for a few hours. We ended up with $100 hard earned dollars. Hopefully they felt the warm fuzzies and we helped a teeny tiny bit. 

While the older kids were at swimming lessons the other day, the little boys and I made gingerbread play-doh. I'm trying to be better at being intentional with this time, instead of just letting them watch extra shows while the bigger kids are swimming. Benson made this gingerbread bear and named it "Alex" and said it was really sick with chicken pox. :)

Whenever I have a hard day, Lindy immediately tunes in, and the best way she knows how to remedy the situation is her tried and true "Ooh-la-la beauty spa". She chooses about 20 different activities for me to choose from. I usually chose, hair, nails, makeup, snack and snuggle time. :) 

Richie had to travel for work for 3 days last week. Just to eastern Idaho, but it was 3 days with me on my own. Even though Richie missed me, he said the quiet and solitude was really nice. So he ordered me some super comfy pj's, reserved me a hotel room, and sent me off for a night away by myself. Heaven! I took a bath, read books, worked in my planner, wrote in my journal, watched a movie, worked on my handwriting course, and slept in. We decided that we'll make it a regular thing. 

2 things: Henry is living with us! While he decides if he's going to go back on his mission, we decided to offer him a change of scenery. He's working at American with Richie and living with us. We moved a few things around and he's sleeping in the little boys room. Hopefully it's beneficial all around! 

2. We got a new set of missionaries! Another Elder Despain and and Elder Graham. They are both from St. George, so I loved them immediately. They came over to share a message tonight for FHE and then we decorated sugar cookies. Even though we loved our last missionaries so much, these 2 seem pretty great too. 

On the Homestead. Side note: We think we might have lost one of our cats to an owl last night. We saw an owl flying around, and then this morning, we are 1 short. On the positive side, we saw one of the cats get their first mouse yesterday too! So that's good. 

Second Half of November

 Homeschool picture dump. Miles has been working on his dribbling skills with this program called "Dribble Up". Some days he loves it, some days he hates it. ? 

We had the Fogle's over for homeschool group and ditched the regular lesson and devoted our time to making mini pies, in preparation for Thanksgiving. 

Each of the kids gave presentations on a specific insect they were learning about at homeschool group. Miles=cockroaches, Gwen=Moths, Lindy=Snails.

Gwen is rocking piano and her Acro class, and Lindy is loving her dance class! 

Scenes on the homestead. Stormy Day, cuddly kitten, chip drop, first real snow day, feeding our fall decor leftovers to the animals!

Richie came in the school room one Saturday and said, "I'm taking you on a date at 5." This was surprising because we hadn't planned anything, and who was going to babysit for us? 

Well, now that Miles and Gwen are a little bit older and all of the 3 older ones are pretty darn mature and capable, we've been gradually easing them into babysitting. This has been a years long process. At first I would just leave the kids if the baby was napping and I needed to run a 5-10 minute errand. Then, we would leave the kids at home after they were tucked in, give them one of our phones, and Richie and I would go on a walk for an hour.  At some point a few months ago, Richie had to leave town for a week for work, and I had to deal with a bit of extra curricular craziness, and needing to run certain errands etc and I HAD to leave the kids alone for longer periods of time, while they were all awake. It was scary, but also liberating. I've now been able to regularly sneak away during quiet time to run a few errands that are so much easier without kids, and other things like that.

 This picture was of our first real date we took, while our kids babysat themselves at home. We fed them dinner, got them in their pj's, and set up a movie. We now have a Gabb phone that the kids can use to call in case of emergency, so that helps ease everyone's minds. He said the plan was to grab some food and then I wanted to go to Home Depot so he could pick out his Christmas present. Something casual. Then he pulled a fast one and took me to this super cool restaurant that the only way you know it's there, is if you know. Then you head up an elevator to get to the dining room. It all felt very mysterious and exciting. The food was delicious. I'm still dreaming about the roasted Brussel sprouts with bacon and a creamy mustard sauce. And then of course we did head to Home Depot to shop. The kids did great! 

I'm not ready to leave them for long dates, like the temple, but real live dates can start happening now without hiring a babysitter! We've hit a momentous milestone!

Thanksgiving 2020

 We were planning on getting together with the Garner side for Thanksgiving this year, but their plans changed, so we had an unusual but wonderful Thanksgiving.  We tried inviting lots of neighbors, people Richie works with, and asking if anyone in the ward needed a place to go for Thanksgiving. But we kept coming up empty! About a week before Thanksgiving, the Stone family (who Richie knows from his Bluffdale days) said their plans had changed and they'd love to get together. Yay!

We've gotten together with them a few times and our kids all get along great. It's so nice when you all genuinely enjoy each other's company. We also had the missionaries over, but because of covid, there were some odd rules they had to obey (wearing masks the entire time, and eating in a separate room) but we worked around them. 

Miles and Richie were invited to a turkey bowl in the morning while the other kids watched the Macy's parade online (oddest edition yet, thanks 2020), and I worked on the food. Then Richie took all the kids to a bike park to try out their newly fixed bikes and to give me some concentrated time to cook.

We had turkey, mashed potatoes, wild rice and sausage stuffing, rolls, dixie salad, veggie tray and homemade cranberry sauce. For dessert we had a chocolate Oreo pudding dish, salted Carmel pear pie, pecan bars, and mini apricot pies. YUM! 

We ate and then the kids played and played the entire rest of the day. At one point, we initiated a new tradition. Since Taylor Stone remembers doing some swing dancing with Richie back in the day, Richie was refreshing his memory of the Shim Sham. We made it a thing and brought as many kids as would willingly participate and we taught them the Shim Sham! New tradition born! (can't believe these are the only 5 pictures I got!)

First Half of November

 The day after Halloween: We travelled back from SLC. But before then, we celebrated Grandpa's birthday, Lindy lost her first tooth, and Davy kept waving to Grandpa who was conducting church via zoom. :)

That Monday, we used our Halloween candy for math, as usual. Counting, sorting, graphing...all good things.

We didn't have to wait too long to see G&G Garner again. They came up the next weekend to help us process chickens. We ordered all the supplies we needed including this GIANT scalding pot. It was our very first time doing this and so there were some nerves, but Richie has had experience processing chickens so he knew the drill. Grandma and Grandpa helped SO much. At the end of the day, we gazed gratefully at our garage wall with 1 freezer full of frozen fruit and nuts etc, shelves packed tight with home canned goods, and the chest freezer full of homegrown chicken. We harvested 37 chickens, equalling over 200 pounds. Then I used the necks and feet to make around 20 quarts of broth. So worth it. 

Miles finally let me cut his hair! He's handsome either way, but I was grateful to see short hair Miles after such a long time.

Scenes from homeschool: Studying pollination, crafts and thank you's for Veteran's Day, how do lungs work, lunch picnic in the living room while watching documentaries, making slime, and poetry tea time. 

My mom turned 72! From now on, we feel like every birthday she makes it to is an incredible blessing. This one felt tender especially since it's been such a rough year. We weren't able to go down, but we participated via zoom. (There we are on the computer:) )

It's been too long since I've gotten my kids out on dates. Miles and I snuck away quickly for an impromptu date the other night to Costa Vida. At one point he said, "Thanks for taking me out to dinner Mom. I really didn't feel like having left-overs tonight." :) And he confirmed that even when he's a super cool teenager, he'll still want to go on dates with me. Love that boy. 

Scenes from the homestead this month, plus the first of our chickens that we ate. Doesn't look pretty here, but it was huge and delicious!