Oh, Dear

I don't know whether he is blessing our clean dishes or bemoaning the horror that is a broken dishwasher in a household of 9. I washed him because he was dusty and left him on the towel to dry. I don't know whether it was Bob or Lizzi who thought this would be entertaining. But since I didn't have to do the dishes...hurray! Would it be totally inappropriate to say quite sincerely, "Thank you, Jesus"? For real. This is a big blessing in my day. And the dishwasher guy better show up tomorrow....

More Pics from September

My Girls!

From our "photo shoot" back in September. Aren't my girls beauties?! :)

Miss Personality.

I miss her.

Lizzi was really peeved that we were doing family pictures, so this was the outfit she chose. She also though posing with the trashcan was entirely appropriate....

Madeline may have been done with taking pictures.

Beautiful!

Are we done yet???

I've got a secret....

Happy Sabbath Day!

A productive day, I think. Sariah and Madeline and I stayed home from church because Sariah hasn't been feeling very well. We finished off the Thanksgiving leftovers, decorated the Christmas tree, decided on some service activities for our church's #LIGHTtheWORLD campaign, and watched this awesome nativity video.

Shutterfly

I'm super excited because part of my Shutterfly order got here today. That means I can get crackin' on my Christmas cards. Here's a sneak peek. I love my little family! They make me happy. :)

My Christmas Gift to Me

I've decided to give myself some Christmas gifts. This could be tricky, because it involves me setting goals. I tend to stink at accomplishing the ones I really want. But here's the deal. I've posted something on this blog almost every day since going to General Conference on October 2 because I felt like I needed to be a better record keeper. I'm pretty proud of that. And quite frankly, Hannah is the motivation behind that. But see? It proves that I can accomplish things. So....

Here are the gifts I want to give myself for Christmas. They are really just baby steps. But that's what I've got to give right now.

1. The gift of health. I'm going to give myself 300,000 steps by Christmas day. That's roughly105+ miles. It's my Fitbit goal of 10,000 steps a day, which I have to make a concentrated effort to achieve. But I'm gonna do my best.
2. The gift of nutrition. Or the beginnings of it anyway. Drink more water. I'm going to give myself 3000 oz of water by Christmas day. That's 100 oz a day. Or 23 gallons in all. I might have to reevaluate this goal, because...hello, I get seasick at about 50 oz. But I'm gonna do my best.
3. The gift of the gospel. I'm going to read the Book of Mormon in the next 30 days. It's about 8 chapters a day, or 18 pages a day. I can do this. I used to tell my Young Women that if they could read a Harry Potter book (which is generally more than 531 pages) in under a week, then they could read the Book of Mormon in under week. Now I have to prove this, lol.

So there you have it. Wish me luck and cheer me on. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Day Before Thanksgiving

Today was cooking and reading and sleeping. And a few games of MarioKart because Sam earned it by actually eating everything on his plate. Crazy, right?

Madeline's Latest Tricks

 These are just some odds and ends I've pulled out of our photo app. She has recently been teaching herself to float in the bathtub. That's pretty entertaining.

Not sure how long ago this was. But I love the mohawk!

I'm pretty sure Nana is one of Madeline's most favoritest people ever.

New hangout apparently.

One of her favorite and most entertaining tricks. ;) Sometimes she can even do it with three binkies!

Rex!!

So I went on a hunt for Rex-pictures. I made him take one on Sunday with his mutant candy corn, and then I found some of him in Bob's camera roll. I think the red shirt is from when I was out of town in October. The blue shirt pics are from a family picture session in September right before Hannah left for the MTC. There will probably be more of those posts in the coming days as I'm preparing our family Christmas pictures. Also, don't mind Rex's older brother in the last picture; Caleb has...issues, and poor Sam had to deal with the consequences. But it's a good picture of Rex! ;)

Throwback: Hannah Leaves the ATL

Hahaha, Bob uploaded all of the photos from his phone to my computer. I plan to entertain myself this way for several days. Here are some departing missionary pictures from October. Aren't we a cute little family!? I can't believe that half of my kids are as tall as I am. When did this happen? Also, some brothers are easier to hug than others. Just sayin'. We miss our Hannah's awesome facial communications.

Here is one of my happinesses in life...smiling at the man I love with the little people we love together.

Saturday Randoms

For the record, and before I go too much further with this post...Rex hasn't been letting me take pictures of him. I'm not leaving him out on purpose. Just sayin'. He might be more elusive than the crazy Hannah-girl.

In the mean time, the last few days have been fun.

I think Caleb is a pretty good-lookin' young man...even when he's covered in chewed-up-by-a-toddler-brownie smears.

Daddy taught Madeline how to get the job done right.

But Mommy got the camera out, so then Madeline needed her picture selfie taken....

I tried to get Sam's picture, too. I told him to smile handsomely, lol.

Also, the swim team photographer posted awesome pictures of Lizzi on FB today. They were from last night's meet (which I missed, because we were feeding the sister missionaries).

And Caleb sent me pictures from our eye doctor visit earlier this week. It wasn't really Madeline's visit, but she sure knew what to do. Look at that grin!

As Promised

Sariah finally allowed me to take her picture with her rocket ship. I thought she did a great job with whatever the heck you call that thing on the end....

And as soon as I got the camera out, Madeline needed in on the action, lol! So much fun!

Skates and Appointments

Sariah earned a reward for her reading endeavors over the last couple of months. Daddy took her and a couple of friends to the skating rink here in town. They had bunches of fun learning to skate. Isn't she beautiful!?

And this morning we had to go to some doctor appointments. Madeline thought it was the coolest thing ever that the table and chairs were just her size.