Giveaway!

My friend Jessie writes a hilarious blog, and she is doing a giveaway for a gift card to the movies. Click here for a link to her blog. (If you want to start following her, I promise you won't be disappointed.)

Toothless and Binkyless

Rebecca lost her second top tooth yesterday. She's now lost four bottom teeth and two top teeth. I was worried that she would look awkward with all of her missing teeth, but she's still just as cute as she was before (at least to me anyway).

This Dorito-faced boy is now sleeping without a binky. I never plan these things - I just couldn't find a binky for him to use one night, so he had to go to sleep without it. He did a lot better than I thought he would. He asked about it a few times the first week or two. I would just tell him that it was lost and that he didn't need a binky anyway. He doesn't ask about it at all anymore.

If I knew it would be that easy to take away from him, I would have done it a long time ago!

New Ride

I think I mentioned that our 1998 Camry died, so our plan this year was to use our savings and tax refund to buy a new (used) car. Kevin's parents had this car that they bought for Kevin's Granny Bowman who recently passed away. Their son Brandon was driving it, but he's leaving on his mission in a few months, so he decided we could have it.

It's a 1995 Chrystler Cirrus, but it only has 59,000 miles! I think Kevin's granny drove it to the grocery store and the temple, and that's it. It's always been parked outside in the sun, and the paint was in bad shape, so we fixed it up with a new paint job.

I love this car! Right now I carpool, so I have to drive the big car to school most days, but I think when I'm done carpooling, this will be my car. It looks more like me than Kevin anyway. ;)

Christmas in February!

I was going through some pictures I recently took on my camera and realized that I never posted my pictures from Christmas! I just have a few to share.

Here are the kids on Christmas Eve in their Christmas jammies from Grandma, freshly bathed and ready for bed.

William and Braden got light sabers from Santa. These boys are obsessed with Star Wars lately, and every time we passed these sweet light sabers in the Target toy section, they had to turn them on and wave them around a little before we could leave.

Rebecca loves Polly Pockets and Disney Princess Polly Pockets, so she got a castle for all of her Polly Pockets for Christmas.

Christmas was just okay for us in 2011. Kevin had to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, so I think that's why I never posted anything here about the holiday. The kids and I did a lot of Christmassy things together like visit lighted neighborhoods and The Festival of Lights at the Las Vegas Speedway, but it wasn't the same without Kevin. We're hoping he's around for more of the holiday this year!

Holy Updates!

I have lots of pictures on my camera of things I want to remember, so here are a bunch of new posts for your reading pleasure. ;)

Milestones

We've hit a few fun milestones at our house lately.

1. I've reached 200 posts! Not very many considering I am going into my 5th year of blogging, but I am happy with all of my posts. I know I joke about blogging getting me out of having to scrapbook, but I honestly feel better that I am doing something to document what's going on with our family.

2. This cute girl turned 7 years old.

3. We sold our 1998 Camry that has been in my family since 1998. My brother bought it brand new. He sold it to my mom a few years later, and we bought it from her a few years after that. It started acting funny last week, so we took it in, and they told us that the engine needed to be replaced. We've known for a while that we would need a new car soon, so instead of putting more money into this car, we decided to sell it. We put it on Craigslist, and we had 4 phone calls about it within a half hour - busted engine and all. We sold it for a lot cheaper than we had hoped because of the engine, but really I am happy to be rid of it with all the problems it's had recently.

4. I've recently passed 50 songs that I can play in the hymn book. This is huge for me! Six months ago I could play about 8 hymns. Then I got called to play piano for Relief Society, and now I am forced to practice and learn new hymns almost weekly. My mom is an amazing pianist, and playing piano was something that I picked up quickly when I was younger. But I gave it up, and I've been regretting it for the past ten years. I feel a lot better knowing that I am finally developing a talent that I have always enjoyed.

All of these crazy things have occurred around the same time, so I feel like they need to be recorded!

Thanksgiving Week

My kids go to school on Veteran's Day so that they get the whole week of Thanksgiving off. It's so wonderful. We spent the entire week at my parents' house in New Harmony, Utah.

Rebecca's birthday was on Tuesday of that week, and for her birthday she wanted to go to Uncle Buck's and Aunt Denise's to ride the horse.

This is Rebecca on Nelson with my brother-in-law Buck.

While we were there we also got to see the new baby chicks and the big chickens, the outside cats, Sam the dog, and the rest of the horses. There are LOTS of fun things to do at my sister's house.

For the rest of the week, we did a lot of relaxing, some shopping, a little four-wheeling, spent time with cousins, ate lots of pumpkin pie and letfovers, and saw Breaking Dawn and Jack and Jill at the movies. It was a nice week break.

I hope everyone else had a nice Thanksgiving!