"I'll Be Home For Christmas"

It's always hard to move. We have lots of experience, but saying goodbye to friends never gets easier. The only consolation is that hopefully everyone will stay in touch. It's not like we've moved to the moon, or even across the country. We're only 40 minutes away from where we were. But, sadly, relationships do change when you can't have that daily or weekly personal contact. So, please, old friends...don't forget us!

This is the happy part of moving. We are so excited about our new house. We still sort of feel like we're in a hotel. Everything is so clean and new. The hard thing will be to keep it that way with 4 kids. It's kind of tricky moving at Christmastime. 5 of our 10 moves have been in Nov. & Dec. I wonder if I should bother putting up all of my Christmas decorations when Christmas is coming in about 1 week?

BROWN carpet...Great for appearing to be clean, even if it's not!

My lovely iron thingeys. I can't remember what they're called, but they look great!

My new bathroom. YEA!

This is what we're going to do with the walls in our main living areas as soon as we get a whole lot of energy from somewhere.

I let the boys decorate the Christmas tree themselves this year. I thought I'd have to do a lot of tweaking, but they actually did a great job! They keep seeing little mistakes and making adjustments, but I haven't really had to re-do anything. I'm not stressing too much about how things look yet since the rest of the house isn't decorated yet.

My parents came up to help on Friday. It was fun to visit with them. It's always a little embarrassing to have my mom see all the ways that I am disorganized, since she is the epitome of cleanliness and organization. But she still loves me anyway.

Christmas Cheer

For a good laugh...

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1318036595

http://www.scroogeyourself.com/?id=1318367032

http://www.scroogeyourself.com/?id=1318596895

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1308070836

Fun Sundays and 6 Facts

Sundays have become my favorite day of the week. Now that Swen works on Saturdays, it's our only day to be together. He does have Tuesdays off, but we have mutual and scouts on that night, so Sundays are our only real family days. We usually get to see one side or the other of the extended family too, so that's a bonus. Plus, we get delicous food, AND we get to go to church. I have always liked going to church, but now that I'm older I really love to go and have my "spiritual bucket" filled. It gets harder and harder to have quiet spiritual time the more kids you get. Anyway, these are the reasons why I love Sundays. A few weeks ago, we had a particularly wonderful sunday. We played Charades, which I took pics of and posted, we jumped on the tramp, and we just spent lots of great time together.

Joe as a donkey

Swen as a gorilla

Me as a chicken (that is the WORST picture that anyone has ever taken of me-oh my goodness!)

Ike as a frog

Lissy as a sheep

O.K. This is another WORST picture. There were other cuter pics, but this one made our whole family laugh because I look so lame, so I thought I'd pass it on. I was trying to be Lightning McQueen with the "vroom-vroom" sounds. "Silly-Boo, Mama!" as Lissy would say.

GQ

Pack meeting fun

Face painting gone BAD!

My sister-in-law tagged me to share 6 facts about myself/my family in our blog. I'm going to have to do it in shifts, though, because...


1. We are buying our first house! Can I hear some shouts of happiness from everyone, please! We are really excited. I'm in the process of going through every paper ever saved, and every box of "essentials" that we have carried around with us for years. I have spent hours, and taken many trips to the recycle bin. We also have a huge pile for DI, and one for the dump, too. I really don't like moving. This is our 10th move in 10 years of marriage. I'm ready to settle down for a few years! We are moving on Sat., Dec. 1, and will be staying with Swen's parents for about a week until our new house is done. Yea! When we're there, I'll have more time to add my other 5, but for now, I probably better run...

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween! It gets more fun every year as the kids get more into it. We all had the stomach flu last week, and Lincoln hasn't been able to get rid of his. He's had a high fever and no appetite for almost a week. I only put his costume on long enough to get this picture. Little Smiley doesn't look like a happy camper, does he?

Isaac was feeling very independent this year. He had one goal in mind- get as much candy as possible as fast as possible. I kept having to remind him to stay by me, they I decided to ease up a little. That's hard to do with your first! Swen had to work, so I took the kids around my parents' neighborhood while Link stayed at their house. Then Swen came a took the boys for a second round to his parents' neighborhood while I enjoyed hot cider and pumpkin cookies in their nice warm house with the two youngest.

Mr. Cool Ninja and his cool jack-o-lantern. He's been sharing a little too much candy with me. Ugh, I think I've gained 10 lbs. so far.

The cutest little black kitty ever. (Actually, all of the kids have worn this costume when they were this age. They've all been the cutest ever. I have to watch the compliments, or the boys ask, "What about me?"

We didn't get Lincoln alone in his costume. We'll have to take his picture when his fever goes away. Here's a cute fall picture of him, though.

Ghost on the move...

We had fun carving pumpkins this year. Alyssa thought they were a little scary, so I tried to help her do a surprised one-like "Wow! It's Halloween, I'm so excited!" But it ended up looking like a scared pumpkin. Oh well.

The artist in Swen comes out when he carves pumpkins. He gets very serious about it. He stayed up until 11:30 carving a very cool pumpkin. It looks like it's a few sandwiches short of a picnic, or like it's elevator doesn't go quite to the top. But it's still very cute. When I failed in giving Alyssa a non-threatening jack, Swen had to do it instead. He definitely succeeded.

The finished product

I had to post this pic. of the "Buggerfields". This is Swen's sister Allie, her husband, Ted, and little Chloe Butterfield. Ted is a cool and unique guy that drives a Harley, but also loves to sew. He made these w/o a pattern. Amazing!

Some of the Howard cousins

Earlier in October, the kids had a few days off school for Fall Break. We had so much fun! We went to Ratatouille-or however you spell it- Gardner's Village, hiking up part of the Timp. trail, and the boys saw Harry Potter 5 with Swen.

The Good Things About October

We had such a great conference weekend. The feeling of sitting there with my family listening to President Hinckley was overwhelming. I had to take some pictures so I could remember... Please excuse the mess. Those of you with 4 kids will understand that anytime you're all in the room together for more than 10 minutes, the result is clutter.

Conference Bingo, Legos, and MagnaDoodle

Joe and Grandpa Howard

Joe caught a picture of me-I guess I'd better appear somewhere. I've noticed while looking through pictures I'm usually the one behind the camera. Hopefully the kids will realize someday when they're looking through their scrapbooks that I really was there.

Along with conference, October also means football. I have to admit, I've never liked watching football. I used to go to the high school games just to socialize. But now I get to watch my boys play, and it's so much fun! They are both in flag football. The schedule gets a little complicated since Swen is at work in the evenings, but we find a way. I forgot my camera at Joe's last game, but here is one of Ike. They are both doing great! Joe even made 2 touchdowns in yesterday's game. Way to go, Joe! Now that I've figured this blogging thing out a little better, I wanted to put a few more pics up for your viewing pleasure :)

It's so fun to take pictures of girls!

Sleeping Beauty

Oooooh, he's so cute. Look at those blue eyes! Lincoln turned 9 months on Oct. 8. I took him in for his check-up hoping that he had moved up on the chart. At his 4 month check-up he was in the 6% for weight and the 45% for height. Well, he's now at 2% and 35%. (16 lbs. 12 oz., 28 inches). Swen is a little nervous that he'll be 5'4" like me. I think he's going to have a big growth spurt pretty soon. He must have the most amazing metabolism, because he eats a ton! He is really wiggly, too, so he must just burn it off. Hopefully we'll fatten him up for the winter!

Joe's first modeling experience. He was asked by the creater of these cool novelty puzzles to be the face on the website and packaging. He felt pretty special. He came home from school the other day saying, "So and So is mean because they said I wasn't famous." It's hard to explain how fame works to a 7 year old. You can check him out on dinofoam.net, or look for him on the packaging at Walmart.

A cute picture of Grandpa H. and Lincoln in the rain during our fun, but rainy camping experience. When I have more time I'll post more pics from the trip.

Family Fun

Welcome to our new blog. I have no idea how to do this properly, but I thought I'd just put some pictures on here to start with...

Beautiful Lissy in one of ten times that she has posed for the camera. She is a happy child, but she DOESN'T like to cooperate when it's picture taking time!

It's easy to get Lincoln to smile for pictures (or anytime). All you have to do is look in his general direction. He's always happy!

This is called "Link in a Sack"! I can't believe it, but Lincoln thought it was funny too.




We finally got in a camping trip the weekend before school started. This is Swen, Alyssa, and Joe at Tibble Fork.

Isaac and Joseph are growing up so much! I can't believe I have a 4th grader.