Christmas week activities

1. Dogsitting  Some friends asked us to watch their dog for a week for them while they went on vacation.  Our kids were more than happy to do it for them.  It was a little Yorkshire terrier, but not too tiny.  They loved taking him on little walks, and playing tug of war and even cleaned up his poop.  They did a great job, but it made them want a dog even more!  One day soon I hope!

 

 

 

 2. The lights at temple square 

Luckily, we had a break in between sicknesses and we were able to go see the lights at temple square.  It is always one of our favorite things to do.  Abby loved it.  She said, "Weow" all night long.  It was hilarious.



With all of our activities going on, Abby got a little tired!  She cracked me up the morning that she woke up and then came out into the living room and started to fall asleep again standing against the chair.  Silly girl.

 

3. Christmas!  We had a really great Christmas.  Everyone was happy and getting along great.  There was a lot of excitement leading up to it and it was just really fun.  We had a fun Christmas Eve night with Peggy and her family and everyone managed to fall asleep!

Jerry decided that he wanted to make the girls beds for their dolls.  He and Matt started working on them in October.  He spent a lot of hours in a friend's shop building them.  He probably spent 40 hours at least working on them.  We thought they turned out really good.  I had some good luck on the sewing machine and was able to make the bedding.  Thank goodness for detailed instructions on pinterest!  We thought the finished product turned out awesome!  We were so excited to give them to the girls.  I think this has been the most fun gift we've ever given our kids!

We went to bed Christmas Eve night to no snow and woke up to enough snow to call it a white Christmas!  It was a very peaceful morning.

One of Abby's favorite gifts was the Santa pez dispenser in her stocking.  She ate all the candy within minutes!

My parents brought back a lot of gifts from their trip to Egypt and Israel.  Kate loved this headdress that the belly dancers wore.  She wore it all day!



We also surprised the kids with a playstation 4. Matt decided he really wanted to buy one so we told him if he earned half the money, we'd pay the other half.  Kate decided she wanted in on the action and was willing to chip in.  Jerry had told her and Sara if they stopped sucking their thumbs he would pay them 100 dollars each.  Kate has officially stopped!  Yea!  Anyway, they had great plans for earning the money, but we decided to use Christmas money from Grandpa Nielsen and surprise them!  Jerry packed it in a wooden crate and painted it pink for a little fun!  They were very excited.  It was a fun moment! 

 

 

The girls LOVED their beds.  It was so fun watching them play doll all day.  They had a great time and Jerry and I both felt great! 

We had an awesome breakfast together.

The snow kept coming all day long.

Happy girls.

Happy boy.

All. Day. Long.

The owners of the house left this horse behind.  The rubber bands soon broke and so we decided to fix it for Abby.  And then we sort of forgot to put it under the tree for her!  We have been so used to stepping over it in the storage room that we just totally spaced it.  Oops!  We remembered at like 4 that afternoon.  Abby loved it!  She calls in her "whee".

There got to be enough snow that we could get some outside time and play in it a bit.  Abby loved investigating the snow.  We got so little snow last year that this was really her first experience with it.  She had fun with it!

They even went sledding for a bit.

 

 

4. Other fun things  With the cold weather that has finally hit we were able to go ice skating. Kate and Sara love it.



Kate also wanted to try out for the school talent show.  She was going to play Silent Night and her friend was going to sing, but her friend was sick so she just played a solo.  She did a fantastic job.  As her teacher and her mother, I was so proud!

 



Four for Sunday

1. Abby's friend  So for the past 8 months or so we have babysat my friend Kayce's little guy once a week.  Lots of times it ends up twice a week so we've gotten pretty close with this little guy. It is really good for both of them to have a friend close to their own age since they both have a gap between their closest siblings.  Abby, of course, doesn't want to share anything of hers so once a week we get to practice learning to share.  She loves the days he comes and once, after we'd had him for a lot of extra days, she was mad the first day he didn't come.

 

This past Thursday was our last day watching him.  A few months ago Kayce told me her mother-in-law wasn't going to watch him anymore so I could either have him two days or she had found a daycare opening in January that she had signed him up for.  Two days a week is hard because I try to just stay home and play with him and Abby and it's just hard when it's not your own child.  So, he starts daycare in January.  We are going to miss him!  This way though we can do the normal swaps more often like for haircuts and stuff so we'll still get to have him over.  This past Thursday was also his birthday so we had a big day of celebrations!

 Abby gave him a set of animal magnets like one that she has that he loves.

 We made cookies and sang happy birthday.

 We taught Beckett how to blow out candles.  Well, we tried.

 And we ate A LOT of cookies.  What are birthdays for, right?

 

I wish both of them would remember playing together.  It has been fun for Abby to have someone to boss around!

 

2. Dogsitting  We are also dogsitting this week for a friend.  My kids are all in heaven.  They all want a dog so bad.  If we weren't renting this house still, we'd definitely have a dog.  So this has been fun for them. 

 They all love snuggling with the dog.  They also love taking him for walks, giving him treats and even though they don't love it, they clean up after him.  It has been a good experience for them!

 

Abby loves to torment the dog.  She can be kind of mean to him so we have to watch her pretty closely.

 

 

 

3. Christmas Lights  We had a great day together yesterday.  We spent the morning with the kids buying each other their sibling Christmas gifts.  Then we spent the afternoon making chocolate covered pretzels for our neighbor gifts.  Then we delivered them and headed up to temple square to see the Christmas lights.  It was so fun.  Abby kept saying, "Weow!"  Hilarious.  It was a really fun day together and the kind of day that makes Christmas so awesome!

4. Funny Abby  Abby is always doing something that makes us laugh and I keep thinking I need to put it on the blog but then I forget to and now I can't remember what it is that she does!  I know one thing that is so funny is that instead of saying "thank you" she says "you're welcome" except that she just says, "Come."  Like if I hand her her milk she says, "Come."  It's hilarious.  I'll have to write down the other things.  

Two this Sunday

1. Kate's ballet performance  Kate's dance studio danced The Wizard of Oz  ballet this weekend.  It was a really fun show.  Kate was so excited.  She told me before we started getting ready that putting on makeup is her favorite part of performance day.  It cracked me up.  She is all girl!  It is so fun getting her all ready.  They performed the ballet twice and so I chaperoned her class for one of the shows and it was so fun to be with her and watch her interact with her classmates.  She's a really good girl!

 

I absolutely loved her costume.  She saw it in when her teacher handed them out, but when she brought it home and we put it on, both of us were so excited about it.  Love!!

 

Love this girl!!  I am so proud of her!  She has been working so hard in dance.  This week she had so many extra practices and rehearsals as well as some extra school projects before Christmas break.  Last Sunday we talked about how she needed to work really hard to get her school work done quickly and make sure to get to bed on time so she didn't get over tired.  She handled it all so well.  Jerry and I were both surprised and so proud of her!  Yay Kate!

 

I recorded her dress rehearsal so I could just enjoy the show.  She did such a great job in the actual show.  It was her best dance yet!

 

 

2. The dreaded Physical Therapist   So I've complained about these plantar fasciitis issues in my foot.  I've taken time off running and slowed down and decreased my miles, but it still has been bugging me.  It's been better, but when I run my outer ankle gets really sore and swells up.  I figured I must be running on the outside of my foot to avoid the sore spot in my heel and that was causing the ankle problems.  So, I broke down and went to a physical therapist.  I felt like I needed some help to get over this PF stuff so I can move on with my life.  It went about like I expected.  He didn't tell me anything I didn't already know or think.  He did do this thing they call scraping where he took this flat tool and scraped all along my heel, calf and ankle.  It didn't feel great, but it also wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  Then he put some of that KT tape on my leg and gave me some foot strengthening exercises to do.  I went to him on Friday and he told me that I could run 1 mile on Saturday.  1  mile.  I was like, that's harder than not running at all.  He laughed and said, "Hey.  At least I'm not telling you you can't run at all."  So we'll see.  I go again on Tuesday.

 

Looks pretty awesome, right?  I'm supposed to leave the tape on as long as it will stay.  Cute.

At least it matches my shoes.  And I have socks that match my laces.  I rock!

Video Sunday

1. Year to Date  I didn't have any specific running distance goals this year.  But I really like running half marathons.  I like it a lot.  And so since I found so many I wanted to run this year, this happened this week:

 

 A friend asked me if it was as hard as the year my goal was to run 1000 miles.  The question caught me off guard because it wasn't hard either year.  It's just about consistency.  To run 1000 miles you have to average about 20 miles a week which in the running world isn't a ton.  I love to run.  I just hope my feet can hold on for a few more years!

 

2. Saying Goodbye  This week we had a family move from our ward.  Kate was really sad because her and Megan had gotten to be good friends.  They were only in the neighborhood for a few months while they were building a house, but they were a great family and I like Megan's mom and they had kids similar ages and it was a good match.  Kate and Megan wanted a picture together before Megan left.  Luckily, their Grandma lives in the neighborhood so we told them to come over anytime they visit her!

 

3. Dance show So our school has had a special arts program going on last year and this year.  Last year they did a drama class and this yea it was dance.  The kids complained a bit but only because it took place during PE time.  It was only for a couple of months so, whatever.  Well, their teacher wanted the school to put on a show.  In a school of 1000 kids, that is no small feat.  This past week was the show.  There was all sorts of complaining from the kids and Jerry (we had two tracks go at the same time so it was a 2 hour show) but we survived and I thought it was fun.  Long, yes, but fun.  Sara was excited to dance so if you only watch one dance, watch hers.

 







Matt is wearing a red shirt.  He's a little hard to see at the beginning, but when the class is doing the worm and you see someone just flopping on the ground, that's him.  He was so mad about doing this.  I can see why, but ha ha on him!  He did think it was cool that the principal and assistant principal participated in his dance!

 



4. Gymnastics  Sara is the star this week.  She also had her gymnastics recital on Saturday.  We put her in a new studio this fall and she has loved it.  I love that they do a lot of strengthening exercises.  This girl will be strong.  I'd love to get her in a couple of competitions, have her win some medals or a trophy and gain some confidence and then she can choose to stick with it, or do something else.  For now, I'm glad she is having fun and getting strong!

Getting her medal afterwards.  She's on the front row on the left side.

She felt pretty proud of herself afterwards.  She said she wasn't nervous, but she's a nervous nelly like me so I didn't believe it.

She was so excited that Scott and his fiancé, Aubrey, came to watch.  It was very nice of them and we loved hanging out with them for a bit!

Kate was so happy to be there.  We'll all be grumpy at her ballet next week!

Sara has gotten her splits down!  Well this leg anyway.  She was excited!
 

 Here are the videos:
 

 

This video is a little long.  Matt recorded all of what they were doing.