Week by week

Week by week

Monday, January 25, 2016

Week ending 1-24-16

Overview of the week: Nathan's mom came to Utah to help with a new grandbaby. We were fortunate to have her stay at our house Sunday and Monday and part of Tuesday. We've been busy with homeschooling, meals, laundry, trips to the store and library, seminary after lunch 2-3 days a week, and nightly church activities. Nathan spent the week setting up his new office and getting acquainted with the clinic he'll be working at.
Monday: Grandma reading to the 5 youngest while the oldest 4 quickly did their school.
Since it was a holiday for public schoolers, our cousins all came over at 10am to see Grandma and our new house and play with us. It was a really fun day! 
Some sort of piggy back pile up. 
Cousin Annabelle with my girls' dollies. 
All the kids playing outside. 

Madalyn reading our history read-aloud book about heroes of the Revolutionary War. 
It was fun to have our cousins listening too. 
FHE with cousins and Grandma. 
We lived in NC for 8.5 years and not until the month before we moved did one little toddler cousin come visit us. Before that we waited and waited for cousins to visit us but nobody did. So it was a treat having everyone over this week. And we're excited to be able to do it frequently now that we live near cousins.

Tuesday: playing outside. This is a big strip of concrete that goes around the side of our house for RV parking. It will be fun to ride bikes on it in the spring. 
Our house is the last on our street and then it dead ends. On the other side of this wall lives most of our ward. The primary president lives in the first house. 
Tom, Kait, Kenna, Sam shoveling snow on the RV spot. 
Makenna coming in from the snow. 

Hanging out after school. Samuel and Makenna are putting band-aids all over themselves. 
They got them for Christmas. 

Friday: Anderson doesn't fall asleep on me very often anymore so I guess I wanted a picture of it.
The kids made a snowman named Bob at the request of their best NC friend. 
That night we had Grandma and cousins over for dinner again and really enjoyed it.

Saturday: setting up a new Smart TV! An aunt I've never once heard from or met quite surprisingly sent me some money. Since she's a school teacher I thought it fitting that I spend it on our school room. First purchase was a smart TV so that we could watch educational things like CNN student news, clips of animal births, rocket launches, etc. We only have a small laptop we all crowd around to watch school videos, so this will be really fun. Besides, with the big TV spot in our school room, how could we resist? 

Our old TV and antenna in the big spot.
(To the right is the garage and the left goes down to the basement.)

New TV compared to the old one. 



Sunday: leaving for stake conference with a fresh 4" of snow. I loved having stake conference only 3 minutes away but missed North Carolina where it would have been cancelled with that much snow. I almost hit 4 cars in that short drive and trying to park in the slick church parking lot. 


Kaitlyn and Madalyn after church. 
A couple more kids join in. 




Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Week ending 1-17-16

Wednesday night while Nathan was out late we put the little kids to bed early and had a reading party with the older kids. We sat around and read and ate stocking candy. Here are Anderson's thoughts about the night. 
"I'm just going to sit here and be good." 
"Oh! I see a bag of candy by me!"
S: You better not be looking at my candy. 
"I'm not looking at his candy! I'm not guilty of anything." 
"I don't think he's looking. I gotta grab the candy quick!" 
"How do I get to the candy? I think I have the bag upside down."
S: I think you're looking for this, it fell out. 


Thursday it snowed some more. 
Samuel and Spencer shoveling.
Our landlord bought us the big shovel for a housewarming gift, knowing we were coming from North Carolina, and my sister-in-law bought us the cute kid ones. We've gotten a lot of use out of them already. 
Makenna happily shoveling. 



Anderson, 4 1/2 months old. 





Alexis and Anderson. She's a great big buddy for him. 
Saturday Nathan went to the temple all day and the kids and I cleaned the house, watched a movie, and played games. Madalyn took these pictures of our house to post on our blog to remember what it first looked like. We have similar pictures of our old house when we first moved in and we loved to look at them and see how we've moved things around over the years. 

The front living room when you first walk in. We got the couches for $150. The bookcase, lamp, and tree were all thrown in when we got Kylie's bed for $100. 



Alexis's, Kaitlyn's, and Makenna's room.

Kylie and Madalyn's room. We got their bed, bedding, 4 lamps, a big mirror, a bookshelf, a fake tree, and a few other little things all for $100 on ksl.com. We were so happy! 

Small bathroom upstairs for 7 kids to share. (No counter space for 5 girls' hair stuff.)
Anderson's and Samuel's bedroom. 

Laundry room upstairs. 
Master bedroom.
Master bath.
Master closet.
School room. 
I absolutely LOVE the kitchen!

Dining room. (Its really not as big as it looks.)
  
Spencer's and Thomas's basement bedroom.
Big bathroom in the basement for only 2 kids to share. 
Kitchen in the basement. Fridge doesn't work so I hope they get us a new one. That's the one thing I want to use in this kitchen. Otherwise most of the cabinets are going towards Kylie's craft supplies and the kids' games and puzzles. 
  
Basement play room. 

I guess someone set him down while doing the photo tour.

We still have some things to figure out like the school room and play room. We're looking for some free couches or desks or something but I've been too busy to look much. For the meantime we love it here. We hopped right into homeschooling 3 days after moving in, as well as church activities nearly every weeknight. I have been called as the primary chorister and am looking forward to getting to know the 60ish primary children we have. It's one calling I never wanted because I don't sing well and I'm not super fun. I feel like I'm making a fool out of myself up there. But I'm willing to give it my best. I know my primary kids are super excited I'm in there.