Kaitlyn's birthday

Kaitlyn wanted to plan her birthday before I even finished with Tyler's birthday week.  Unfortunately for her, I was a bit birthday-ed out when Tyler had three parties in one week.  Unfortunately for me, Kaitlyn was now convinced that she should also have at least two parties.  I told her that I was only putting in work for one party, and that she could also have a "playdate" party sometime, but I have to admit with some shame that I never actually hosted the second party.  I just don't know any of the other moms in her class at the new school, which makes it tricky to organize a playdate.

I like to think the Minecraft party made up for it, though!  We had a lot of fun planning this out.  Thank goodness that other bloggers and Pinterest helped me get started.  My kids helped me sort out the details of how Minecraft works from there.

We started off coloring bookmarks that I printed off.  I was worried that they wouldn't be very interested in this, and intended for this to just fill the time as everyone arrived, but I was impressed.  They worked really hard to color them all in.

Dinner was a large assortment of Minecraft food.  We had "potions", like the Potion of Strength or Potion of Invisibility, which were made of drops in water.  We had "bucket of water", which was JELLO in a cup.  And since chicken, bread, and carrots are all things that you eat in Minecraft, that worked out pretty well.  Daddy insisted on getting pizza, too, but he was informed that there is no pizza in Minecraft.  We brought out the rectangular food trays because circular plates felt wrong.

After that, they broke apart some "ores" (dried out cornbread) to find the "gems" inside ( dollar store green rocks) that they could trade with the Villager (thank you, Daddy) for some gold and iron ingot (small chocolate bars).  Kaitlyn and all of her cousins loved all of this!  Even the older cousins were 100% into this as "the most fun ever".

After that, they headed to make crafting tables.  Crafting tables is a way to exchange things in Minecraft, from what I gather.  You put things you have in an arrangement, and you get something else out.  At our party, you could make a crafting table with stickers I printed out placed onto a grid on paper, and then get the real food in return.  So they crafted a golden enchanted apple, chocolate cookie, and then cake.

So in case you were wondering why I made a circular cake with frosting sloppily applied halfway down the sides, that's why.  Kaitlyn loves raspberries, so that was the obvious choice to imitate the red dots on top.

A week after her birthday, we even got a chance to go ice skating again.

A birthday snapshot (written a few months later while I catch up on the blog):

* She is still my social bug.  Her teacher has had a fun challenge this year as she tries to keep Kaitlyn isolated enough to stay quiet.  At my last visit to the classroom, everyone else was in grouped in two or three desks together, and Kaitlyn was the only one with a desk by herself.  One day in class, she responded to the weekly "what was your favorite part of the week" question by saying her favorite was the math test.  Which might have actually had some truth to it, but was still said to be funny.  Next thing the teacher knew, a large group of the class giggled so much that they also said a math test was their favorite.  So the next day, the rest of the class got art time while they were handed an extra math test "since it is your favorite."  HA!  I love that her teacher will call her out on her nonsense.  They had a good talk, as a class, about telling the truth and focusing in class.

*Meanwhile, she is still struggling to learn to work hard.  She has to work hard to get something so rarely, that she is used to life coming easily on the first try.  I think that's why she talks and goofs off so much in class.  (And at piano lessons, and in Primary at church.)  She's reading at a middle school level (though her vocabulary and skills at following difficult plots are still catching up), she skipped a grade of math this year and still is one of the best in her class.  She has been blessed with a mind that learns everything as quick as can be, and I am constantly amazed by that.

* She is such a snuggler.  She is constantly coming up to me and saying "Mommy? I wuv you!" and hugging me as tight as she can.  She loves to tease (and be teased by) Daddy, and would love to spend every day playing with friends. ALL day.

*She has dozens of stuffed animals, and they are all her dearest friends in the world.  She's moved on from Disney Junior and other shows that Jasmine still loves, and in fact, loves to sit with me and point out all the absurd reasons that those shows are wrong.  Her new favorites are Studio C, and more recently, I converted her to Animaniacs and Abott and Costello routines.

*She is getting more picky, as an eater, all the time.  I think the current list is that she doesn't like pizza, chicken, tortillas, rice, or anything made with those ingredients.  Taco Tuesday is her enemy. I'm sure I'm forgetting a dozen things, too.  We're down to her loving sweet potato soup, ribs and sushi, along with edamame and berries.  She's used to knowing that dinner is dinner, and she'll pick at her food well enough, but I'm not sure what to make for dinner some days.

Kaitlyn truly does amaze me all of the time.  Sometimes I worry that I am trying to expect her to grow up too fast, since Tyler and Jasmine need so much more help than she does, and other times I worry that I haven't taught her to power through difficult things.  But most of the time, I just watch her in awe of all that she can do.

Tyler's birthday

Unfortunately, I have gotten behind again.  I wish I wasn't making this post four months late.  I do want to keep this more up to date, though, so I have to start where I left off!

Tyler turned 10 this year.  I always say that we feel old because it is the oldest we have ever been, but that still amazes me!  What a fun ten years it has been.  He took us by surprise in many ways, from his early birth to the wonderful and innocent person he has become, and we are grateful to be along for the ride.

This year, he ended up with three birthday celebrations in one week.  On his actual birthday, some friends asked if we wanted to come see the lights downtown with them.  We hadn't gotten a chance to go yet, so I jumped on that!  And since we met up with cousins and went to their house afterward, I brought along the birthday cake I made for that day but ran out of time to eat before we left.  Which made a nice, low key "party" of sorts.

Why wear one hat when you can wear two?

We missed having a Classic Skating day last year with all of Christopher's family, so we made sure to plan that this year.

This year, they only skated for a few minutes.  Everyone wanted to play on the bounce houses instead.  So we just moved the party into the next room.

As we were planning his party at Classic Skating, however, he once again surprised us.  "Can I have my friends come to the party, too?  I want Olivia to come to my birthday."  To be honest, we have always had a birthday party with his cousins because those were the only people he . . . remembered.  Even when he does play with other kids, he doesn't seem to remember who they are.  But he remembered his friends Olivia, Austin and Jacob from last year and wanted them to come too.  Hooray!!

Since we couldn't really invite them to the family party, we ended up just inviting them over to our house that Saturday.  A playdate with birthday cake.  I don't think I took any pictures, since it was mostly just moms chatting and kids playing around, but I was just so proud that he asked for it to happen in the first place.

I always do a birthday snapshot of what they were like on this birthday, so I'll see what I can do a few months late here.

*Tyler's reading has really been improving this year.  He can read level 1 books almost entirely by himself, and enjoys reading books about Star Wars and the Lego Movie so much that he'll struggle through a level 3 or more with me.  We read every morning before school, since we drop off Kaitlyn and have 15 minutes in the parking lot at his school before it is time to head in.  I am so glad that reading time is built into my schedule like that, because between that and Miss Angie's hard work, I have seen a huge improvement this year.

*Tyler is just as in love with babies as ever.  He is drawn to any baby he sees like a magnet, and it is hilarious to watch.  He loses interest in them when they are about a year or year and a half old, but until then, he will change direction on whatever he is doing to head straight towards the baby.

*He spends all of his spare time on his Kindle or the computer, playing Minecraft or watching videos of other people playing Minecraft.  Legos and Magformers are other favorites, too.  And recently, he has been enjoying going down the street to play.  Kaitlyn's friend Lily moved in a few houses away from us, and there has been a constant flow of their girls wandering over here and our kids wandering down there ever since.  I'm just so happy to see that he is interested in playing with other kids.  Miss Angie says that he has been improving in the same way at school, too.

*He loves Star Wars, since Daddy watched all of the movies with the kids, but the Lego Movie is still is favorite.  They watch the movie in the car when we go on long trips, and he has seen the ad for Legoland so many times that now he keeps asking if we can go there.  Hopefully someday we can get him there!

I love this kid!

New Year's at the cabin

We planned on heading up to the cabin right after Christmas, but ended up delayed for a little bit.  Even when we were ready, Christopher wasn't sure how easily we could get up there.  So he headed up in the evening, and we planned to come up the next morning.  We invited friends to come up and spend the night with us, so my main goal was to beat them.

Christopher had been able to drive his truck to the parking lot in the middle, but only barely.  The road that is usually plowed was feet of snow that had fallen too fast for anyone to keep up with.  And when I came up in the warmer part of the morning, there was just no way.  What followed was a comedy of errors.  I walked up toward the parking lot, since I had no way to tell Chris I was stuck and couldn't drive to meet him there, but met him on his way walking down to tell me that he had driven the Argo down and run out of gas at the bottom of his drive.  He also told me that our friends should be here soon.  So I ran down to try and find them, and he ran up for gas.  No sign of the friends.  He came back with the Argo, tried to get the Pilot up the road to the parking lot, and got it stuck.  Then we tried to get it down, and were behind other people who got stuck and pulled out and stuck again.  It took us most of the day to get down to the bottom of the hill to park the Pilot.  And somehow, our friends pulled up just as we were getting down there, having been delayed themselves.  Thank goodness they were happy to have an adventure, because we still had to shuttle everyone up to the cabin.

We love the cabin in winter, but it isn't always an easy trip!

Our "snow gauge" looked like about 4 feet or so.

We had David and his family up again for New Year's Eve, and had only a little less adventure getting them up.  We took both the Argo and the four wheeler down to get them, but the four wheeler gave out in the cold, and the Argo didn't want to start the climb back up either.  Once I got the Argo started finally, I ended up taking one load of people up and letting the rest of them walk most of the way before I could come back for them.

To be honest, we were cured of winter cabin trips for a little while.

New Years is always fun, though!

I found these little poppers that had prizes and paper crowns inside, and we had our usual sparkling cider challenge.

Then, Christopher broke out the paper lanterns he bought online.  It was 3 degrees and windy outside, but he still wanted to try them out!  It took a lot of tries to light one, and then when he did get one to take off, it blew right into a tree.  Oops!

Our kids couldn't quite keep up with Wackee 6, but they loved it anyway.

We had a great time at the cabin, but somehow, it felt like a relief to be back home with plowed roads again!

Christmas!

We were supposed to go to the cabin before Christmas and again after Christmas.  In fact, we had friends lined up to come with us before Christmas.  But then the girls got pink eye, Christopher got sick, and we got hit with a serious snow storm.  We kept thinking that we would wait for the weather to pass and then head up, but our friends sent us this picture when we asked for current conditions.

Nope.

That was fine, because it was good to stay home and get ready for Christmas anyway.

We had our traditional Christmas Eve at Grandma Skarda's house.  Lots of food, music, and cousins.

Jasmine was still a bit under the pink eye bug, and so we found her like this at 6 pm.  She tucked herself into Grandma's bed when she got tired.

The bigger kids like the parts they got in the Nativity.  The star costume was new this year, and he got into that part.

The best part of the evening, though, was the list.

Kaitlyn brought her yellow list for Santa.  When Grandma watched our kids earlier that month, she got to see what was on the wish list for Santa that Kaitlyn would not let us see.  She had been sworn to secrecy.  While we were a bit concerned about it, Grandma said that she decided it was okay.  Whatever that meant.

Other cousins got on Santa's lap and asked for candy, or small toys.  And then Kaitlyn hopped up and unrolled the giant list.

I've been told that the reason the list was so long is that it was mostly for other people.  She wanted Star Wars costumes for Daddy and Tyler, a new cage and hampster wheel and things for Fluffy, and sewing stuff for Mommy.  Oh, and her cousins wanted an elf.  A real, live, from the North Pole elf.

We stayed for a while that night to get the kids extra tired, and then headed home.

Thankfully, everyone mostly got what Kaitlyn thought they should get.  Fuzzy got a new cage.

Jasmine got her beloved  Take Care of me Lambie.  The family got light sabers, and that was almost like costumes.

Grandma and Grandpa had an empty house for Christmas, so we Skyped with them while we opened presents.  It wasn't the same as being with them, but it was the best we could do and I am so grateful that we could do it.

The boys (I'm including my husband in that term) spent the entire day playing around with the "green truck" Tyler asked Santa to bring.  This RC car actually goes up and over pillows and things, which the boys decided made it totally awesome.

And Kaitlyn spent the whole day testing out her microscope.

However, this picture was the one that made me the happiest this Christmas.  Tyler got some Legos for Christmas, and we talked to him about how they were smaller than his old Duplos because they were for kids 8 and older and Duplos were for little kids.  He wanted to make sure that Jasmine did not mess with his big kid Legos, which is a valid concern.  So he got the paper and pencil, and totally on his own wrote this note:

No Minecraft Legos
until you are older
than 8

What made me SO happy is that he did it all on his own!  That is the first time he has ever actually written anything down without someone right next to him, helping him through every syllable.  That note is the fruit of SO much work and practice.  I know it doesn't even look like English, but it is totally awesome to me.

At the end of the day, all the kids curled up in their new sleeping bags in the basement, and we watched Home Alone.  Which they deemed hilarious.  It was certainly a new experience to watch it as a parent of an (almost) eight year old, instead of watching it as the kid when I was growing up.  I laughed much harder when he unrolled the crayon drawing of all the traps he was going to put out, thinking about how Kaitlyn unrolled her yellow master plan of who should get what for Christmas the day before.

The best part about Christmas is just having a wonderful day to spend together.  We were rather snowed in, so Grandma couldn't come to visit us, and we just stayed inside as well.  It was a wonderful, white, Christmas!

Getting ready for Christmas

The big downside to waiting to record what happens, and the reason I am trying to catch up, is that I'm terribly forgetful.  I don't care if anyone else reads this, I appreciate looking back to see what we did as a family and adore pictures that make me feel like I'm really there.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what we did in November.

I can't find a single picture taken in the entire month.

I know we went to Christopher's cousin's house for dinner, and they came to ours.  I know we had Thanksgiving at my Mother-in-law's house.  (Christopher tried to fry some turkeys as well as smoke ours, and he decided that smoked turkey was much better.)  We went to a BYU game or two.  But the rest is lost.

All I can tell you is how we got ready for Christmas.

I got some tickets for a live Nativity months ago.  We'd never gone to one before, but I was really impressed.  I think the kids got a lot out of it, and I know I enjoyed it.  The only bad part was that Jasmine refused to put on long pants or much of a coat beforehand, and she froze.  But hopefully she learned something from that experience, too.  We all want to wear short sleeves and shorts all year long, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

Whenever people bundled in coats ask me why my daughter is in shorts, I tell them that "she doesn't believe in Winter."  They usually laugh and tell me that it happens anyway, which I hope Jasmine will realize someday.  I keep thinking that I am fighting her on enough battles, and Mother Nature should convince her on this one.  It is working . . . slowly.

In early December, we had a week of three Christmas parties for Christopher and I.  The first one was for his new job.  He really liked the old job, and felt bad leaving, but he was really sick of the commute.  He is so much happier about going to work, now that work is 7 minutes away instead of close to an hour!  The company party was fun, and we are hoping that it will be a good decision all around.  The next night, the Race Entry company that Christopher helped to start had their party.  The White Elephant was the oddest I had ever seen.  First, someone opened a goldfish swimming in a bag and some potato chips.  Fish and chips.  Not the best surprise, but goldfish aren't a big commitment.  Next, one poor girl saw a box from a pet store with holes in it, and dashed as far away as she could.  I felt bad and  opened it to see a cute little mouse (sitting in its own poop, sadly).  No one else would go near that little mouse.  And then later, someone realized that their box felt warm and opened it to find a live rooster.  The guy who brought that was so proud of how he caught it to bring to the party.

Some people need a lesson in animal cruelty.

As we were leaving, I could hear the husband trying to convince his wife to go and get the mouse she hadn't gone near all night.  "You opened it!  We have to take it!"  But the best plan they had was to leave it on a neighbor's doorstep as a prank.  So I took pity on the tiny thing and we brought it home.

The kids were in love, instantly.  This tiny little critter was adored by all of the kids, and they would spend as much time as they could holding him and sitting by the cage to watch him.  Daddy tried to name him "pooper", because he really didn't like the smell, but Kaitlyn eventually settled on naming him Fuzzy.  She even found a dollar store stocking kicking around somewhere and asked me to embroider its name on there so that Santa could bring him presents, too.

Of all the things I thought I would do with that machine, I never drempt of that.

Or embroidered toilet paper, but that did make a fun White Elephant gift for the final party that week.

Around Black Friday, I decided I wanted to make some embroidered hooded towels for my kids.  I had seen so many cute pictures of them on the facebook group for embroidery that I was curious to try.  It seemed silly to spend the money to just make 3, though, so I presented Christopher with a grand plan of spending $80 to make 8 of them and sell the extra 5.  Our kids could just keep the leftovers, since I was only going to make ones they liked.  The first time I posted a pair of towels for sale, I sold one of them.  The next week I posted a set of five that I had ready to go, and I sold eight towels in 24 hours . . . but only two of those were the ones I had already made.  I scrambled and got all the supplies to make all the rest.

I was proud of making $15-20 on each one, but Christopher and his brother got a bunch of phones on a good deal over Black Friday and were selling them off for $30-50 profit.  Without working for two hours on each, like I was.  So he won that round, again.  At least they are really cute!

With a new Star Wars movie coming out, Daddy had started watching the original three movies with the kids.  Tyler and Kaitlyn really enjoyed those!  I just wish we had done that over the summer, so that Tyler knew what Jedi Training Academy was at Disneyland.  At least they were ready to see the new movie.  We managed to score some free tickets for a pre-showing, and while it was chaos making it through Tyler's school program and then sitting on the front row of the theater, it was worth it.

Jasmine will fall asleep anywhere, doing anything, I tell you.

Of course, I made them shirts the night before.  You'd think I never leave that machine, but I swear I do.  Sometimes.

Halloween costumes, quickly!

On the drive home from Disneyland on a Wednesday (which involved Tyler puking, Jasmine wetting her car seat, and me spilling a drink on myself, by the way), I mentioned to Christopher that I had just finished all the matching shirts and Jasmine's Sofia dress in time for the trip, but had until Saturday to make the bigger kids their costumes.  And Kaitlyn didn't even know what she wanted to be yet.

"Good luck," he said.

By Saturday, I just felt lucky to have all the laundry done.  I won tickets to the local pumpkin patch's pumpkin drop event though, so it was nice to take the kids there.

It was a busy place, but slides and mazes and corn angels were a lot of fun.

And Daddy especially loved seeing what they dropped from the crane.

Kaitlyn just wanted to hold the bunnies all day.  Especially this teeny one.

After that, our neighborhood had the annual block party.

I should have had their costumes ready, but did not.  The only one who had a costume made for them was Jasmine, who sensed that I wanted her to wear the Sofia dress and hence refused to wear it.  She picked out a very bare belly Jasmine instead.  Tyler loved his Zombie pants and Zombie tattoos, and the kids loved that Daddy's costume was "Daddy with hair".

I asked Daddy to pose in the redneck "guns" sort of pose, and Jasmine decided she could do that, too.

About this time or so, Kaitlyn told me that she wanted to turn her khaki uniform for school into a Ghostbuster costume.  (I had known for months that Tyler wanted to be a Minecraft . . . something, but didn't know how to pull it off.).  I took over Kaitlyn's costume, but I wished I hadn't when I found a detailed list in her room of all the parts of her costume and what she was going to make it out of.  (Along with a Ghostbuster patch made out of paper and colored with crayons very carefully.)  Sadly enough, the proton pack took the most work, but I didn't even get a good picture of that.

I embroidered the Ghostbuster patch and name, shrunk a men's khaki shirt to be her shirt, and then took apart an old backpack to make the proton pack.  At first, I was going to make the men's shirt into a dress, but Kaitlyn reminded me that "Ghostbusters wear pants, Mom,"  Right.

And then, I had to figure out how to make Tyler into a blocky character without making him uncomfortable in boxes all night.

The box head came from the store with another face on it, but I was informed that the face looked wrong, so I was gluing Minecraft Steve's face on there an hour before Trick or Treating was starting.  I used a foam costume from a clearance bin for his shirt, and while it took a lot of trial and error, he has put it on a lot of times since then, so I'm happy.  And I had a lot of fun making the Minecraft "chest" and Ghostbuster Ghost trap for them to collect their candy in.

The only fail was that Tyler's box head had no reason to stay on straight.  So as he walked, it would turn aimlessly, and he would walk around like a blind man!

The other part I wish I had a picture of is Christopher's contribution that night.  He decided the day before that "you know what would be awesome?  We should make pulled pork sliders for Trick or Treaters!"  and did just that.  We have had a lot of neighbors comment on how wonderful it was to have some real food as they trudged along with their kids from house to house.  He had a party going!