FHE

Can I just tell you how much I love family night. I'm not the only one either, Rachel begs for it to be time for Family Night! :) I love teaching my kids about the gospel. I love singing primary songs with them. I love the feeling of the spirit in our home teaching us and our children. Oh, and did I mention I love the treats?

 

 

As part of our family night every week, we have started putting some scriptures to songs to help us memorize them, and Rachel has been doing a fantastic job. Here she is singing one of our songs. Isn't she cute?

Who wouldn't love to spend time with my cute little family. :)

Rachel

I just wanted to take a few minutes and jot down a few funny stories about Rachel lately.

On Sunday morning Rachel woke up before I did. Jacob got up and took her potty and they both came into my room to see me. Jacob laid down by me and Rachel went about exploring my room. I could hear what she was saying but I wasn't watching what she was doing. She kept talking about how she wanted to wear my bra (which she talks about frequently). After a while she said she needed to go potty again so Jacob went to go help her and came back cracking up a few minutes later. Rachel had stripped naked so that she could put my bra on. She knows that it goes under your clothes. That girl is so cute and funny!

This next one needs a little back story. Every since Rachel was a baby she has liked to pinch skin. When she was really little she would pinch the soft skin on the underside of my arm while she nursed. When she got a little bigger and could reach farther she switched to pinching the skin on my neck. When I weaned her since my neck wasn't aavailable while she was drinking her milk, she started pinching her own neck for comfort and she still does that. The first time I have her hot chocolate this season, she was really funny. She told me, "Mom, hot chocolate is my favorite drink!" I said, "it is?" And she said, "Yeah, pinching my neck!" And indeed she was. I thought it was really funny that she thought hot chocolate was sooooooo good that she needed to pinch her neck while she drank it. It's "pinch your neck, good!"

According to Rachel, Nephi has been a regular visitor at our house lately. Rachel loves playing with him. She gives him rides on her bike and helps him go potty and puts bows in his hair for him. She is really funny because she "carries" his all around the house. Also she told me that she saw Gidianhi going for a walk outside. Al least I know she is getting something from our family scripture stories.

If you ever ask Raxhel what she is thinking about, she will always say "Baby Jesus!"

I had a few other stories in mind when I sat down to blog, but I can't remember them right now. I guess I'll have to write them down later when I remember them.

Christmas

So I realized I never posted about Christmas and it would be a shame to not have a record  of some of the things we did. It would be sad if we forgot about some of the traditions we started, because I would really like to keep them going through out the years.

Our Christmas this year was pretty simple and low key, and it was perfect and just what we wanted. We decided to go easy on the gifts and not stress about it, and just try to spend the season focusing on the Savior and our family.

One tradition we decided we wanted to start was a Christmas pagent. Since this year we didn't have very many people to be in be pagent we decided to do it kind of like a puppet show/ flannel board type thing. Here is a picture of it:



Another tradition we decided to do, is after our pageant we opened three gifts. One gift had jammies in it for the kids. One had a game for us to play as a family, and  one had a treat to eat while we played our game.
The game we bought was Don't Break The Ice which I remember loving as a kid and which Rachel absolutely loved, and the treat we shared was  a chocolate orange. The chocolate orange was extra special because I couldn't find them anywhere this year. I sent Jacob running some errands one day and made him look at all of the stores he went to, but he didn't tell me that he had found some. Chocolate oranges are my very favorite store bought Christmas candy so I was super excited and way surprised when I opened the present that had them in it. :)

 

Here's Kent in his Christmas jammies. Isn't he so handsome?



Kent's favorite part was the wrapping paper. :)

Another fun tradition we started this year was we left a candy trail from Rachel's bed down to the Christmas tree. I loved every part of this tradition. I loved watching Jacob sneaking to put it out while Rachel was asleep. He is such a cute daddy! I totally should have taken a picture of him! :) When Rachel woke up  on Christmas morning, she looked over the side of her bed and said, "1,2,3,4,5,6 M&M's!" She was so excited and it was so cute and fun to see. Then we had her pick up the candy and put it in a bowl, and she kept saying things like, "This is so silly!" and "I'm cleaning up this mess!"

Rachel and Daddy playing "Don't Break the Ice."

 

Rachel on Christmas morning in her Christmas jammies and riding her new tricycle. She was so excited about this present even though she didn't know how to pedal.  It only took her one week to figure out how to pedal. I love watching her ride on her little bike. She is getting so big!


Kent slept awful on Christmas Eve. He and I were up almost all night, so here he is all tuckered out the next morning. I think he was just too excited for Christmas. :) 

 

Trying rice cereal for the first time and not really loving it. 

 

 

Breaking into the ginger bread house

We had such a fun Christmas together. I just love my sweet little family!

5 months!

My little Kent boy is 5 months old today! I can't believe how fast the last 5 months have gone by! My little baby isn't so little any more! He weighs 20 pounds and is 27.5 inches long. He definitely makes my arm sore when I carry him for a long time (like the three hours of church I carried him through today). I'm going to have Amazon woman arm muscles by the time he learns to walk! 

He is such a happy and easy going baby!

This is the expression he gets when he catches your eye. Isn't he sweet?

And here he is wiping up his own drool. What a good boy! :)

Kent is getting really good at grabbing things, and he loves to play with toys. He is such a busy little baby. He is always wiggling and rolling and scooting (backwards) and he always has his hands busy grabbing something. I absolutely love it when he is laying down and I lean over him and he reaches out his hands for me, and I love it when he grabs my face. I think it's the sweetest thing ever!

He loves to lay on the ground and watch Rachel play and to wiggle all over the ground. One day this week while I was doing Rachel's heir, Kent scooted backwards from the carpet in our living room all the way through the Kitchen and almost to the laundry room. He is going to be into everything once he figures out to go forward instead of backward. 

I just love this sweet baby boy! I couldn't imagine our family without him!

Sweet Sleepy Baby

My poor Kent boy has been sick. In fact, our Rachel girl was kind enough to share her cold with the whole family. (She is soooooo good at sharing!) Mostly it's just been a head cold with a cough, sore throats, and copious amounts of boogers. We have all weathered through fairly well, but my poor Kent boy has had the roughest time sleeping since he's been sick. Because of all the mucus and snot he has had a hard time breathing through his nose and it has been keeping him awake. He is happy when he is in my arms and he will stay asleep if I will hold him, but if I put him down he is awake within minutes. His longest nap today was probably 15 minutes long and now he is just sooooooo tired. I've put him to sleep tonight 3 different times already but he just can't stay asleep.

It would be nice if I didn't need to sleep or get other things done. There is something about holding a sleeping baby that is so sweet, and so peaceful that makes me never want to put them down. Kent is so sweet and cuddly. One time tonight I sent Jacob in to take a turn getting him back to sleep and Jacob ended up bringing him to me to take care of. As soon as I took him in my arms, he snuggled right in and was so happy to be snuggled by his mama that he started laughing and he would laugh every time I talked to him. I just love how much he loves to cuddle! Those are times when it's extra fun to be the mama, because babies usually like to cuddle with their mamas the most. 

Well here I go to try to put him down again. Hopefully it works and this tired baby and his tired mama can get some sleep. 

Funny Kent Boy

Baby giggles are the best!

Baby food

On Christmas we started feeding Kent rice cereal and he hated it, which is really funny because he is always staring at us when we eat and complaining at us until we share something with him. I thought he would be way excited to get something real to eat, but he hated it to the point that he would cry whenever I would try to feed it to him.

 

Last week I decided to buy some baby food and see what he thought of it. I tried him out on squash first and he loved it! He ate the whole container with no problem.  I tried it again the next day with some more squash and he ate the whole thing again. 

 

He has also eaten baby food pears, baby mum-mums (which Rachel loves too) and licks of various other foods. Crazy, my little baby is growing up and eating food already! I love this boy!

Good Helper

Today Kent was whining a little in his crib while we were trying to get ready so I sent Rachel in to help him. She went off and he stopped crying. A few minutes later I went in and this is what I found. She had piled blanket after blanket into his crib for him and apparently that's what he wanted because he was fast asleep. She is such a good helper girl! 

Bath time!

I think my kids bath time is one of my favorite parts of the day! It's fun to hear and see Rachel pretending she is an alligator or a penguin or a turtle or that she is helping Nemo and Dori find a boat or that the little bubbles are tired and are taking a nap and the big bubbles are staying in her mouth. This girl has an awesome imagination and I love being a part of the things she imagines up!

I love giving Kent a bath! He lays there in the tub making the biggest splashes he can manage. He is at the age that he is liking to play with toys now and his favorite thing to play with in the bath tub is a loofa. It might be his favorite toy in the tub because Rachel is busy playing with the rest of the tub toys.  I love the look on Kent's face as he concentrates on making his big splashes, but then he always breaks into a smile when he catches my eye. Then after they get out, they are both so snuggly! :)

Aren't they cute little wet munchkins?

Sleepy

This is how my Kent-boy fell asleep this morning! I love this sweet boy!