An Early Christmas

On Dec. 19th, we went up to Dad & Mom Beck's house so we could open the presents that they had for us. We always have such a great time at their house and have a hard time leaving. Thanks for the great presents - we loved them all.

Bradley loves to follow Aunt Melissa around and won't let her out of his sight when he is with her. Luckily she is fine with it or we would have a case of stalking on our hands:).What a relaxing and enjoyable morning! The kids let us sleep until 7:00 a.m. and then we headed out into the hall. The kids all formed a line youngest to oldest to enter the living room. I just love watching them enter to see the looks of amazement on their faces when they realize what Santa has left for them. Tanner was so excited for his new skateboard. He had a small one, but has wanted a larger one for quite some time now. We just have to wait for warmer weather for him to try it out.

Bradley got a train set. He has had so much fun sticking the trains together and pulling them around the house.
Parker - our Batman boy- he lives, sleeps and breaths batman. He was so excited for his new toy - a Batman mask and mega cape. When the straps are pulled on the cape and the wings fly out. He was having so much fun with his new toy that he didn't realize the wing span and was knocking things over:).
Camille got some dishes for Christmas. She has started to spend every waking moment in the kitchen. The last few nights she has been so gracious to make dinner for us. Camille will get some good use out of these.
Johnathan got a Star Wars Lego set. He is so excited to put this together - Johnathan is really good with his hands and can create some incredible things.
Carter got a small guitar. Tanner has a ukulele and enjoys playing it, but wanted something of his own. He has loved carrying it around and playing fun songs he has made up. Camille even taught him how to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

After all the presents were open, the craziness started. Our original plan was to leave for California early Christmas morning, but a huge storm was coming through on Christmas day. Instead of getting stuck in it, we decided to leave by 2:00 that afternoon. Packing is no easy feat with 8 people. Luckily the kids are getting older where they can pretty much pack everything up themselves and I end up looking over their bags after they are done. There were some VERY stressful moments, but we were finally ready to leave around 2:30 p.m. Thanks Melissa for all your help during those stressful moments.

Bye car - Hello Truck

Since the accident last month with our car, we have had so many fun issues to deal with. We have decided what a pain it is to work with insurance companies. We also had our car damages estimated and found out that our car is worth less than it would cost to fix. Thus, we were stuck with making such a hard decision, but ultimately decided that it was the car's time to go. Byron has always wanted to get a truck after our Geo stopped working, so the time now came to start looking for one. Since we purchased a new van just recently we had to look at used trucks. The hard part is getting one that is reliable, like our Geo has been for the past 13 years. We ended up getting a 2001 Toyota Tacoma. Byron has been in pure heaven! We have heard so great of things about Toyota cars, so hopefully this one will last for many more years.

We will miss:

Amazing gas mileage!
No car payment.

The reliability of it - no real problems in all the years we had it.

Won't miss:

Not being able to roll down the driver's side window.

Not being able to make it up hills very fast.
The kid's have been so excited to ride in the truck with their dad. We are also excited to be able to haul most anything in the bed of the truck. We have used the back of our van so much that we won't even know what to do with such a huge area to put things.

December festivities

So much has happened this month - it has been so busy, but all full of good things. We started out the month with no snow at all and have ended with at least 12 inches. We also have enjoyed being able to attend many Christmas celebrations, parties, listen to Christmas music, drive around to see the lights, and reflecting on Christ's birth.

We started out this holiday season with decorating our tree. The kid's were great helpers. After putting on the lights I was worn out. I am so glad they love the decorating part. Camille began the month with two separate performances for Showcase USA - one of them was at Festival of Trees. Thanks for all the family that came to watch her. We enjoyed walking around to see all of the beautiful trees before her performance started. We saw some really cool trees and gingerbread houses.


Camille is on the right side with the black microphone.
Johnathan decorated gingerbread houses at school with all of the 3rd grade. It was so fun helping him. Johnathan has such a sweet tooth that it was fun seeing him decorate his dream house. He had no problem covering every inch with candy. His house didn't even make it home more than 10 minutes before it was being devoured.

Tanner's 4th grade class decorated the Christmas tree at Zions Bank in Lehi. They made the decorations in class and then had a lighting ceremony in the evening. His teacher is so great to let the kids play a part in such a cool activity. The kids all sang Christmas songs and then ate yummy desserts and hot chocolate.
This is the snowman that Tanner decorated for the tree - notice the "Y".

With the snow we have received, comes many hours of shoveling snow. Carter & Parker were so excited to help after the first real snowfall of the winter. I put boots on Bradley for the first time and he really decided that he liked them. He would put them on in the house and wear them wherever he went. Below is Carter and Bradley in the snow.

Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert

I was so excited to be picked out of the drawing to receive 4 tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert. I took Camille, Tanner & Johnathan and we definitely were so excited we went. The concert was awesome! Brian Stokes Mitchell was the guest and can I just say he was so AMAZING! I found this video clip of his awesome musical abilities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g-T46ja95s

He also has such a fun sense of humor. My kid's favorite song was "The Friendly Beasts" where he acted out each of the animals through his voice- very entertaining.

Temple Square was gorgeous - we had so much fun walking through on our way to the Conference Center. We were able to go up into the Relief Society Building after the program to see Melissa. She works in such an amazing building. The kid's loved seeing where she works and being with their awesome aunt! Thanks Melissa for taking time out of your busy lives for us and for the ride to our van.




We look forward to watching the concert on PBS to let Carter, Parker & Byron enjoy some of the fun songs we loved also.

Shoes

Bradley has some adversion to shoes and can drive me crazy at times. We will put them on his feet and within a few minutes they are off and being carried away in some direction. If I could attach a beeper to them to find them easily this won't bother me as much. We just have the hardest time finding them when we really need them.

I have decided that we will just leave a pair in the van at all times so when we run errands they are always there. This has proven to be such a great method for him. This method also saves on laundry since when his shoes are off so are his socks. I only need to wash the socks I leave in the van every few days since he won't wear them for more than 15 minutes each day. Crazy boy!!!

Motherly Love

I have realized as a mother how much my children mean to me. Even though I have 6 children, I love them all so different and in their own way. I can remember so many times growing up that my mom would go without to make sure we all had what we needed. I have had so many amazing experiences to make me who I am today - many of them have been from sacrificing my time, efforts and talents all for my family. They have helped create me into who I am and helped me become a better individual. I have definitely become a better person because of my children.

Today I have realized how important every child is in my family and how quickly everything can change. While driving home from Camille's dance performance, we had just gotten off the freeway and were slowing down as we were coming upon a light. I was in the left lane and all of a sudden saw a car coming right at us on the right side of the road. He was turning left out of a parking lot where the cars in the right lane were stopping for him to come across the lanes of traffic. He didn't see me coming and hit me as he came into my lane. The impact hit on the driver's side front tire and then slid all the way back to our back tire. Camille was sitting in the back seat right next to where this happened. We were not hurt at all. The car is not in perfect condition any more, but at least we were safe. I keep thinking about this happening and how easily Camille could have gotten hurt. If were were just one second further on the road the impact would have hit right next to Camille. I have had such a hard time realizing how easily she might not be here with us right now and it has torn me apart. I love my children more than words can ever say and wouldn't know what to do if anything ever happened to any of them.

Since this experience I have been reminded how easily anything can come into my life and turn it inside out. I realize how I need to rely on Heavenly Father more than ever to help keep my family safe. Family prayer morning and night has brought on a new meaning. I need to live each day not letting any moment be taken for granted.

I love being a mom more than anything and look forward to many wonderful years ahead as my children grow, become more independent and then move on to having families of their own. How could I not be grateful!

"Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." -Helen Keller

Thanksgiving Festivities

We had such a relaxing Thanksgiving Break. We have never had Thanksgiving with just our little family before and decided it was about time. Each of the kids decided on one thing that they wanted to be in charge of to help. My load was lightened due to all their great help. On Wednesday the kid's didn't have any school so we started preparing some of the food. Camille made 4 pies with practically no help at all. What a wonderful help she is in the kitchen! She made 3 pumpkin pies and 1 chocolate pudding pie. Thursday morning each kid started their tasks and didn't even complain :)
Tanner was our potato peeler and a great one at that! He was so quick and peeled around 15 potatoes.

Carter was able to put the cheese on the celery with Camille's help. They looked so yummy and tasted great!

Bradley acting cute and trying to find something to keep himself busy. He was getting into one thing after another making our morning pretty exciting! Bradley has such a fun personality and constantly is doing something to make us all laugh.

Parker and I made rolls. Parker did such a great job at helping me put the ingredients into the bowl and then forming them into balls. Johnathan was so excited to be doing the candy cups. He took great care to make sure each cup had the exact amount of candy. He also created as a surprise a special card for everyone telling something that he loved about each of us. These special cards included a colored picture for each of us. He was up at the crack of dawn making them - he is such a thoughtful kid!

Byron did awesome at carving the turkey and was such a great help in the kitchen! I definitely couldn't have done it without his wonderful help. He even spent the afternoon taking all the turkey off the bone - my least favorite job:).

Camille has a knack for decorating and did an awesome job at getting the table just perfect! She was pretty excited about her masterpiece:).

This is taken after we all sat down to eat. The food was delicious and we enjoyed talking with each other. We created a "thankful tree" that we added leaves indicating things we are all thankful for throughout the week and read through them together as we were eating. After eating our meal we needed to all take a break from the kitchen and headed down to watch the Macy's parade that we had recorded (thank goodness for DVR:) We fast forwarded to each performance. We especially loved watching David Archuleta. We all love his music and have played his new CD non-stop.

The kitchen clean up was the next fun part of our day. Luckily 8 hands make light work!

Parker & Carter as Pilgrims and Indians. Notice my little BYU fan decorating his vest with "Y"s all over it.

We headed up to Grandpa & Grandma Beck's house in the evening to enjoy time with family. The kids were so excited to spend the night there since we rarely do this. We enjoyed visiting with family and the kid's loved spending time with their cousins.

Friday morning Byron headed out at 3:45 a.m. to find the great deals with his mom and siblings. I am so glad he enjoys and looks forward to going out since we are able to get some great deals for Christmas. Byron won't go to K-Mart since it is always a mess and usually doesn't have the sale items. I found some things that I wanted from their so I decided to get up at 6:30 and head to K-Mart. I was able to find most everything I went for. The sale items were not marked which made it very chaotic and hard to find the item I was looking for. Byron reminds me that we go for the sport and if we end up with anything it is a bonus. He has seen so many people go crazy in the lines and not act in the Christmas Spirit that he has to think this way. I hope to do most of the remainder of our shopping online to avoid the fun lines and rush.

Thursday night upon seeing family we noticed that Bradley was really scared of his Uncle Eric - this was such a strange behavior since he LOVES seeing all of his aunts and uncles. Every time Bradley would have to even go in the same room which Eric was in he would start crying and run to Byron or I. We soon found out from Eric that when we were up a few days previously Eric was downstairs taking a nap since he wasn't feeling good. Bradley didn't realize that he was on the couch while he was downstairs. Bradley started to get into some things that he shouldn't have - just as he was reaching his hand into somethings Eric said, "Hey." Bradley was so scared that he ran upstairs and wouldn't go back down. We all got a good laugh since we didn't even know that his had happened a few days previous. Luckily he warmed right up to him again after being there for about one hour. Silly boy!

We had such a great weekend and are now looking forward to this wonderful Christmas season!