Make it Hot! Make it HOT!! MAKE IT HOT!!!

January 2010 sure has been exciting so far!!! What a first week we had! :)

Thomas is a SUNBEAM now!!! :) He wasn't quite sure that he wanted to go to Primary. But by the end of the day, he decided it was FUN! It is a little weird to think that we won't have anyone in Nursery anymore.

Edd and I got talking the other day about how this will be the decade we move having little kids to having BIG KIDS!!!

In ten years from now, Bethany will be 24, Andrew will be 21...a returning missionary, Aimee will be 19 and a freshman in college, Mattie will be 17 and a HS sophomore and Thomas will be 13!

CRAZY!!!

We have a lot of change to look forward to! Good thing life just comes one day at a time! :)

The kids started back to school on Monday. Bethany lucked out and got out really early because she had some very special out of town visitors! :)

Brooke, Raegan, Cheney & Amy Knight were visiting! They went to church with us, which was a lot of fun. Amy and I ended up in YW with the girls because I'm the new 1st councilor! Raegan & Cheney were brave enough to get up and go to Seminary with Bethany Monday morning.

Amy had an audit job in New Orleans. While she was gone, I took the girls to lunch at "BEARS" po-boy shop. Then we went to see "Princess and the Frog!"

Thomas wasn't very happy about having to spend his whole day with a bunch of girls. He cheered up some when we got him some French fries and a root beer.

After the movie, we went back home to get warm and just hang out! Amy didn't get back to the house till after 5. So they all hurried and packed up their stuff and headed back to Houston. It was quick trip, but still fun to have the girls around for a couple of days! :)

Tuesday morning we had quite the surprise...ICE!!!

We knew that it was supposed to get really cold, but it was still exciting to see ice in the fountain!!! While Andrew was waiting for his bus, he broke a hole in the ice...it was about 1/2 an inch thick! Pretty impressive! And fun to look at!

After a whole day, there was still quite a significant amount of ice in the fountain. Which froze again. By Thursday, the water in the fountain was frozen solid and we were about to get blasted with the DEEP FREEZE!!!

Of course we aren't quite prepared for this kind of cold weather! Andrew had to bundle up with 2 sweatshirts! The girls wore their big sweatshirts and Thomas actually kept his clothes on most of the time! But there's an occasional perk...NO SCHOOL ON FRIDAY!!!

I had to wrap all of our pipes outside and we've been dripping the faucets each night to avoid frozen/broken pipes. Luckily, our pipes didn't burst, but our crown moulding is cracking...we heard form lack of humidity and really dry air from running the furnace all the time to stay warm. Hmmm...I guess that's better than a flooded house.

Thomas kept himself occupied with a treasure we found during our weekly Wal-Mart trip...T-REX MOUNTAIN!!

Andrew used to have this, but over the years it has gotten wet and T-Rex won't growl anymore. Thomas has been so sad because he's wanted to play with it...so when we found it, we just HAD to buy it!!! :) Best spent money of the week...it has kept both boys entertained while we've been cooped up inside!

The kids have ventured out some. Their favorite activity is to go out back and test the ice in the ditch to see if they can stand on it without it breaking. Then they will harvest HUGE slabs of the ice!

When I was a kid, I remember having my big brother, Frank, break off BIG icicles from the house and sometimes we'd sword fight with them! So much fun! :)

Friday morning, Connor & Aubrey Whipple wanted Andrew & Bethany to come to the park with them.

Of course everyone wanted to go and it was bitter cold and windy outside. So we bundled up and headed to the park.

Before we could get to the corner, Thomas wanted something for his head...his face was cold! He wanted me to carry him because he was sooo cold.

We should've turned back right then. By the time we got to the park, Thomas was yelling, "Make it hot! Make it HOT!! MAKE IT HOT!!!" Poor little guy was freezing!!! So we stayed at the park for about 10 minutes, then I made everyone go back home. Thomas finally got warm again! :)

This weekend was stake conference. Edd and I went out to the Stake Center together. While he was in his meetings, I tried to organize my Young Women stuff. We went and got dinner during the hour break, then back for the adult session of conference. As soon as it was over, we ran to the truck and headed home...it was way too cold to just walk.

One of the talks during conference talked about dedicating your home. After conference on Sunday, Edd dedicated our home. About half way through the prayer, Thomas asked out loud, "Is this a LONG ONE???" He was done!!! He proceeded to make the fake noises that little boys like to make and would comment on them! Needless to say, there were a lot of giggles and Edd's prayer ended a little quicker than he probably wanted it to! :)

Things are slowly starting to warm up again. Yesterday we got back into the 50's. Last night was the last night, I hope, that we have to drip our pipes. The sun is out today and Thomas thinks it's warm! I tried to tell him the sun was out, but it was still cold. He didn't care and went out to check on the ice that we still have in the ditch out back.

It was about 55 degrees when I took the picture. And yes, it felt pretty warm outside! Funny how your perspective changes! :) The fountain is starting to thaw. There was a little bit of water on top of the ice when I took this at lunchtime. I just checked the temp and we're up to 59 now.

I am so thankful for "WARM" and sunny January days!!! Can't wait for Spring though!

Oh, I just learned what the four seasons are here in New Orleans...King Cake Season, Crawfish Season, Hurricane Season, and Football Season!

Christmas Break

You know you've had a great break when you loose track of which day it is!!!

The other day I was thinking it was Saturday, but it was actually Friday!!! The next day, Edd asked me, "Is today Saturday?" I had to stop and think for a minute before I answered!

We had a wonderful Christmas Break! I'm sad that it is over, but a little anxious to get back to the norm. Here are some of the fun things we did:

We went into New Orleans and went to the WWII Museum!
Aimee wasn't too thrilled about driving across Lake Pontchartrain. She told us that she didn't like listening to the "kathunk kathunk kathunk" the whole way.

Once we got to the museum most of us had a good time!

The displays were very well done. I think our favorite part was the D-Day area. This picture is of Andrew and Mattie looking at some of the boats and planes that attacked that morning.

The big transport boats were designed and built here in New Orleans!

Christmas Eve!

Edd cooked up a yummy turkey for us...he'd planned on grilling the turkey, but it rained most of the day. So the turkey ended up in the oven, but came out super yummy!!! :)

After our Christmas Eve dinner, we acted out the Christmas Story. Mattie was Mary, Aimee was the Angel, Thomas was a shepherd, Andrew was Joseph and the donkey, and Bethany was the narrator.

It seems like each year there is something that stands out from our quick re-enactment. This year it was Thomas and his little lamb! Thomas kept throwing his little lamb up and tossing it all around. He was pretty entertained by the little lamb and didn't care about participating in the Christmas Story.

I kept trying to take a picture of Thomas he kept moving faster than my camera could handle....

Finally...I got a good picture!! :)

After the Christmas Story, the kids opened their traditional pj presents...don't they look cute!?!

Christmas Day! :)

The kids were up and checking out their Santa goodies right at 6:30!!! I was hoping that they would sleep in like we'd been doing all week, but I think they were a little too anxious!

This was the year that Thomas loved helping everyone unwrap their presents!!!

About a week earlier, while Bethany and I were outside trying to re-hang the Christmas lights , Thomas took all the presents from under the tree up to his room and unwrapped everysingle one!!!

Luckily there were only a few presents under the tree...the cousin gifts and a few from Grandma Cutler!



TRAINS!

Christmas is when we let Andrew get out his train sets. He likes to take the Christmas candy and put onto the train to deliver to the spectators.

Well, Thomas caught the train bug BIG TIME!!! He ended up playing with ALL of his trains.

One day, after church, I found Thomas loading up his Fisher Price train with candy. He would deliver it to me, since I was in the kitchen getting lunch ready! :) What a sweetie!!

The rest of the week was a train bonanza for Thomas!!! He pulled out his motorized set of Thomas the Tank Engine trains. We set up the waterfall track for him to play with for a few days. Thomas was in train heaven! :)

On New Years Eve, Thomas put a super long track together...it wrapped all the way around the couch! This picture is only one side of the train! Thomas also connected all of his trains and cars together and pulled them all around the family room.

Andrew laid down next to the long train to measure it. It was the length of Andrew, plus about 2 more feet!!! Now that is a LONG train!!!

Thomas also ended up getting out the little set of Thomas trains and played with that for a few days too!

We are still currently playing with trains! Thomas realized that he LOVED MURDOCH, but his Murdoch wasn't with his little trains. We've been looking everywhere...but where could he be??? Thomas hadn't played with Murdoch and the little trains since last Christmas...so there's no telling where he could be...especially since we moved!!! HMMM...where could he be???

Yesterday, while we were at Target, Thomas spied a Murdoch train!!! We ended up leaving with it. As we were walking out, Thomas said something to the effect that he was glad that all his talking worked!!! He had to do much convincing that he NEEDED this Murdoch!!! Of course the ONLY Murdoch was the wooden one! (We don't own the wooden Thomas set and Thomas is super stubborn!!!) Luckily, we still have the old wooden train set that was Andrews when he was little! Thomas has been in heaven since! :)

PLAYING AT THE PARK!

We spent a lot of our free time playing at the park, enjoying the nice weather! A couple of times we went to the "alligator park" (the park where the alligator festival was at) and we also went to the neighborhood park a few times too! Even Missy enjoyed getting out with Bethany a few times! :)

Edd had fun using his free time to take pictures! Aimee had fun jumping out of the swing so Edd could capture her flying through the air!

NEW YEARS EVE!

New Years Eve was spent playing on the wii. I even got a chance to try it out! I did the sword fighting and the 100 pin bowling. I ended up with the TOP SCORE in 100 pin bowling! :)

We went outside for a little while and watched the neighborhood fireworks from our driveway! They put on a great fireworks show! The fireworks started around 6:30 and went in spurts until about 12:30! We had to get all snuggled up in blankets and the kids used their new sleeping bags too!

After watching the fireworks, we went in to get warm and watched a movie! The movie ended up putting the kids to sleep before the New Year was official. Bethany had been at a party, but got home a little before midnight. She and I stepped out to watch the FIREWORK FINALE...pretty impressive for neighborhood fireworks!!! :)

NEW YEARS DAY!

Our new year started with race to clean the house! The Knights were coming to stay at our house for the weekend! :)

Aimee got her room clean and wanted a friend to come over. Catherine was the lucky one! She and Aimee are in the same class at school and have violin class together too! Aimee and Catherine are like two peas in a pod! They are so cute together! We went to the neighborhood park to play for awhile and had hot chocolate when we got back to the house! :)

Mattie is 7! :)

Last Monday was a busy day!!! Mattie had her 1st grade Christmas program. Her class sang a really cute gospel version of Jingle Bells:

Mattie looked really cute!!! She was so excited about her program...she'd been talking about it for about a month. I'm glad it went well!

After the program, Thomas and I went to Mattie's classroom for a class reception!

Once we got home, it was time to celebrate Mattie's b-day...a few days early. We decided to have her family party for Family Home Evening! 2 days early :)

We had the table all set with the fancy tablecloth and fancy dishes! We had one of Mattie's favorites...Chicken Stoganoff!

After dinner, we let Mattie open her presents! Then it was time for birthday cake an ice cream! YUM!!! Can't believe Mattie is turning 7!!! :)

We have had other excitement at the house this past week...

We finally had a tadpole turn into a frog!!!!

Wow, was that an exciting day!!!

Out of all those tadpoles we caught way back when we only had one turn into a frog!!!

I hadn't expected this science project to drag out for months!! We had a few tadpoles start to grow legs, but then they'd die. This is the lucky sole survivor!!!

Mattie got another fun early birthday present. Monday night when she came to kiss me goodnight, she announced that she sort of had a wiggly tooth! Tuesday afternoon, when I got back from the store, Mattie had NO TOOTH!! She wanted fairy dust from Tooth Fairy!

Boys will be boys!!!

My boys were in 7th Heaven when Andrew splurged on two sword and armour sets for them to share! It's been crazy at our house every since...well just a little more than usual! :)

On Sunday, we as a family, went with Edd to his High Council speaking assignment! We drove about two hours to Thibodaux and Houma. Both Edd and I spoke. Bethany played a Christmas medley on her violin. After church was over, we were invited to stay for their ward dinner! That was sure a treat!!! Some good Cajun cooking! :) We had some gumbo, "cornbread casserole," along with some other yummy things!

On our way home, we stopped to take a picture of this really neat old house. It was about 2 miles down the road from the church.

The owner was out working in the yard so Edd asked him if we could take some pictures. We also asked about the house. They started building it in 1895--the year Grandpa Ray was born! They finished it five years later. The house has stayed in the family all those years!! Pretty neat!! But lots of work apparently! :)

OOPS!!!

We had a BIG OOPS at our house the other day!

Andrew let his curiosity get the better of him...there was an orange power cord hanging down from the lights that must have been screaming..."ANDREW GRAB ME and PLAY WITH ME!!!" Because that's exactly what Andrew did.

I tried to tell him to stop, but I was too late...all of the sudden, the lights started to fall off the roof!!! Andrew and I watched in horror!!! Luckily, only a section of lights fell off and not all of them!!!


This is how the house looked before the accident...BEAUTIFUL!

Unfortunately, I'm afraid of heights. I tried several times to climb up the big ladder, giving myself a pep-talk the whole time. But I could only get up half way. I decided that if I put the ladder up by the garage, instead of by the front door, it wouldn't be so bad because it's not as high, but same story...could only get up about half way.

So I called Andrew back outside. Since he's the one who made the lights fall down, I figured he should be the one to get them back up. Andrew climbed the ladder just fine, but he couldn't get the lights to stay put. He gave up.

PLAN B...have Bethany try! Bethany had no problem climbing the ladder and decided to start by the front door to get the highest part out of the way first. She got the lights to stay and we slowly moved around the corner and over to the garage. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves and were almost done! We had about 2 feet of lights left to hang when the unthinkable happened...the lights all fell off AGAIN!!!!!

It was too late to try again so we cleaned everything up and went inside. Edd had hoped to hang the lights on Saturday, but it just rained and rained and rained!!! If you haven't heard, I think we got about 14 inches of rain this weekend. Maybe this weekend Edd will get the lights back up...or Bethany may beat him too it...she hates not having them up, but has been too busy studying for finals to try again.

"Watch out for the "SWOG," Mattie!"

Well, in the rush of things, I've fallen a little behind on my blog...

We had a very fun Thanksgiving! We drove 8 hours up to Austin to be with Edd's side of the family. The kids were soooo excited to see their cousins again!!!

They were in heaven!!! Out of the 20 grandkids, we had 16 of them running around...good times!!! :)

Thanksgiving weekend provided plenty of good times!!! Football, baseball, kickball, slumber parties, playing on the nearby school playground, going to the park, Cabela's and just plain goofing off were some of the things we did! :)








All the cousins who came for Thanksgiving! :)









We had our 2nd annual Burrito Hike...this time all the hiking was with the football. After all the breakfast burritos were devoured, we had our own family football scrimmage.

Allison, Aimee, Mattie & Zoey ready for their slumber party! :)

Checking out Grandpa's new truck! :)

Edd's grandma wasn't feeling well so that was hard, but the BIG KIDS went over to her house to keep her company for many hours of watching football! :)

Another fun tradition, Edd's mom lets the kids go fishing Thanksgiving night! Each year she has a fun ornament for each grandchild! This year the boys got homemade snowmen and the girls got homemade kittens!

The next weekend, (last weekend) we received a fun surprise...
SNOW!!!!!!

We had heard that it had been snowing in TEXAS all day long. The kids were hoping that we'd get some too! It didn't snow until 10pm Friday night. Andrew had planned on staying up all night, if he had to, to see the snow! Luckily, it came on the early end!!!

Mattie & Thomas were already asleep, but the Andrew & Aimee woke them up so they wouldn't miss out on the excitement!!! Mattie & Thomas went back to sleep and Bethany, Andrew & Aimee went outside to play in the snow!!

IT IS REALLY SNOWING!!! :)

Aimee and Andrew tried catching the BIG FLUFFY FLAKES in their mouths!

They threw snowballs!

They made snow angels!

They played with friends too!!!

We went over to play with the Whipple kids! They just live in the neighborhood across the road from ours!

The next morning, this is how our house looked...

Mattie and Thomas were so excited to see that we still had snow!






















Mattie ran out and made her own little "snow" ball!














When it was all said and done, we got about an inch of snow...the snow storm lasted about an hour and so did our snow fun!


We were glad we got some snow to help get us in the mood for Christmas! Edd spent his Saturday putting up icicle lights around our house! It looked really nice when he was done! :)

So today, Sunday the 13th day of December, Thomas was telling Mattie that she needed to watch out for the "SWOG!" Mattie asked him what a swog is. Thomas said that it is a monster that will eat you, so you need to be careful!

They had a big conversation about what a SWOG is and how you say it and if it is real and if it will really eat you...Thomas was convinced that a SWOG IS REAL and HE WILL GET YOU!!!

I just asked Thomas what a SWOG is, as he was headed up the stairs to bed. He replied, "It is a dinosaur that sleeps all day."

Hmmm...so this morning one of the creature pictures we looked at on our morning Google image hunt had a sloth along with a bunch of other dinos...why a sloth was with the dinos I really don't know.

Anyway, Thomas asked it was sloth and that it was a creature that sleeps all day. So I'm thinking that the SWOG is Thomas' version of a sloth...mixed with a little mythical creature background. Andrew loves watching the mythical creature shows on TV and of course Thomas watches them too!

What a fun imagination!!! Thomas also told us that Missy, our dog, was his dad. He talked it about it all day long!!! Tonight, Edd was questioning him about where his tail was, etc. Thomas told him that Missy was going to give her tail to him and she'd get a new one. He'd also take her fuzzy ears!!! FUNNY BOY!!

When Thomas was done, he stood up, told everyone goodnight, kissed us all and went straight to bed!!! That is amazing!!! :)