Ellie's 1st Birthday

I can't believe how fast this past year has gone. Our precious little girl had her first birthday yesterday. Ellie has been so fun to have in our family. She is a happy baby and very good. Her brothers really watch out for her, and enjoy making her laugh. I went to wrap Ellie's presents and the only wrapping paper I had was Transformers, Balls, and plain blue. So plain blue it was. Poor girl, I hope she likes blue. Ellie is such a little momma, she loves to hold and feed her baby. She saw the carrier before we started presents and she did everything in her power to get it.

Her brothers insisted that we put balloons up for their little sisters birthday, but we put them low enough that Ellie could enjoy them. Here she is following us around and taking the balloons down to play with them.

Playing with her presents. Even the boys got into it. Ellie just enjoyed playing by herself, or having tea with her dad.

Ellie eating her birthday cake. Pick it up and shove the whole thing in.

Update

January was a slow month for us. I don't know that I took a single picture of my children. So since it has been so long since I blogged I took a few pics of the kids and thought that I would share.

Here is my Ellie girl. She is looking super cute in her pig tails. She got this little doll for Christmas and she loves it she likes to hold is and give it kisses and feed it her bottle. She is very fun to watch with it. The third pic she is in the boys drawers taking things out (so helpful). Ellie uses the little ladder as a walker, she pushes it all over the house and walks with it, here she found another use for it.

Tanner folding himself in half to play. In the second picture he is using his toes to play with the toys.

And Hayden and Devin.

In sharing time yesterday, the primary pres. asked the kids why Noah needed to take one male and one female animal on the ark. Now mind you I am in junior primary. I started looking at my boys and hoped they did not know the answer to this one. I was also hoping that none of the bigger kids did either so I would not have to do any explaining on the way home from church. The teacher in front of my turned to look at her kids also a little worried.

Of course Devin raised his hand and I though "oh great, what does he know about this", but he had a great answer. He said "because Heavenly Father told him too."

I would have left it at that but she didn't, and proceeded to question the kids. Most of the kids had no idea what she was alluding to and I was thinking I guess if the primary pres. wants to explain this to the junior primary then I guess that is one discussion I won't have to have with my boys later. Finally one of the older boys said " because the boy and the girl get together and have a family". Good enough!

I just had to laugh that she asked this question and was really looking for an answer with these little kids. Glad it turned out good and no questions came up later.

Christmas

We had a great Christmas break. The first two days of no school were hard and I was ready to send the boys back. But after that everything was fun. For Christmas Eve we stayed home and the boys made graham cracker houses. They turned out to be very easy. We have usually tried to do a gingerbread house every year, but this year I was looking for something easier and this turned out to be just what I was looking for. Every one could do one and they went together so easy. The boys loved it.

Tanner's house built with help from mom(notice all the yellow).Devin's house (I think he ate more candy than went on the house.)Hayden's house (giving instruction to dad, who helped with the icing.)Posing with their finished houses.

After we finished our houses we decided to take advantage of the fact that we now live on a hill. So we went sliding down the road in front of our house. It was a lot of fun and we could really get moving. Due to the fact that the snow plow only plowed our road twice through all the snow storms and managed to get stuck both times he came up our street, it was pretty slick.

Hayden on a neighbors sled.Tanner riding down on Devin's back.Tanner in the snow.Joel pushing the boys. Getting them going.Even Ellie joined us out in the snow for a little while.

For Christmas Eve dinner we have decided to try and do some sort of foreign meal, since neither Joel nor I have any real family traditions for this meal. We did a Indian noodle meal and it turned out really yummy and fun, because it was different.

Because Christmas always gets so busy with presents and things, we always tell, act out, with lots of music the Birth of Christ. We have really tried to teach our children that Christmas is a celebration of Christs birth and this is always the best part of Christmas.

Devin and Hayden playing with Christmas presents.Ellie on Christmas morning. Helping dad with Christmas dinner.

All in all it turned out to be some pretty fun days together.

Day after Christmas, Joel shoveling out the drive way. Maybe next year he can get himself something to help him out. He was pretty sore after shoveling us out.

Going Ons

Devin and Hayden wanted to try wrestling this year, so we signed them up and they had a great time. I thought that it would be harder for them because it is an individual sport and if they lost they would be sad. But my boys loved it, they loved getting to wrestle other kids and didn't care at all if they lost. They thought that it was a big game.

Devin

Hayden

With their medals.

Big blue eyes Ellie and grandpa Wilson watching the match.
Grandma Wilson and Tanner not watching the match.

We took the boys to see the lights at temple square. It was beautiful and they loved it. It was a little cold though, so we are looking forward to going back sometime this coming summer.

We haven't had a problem with our children at Christmas time before, they were ever to small or old enough to leave the presents alone. But this year we had an Ellie who was very curious. Besides pulling the lights off the trees and all the decorartions that she could reach, she had to check out the packages as well.

The boys made a snowman on their day off of school.

Grandma Honey's Birthday

This month we celebrated Joel's Grandmas 94th birthday. We are grateful to still have her with us, and doing so well. Here she is with two of her great grandsons Tanner and Rowdy. It was a fun afternoon to reaquaint with some of Joel's cousins that we haven't seen for years.

Grandma Honey with her children.

Our family with Grandma Honey

Ellie with her grandma Lewis and Uncle Travis.

Tanner licking the icing of his cake.