November/December

One of the Saturdays the FL cousins were here, we took care of them and the other little cousins, while their parents went on an outing.
To make the time pass by quickly we had an unbirthday party. If it wasn't your birthday then, you could celebrate.

We started by decorating the house with random decorations I had . Then, we baked cupcakes and 5 of the 6 children helped. Can you believe Newel and I had 6 children under the age of 5? It was fun, but by the end of the day I was tired. How do moms do this on a regular basis?

While the cupcakes were baking, the children made party hats. They decorated them and some of the children even made hats for their mommies...not my children...

After the cupcakes were cool, we decorated them and then each child had a candle on their cupcake. I lit the candles and we sang 'Happy Unbirthday' to each child. That was a lot of fun and I think this activity was inspired too. It kept them busy for at least a couple of hours. After the 'party' they ate lunch, played games, and finally watched a movie.

So what's this photo of my children brushing their teeth? Yes, today I will claim them as my children. I get tired to telling them to brush their teeth or have to brush their teeth because the won't do it correctly. So, in November I bought them electric toothbrushes. What a life saver! Now they like brushing their teeth and it's no longer a war.

I don't have too many photos for November. My camera is dying (well, the lens is not working properly) so I didn't take too many photos.

We had an early Thanksgiving with the family, before the Romeros went back to FL. We missed them after they were gone, but I'm sure they were glad to be back home.

December came by quickly. I feel like time flew by. One of the first activities we had in December was attending our ward Christmas breakfast. Our children dressed up as shepherds. Even though Maya was not in the re-enactment of the Nativity, she enjoyed being dressed as a shepherd girl.
Arden was a calm shepherd boy.

Also, at the beginning of December, the cousins went on an adventure. We met up at the train station and rode to downtown on the train. We liked that. We had to be pretty bundled up because it was cold!

We walked through the streets of downtown SLC.
We walked around Temple Square and saw the lights. They are gorgeous!

We saw the Nativities around Temple square.


We visited the Visitor Center.



After our walk around Temple Square we ate at a Brazilian restaurant and thawed out a little bit. It was a nice evening.

This year for Christmas, we tried to keep keep it simple and tried to keep it focused on the Saviour. Unfortunately, now that Arden is attending school, they get fed all of that Santa Claus crap and it was more challenging to keep Christ as the focus. Can you tell I have issues with the whole Santa thing? I just don't like the idea of lying to my child about that. And in this country is 'Santa this' and 'Santa that.' I don't want to ruin my children's childhood, but I don't like an imaginary character taking all of the credit for the things that are good, holy, and wonderful about this season. It should be about Christ. So this year as I was packing all of the Christmas decorations, I threw out all of my Santa stuff (which wasn't a lot to begin with), except for the mug my little brother gave me many years ago. Santa is not welcome into my home. Enough venting.

We haven't had too much snow this year, so when it has snowed, the children and Newel have gone outside to enjoy the snow.

Oh, about keeping the Christmas season simple...it was simple.

Well, until it was the week before Christmas. I decided to have a gingerbread cookie decorating party for my children and some of their friends. It was also the week before school got out and that was a bit hectic. I hadn't finished all of the shopping and preparations. It's almost February as I'm typing this, and I still haven't sent out Christmas cards. So, a simple Christmas, turned into a hectic week for me.

Looking back, it was worth the stress.

The children loved having friends over, decorating cookies, eating icing, and sipping on some hot cocoa.

Aren't these the things that really matter in life anyways?


I hope when my children get older, they will not only remember the bad stuff about their mother like her impatience, her bad temper, but hopefully they will also remember that we did fun stuff too. Especially that I loved them.