About the kids...

Since the year is ending and new one is beginning I wanted to write about what my kids are like these days...

Kenzie:

• love socks and shoes
• loves her family
• loves to do things she's not supposed to do and smile at us while doing them
• likes hitting people on the head. I think she's trying to play duck duck goose... That's where she got the idea from.
• says ma, da, ock (sock), cheese, bup (up), more in sign language, and occasionally says other words that sound like real words, but I'm not sure if she really knows what she's saying.
• loves chairs
• loves knocking down towers
• can do doggie, kitty, and bear/lion/tiger sounds (she'll only do them sometimes though) and opens and closes her mouth for fish and says bop bop (hop hop) for bunnies. She loves doing the fish one.
• loves the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see.
  
• loves to eat. Whenever I start setting the table she runs over and puts her hands up because she wants me to put her in her high chair. If it's not actually time to eat she cries when I don't put her in.
  
• loves our new slide and gets really excited whenever we ask her if she wants to slide.
• loves being chased
• has a very cute kiss face
  

Jordan:

• loves playing with blocks and trains. He especially loves Trio blocks.
  
• loves peanut butter
• is really good at sharing as long as someone asks first
• is loud
• loves to sing (which is one reason why he's loud) and likes to make up songs or change the words in other songs. One he really likes to sing these days is "Who's afraid of the big, bad Jordan"
• Does good with going potty as long as we take him potty. If we don't he usually has accidents.
  
• loves watching the Letter Factory (a leapfrog movie) and now knows the letters pretty well and the sounds they make. (I recommend this movie to anyone with little kids, especially ones that don't really have much interest in letters. My kids love it.)
• loves riding on our rocking horse
• doesn't really like anyone to do things for him except Doug and me.
• doesn't take naps very much anymore. Only 1 or 2 a week.
  
• sometimes likes to sneak candy or other treats in the morning before breakfast.
  
• likes doing puzzles.
• likes reading books. He especially loves search and find books.
  
• says "oh, yeah!" a lot
• likes wearing his clothes, especially is pants, backwards
• still likes to do and say the things Jackson does.
• loves to tell us jokes. He only tells knock knock jokes and this is how he generally finishes them: "duck (or whatever knocked) don't eat me or else you won't get any presents for Christmas." If he doesn't say that he still gives some long rambling answer. It's pretty funny.
  

Jackson:

• loves preschool
• loves learning to read. He's getting really good at sounding easy words out and spelling words too.
• loves playing with Jordan and Kenzie
• likes to climb in Kenzie's bed in the mornings after she wakes up to play her.
  
• loves wearing pajamas
• loves watching movies and playing the Wii
• loves playing his new leapster
• pretty much always willing to help Kenzie if I ask him to or if he sees she needs help with something
  
• hates being alone. He always tells us he's lonely or he'll get lonely if he's alone.
• when he's bored he says he's boring instead of bored. It makes me laugh every time.
• loves to talk. between him and Jordan someone is always talking
• like to tell jokes
• likes playing games
• occasionally talks about how we're going to need a school bus when we have lots of kids in our family
• always likes to tell me the things Jordan is doing that he shouldn't be doing (unless, of course, Jackson is doing it too)
  

Kid Pictures

Here's some cute pictures of our kiddos...

Jackson's 4 and half years old. I can't believe he'll be 5 soon. 5 is old. by the way, the kids really, really love this slide.

Jordan is going to be 3 in just a couple months. It should be an interesting year... 3 year olds are more difficult than 2 years olds are, at least in my experience of raising one 3 year old. But he's cute and so I think we'll get through it just fine :)

Sweet little Kenzie girl is 15 months. That means she's only 3 months away from 18 months. We like when kids turn 18 months in our family. But don't worry, we like 15 month olds too. It's just Sundays we won't like as much for the next 3 months...

Baby#4 is coming around June 22...

Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas day. On Christmas Eve we went to my parents' house for most of the day. My mom cooked a very yummy dinner and we read about Jesus' birth in the scriptures and sang songs and then hit another pinata. We didn't take too many pictures that night. We mostly just used our video camera. Jordan wouldn't hit the pinata this time. Jackson loved it though. The kids were really excited for Christmas.

Jackson had fun playing with Grandpa.

Cute Kenzie in her cute Christmas dress.

Cute Doug and cute Kenzie

I made the kids Christmas pants again this year. I actually made Kenzie 3 pairs, but the first too were too small. I barely had enough fabric to make the 3rd pair. I also tried to make them pajama shirts this year but that didn't work out. The collar was too tricky for me. The first one was too wide and looked funny and the second one looked good but wouldn't fit over my kids' heads. So after a day of frustration I just gave up. I decided it was better for me to be a good, happy mom and not have matching cute shirts for the kids than to be a frustrated grumpy mom, and probably still not have cute matching shirts for the kids.

We didn't get home until about 10:30 on Christmas Eve so I was hoping the kids would sleep in some on Christmas day, but it didn't happen. I had told them they could come in to get us at 7 (which is never allowed in my house) and they were really excited about that. Jackson came in right about 7 and said "Mom, dad, it's Christmas." The other kids weren't up so he just climbed in bed with us (which also never happens... Christmas is just a special day:)) and told him we'd wait for Jordan and Kenzie to wake up. After laying there for awhile we decided to let him watch a short Christmas movie while we waited. Jordan woke up around 8 and came in. We woke Kenzie up about 15 minutes later. She was not happy about being woken up. She was pretty grumpy all morning and ended up taking a morning nap and then an afternoon nap. Then we all went down and opened presents. The kids were pretty excited by their presents.

Excited Jordan before going downstairs to open presents.

Excited Jackson

Jordan got his red umbrella and was very excited. Jackson got one too. Today they were sad they didn't bring them to church since it was raining outside :)

Kenzie loves her new chair. It was one of the only presents she actually seemed to like. The others were her 2 little boxes of cereal, her toothbrush, and her socks. I think she may have been more excited about the socks than the chair.

Jordan got a pirate ship.

And a Mariners' hat.

Jack got a piggy bank which he was pretty excited about.

Jordan and his new binoculars.

Jackson also got a Leapster and several games. Kenzie enjoyed watching him play for a few minutes.

While Jack and Kenzie were busy with the Leapster and were done with opening their presents, Jordan still had several left. He was slow at opening them. He wanted to play with the ones that were already open.

Jordan got a fireman costume. He likes to put it on, wear it for about 10 seconds then take it off.

My parents got them this huge present that they were really excited about.

And they were even more excited to find out that it was a slide. They love it. Before doing things they like to go down the slide "1 more time." Here's Jack going down the slide while talking to Grandma Dance.

Jordan going down the slide. Notice Jack's still talking on the phone. I thought it was funny that he was talking on the phone and kept going down the slide.

Kenzie can't climb up the ladder yet, but she keeps trying. She did go down it once and it was much faster than the ones she's been on and she kind of crashed at the bottom.

After we got the kids breakfast and busy playing with some of their new toys (and tired Kenzie in bed) Doug and I opened presents.

Doug was very happy to find that I had bought him a discount golf card that will give him 6 free rounds of golf at some very golf courses around here as well as discounts to those same courses after he uses the free rounds. He was very surprised that I got him that because I'm not usually that happy to let him go play golf and with this present I'm giving him permission to leave me on 6 Saturdays to play (or other days I guess if he wants...) I think this present was really his 2nd favorite one though. I think the one below was his very favorite...

He loves his new robe :)

Jackson got me this nice Santa hat and Doug gave me the cool onion goggles.

My parents came over after we were done opening presents. Kenzie woke up while they were here and sat on my dad's lap for awhile, mostly just staring off.

Jackson and my mom.

Jack talked my dad into playing Mario kart on the wii. We got 2 more wheels for it so now 4 people can play together. We haven't tried it out yet, but are excited to do it. We like Mario kart.

After the kids ate lunch we went back to my parents' house and stayed there until bedtime. Doug and Jordan built an elephant out of Jordan's new trio blocks.

Jackson and my dad played a lot.

Kenzie and grandma.

After getting home and putting the kids to bed early Doug and I had a chance to play with our new stuff :) We played Donkey Kong on the Wii until we went to bed. It's a fun game. We really had a very fun Christmas.

Christmasy Saturday

On Saturday my sister and her family were in town. I watched her girls in the afternoon then we had a family Christmas party that night.

The kids painted wooden ornaments.

Jordan loved painting.

See how happy he is?

In order to fit all the kids in the car, we had to move Kenzie's car seat in the back and she forward facing for the first time. She cried a little.

After we got to my mom's house we made gingerbread houses. Ashlee and her family did them with us too.

Jackson and his house.

Jordan and his house.

Doug and his shape city. He never added any candy to it.

The finished products. We used our left over halloween candy so they don't really look like our typical gingerbread houses. Natalie loved using the suckers. She put a ton on them. Hers is the front one on the right.

After having a delicious roast beast dinner, we opened presents. Here's Jordan with his presents.

Kenzie and one of her presents.

Kenzie liked playing with the bows.

Jackson and one of his presents.

Kenzie opening a present.

Jackson opening a present.

Jack helped Kenzie open her presents.

All the grandkids: Mackenzie, Kimber, Nati, Alli, Jordan, Samantha, Makenna, Jackson

After presents we had a pinata. Jordan didn't want to hit it at first, but my dad told him there was candy inside and so then Jordan was ok with it. He'll do anything for candy.

Jackson was excited to hit it. He refused to wear the hat for a blindfold though.

Jordan in his new Jordan clothes with Kenzie looking cute in the background.

Cute Mackenzie again.

Jack in the box... A little later Jordan climbed in and said he was Jordan in the box :)