Bryce at 4

Bryce just turned 4. Here are a few things about him at this age.
He is super smart and just a little bit sensitive.
He has started learning how to read, and is good at counting.
He loves music and rhyming and is always making up songs and rhymes.
He like to tell jokes.
He doesn't have a favorite color-he likes them all.
He is into Paw Patrol, PJ Masks, and Ninja Turtles.
He can get himself dressed.
He likes to fill his pockets full of surprises and treasures and empties them every day when he gets home to show me what he has found.
He is a super picky eater-he survives on things like cereal, fruit, cheese, some pasta,  and bread. He doesn't really eat meat at all unless it is in the form of a hot dog or chicken nuggets.
He still wants to be a farmer when he grows up, and maybe Santa Clause and a pilot too.
He loves his brother and sister even though sometimes he gets mad at them when they torment him.
He is spoiled, but I guess that is to be expected with the youngest child, especially one with a huge age gap.
#BryceEE

Happy Birthday Bryce

Bryce's birthday was on Wednesday, which was also a school and babysitter day for him. We tried to make it special for him-he took birthday treats (bouncy balls) to share with all of his friends at both places. That was a lot of treats!

At preschool he did his walk around the sun, while the class sang to him. He walked around one time for each year in age.

They sang to him again at Mrs. Gay's house.

While I was at work and he was at school great grandma was busy making him this awesome ninja turtle birthday cake. 

For his birthday dinner he chose chicken nuggets and french fries from McDonalds. 

Happy Birthday Bryce. Hope you had a great day!!!

CTR 4-Primary

On Sunday they sang to Bryce in church for his Birthday since this week we are having stake conference. This year he is in the CTR 4 class and he loves it. They have actually combined his class with the CTR 5's because there are only about 3 kids his age that show up regularly.  I thought it was so funny that on this paper they filled out for him he said his favorite thing about primary is snacks. LOL

#BryceEE 

Basketball Update

Basketball is in full swing. Chloe has been super busy with practice and games. Her team is doing really well so far this year. It's fun to watch them have things click and start running the plays and defense they have been working on the past few years. Chloe's dribbling and shooting skills are improving and she is getting more aggressive. #10 

Looking forward to more games tomorrow and a tournament in Enterprise the following weekend.

Quilts 21 and 22

I started out the new year by getting a couple of quilts done, both went to people in our ward who had recently had babies. The top one was made from the scraps off Tanner's Christmas quilt, and the bottom was a rag quilt I also made mostly from scraps. 

I wonder if I will reach my goal of 52 this year?

Funny Things B Says

On Sunday Bryce started throwing a little tantrum as it was time to go home. He has been having several lately as he wants to exert more and more independence and be the one to make decisions. It was escalating not getting better so I finally just picked him up and headed out the doors to the car. On the way out I think he realized he wasn't going to get what he wanted but he also didn't want me carrying him, so as he is crying he said "let's go back in and try again". HAHA he must have heard me tell him that one to many times. We all got a good laugh out of that.

Later he was trying to do something I can't even remember what and he said "I'm really struggling here." He is so funny!

#BryceEE 

Letter Sounds and Starting to Read

Last week Bryce passed off all of his letter sounds. His teacher said he is now ready to start the reading program. She started sending home little books with him that we read a few times and then send back and she sends a new one home. I am so happy with what the Montessori program is doing for Bryce and what he has learned in just a short time since he started there. I can't wait to see what the next year and a half brings for him. Reading was at the top of my list when looking into preschool programs and I think I found the perfect one. As long as he is loving the learning that's what matters. He usually asks to work on his sounds and reading and if he doesn't and I ask him if he wants to he rarely turns me down, if he does  I don't push it,  I mean after all he hasn't even turned four yet and I want the learning to be a positive and fun experience for him. We are so proud of our little guy.

Puppy Love

These kids sure do love their puppy.

Ear Infection and Emergency Room Scare

 Last week on Monday Bryce started running a fever. Tuesday he woke up fine so I took him to the babysitter and went to work. I picked him up after I got off and then went to a training. When I got back home he was asleep and his fever was back. I also noticed his ears were really red. Wednesday he continued to run a fever and just not feel well, so I took the day off to stay home with him. I also took him into the doctor where we found out he had an ear infection. :( poor little guy. He gave him a prescription. I went to get it filled at Target and while we were waiting Bryce fell asleep in the cart. He was just not feeling well at all. He stayed home again on Thursday this time Tanner stayed home with him. Friday he was feeling quite a bit better and his fever was gone so he was able to go to school.

Friday night Bryce fell off the bench at the table and hit his chin really hard. He bit through his lip on the inside. It was bleeding pretty bad and the cut was pretty deep so I ran him over to the ER to see if the triage nurse thought he needed stitches. Luckily they said they though it would heal up without them. It's just still been kind of sore when he eats and stuff.

Poor kid has had a rough week. Hopefully this week will be better for him-it's his birthday week after all. :)

SEP's: A Chloe Story

Today we met with Chloe's home room teacher for SEP (Student Education Planning) conferences, let's just say her report card wasn't great. Although her teacher seems to really like her despite that ;). During the meeting he said "Chloe what do you like about my class" she said "the experiments and projects". He said "what don't you like" and she said "when you talk". HAHA! She said he knew I meant the lectures he gives not just him talking in general. Oh Chloe! The thing is that this teacher is her favorite teacher and she really likes his class it just came out a little bit in the wrong way. I think he took it the intended way though, and kind of rolled with it. He had some good things to say to her and what it comes down to is just if she wants to apply herself or not.  I hope some of it gets through. Love that girl even though sometimes she doesn't always think before she talks.

Tow Day

Today my car got towed to the mechanics. Bryce was pretty entertained by the whole process. I will just be happy once it's fixed and I have it back. Having just one vehicle is a little bit of a juggling act. I need to remember how blessed we truly are that we each have our own vehicles to drive. Hopefully soon they will all be back in commission. 

Raising A Teenage Son: A Lesson in Patience

Most of you may have a teenage son, or at least know a teenage boy. Maybe it's a nephew, grandson, or neighbor. You know the ones I'm talking about the tall almost manly ones who used to be little boys but now tower over one or both of their parents. Those odd hormonal creatures with mood swings as bad as any teenage girl you've ever run across. Those boys who could eat you out of house and home in a single day. Yes those teenage boys. It is those boys whom you love dearly that are probably going to cause you to exercise a great deal of patience over the next few years.

There will be days when they will make you laugh, or cry, or possibly both. Days you will scream really loudly or at least want to, and days you might seriously think about punching them if you didn't think you would hurt yourself doing so.

All I can say is that you had better hold on for the ride and be prepared to roll with the punches.

They will do things like: get curfew tickets for sleeping overnight in the park with some friends, light things on fire, sneak kids into their room late at night, leave their receipt for eggs in you car, skip school, and many other countless things.

Sometimes you will want to laugh, other times you will just shake your head in disbelief, sometimes you will just be grateful that nobody was seriously hurt, and hopefully you will remember some of the stupid, crazy stuff you did as a teenager and show PATIENCE toward them.

There will be other times when you might receive the call that nobody wants to hear. One telling you your son has been in a wreck, but everyone is okay. That one is a little bit harder. You will probably cry with relief just to know he is okay. Then you might get angry and yell a little bit. You will be super frustrated not only with him but with the situation (I mean he has only had his license for like 6 weeks). There will be consequences and punishments that will likely follow. But when it all is said and done you will show a great deal of PATIENCE and LOVE, you will probably even take him into the doctor to have his jaw looked at and remember that although the timing sucks accidents happen, and thank heavens you gave him an older car to start with not some fancy new one.

On another day, after ending a date with your husband, you might notice you have both missed several frantic phone calls from your son. There was an unexpected snow storm and while driving home from work he slid off the road and could we please come get him. Okay that's understandable 16 year old boy living in the desert with no experience in ice and snow, but of course the plot thickens. Wait? Your where? Why are you up there? And then when you get there you realize that it is more than just running off the road it is more like he jumped the curb and ruined your whole drive train system and your front bumper and your brand new car which you had let him drive that night is not un-drivable and is going to cost a lot of money to fix. Okay yes you are going to yell at him just a little bit, after of course making sure he is okay. Then when you get home you are probably going to go in your room and maybe throw a few things, yell into your pillow, and cry just a little bit. But then you are going to walk out of your room and show a great deal of PATIENCE. You are going to tell your son that yes there will probably be some expenses he will nee to help cover, but that you will work it out and get through this together, and that most importantly you still LOVE him after all the car is just a thing. That being said you will also let him know that he will not be driving the truck, the only vehicle he has left to wreck, anytime soon. Also the next day when you are driving him somewhere and he tells you to slow down because you are following to close you will probably let him know in the nicest tone possible through clenched teeth to never tell you how to drive again.

Then you might want to take a serious look into some meditation exercises or possibly yoga because you are going to need something to help you survive the next couple of years. You might also want to memorize the serenity prayer God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference, as maybe just maybe reciting it over and over to yourself might help on the bad days.

On those days remember that "this to shall pass" and one day they will turn out to be the great man you know they are destined to become in the meantime just be ready to exercise a great deal of PATIENCE along with an equal amount of LOVE. 

Why Are We Smiling?

Over the weekend Landon thought he had fixed Tanner's car, so after dropping him off at work, we decided to use it to run a few errands. We made several stops all around town. Our final stop was the sugar cookie. Chloe required payment for tending Bryce the past few evenings and this is what she had chosen. We pulled in an the car died-yep we weren't getting it going, so we decided to accept fate and being that our house was only a few blocks away, walk home. We all got out of the car and began the trek. It was pretty cold and Bryce didn't have a coat on so Landon ended up carrying him most of the way. Along he way I pulled out my phone to snap a picture to document. Everyone smiled-haha! Landon was like why are we smiling? It was cold, the car was broke down, why? I said I guess that's just what you do when you take a selfie, plus at least we are together and the kids have their sugar cookies-right? Looking on the bright side. Hopefully things turn around for the better soon and our gray skies start to see some sunshine.

Getting off to a Rocky Start

As I stated at the end of the previous post...and then we got the phone call. While we were at the temple my husband and I had both missed two calls from our son. We tried calling him back, but didn't get through to him. He finally called us back, and what he said to us was not the phone call we hoped to receive. He told us that he had slid off the side of the road in my car. (you see I had let him take my car to work that evening, since his hadn't been running right and Landon was going to look at it to see if he could figure out the problem.) We thought that he had just slid off and we just needed to go get him and the car both home. We understood cause he was a new driver and had never experienced driving in ice and snow before. However when we arrived to get him things were worse than expected. When he slid of he hit the curb hard, and slid down it for a ways and then came off it again. He had not only tore the front bumper, but also messed up the whole undercarriage and wheel system. Landon was able to get it home, but it is deemed un-drivable and we are looking at a good $2400 dollars in repairs to get it up and going again. We are going to file an insurance claim to help cover some of the costs, but even doing that we will still have some expense and probably at least 2 weeks without that vehicle. 

BAM! That's a nice hit to start out the new year. Add to the fact that we are now down to one vehicle for all of us and it's not looking like it's going to be a very fun couple of weeks. Hopefully this isn't an indication of how the rest of our year is going to look.

It's Snowing!!!

Thursday evening Landon and I went to the temple. When we went inside it was bitter cold outside, but there was no inkling of snow. It wasn't even raining at that point. Two hours latter when we walked out it was a sight to behold. Especially for someone living in St. George. I couldn't help but laugh and smile as I noticed the snow coming down and the few moments of quite, peaceful beauty.

Of course when we got home the kids were giddy with excitement. It was snowing and snowing pretty hard. I now for a lot of people it is no big deal, but when you live in the dessert snow is exciting. Kids and Parents alike run outside to play in it, they snap pictures and post about it on social media. Because chances are it won't last long. Chloe and Bryce both ran outside when we got there to touch it and throw a few snowballs, of course Chloe ran out barefooted (I swear she will one day be a hippie). 

I think everyone in town was secretly hoping for a snow day the next day-although it didn't end up happening.

And for a few more minutes the snow was fun and exciting...until the bad news came and I didn't really like the snow anymore especially not right then.

New Year New Goals

I have broken my goals down into 5 areas this year. Here is what I am hoping to accomplish and improve upon this year.

1) Spiritual/Mental
-More Meaningful Prayer
-Daily Scripture Study in the form of a)Book of Mormon Journal b) reading and preparing for the week's lesson in Relief Society c) reading Ensign articles
-Increase Temple Attendance
-Continue Working on Family History

2) Physical/Emotional
-Drink more water 64 oz + a day
-Make a Conscious effort to eat more fruits and veggies
-Exercise (at least an hour every week it can be anything from treadmill, playing basketball, or abs and arms the only thing excluded is roller blading because every time I try that I end up hurting myself)
-Eat less sugar (which means cutting back on candy, cookies,etc; trying to eat dessert only once a week and only 1 soda a week. I was doing really well on this last year until December hit)
-Take more days where I just rest and don't have anything to do besides maybe read a book and spend time with my family
-Don't put so many demands on myself/ and say no to other people when I need to.

3) Family-
Spend lots of time together. Take more time to do little things with my kids like play a game or shoot hoops in the driveway. Go on more dates with Landon. Smile and laugh with them more. Show them I love them more. Give more hugs and kisses. Be more patient. Just enjoy any time we have together.

4) Financial
-work really hard to stick to our budget
-pay tithing first-always
-try really hard to not spend my weekly petty cash before I actually get it
-avoid using credit cards unless necessary
-try not to add any debt
-save a little...for a rainy day, Christmas, a new house-make a plan and do it

5) Personal
-Finish Bryce's Baby Book by his Birthday! (I was so close to completing it last year)
-Organize and Transfer all files on my old Computer to New Computer by the end of February.
-Continue to Work on my 52 Quilts Project. (I have 20 completed and 3 in the works)
-Continue Blogging-write a few more blog posts each month that are a little more personal.
-Develop Skills in Digital Scrapbooking and work on some things that have been sitting on my desk for years.

Sledding

Since we live in a place where snow is a rare occurrence whenever my kids are somewhere where there is snow they naturally want to play in it. Luckily they usually have cousins who want to as well. During the trip we went twice once on New Years Eve and once the day after new years. They all loved it. Even Bryce who last year hated it and sat in the truck the entire time. This year he went down all by himself over and over again. He would even hit the jumps and then carry his sled up the hill after each run so he could go again. He biffed it only twice each time getting a pretty bad mark. He did cry both times, but when we would ask him if he was ready to get in the truck and be done he would quickly dry up his tears and hop back on his sled.

The Gang

Cute little monster-he loved the green sled the best

Bros

Taking a Run with Aunt Shawna

The hike back up

Bryce cut his chin one time when he fell off, but it didn't slow him down.

It was so much fun for everyone. I'm glad the kids get to play in it once in awhile, but I'm so glad we don't have to deal with it on a daily basis. 

New Years Festivities

This year we spent New Years in Flowell with Landon's family. It was a Christmas/New Years celebration. All of his siblings came, so there was lots of people. Which meant chaos, but lots of fun. The kids of course had a blast with their cousins.

We had our annual white elephant gift exchange. Landon took some wrapping paper that we had printed with his sisters picture all over it. I took Guess Who-Ellison family edition, which I had made using photo-shop, and Tanner took a Buddy in the Box (from the movie ELF).

There were some other funny things brought by his siblings. Like a "kickasserole" dish and a shewee. LOL We ended up bringing home an assortment of interesting flavored body spray, a whoopie cushion, bubble gum, cash, trail mix, and candy. The white elephant exchange is one of the highlights you never know what you are going to end up with.

On new years eve we had lots of yummy snacks and played a few games. It was pretty low key except for a few intense minutes while playing the game Speak Out. You see Shawna had made everyone promise not to video her turn, except for Tanner. Tanner took a quick video and snap chatted it to a few friends. When Shawna found out she literally jumped on Tanner and wrestled him to the ground trying to get his phone. It was so funny to watch. Of course it didn't do her any good cause she never got the phone and even better video footage was gotten of her wrestling match.

 Bryce fell asleep pretty early he was exhausted cause he hadn't had a nap all day. Landon and I also went to bed a little before midnight. I think Tanner might have too. The crazy older girls cousins (Chloe and company) all stayed up until the wee hours of the morning.

Happy New Years!!!