2015 Kidisms

Time for the annual round-up of the "Kidisms" from my side bar.  I think I'm getting bad at remembering to write them down because this year is smaller than past years.  That, or the kids just aren't as funny anymore! ;)   (Just kidding--they are still funny!)

January 2015
Bree just told me about her dream last night... "it was about a hamburger monster. He had ketchup, and people, and lettuce in him!" Yikes!

February 2015
Uh oh... Miles came into the bathroom wearing nothing but his shirt. When I asked where his pants and undies were, he told me that Dad had just put them into the washing machine. He said he had had "a toot gone wrong." Ha!

Breeisms: "Valenz-tine Day" is when you give valenztines to your friends.
breakfast= bresskist
yesterday= lasterday

April 2015
During a playdate Bree told her friend, "My daddy is just named Daddy. But sometimes my mom calls him Bryan."

May 2015
While walking down the school hallway, Bree slipped on a spot that had recently been mopped and was still wet. When I asked her where she got hurt she said (in tears), "on the cheek... of my BUM!"

June 2015
Bree just came in and said that both of her feet were broken "pretendly."

Another cute Breeism (what will I do when she outgrows these? I love them and they crack me up!)... gigantic= Guy-jantic

July 2015
Tonight at dinner Bree said the prayer...it went something like this: "We are thankful for the food. Please help it be good, even though I don't want any of the sauce because I hate it, Jesus Christ, Amen."

Bree always has super sweaty little hands! Every time she holds our hand (index finger) it is swampy and sweaty. Well, she also gets the words "slippery" and "slobbery" mixed up. She tried to open a doorknob the other day and said, "I caaaan't open the door!! My hands are too slobbery!"

October 2015
Bree can say "police" and she can say "officer," but ask her to say police officer and it is always "pol-eef a-SAUCE-er."

Christmas 2015

We had a wonderful Christmas this year!  On Christmas Eve we enjoyed a feast and party with Bryan's family and then came home to open jammies, play our new game for the year (this year was "Spot It!"), and open sibling gifts.

Christmas morning was exciting as always.  Here are the children with their new snorkel gear.  They also got 3 strange gifts...a stuffed alligator, a toy airplane, and a travel book about Florida.  It took them a minute to get it figured out, but eventually they realized that we were going to fly to Florida for a family vacation!  They were super excited.  (Bryan & I have had such a hard time keeping it a secret, but we can't wait for our trip!  We have lots of fun things planned.)

 Gramma & Grampa Terry came up to see what the kids got for Christmas and also to smother them with more presents. :)  (One of Miles's was a slinky, if you can't tell, below!)

Then we headed up to Papa's house for more fun with cousins, more food, and more presents again.  We all got spoiled!     Papa has a new puppy so he needed a new doghouse for Christmas.  Miles and Bree thought it was pretty neat to play in.

 Our last destination on our busy Christmas day was to sweet Gramma J's house.  Gramma just turned 89 but she still hosts all the kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids on Christmas every year!  We love you Gram!

December Happenings

A few miscellaneous pics from our December...

Fun and silliness one Sunday after church, when I noticed we were all dressed Christmas-y.  (The phone was propped up on the chair rail in the room to snap these photos.  Yay for self-timer!)

 If you have to snow-plow, might as well make it fun for the kids too, right?

Winter Break--a great time to go sledding!

Bryan's company ES3 always provides a nice Christmas party banquet and a night's stay at a hotel.  It's a really nice getaway each year.

Sometimes, no matter how old you are, it's still fun to get out the dress-up clothes and act silly!

Happy 8th Birthday to Miles!

Miles is the birthday boy!  Happy 8th buddy!  

He decided on Cosmic Bowling for his birthday activity and he chose to invite Ivan to come along.  Ivan has been in Miles's school class for 1st and 2nd grade and they've become close friends.  We told the kids to wear their brightest, most fluorescent shirts to glow in the lights and it was lots of fun.  

One of Miles's favorite presents this year was a pair of Rollerblades.  It's always a little risky giving him outside items for his December birthday, but luckily this year he could use them outside for a while before we got any snow.  He is doing great on them!  (I think having the "Heely" shoes really helps prepare the kids to learn how to skate/blade.)

Miles chose a Mario birthday cake.  I have tried to do the cake-decorating method call Frozen Buttercream Transfer twice before (once for Tess and once for Miles) and I've never had it work very well...I swore I would never try it again.  But when Miles requested Mario, I knew I could not draw or sculpt Mario to save my life so I tried the FBT method one more time.  I watched YouTube videos to prepare and found one lady who does it differently and, guess what?  It worked this time!  It's not perfect, but better than I hoped for, so I'll take it! :)

(This picture just makes me smile and warms my mama-heart.  I love this boy!)

Here is Miles's birthday interview, and a trip down memory lane in pictures...

Miles is 4’5” feet tall.

 What is a happy memory you have?  Going to Yellowstone.  I liked the Grand Geyser.
What is one word to describe you?  Awesome!

Why do you like being a kid?  I don’t know.  I don’t really like being a kid.          (What??  Crazy kid!  I wish I could be a kid again sometimes!)

What do you like to do for fun?  I like to play Skylanders, play with friends, Roller Blade, Heely, play with my family.

What's your favorite thing to do with your friends?  Play video games, write with chalk, jump on the tramp, have popsicles, play tetherball.
What's your favorite thing to do with your family?  Pizza Picnics, watching Star Wars, going to pools, going on vacations, playing outside.

What's the nicest thing you did for someone?   I’ve made Tess’s bed. 

What's your favorite song?  Dangerous by Big Data. 

What's your favorite color?  Green.

What's your favorite movie?  I have a lot of them. National Treasure, Star Wars, Despicable Me.

What's your favorite book?  FableHaven, Roald Dahl.
What's your favorite TV show?  Pokemon.

What's your favorite food?  Pizza, Rice & Meatballs, and Chicken Katsu. 

What's your favorite dessert?   Pie, cake, Swiss Rolls, and Twinkies.

Who's your best friend?  Ivan, Burke, and Spencer.
What's a talent of yours?  Tetherball and video games. 

What do you want to be when you grow up?  An astronaut.

What's the best thing about being 8?  I get to be baptized.

We are also so excited for Miles to get baptized, coming up in January.  We sure love Miles!  He's a good friend.  He loves to make people laugh and he's developed quite a sense of humor to crack up his 2nd-grade cohorts (to his teachers' chagrin...).  He's a great brother and helper to his sisters, and to his parents.  I can always count on him to help me or Bryan out with a project.  Happy birthday Miles!

Garth!!!

I love Garth Brooks.  I had a chance to see him way back in 1991 when he was the opening act for the Judds and I was only 14 years old.  When I found out he was coming back to Salt Lake I knew I wanted tickets!  We were able to get pretty decent seats to the October 30th show.  We were on the side of the stage, but only about 16 rows up so I was really happy about that.  He is so awesome that he charges the same exact price whether you're on the last row in the upper bowl, or the front row center.  He also added 2 extra shows in town so that there would be less scalping of tickets.  He wants to make sure that everyone who wants to see him can without breaking the bank.  He's such an awesome guy!

The crowd went WILD for Garth!  We were all on our feet the entire show.  He is such a huge entertainer that it didn't even matter that the Delta Center (or whatever it's called now) has crappy acoustics.  It doesn't matter because every person in the arena was singing along to every song.  So fun!!

Here's a shot of everyone with their cell phone lights on during one of the love songs.  It was amazing how much all those phones really lit up the place!

The drummer was sitting inside this cool circular cage thing that would light up different colors.  Here's Garth climbing on it.  He really is just a giant kid at heart.

Trisha Yearwood came out about halfway through.  She is great too.  She sang about 5 songs and it was fun to see them sing together.  (I didn't realize that they had both collaborated and sung back-up vocals on each other's albums for years before they got married.)

Toward the end of the show they said there was a special surprise guest.  It ended up being John Stockton, who came to announce that Garth had set a record for the most tickets sold for a single performer ever in the arena.  They even unveiled a banner in the arena for it.

Our show got over around 10:00 pm and the poor guy seemed just exhausted.  His voice was a little hoarse and he seemed pooped out!  But he had another show to do at 10:30!  Our friend had tickets to that one and I asked how it was...he said that when Garth came out he said something like, "I know it's late, but I'll make you a deal.  As long as you keep standing and have energy, I'll keep going too."  Apparently he went until 2:00 am!  He is just an amazing entertainer.  So FUN!!!

Halloween 2015

Halloween was fun this year.  Here are Bree and me, waiting in the school cafeteria for the Halloween Parade to come through.

The kids come zooming in pretty fast so my pictures are usually blurry but the kids all look so cute!  Tess was the Bride of Frankenstein this year.  I didn't even want to attempt to fix her hair like the Bride of Frankenstein so I just bought a wig and costume off Amazon and it was great.

Miles was Spiderman!

Bree had a costume party at preschool too!  She had been planning on being a cheerleader but changed her mind to a witch at the last minute because she said she wanted to be something spooky.  Luckily our next-door neighbor had a witch costume for Bree to borrow.

I don't usually dress up, but I found this wig for cheap at Target after Halloween last year.  I decided to throw it on for fun.

In my last post I lamented the fact that Bree won't look at the dang camera!  And when I say, "Bree, look at the camera!  Look at my phone!"  She always says, "I am, Mom!"  Here are a few of my attempts at taking her picture before Trick-or-treating.

 At this point I told her she wouldn't get to eat any candy if she didn't look at the camera...

 So she was looking, but not really smiling.

 I think I stressed her out... I'm a meanie mom!

It was Bryan's turn to stay home and hand out candy so I went around with the kids.  We decided that this year Tess was old enough to go around with her friends alone!  That's a big rite of passage I think.  But, bless her heart, she said she preferred to go with me!  Daaah, that made me happy!  So she and her cute friends walked around with me, Miles, and Bree.  It was a great night.