Playing the Wii

Every time the boys turn on the Wii to play it, Jonah wants to play too. His version of playing is to simply hold one of the Wii remotes and wave it around, sometimes stopping to chew on it a little. He will cry and shriek until he is handed a Wii remote and then he will play with it with a huge grin on his face.

More Fun Stuff

This week we focused on letter F in our preschool, so I thought it would be fun to buy some fish. The kids have just loved it, even though it is only two simple goldfish. They have all fought over who gets to feed them every day. I'm just wondering how long they will last as I have a tendency to not be able to keep fish alive. They named them Awesomeness Fish (the all gold one, named by Travis) and Talisha (the white-and-gold one, named by Eliza after the overnight baby-sitter we hired twice). In fact, right now, I'm looking at them and Talisha's not looking so good, so we'll see if she lasts another night.

We also bought a box of oranges from the scouts for a scout fundraiser. I thought, oh, 3 dozen oranges, that's not that many, right? Wrong! We will not be able to eat through that many oranges before they go bad. Plus the box is too big to put on the counter but we can't leave it on the floor because Jonah gets into it. I'm sure he's thinking, "a box of orange balls! how lucky am I?" Very cute. That boy loves balls. He will throw a ball across the floor, crawl over to get it (and he is amazingly fast on his hands and knees) and then throw it again. He keeps himself entertained for very long periods of time doing this. But I've had to keep my eye on him with these oranges so he doesn't do it with them. I've gotten good exercise this week moving the box of oranges from the floor to the counter, back to the floor several times a day.

Blue and Gold Banquet

On the same day that we flew in from our little trip to Southern California, Westley had his first Blue and Gold Banquet.  He earned his Wolf at the banquet.  Now, he is working on the Arrowhead Trail to keep him busy until he is nine and moves in Bear Scouts.  The kids were very excited about the Blue and Gold Banquet and I remember attending a few of those myself when I was a kid.  The cake was made by a lady in the ward who does cakes and cheesecakes for a living.

Funny thing is that we realized that next year, we will have two boys in cub scouts because Caleb will turn eight this year! Like I said in "Don't Blink" on my "Cluttered Musings" blog, once one of them gets there, they all follow pretty quickly!

In-N-Out Kickoff Dinner

The week after Valentine's Day, Corey and I got to go to Anaheim and attend the annual Kickoff Dinner for In-N-Out. Corey has been able to attend a few of these before as the guest of his older sister, who used to be a store manager with In-N-Out. But this was his first one as a store manager himself.

It was all very fancy. They flew us down there and put us up in the Disneyland Hotel. Corey and I spent the afternoon walking around "Downtown Disney", which is the area between the hotels and the Disneyland entrance. There was a lot to see and we think our kids would be thrilled just to be there. We stopped in at the Lego store just to look around and went into another store to look for souvenirs but couldn't find anything we wanted to pick up for the kids. Then we went to our hotel room to nap and then get ready for the dinner.

We arrived at the dinner right at 6 pm, but didn't realize that the dinner wasn't actually until 7 pm, it was pre-dinner cocktails and hors d'oeuvres from 6 to 7--we had soda and some of the interesting .  Still, we walked around and tried to say hello to everyone that we really wanted to see--people Corey knew from his dad and people we knew from California and Arizona with In-N-Out and people who had gone on to Texas with In-N-Out.  It was really nice to see some old faces.

Then we sat down for a fancy dinner and the awards.  The food was very good, but I got so full quickly and was unable to even eat my dessert, which you see pictured above.  You also can't see in the pictures above my fancy red shoes.  It was fun to get all dressed up and we will get to do this every year (well, every third year they don't have a dinner but send all the managers and their guest to Hawaii if they meet certain goals in that time--so here's hoping for Hawaii 2014!).  Just one of the perks of management.

The next morning, Corey and I decided to order room service for breakfast before leaving the hotel for the airport.  Quite a few of the other managers were staying an extra day to go to Disneyland, some of them had even brought their kids.  We're hoping that we can do that too sometime, maybe not next year, but maybe in 2015.  Then the kids will get to experience the Disneyland Hotel.  We were very fortunate to be able to have had the same baby-sitter for the kids overnight that we had for our In-N-Out thing in January.  Things went well but we were glad to get home and the kids were glad for us to get home.

Big Baby Boy

Jonah is eleven months old now, as of February 11th.  He is such a cutie; we all just love him so much.  He loves to play with his big brothers and follows them all over the house.  Here, he is trying to play Harry Potter Legos with Travis.  Good thing he can't quite reach yet.  Legos is one thing the boys are always playing but Jonah is not allowed because of the choking hazard and he always gets so upset when he can't be with his brothers while they're playing.  He does have some old Duplo Legos of Travis and Eliza's that he will play with, but he knows it's not the same thing as the cool Legos that his older brothers are playing with.  I can't believe that he is almost ONE!

Valentine's Day

We didn't do much on Valentine's Day this year. I tried to make it a day for the whole family to celebrate. The older boys had their parties at school. I was going to have a preschool party for Eliza and Travis to invite some of their friends from church and play games, decorate cookies, etc., similar to some I've done in the past, but I never got around to organizing it, which is okay since I ended up sick all that week anyway.

I did do a special dinner for the whole family. I decorated the table with flowers and hearts. I also made a special valentine for each member of the family (minus Jonah--too little for valentines!) and put it by their plates. For dinner, we had a delicious meal of steak, steamed vegetables, rolls, and red jello with bananas.  I mixed up a special drink of strawberry-kiwi juice mixed with 7-up.  We had a big cookie cake from Mrs. Fields, of which I forgot to take a picture.  But it was a very nice dinner.  I think we'll make that a tradition rather than going out. 

Chair Train

During the week, we mostly just pick up the house every night so it is clutter free, but on the weekends we do more of a deep cleaning. The kids have chores that rotate each Saturday based on their weekly chore. One child cleans the bathrooms, one of them sweeps and mops the hard floors, one of them vacuums the carpets, and one of them picks up the dog poop in the backyard. Whenever they sweep and mop the kitchen floor, they have to move all the chairs to the front room. Often, they set up the chairs in a line and then play train. Here, they've even included Jonah in playing train.