Starting the year with a 'Bonk'

On January 2nd we were hosting the Missionaries for dinner, had just got done eating and were chatting in the kitchen when Linq starts crying and the girls start screaming from the living room.  He had been running around, tripped and hit his head just right on the corner of the TV stand and split it right open.  The Elders quickly left, Laura came to the rescue and LeGrand and I headed to the hospital with Linq.  We had just changed our insurance to a higher deductible and it started on the 1st, ugh.  We didn't really want to have to take him to the ER, we knew he just needed stitches.  So LeGrand called our awesome PA in town (Brett Smith) just to see if he did stitches, just by chance he and a nurse were still at the office doing paperwork and said to come on by.  He was so great and got Linq all stitched up, and saved us a bunch of money :)  Through it all Linq was a trooper, even smiling for the nurse!

He got his stitches out about 5 days later and is healing up perfectly, he'll probably always have a decent scar.

Christmas time!

This year the Pajama Elf came a couple of weeks early so that we could enjoy our Christmas PJ's the whole month of December - it was a fun start to the holidays.  

 Chistmas Eve morning was the coldest day of the season so far, -10 degrees, but I somehow still managed to get everyone to smile for some pictures :)

 Christmas was so enjoyable this year!  No worrying about getting places, or having things scheduled we just kind of did our thing, it was extra relaxing and we got lots of fun time together!  This year we decided to have Santa go small on the gifts and we gifted the kids a trip to Florida to visit Cousins and go to Disney world and Legoland.  They didn't act as excited as I had hoped but once they talked more and more about it in the couple of weeks leading up to the trip they got more and more excited - in the end, I feel like it was the perfect gift!  They also had lots of fun buying each other gifts this year.

Some crazy santa decided that this princess needed her own make-up --man did she make herself up! She smeared the sticky lip gloss all over her face and after attempting make up remover, soap, face wash  etc. we finally were successful removing it with industrial orange scrub, ha ha.

Linqy loved all his cars & the big kids spent lots of time playing skylanders!

 Luckily we even had snow on Christmas!  The kids love having LeGrand pull them behind the truck on their sleds, Lytzi lasted about a half a trip then ended up in the truck but the two olders went until Loas hair was a big ball of frozen snow and they couldn't feel their fingers anymore :)

It was so nice to have LeGrand off for a few days!  The kids spent lots of time playing with their new toys & enjoying the snow, we ate lots of yummy food, played lots of games and watched plenty of movies.

December happenings

Loa had a fun time playing Basketball for the first year.  

One afternoon I was trying to get dinner made and Linq entertained himself for a good 30 minutes in the sink...then he started getting a bit too wild and trying to climb in, haha.

The kids had their talent Christmas assembly, Loa's class sang, Laexins class played ukuleles and Loa did a Piano solo.

 I attempted to make gingerbread cookies, they tasted alright but were mostly a fail - then LeGrand decorated them, ha ha.

The kids were excited to finally get enough snow to play in, they built themselves a snowman.

The weekend of Christmas we decided to do Free Hot Cocoa and cookies in town, the kids had a blast and got so excited when people stopped.  But we learned that mostly people didn't take the time to stop - maybe they just thought we were crazy :)