Christmas

Christmas was wonderful this year! Every year our kids learn more and more and Christmas just keeps getting better and better! This year our older 2 knew more about Christmas than I expected, meaning they knew it was more about the birth of Jesus than about Santa and getting presents and that is just exciting to us! This year we even got Jacob and Lily to think more about giving than getting and provided them with a list of jobs they could do to earn money, and they both did very well earning quarters here and there. They were both able to buy presents for their siblings, and their aunts and grandparents, needless to say, it made Christmas a lot more special! I wanted to put more pictures up but I have lost the charger for my camera and cannot keep it awake long enough to download the few pictures I even took! These pics are from my moms camera! So enjoy that I even got a few out there! Soon I will get the other activities from December on here, including our awesome trip to see Santa! In case you didnt know Santa was extra special this year! So look out for the next post!

Lily enjoying her gift from Santa!

Cody enjoying Grandma Gomms present to us! Thank you Grandma! Both boys still love this gift!

I just thought this pic was adorable! I LOVE my kids and how good they are!

Ballet recital and our first parade!

So, this is Lily's 3 recital, it was a city class, so it was just a little recitals with the other girls in her class during her regular class time. She loves ballet, but their were only 2 other girls in her class this time, and she did not like that so much, especially since the last class had soooo many friends! Anyhow, she did beautifully, actually she was the only one who did the whole performance, and the teacher afterwards said she is completely ready for the next level of dance, so that was exciting!

Throwing out some attitude! She actually struck this pose for me!

These are pics from the parade for the city. We were lucky enough to beinvolved because the company we have our dance classes through do the parade every year! Lily was actually the one who brought it up and wanted to do it, so I signed her up, she did really well, walked the entire thing with no complaint, and at the end said she never wanted to be in a parade again! She said it was too long!

Waiting, and waiting. Cute though!

I wanted to walk in the parade with her, so I had to buy a shirt and hold a sign! It was fun, but I'm not looking forward to any more in the future!

Lily is 4!! and other fun things going on...

Lily is finally 4 years old!! and the only reason I say FINALLY is because she has been begging to be 4 for months! She hates being the youngest in her class and in the girls her age, so now she is so excited about being the same age as all the other kids she plays with, and proudly tells everyone and reminds them that she is 4!
We didnt do much for her birthday this year, but she did want to go to a movie, so we invited a couple of friends and saw Astro boy! (not many choices this time of year, and Lily did want to see it!)

This is most of the group, we had another couple of friends come, but they didnt make it in time for any pics.

Jake had a performance at school entitled 'Give Thanks'. Very cute, expect Jake pouted for most of it because he accidentally forgot his sunglasses in the classroom that he needed for a song!

Jake got an award at school! Kindof like honor roll, only they call it '

'Hall of Fame', He was so excited and proud! and so were we! Way to go Jake!

The Bum

So I forgot to include pictures of Nephi the bum at our ward halloween party! We had the elders over here tonight, and we started talking about Nephi the bum, and one elder said, "oh that was you! I thought at first that it was a member just dressing up, and then as you walked past us and said goodbye you walked out to the street and started walking down it, and I thought Wow, that must have really been a bum!"

Earrings! finally!

Where to begin... this story began when my daughter was born. I have always long believed and been excited about piercing my baby daughters ears. I know there might be readers out there that dont believe as I do, and that is fine but for me I honestly have always been excited for this moment when my baby girl has earrings. My ears were pierced when I was a baby, most of my siblings had theirs done too. Well my sweet husband did not agree with me from day one, he is always very willing to let me win ( in a way) but I did not want to go against his wishes, so I conceded with when she asks it is okay. So, periodically as she has grown up I have kinda asked her, or teased my husband, but she would always say no to needles! Anyways, so a couple of months ago she actually started asking to get her ears pierced! Which was so exciting, but I was super nervous because I have heard tons of horror stories about little girls getting their ears pierced at this age... the infections, the crying, and so on. So as exciting as it was, I put it off... and kinda ignored her.. well not ignored her so much as began to really lay the excruciating truth of it all to her. I told her it was painful, that it is a big needle that goes all the way through her ear... yada yada.. but she still kept asking and I still kept hoping she would forget for another year or two. Then one night, I walked into her room, and found her sitting on her bed touching her ears, she looked at me and said "mom do you have a needle?" and I (doing the laundry so a little distracted) asked her "why do you want a needle?" and she said "so I can poke a hole in my ear". So that did it, and over the next few days I figured out where and when we were going to do it and did it! If she was desperate enough to ask I was not going to wait and find out if she would! Anyways, she did awesome! She cried but she got over it really fast, and has been such a good sport about the whole process of cleaning them all the time, and not touching them so that they dont get infected. Sorry this story was so long, but it was just one of those things that for future reference I wanted to remember every detail. So know, my beautiful daughter can wear earrings! Yeah for patience!

Halloween time!

We had such a fun time this Halloween... which is saying a lot for me, because although it is my husband's and childrens favorite holiday it is probably one of my least favorites... only because it always seems to be super hectic! and getting worse every year! Besides school, and Nephi's usual excitement and getting carried away with halloween, it was actually pretty darn fun this year. It was hectic, but I think we (and by we I definitely mean I) are finally getting used to a good system of making the most out of everything we are handed! Our ward trunk or treat was the night before halloween, so it made that weekend super crazy! On top of that, Nephi was asked to do something extra special for the night... He was asked to dress as a bum during the trunk or treat and scare everybody! Which he did very beautifully, as only Nephi could! It was seriously great, especially since he came to the party dressed from head to toe as a mummy! If it hadnt been for some of the youth catching on that he was the bum he could have really convinced the whole ward. As it was he still had people second guessing... and for the rest of the night, we would have kids AND adults running up to us, and looking closely at his face! So like I said, it was hectic but we all had a lot of fun this year!

Lily as Tinkerbell!

Jake as Harry Potter


Cody with his mummy daddy

The kids, and Nephi with our cousin Hailey, I mean Cinderella.

The outcome of our pumpkin carving night.

Lily helping Dad carve pumpkins, dont you just love that cheesy smile?

At the Cal Poly pumpkin patch, where I am determined to go every year, because they have the best selection for an unbeatable price! Cody was such a grump here,

but we all were in a way because it was so darn hot, and too close to lunchtime!

The Fair

We actually talked Nephi in to taking us to the fair this year! and we had so much fun, first of all we only paid a dollar to get in so it started out good! We went to all of the kid stuff, the farm animals, the kids loved it especially since there were little baby piggys to look at. Cody got so excited he tried to reach through the fence to touch one, another piglet came over and started sniffing the other hand he wasnt using, and he wasnt very excited after that, he kept saying "gwoss, ewww, gwoss" with a mad look on his face until we went and washed it off. There was a baby lamb born just an hour before we got there, and so that was cute and exciting to see. We visited the under the sea exhibit, and the dinosaurs, oh and the trains! We loved them, but they were way too loud! I'm sure you can tell from the pictures that the most fun was really finding all of these cutouts to take pictures in! There are a ton more that I didnt put up, because it would take forever! At the end, we were walking through the games and rides, and the kids wanted to play a few games, but when we saw the prices we convinced the kids otherwise, because it would cost us about 20 bucks to let the kids have a couple of tries which would definitely not guarantee them anything! I was almost still tempted to let them try just one, but Nephi came up with a better solution, and when we were walking out to the car I asked the kids what there favorite part of the fair was. Jake said the dinosaurs and the train, but Lily said "my favorite part was when Daddy said I could pick out a toy from Target instead of playing a game at the fair". Funny, huh? Oh we LOVE the fair!

Goodbye summer, hello school!!

Last day at the Beach:

Becky and I decided that we ought to have one last trip to the beach before school starts so we took our last wednesday before school and took the kids to Treasure Island. The kids had a ton of fun, because there were lots of tide pools and rocks to climb and explore. So goodbye summer, we already miss it!

Back to School and hello first grade!

Jake is a first grader now! yeah! A whole day at school! It has been quite an adjustment to have to get all of the kids up and ready so early, but it has been fun. The first couple of days were a little tough for Jake, but he loves it now (except for the whole doing a lot more work part). He even got to buy his first hot lunch today at school. He has been begging me every day, so we made a plan that on pizza day he would get to do it, and so today he did! I dont think he was too crazy about the food, just excited that he got to do something that some other kids in class do.

First day of school, jake decided to "test" his scissors out and see if they could cut his shirt... and it worked, who knew?

KiwiFrost:

After the first day of school, a few of us moms, decided to try out this new ice cream place as a treat for the kids. It was a lot of fun. I think it was more fun, because we got to all sit and talk about our first days! For the moms and the kids there was a lot to talk about, I hope it becomes a fun tradition because I sure enjoyed it. This poor little place though, we definitely took it over! By the way, if anyone wants to try out some ice cream check out KiwiFrost, it is right across the street from Spaghetti factory, and it is sort of a self-serve frozen yogurt place, it is really cool, you pay by the ounce and add as many or as little mixins as you want!

Cody's cannonball and his mischievious brother

Sorry it has been so long everybody! I am done with school for the summer, and dont start again until the 24th! Yeah, some free down time! So hopefully I will catch up on blogging in the meantime!

Thankfully besides the school, I have been trying to keep summer fun for the kids. So, thankfully summer has been full of fun and memorable times! One of my all time favorite memories of this summer though will be Cody learning to talk and the new words he is picking up. So I had to include this video of him trying to do his own cannonball! complete with the word! It is so funny to hear him mimic us, but even funnier because he mostly likes to mimic things his older bro and sis say! So "cannonball" is by far my favorite word that he is picked up! Of all the words, huh? Hopefully you can hear it on the video!

Last but not least, tonight, Jake and Cody were playing in the front room while we were in the family room, and after awhile we asked Jake what he was doing, and he answered the he was putting lotion on Cody, because Cody came up to him and asked him to! So, I video'd what the result was...

Summer fun

We have had a lot of fun this summer already, we have had swimming lessons, beach trips, free movie trips, tons o play dates!, and lots of other lucky stuff, but due to my great camera malfunction all I've been able to get pictures of this summer have been at the beach, because I stole my sisters camera! Our ward is so cool, they have something fun to do everyday for the kids, and one day was beach day! So we braved taking kids without dads, and it turned out pretty well, it was a little crazy at the end trying to get 3 kids showered off before we got into the car.. you know I'd wash one, then as I began to wash the other the newly showered one would walk back into the sand...but it was actually a really fun day! I love going to the beach every summer, because its fun to reflect on how much they have changed in just a year! Last year Jake would never have gotten into the water very far by himself, and this year he was in over his head before I knew it! We cant wait for more beach days this summer!

Jake and JP braving the ocean! I dont think either one of them would have gone out very far if it hadnt been for the other, but it was Jake that stayed out the longest!

Jake and JP good buddies!

Lily and Jessica, getting into trouble! All of a sudden they would disappear and be halfway down the beach, after one such trip down the beach Jessica said "I was just following Lily".. and Lily said "I was just following Jessica!"

A very happy 4th!

Happy 4th of July everybody! We love Independence day in our family! Besides being the birth of our country, it is also my sister's bday, and Nephi's bday is the next day. So we had a lot of fun, first we got together with my family and had a fun day at my uncles parents house. They had a beautiful backyard with a huge pond in it, that even had a little rowboat in it to ride around in, the kids loved it! We all had a great time! Then we went over for our annual trek to the Azusa war zone. In Azusa it is still legal to light off your own fireworks, and while that is great and all, it doesnt stop very many people from shooting off the illegal ones too. So it drives the kids crazy, they love it, but they are pretty nervous about it by the end of the night, the only exception was actually Cody, who sat and enjoyed more than the other 2 did! funny, huh? Even more proof that he is more like Nephi! We all had fun, and Independence day activities ended with Nephi's bday today, 30 years old!

The birthday cake, America and all of the rest of the Packer's we've missed recently, not to mention Nephi! and you too Ri!

Lily's hair! Didnt it look awesome?

Grandpa giving Cody a ride in the boat, he loved it!

Erin giving Lily and Jake a ride

The kids, complaining about their food as usual!Even though we had super yummy food!

The firework watching in Azusa. Prior to this picture I had to beg Lily to put her hands down from her ears!

Lily in her normal position for the night, next to her little cousin Nathan.

I have realized that I never really put up any pictures of myself, so I decided I should, besides this one actually turned out kinda cute! At least Lily anyway!