Andi's Growing Up

Andi turned 5 on the 26th. I can't believe that she's five years old already. When did that happen? I can't believe how much she's grown. Looking at Soni it's hard to remember Andi being that little. Now she's this kid who is able to express herself really well and helps out around the house and can write. I'll need to buy myself a shotgun before too long.

She didn't have the best birthday. Christmas night she had a fever and started throwing up, and she didn't feel well at all on her birthday. She complained about her throat hurting and couldn't eat hardly at all. She had a pediatrician appointment the next day and it turns out she had blisters on her throat, which would explain why is was so sore. We had planned on going to a movie and getting pizza on her birthday, but we ended up having to put that off until later. She got a bike and a scooter, but she couldn't ride them because it was raining. I felt bad for her because she had a pretty pathetic birthday.

She has a pretty good memory, so she'll probably be bringing this up for years. "Remember when I turned five and I was sick and it was raining. That was sad. You should let me have a pony to make up for that."

Christmas Cookies

We made a whole bunch of sugar cookies, and we let the kids put the icing on some of them. I told them to take it easy on the sprinkles this time because last year the super sprinkle covered cookie gave Santa some wicked heartburn.

Andi did a pretty good job with her cookies.

Dylan didn't do too bad either.

Peyton started off ok.

Then he decided to eat the icing.

And continued to do it on the floor.

Reminiscent of Mr Pooh Bear.

Pretty Girls

Sam got the girls matching Christmas dresses a while back. They wore them to church yesterday. We sat right in front of a little girl who had the exact same dress too. Small world.

Addison looks quite comfortable.

Don't you just love Andi's fake smile?

Ramblings

If you've come here to read something that is well organized and makes sense, then you have come to the wrong place, my friend.

Last night Sam and I were in the car and I hit the temperature button to see what the temp was. It was 56 degrees. At night. On December 21st. Man, when I was a kid to get to 56 degrees on a December night, the entire state of Wyoming would have to be on fire, and that's just impossible since Wyoming is covered in four feet of snow on Halloween. When I tell my kids that I had to walk to school through eight feet snow uphill both ways, they won't even know what snow looks like, and since we live in a flat part of Texas they probably won't know what uphill is either.


Soni has this cute habit lately of waking up at 4:30 and refusing to go back to sleep. She did that yesterday morning, so I got up with her and put her in her swing (seen at the right). I tried to start it up, but it would do anything. The music wouldn't come on, the swing wouldn't swing, and the mobile/light show didn't start. So the swing had pretty much become a useless piece of junk. Well, I guess it wasn't just a piece of junk, because it turns out it was also a fire hazard. Yeah, I unplugged it, and the plug was hot enough to leave a slight burn on my hand. The motor area also smelt like burning plastic. This is a great product, it slowly lulls your fussy child to sleep, and then burns them to death. Muahahaha. Fisher Price has a problem here. If you read some Amazon.com reviews on it, every third one says something about smoke or fire. That's a great feature for a baby swing. Luckily the people at Babies R Us were awesome, and they took the swing back even though we didn't have the box or a receipt. We got a new one, and the plug looks different than the other one we had and some other things have changed slightly. Hopefully they fixed the problem. I'll be keeping a close eye on the Swing of Death.

We ate at Panda Express last night, which is a fast food place that serves Chinese food. As soon as we walked in, they started asking what we wanted, which is usually fine except we've only been there once before. I ended up picking some thing that has hot peppers in it. I hate hot peppers. I am such a pansy, I can't stand hot stuff. I bit into the hot pepper, and it starts burning my mouth, and after that I couldn't taste anything else since my taste buds had been rendered useless by the hot pepper from Hades. My Christmas present to you is this: Don't get the Kung Poa Chicken at Panda Express unless you don't mind losing feeling in your face for half an hour. Some people would have known that Kung Pao is hot, but I don't speak Chinese, how was I supposed to know that? If they did have an indicator that it was spicy, I didn't see it. They should have had a big blinking flame icon above it.

Have you noticed how "The most wonderful time of the year" turns people in stores into complete jerks? That could also be said about people driving and people at crowded gas stations. The other day I saw people yelling at each other about whose turn it was at the pump. I figured it wasn't worth waiting in line for half an hour and getting into a fist fight to save four cents a gallon on gas, so I went to a less crowded gas station and saved some stress. Some people just need to take a deep breath and stop being such jerks. While you're taking that deep breath I'm going to grab that last Tickle Me Elmo from the shelf in front of you. Muhahahaha.

The Button

Whenever we to go to Wal-Mart, we always pass those stupid firetruck or horse rides that you put 50 cents in and the kids get to ride it for like 45 seconds. Almost every time we pass them, the kids say "Hey, I want to ride in the firetruck" to which I always respond "Sorry, I don't have any money on me", which is usually true. I hardly ever have cash or change any more since the bank gave me the plastic card to use instead of money. Tonight we stopped next to the rides to look at some stuff, and Dylan hopped in the firetruck while he was waiting. When it was time to go, he asked if he could ride it to which I replied "sorry, dude, but I don't have any money." He said "Hey, I've got a great idea. You can go to work and push the money button so you can get some money and I can ride in the firetruck!" That is a great idea. I need to find that money button.

Addison Samera

It occurred to me after I posted my last story, that there are some of you that may not get the birth announcement, that may be interested to see my handiwork. So, here it is...

Entertaining Grandma.

Recently, (November 28th-December 8th) I was very lucky to have my mom able to come into town to help me with the new baby and the other kids. This visit was very different from others like it in the past, because Soni had already made her appearance, so no time was taken up by the hospital stay, and I was pretty much back to "normal", so I felt bad about dragging her away from work, but I really appreciated everything she did while she was here.
One thing she helped me with was kid control. I got to shower every morning she was here, WITHOUT an audience of 1 or more children. I was also able to get our Christmas letter written, and a really cute birth announcement made in PhotoShop.
During one of the times when I was distracted, and my mom was upstairs with the kids, there was a thump, then a muffled Dylan crying. Apparently, my mom came out of the bathroom to find Dylan trapped under the couch, with nothing but an arm hanging out. She lifted the couch so he could crawl out, to which he thanked her by saying "Grandma, I lost my super powers!" Makes me wonder where the kryptonite was hidden. Maybe he'll think twice next time about trying to get something from under the couch on his own...
Another thing mom tried to help me with was understanding my eldest son, and his stubbornness about potty training. She bought him a really cool robot toy as incentive to potty train (he can have it once he goes potty all day for 7 days), and she tried to explain how different tactics could work for his personality. (She minored in child psychology in college, plus she raised 5 kids of her own, one of which was A LOT like Dylan.) We tried a few different things over the course of the week and a half, none of which had an effect for more than a day. Finally, on the second to last day before my mom was going home, I lost it when Dylan pooped in his pull up, yet again (minutes after being asked if he needed to go potty, and he had responded "no"). I was cleaning him up, and told him I was tired of it, and that if he was going to insist on acting like a baby, we would treat him like a baby. I revealed the new plan to him about how he was now going to eat dinner in the high chair, drink from a bottle, so on and so forth. He reacted just how I expected, with screaming and tears, so I thought I had finally found the solution. Dinner came, and Dylan sat in the high chair. he ate out of a plastic bowl, using a "baby spoon" and drank from a bottle. While drinking from the bottle, it made that ever familiar "squeaking" sound as he sucked on it. He looked up in frustration (looking really depressed) and said: "That cup sounds like a mouse". It was very matter of fact, but it cracked mom and I up. I really tried to not let him see me laugh, since he was being punished, but I failed miserably. I think mom had the hardest time keeping a straight face because it reminded her so much of something my brother, Barton, would have said. Don't kids know they're not supposed to be cute when they're being punished? Someone should tell them...

I am Smart. S-M-R-T

The other night we were going through stuff in our room, and I found my collection of football cards. Yes, I'm pushing 30 and I still have football cards, so what? Maybe some day they'll be worth something. Or not. Probably not.

Amongst my football cards I found a piece of paper with some notes from my high school Physics class. I don't know why it was there or why I kept it, but there it was. I used to think that I was kind of smart in high school. I was in the National Honor Society and had a fairly good GPA. I though that I was smart until I read what was on this paper. In my Physics class Mr. Nethercott would from time to time have us observe some contraption and then explain how it worked. I'm not sure why, probably to get us thinking or something. That's what was written on this paper. I'm not sure what the contraption was, because what I wrote about it was less than helpful. Here are the words of 17 year old me trying to explain how a contraption works:

"The thing spins and it pulls the steel band inside. It does it because centripetal force is pulling it toward the center of it. Or it does it because when it turns that thing sucks so much it pulls the metal bands in."

I'm hoping that was the first draft of what ended up being a profound paper or something, but I kind of doubt it. I ended up getting a D in Physics. Good call, Mr. Nethercott.

Slacker

I know that I've been a slacker at posting stuff lately, but it's because of the kids and this cute baby...

Cool Videos

I got on to YouTube tonight, so now I'm going to bombard our blog with videos I think are cool.


Donny Osmond on the Jimmy Kimmel show. Funny stuff.


Will It Blend - Bic Lighters.


Microwaving a can of spray paint. Why am I watching this? I'm sleep deprived and I think it's funny.


Terry Tate Office Linebacker. I know this is a couple of years old, but I still like it. Why, maybe because I'm a nerd.

Baby Pictures (Now with captions)

Our first attempt at a family picture. I'll take four out of six people looking at the camera.

So cute, if I do say so myself.

Looking good for having just had a baby.

Andi loves her baby sister. She tells random strangers that she has a new baby sister. It's pretty cute.

We had to convince Dylan that it was ok to sit on my lap with the baby. He only did it after Andi and Peyton had a turn.

She's really a good baby and doesn't really cry unless she has a good reason, like if someone wearing a yellow shirt pokes her in the eye.

Soni is here

So, Sam went into labor Sunday and she ended up having the baby at 12:24 PM today. She weighed 6lbs 6 oz.I've tried adding pictures, but I'm getting some error now and I need to get back to the hospital pronto before Sam gets exasperated with me. I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

Irritating

One of the more irritating things in life is when you get in your car when you're in a bad mood so you slam your door shut and yank on your seat belt to put it on, and when you yank on it, it does that thing where it locks up and won't come out so you have to calm down for a second and calmly pull the seatbelt to get bucked up. Stupid seatbelt. It was probably created by some passive aggressive pacifist who was trying to get people to not drive angry. Jerk.

Baby Shower

While Jared, our daughters, and I were off traipsing through nature and such, Aubrey threw Sam a baby shower. Why? Because she's a super fantastic person. I just wanted to throw some of her pictures from it up here because it turned out so cool.

These are the coolest cupcakes ever made.

And look how many of them she made. Holy cow!

Mmmmm tasty treats.

Check out all the stuff! Woo hoo!

We got a lot of good stuff. I forgot to register for this, so we'll never know if anyone would have bought it for us. If any of you are looking to spend some money and want to throw some our way, we're registered at Target ;) .

Thanks again to Aubrey. You did a wonderful job. We really appreciate it!

Father Daughter Campout

Our ward had a father daughter camp out on Friday night. Andi and I went with Jared and Tess. It was pretty fun. Andi was a good sport about it and had a lot of fun. Here are some pictures.

Andi liked out tent.

She liked the inflatable mattress too, until it deflated.

We brought her bike with us. She liked going downhill.

This is one of her friends that she saw there, Allie Cox.

Another friend of hers, McKenzie. Andi liked wearing the glow stick from the night before, even though it was daylight and the stick had stopped glowing.

And of course Tess was there too.

I gave her that bag of Halloween candy to eat on the way home. For some reason she didn't want to eat her lunch.

Woo hoo for camping!

The remaining pictures were taken by Andi while I was packing up the tent and stuff.


That's McKenzie's dad Chris helping me get the gigantic tent into the teenie tiny bag.

There's our van.

There's our van again. She took seven pictures of our van.

There's a fingerprint and someone not ready for a picture.

Jared hauling his tent to the van.

That's me doing something manly.

I think she was fascinated by the barbeque because she took five pictures of it.

Trick or Treat

We had a theme going on for Halloween this year. Bet you can't guess what it was.

Peyton refused to stand up for this picture. I guess it's because since he was the scarecrow he didn't have an endoskeleton.

Dylan was a good sport about wearing this. After the first two houses he was sweating like crazy.

Andi kept saying how beautiful she looked in this. I asked her to say the prayer for dinner and she asked "Is it because I'm beautiful?" Yep, and humble too. Sam made this with some help from Aubrey. Good job.

Howdy ho scarecrow.

I'll get you my pretty.

Pumpkins

We went to a Pumpkin Patch in Rockwall for Family Home Evening.

There were so many pumpkins to choose from.

Andi picked out this one.

They also had a hay bale maze there. Andi kept following around this boy in the convict outfit that had his head zipped up in his suit. We're hoping she doesn't make a habit of following such boys.

Here is the finished product. Dylan made a bat, Peyton made a face of some sort, and Andi made a cat. Those were the three patterns that came in the kit.