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.