Tooth Tooth Who Lost a Tooth?

Brody! It was Brody! Finally at age 7 he lost his first tooth.

Last night for dinner we had sloppy joes...Brody HATES sloppy joes.  Actually there's not much that this kids likes but he really hates sloppy joes. Well being the mean mom that I am made him sit there and eat all of his dinner.  Being the nice mom that I am, only gave him a quarter of a bun with a little tiny bit of meat. Well after an hour he still hadn't touched his food and he was getting mad, so he bit his shirt and ripped it out of his mouth and out popped his tooth.  So who won you wonder?      

He did ... he had an orange for dinner. I caved after he lost his tooth, it was too exciting.

Christmas Day

Christmas Day Chaos...the only day of the year when it is OK for my house to look like this...

The shopping cart was an INSTANT hit!  She was loading it up with anything and everything she could find, and pushing it around.

I loved going to sacrament meeting on Christmas Day. Our little Christmas program was awesome...I was holding back tears the whole time!

After church it was up to Grandma and Grandpa Catmull's for Christmas dinner.

Opening presents from grandma and grandpa.

Finally...Under Armour of his VERY OWN!

Brody and Hudson got "fishing jackets."

It was a wonderful day!! Hope yours was too!

Christmas Eve

Went to Grandma and Grandpa Mickelsen's for Christmas eve. We enjoyed a Prime Rib dinner and then got to open our Christmas Jammies:

They got Jammies and a pillowcase this year:

Even Scott got Boise State jammies.

Our little kiddies



Catmull Christmas Party

 As usual there was a ton of delicious food, a TON of candy and of course...

Santa

Hudson and Brody

Braiden

Joslyn...still not very fond of Santa.

Santa brought her some pretty dress up shoes.

Lucky kids!

Happy Birthday Brody

Brody turned 7 years old on the 14th.  He totally scored on his big day...we joked that Christmas was going to be a let down.

The Oreo Cake.  But forget about the cake those candles are awesome, they are color glow candles, the flame glows the same color as the candle.

Make a wish!

Ta-da!

Presents!

He was SO excited about his Under Armour sweatshirt and his older brother was SO jealous!!

December Ramblings

OK this has gone on long enough, I need to blog about SOMETHING! ...


~ This is the scene of Christmas tree hunting, we were very successful this year. We picked the worst day  to go because it was a BLIZZARD on the mountain. Needless to say I wasn't very picky, I walked around for 5 min and then said,  "yup that one looks good", and it paid off!

~I stink at decorating a Christmas tree, or maybe it is my decorations that stink? Or maybe it is the fact that the tree is so Charlie Brownesque that makes it hard. ???

~ It was my birthday on Saturday, it was a great day!! My mom and I went gallivanting around Twin all day and finished up most of our Christmas shopping. Nate got me The Help, so when the kids went to bed we sat down to watch it..I love that movie.  I was crying so much that the tears were running down my NECK...crying in a good way.  Best. Movie. Ever!

~I also got the Our Best Bites cookbook for my birthday, now I have a grocery list a mile long.  There are so many things I am excited to try!!!

~ Been waiting for this day to come so that I can call my Christmas shopping done! There's a certain movie that comes out today, that is on someone's list.

~ Hudson asked Santa for black boots...little kids are awesome.

~ The Christmas cards officially started coming! I think there is NOTHING I love more than getting Christmas cards in the mail! (hint hint :) )

~ Speaking of Christmas cards... I haven't even started on mine.  I just picked up the picture CD from the photographer last night at about 5:00.

~ I am really disappointed in the pictures this year. Joslyn was not interested in getting her picture taken, in half of the pictures she was bawling and in the other half she was looking away.
But I ordered one anyway because the last family picture we had done Hudson was about 9 months old.  The pictures are a blurry mess, they looked fine in a little 4x4 proof but blow that up to 11x14 and.... grrr!

~Brody has been laying around, ill for the last 3 days, I hope he snaps out of it because tomorrow is his birthday!!

~ My niece is dancing in the Nutcracker tomorrow, I'm so bummed that I have to miss it, I just don't think that would be Brody's activity of choice on his birthday. Good luck Kailey!!!

~ On the 3rd  we got to see my other sweet niece be baptized, now Hudson is talking about when he is 8 he is going to get baptized,  Emily thank you for setting such a great example.

~ After the baptism we met up with some dental school friends that we hadn't seen in a couple years, we had a great time catching up, and I had a great time loving their sweet baby girl.

~The funniest thing...Joslyn sings the clean- up song all the time.  Her version goes like this, "dee-yup dee-yup, evbody dee-yup" If she sees you cleaning up anything (the bathroom counter, dishes off the table, papers off the floor and toys for sure) she breaks out in song.  It makes cleaning a whole lot more fun!

A Beautiful Sight

I was doing dishes the other night when I looked down and noticed that half of the bottom rack was filled with kiddie dishes. I thought, now that is a beautiful sight!! I am so blessed! One day they will grow up and they won't want the Buzz Lightyear plate or the Minnie Mouse sippy cup any more and my dishwasher will be filled with boring white dishes. Buzz you have a slot reserved in my dishwasher for years to come.  Kind of a random thought, just thought I'd share.

Another beautiful sight:

This wall finally has something on it!! ♥ it!! This shelf was above our bed, I decided it would be better out here, and it is. :) Now I have more places to put crap! :)

A background story:

A long time ago (back in our Omaha days) Nate decided to build bunk beds for our two little boys, it was a huge project but well worth it in the end! While our garage was already a woodshop we decided to refinish some dressers that were from my Grandma Mickelsen.  We stained the dressers and the bunk beds the same color thinking that maybe one day we could pass those dressers down to our boys. Smart thinking I'd say. Here's a little before and after for ya:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

So here is another beautiful sight:

At last, the redone dressers have been passed down. We got rid of the plastic "dressers" and now they have real ones!!!

Another beautiful sight:

We finally got some bedroom furniture! I feel so grown up and sophisticated now. ;) Mom and I had a fun day in Twin yesterday shopping for stuff to dress it up- yay Target!! I couldn't wait to get up this morning so I could make my bed...now that's a rarity.

Happy Halloween!

We had a garden fairy, a "motorcycle man", Batman, and a ninja this year.

.

Happy Halloween!

Fall Photo Shoot

I took about 70 pictures and this is about as good as it gets. : /  Thanks to our neighbors for letting me use their beautiful yard!

Lately

Friday Oct 7:
We said good bye to our puppies. We were giving them away for free and they were gone in 45 min!!!! I was shocked.  It was an emotional day, excitement, worry, sadness. I was excited to send them to new homes, 4 dogs was starting to wear on me. Oh and the dog food we went through there at the end...they would have eaten us out of house and home. I was worried about the new owners...would they take care of them and be kind to them? Sadness- oh the tears that were shed!! Poor Braiden had a hard HARD time letting them go, I'll admit I shed a couple too. There at the end I thought for a second about keeping one...but just for a second. One man said to us, "The most expensive thing in the world is a free puppy." HA HA we got a good laugh out of that one.

Here they are, all washed up and ready to go.

Here's some animal arithmetic for ya: in a period of 7 weeks we went from 1 dog + 2 kitties + 3 puppies - 1 kitty - another kitty - three puppies and now were back to 1 dog again.

Nate's Birthday Oct 11:

I made these little jars of pumpkin cream pie for everyone at his office, I got the idea from the Crafting Chicks Yummy!

Dinner with his parents at the Drift Inn! Yummy!

His very own camp chef. Do you like my wrapping paper?

 Oh and the German chocolate cake (from scratch) is a must! Yummy!

Aren't  birthdays Yummy?

Oct 12 Brody's last football game:

Oct 15th Braiden's last game:
He's #75-
The one who's hiking the ball-
the one with the grey sleeves.

It was fun... what are we going to do with ourselves now that football is over???

After Braiden's game we met up with Christopher and the kids at the straw maze.

Bella and Joslyn

Hudson played on the slide all night.

Scott driving a go-cart.

Brody and Ethan

Braiden was nice enough to give his baby sis a ride.

My kids were not interested in going through the haunted maze so we will have to go back in the daytime for the regular maze.