Samuel is 7!

I can't believe that 7 years ago I was a mother for the first time! I am so thankful to have Samuel as the oldest child in our home. He is such a good example to the rest of the family. He is very kind and considerate of others, especially when someone gets hurt. He's responsible, respectful and safe. At school he is a self-manager, which means he gets special privileges. He has been a more faithful reader than I have been to reach his goal of reading the Book of Mormon. There are many nights that I think it is too late to read, but he is willing to stay up a little longer. We are almost done with 2nd Nephi and his reading is already getting much faster. I'm always amazed at some of the words that he can read or sound out all on his own.
We had a fun birthday. Yesterday we made a cake and took it to Tricia's house for a mini b-day party. Tricia watched our kids while Aaron and I went to the temple. When we got back we visited until Calista, Ellen and Caleb got up from their naps. (Tricia was so nice to put them down for a nap!) Then we ate cake and the kids got to play a little longer with their cousins. They must've played hard because both Samuel and Jacque fell asleep shortly after starting our drive home and they were still tired enough to go to bed at bedtime!

Mom gave me a cupcake decorating book last year where we saw a cute alligator. Samuel decided he wanted a cake and not cupcakes, which sounded easier to me, and we followed the decorating instructions. It was fun to make and yummy to eat.

Growing up we always had the "spanking machine." Whoever had the birthday had to crawl through everyone's legs while they were spanked (lightly of course). You had to go through the tunnel the same amount of times as your age, so Samuel had to go through 7 times. He was a good sport. It was fun to have Grandma and Grandpa Baxter here!
For his birthday, we got Samuel an alligator so he would be able to remember his cake, a pair of pants (not pictured) because all of his other pants have holes in them, a transformer carrier airplane - which came with a small transformer truck which fits in the cargo bay, and a toy pirate pistol. I think he enjoyed them all.

New Christmas Advent calendar idea

We grew up using an advent calendar that had a bear going from outside to inside the house, from room to room, looking for Christmas and he finally found it on Christmas day.

At Thanksgiving, I overheard my sister-in-law talking about another idea. You use the the advent calendars with the pockets on the bottom. In each pocket you have an activity that you can do as a family or with the kids to celebrate the Christmas season. You can make cookies for a neighbor, read a book on Christmas, watch a Christmas movie, make ornaments, put up the tree, decorate the tree, build a snowman, making paper snowflakes, play a game...etc.

It sounds like lots of fun. Some of them might need to be moved along the way, because you might not have snow on the day chosen for the snowman, so you can save it for a snowy day! Depending on how many ideas you have, you can do it for the whole month, or make it the 12 days of Christmas! You can also repeat several of the options to lengthen it out.

It sounds like a fun way to spend the Christmas season with the family. By the way, my brother-in-law makes awesome snowflakes. He made one with carolers on the outside, and another with angels. See how creative you can be!

FHE Visitor

Mary was our visitor for tonight's Family Home Evening! We probably should have waited until the Monday before Christmas, but there are only a few women to act out in the scriptures that the kids could think of. I could probably come up with more if I tried, but Jacque really wanted to be Mary. I think she was a little disappointed that she didn't get to wear a blue dress since the movies we have with the story of Christmas, all have Mary in a blue dress. I just told her that no one knows what color the dress was and it might have been white too! She had fun telling the story of Mary, or at least answering the questions we asked her about Mary and the Christmas story.

I think the kids are really enjoying acting out the lessons and taking turns being in charge of the music/prayers/lesson/game. Ellen got to be in charge of the music tonight. She chose to sing, "The Family is of God" known as "Family" to her, twice for an opening song, and "Once I was a baby" sang to the tune of "Once there was a snowman." She and Calista learned it in nursery.

The kids get a little impatient waiting for their turn to be in charge of the game or lesson. I need to make a FHE board where they can see that we all take turns. Any good ideas of FHE boards?

A New Discovery

I love it when the kids discover "new" things. The other day Ellen discovered the fun that comes when you combine wearing a dress and standing over the vent! We were getting ready for Church and I hear this, "Look! Look!" I look over by the door, and there is Ellen, looking out the window with her dress flying up around her. I thought it was pretty cool that she discovered that on her own. I don't remember anyone else picking up on that.

The heater happened to turn on shortly after Ellen and Calista got in their play dresses. Ellen ran over to the vent saying, "Look! Look!" again, so I decided to take pictures of their fun.

We had a visitor come to FHE tonight

Ammon the missionary to the Lamanites came and joined us. He told us the story of when he protected the King's sheep by fighting the wicked Lamanites, and how he was able to defeat them because the Lord was with him. Here's another picture of our visitor:
Samuel was a little dubious about dressing the part, but by the end he was pretty excited. I'm planning on making the kids dress up clothes for FHE's/Sundays. This was actually scraps that I had lying around, but they worked just fine.

We did it!

We actually paid off our van!! Yeah, it only took us two years!! We were supposed to still be paying on it for another 3 years, but we got the title today in the mail...so its official!! Now we are going to try to start saving money for a down payment on a house (some day when we are more settled). We want to take the money we had been paying on our car loan, and put it into a savings account of some sort. Do you have any ideas of where the best place to put money: savings bank, ingdirect (or something like that) or other options (not including your bank account) :]

Veggie Pizza

Aaron and I are trying my mom and dad's diet. On this diet, you don't mix your meats (fleshes, dairy) and your starches (pastas, breads, wheat, rice, potatoes...) and you wait for three hours after you eat something before you eat anything else. And you eat your fruits separately, but only have to wait 30 minutes before you can eat again. The best part is that you can eat as much of that one food area as you want, you just can't mix them. It seems to be working for us. I had never noticed how much I snack!

Well last night, Aaron and I were reading the Tidbits and saw a recipe for veggie pizza!! I was so excited and thought I should share it with you. Are you ready?? Here it is:

Veggie Pizza

1 frozen cheese pizza

2-3 cups vegetables (spinach, peppers, mushrooms, etc.)

Preheat oven. Top frozen pizza with variety of vegetables. Sprinkle with additional cheese if desired. Bake according to package directions. Serves 4.

After reading this, I thought that I should go into the recipe business. It doesn't look to hard! This is supposed to be a funny post, so hopefully you at least smiled a little! Hope you all have a great day!