February Fun

I can always tell when the after the holidays lull kicks in because my pictures in iphoto go from a folder a month to the famous January-March folder.  I personally think january and February should just be deleted from the year, but that's just me.  So here are some things we do during the blah months to keep us sane and warm....

Lots of crafts and art projects, that is when Beckett is asleep so that the house doesn't get completely destroyed.

Lots of lego creating.  Carter's always seem to be the best.

Quite a bit of house, baby, make believe, dress-ups, cross dressing, whatever you want to call it.  Rylynn seem to usually take the lead on this one and is the master creator of the story line.  Carter is such a good sport and goes along with most things she comes up with because he just loves playing with his big sissy.

We had another crazy hair day and this is the extent to which Rylynn was comfortable going for "crazy hair". She always gets so worried that she will be the weirdest one and then we show up to school and hers is barely even unusual looking.  I try to tell her every year that she can really do something crazy but she doesn't believe me.  Oh well.

Beckett started going potty in the toliet at least a couple times a day.  We still haven't actually tried the real potty training since I have been pregnant and lazy, but this was the day I let him wear underwear for a little while.  He really was excited eventhough he looks totally depressed in this picture:)

Beckett and I went on a little date to the new cupcake shop in town.  It is amazing!  He is eating the strawberry cheesecake cupcake which I very kindly helped him finish off while he was running around the store.

This is what I found one morning when I got out of the shower.  Apparently Beckett felt like he needed to wear a bra?

Rylynn drew an elaborate portrayal of the Bubble Guppies episode the kids were watching one night before bed.  She kind of got obsessed with drawing on the wipe board for a while there.  Like I said, we all go a little crazy during the blah winter months!

Then came Valentine's Day and the sugar high breathed some life into our daily activities.

We of course had our FHE cookie decorating night with our lesson on Loving one another.

Somehow the kids are really quiet and attentive to the lesson when they get to stuff sugar cookies in their mouths while we talk:)

This is to document that even when it is 30 degrees outside, my children refuse to wear winter clothes inside.  Beckett pretty much goes clotheless in his diaper all day so it is kind of a miracle that he is wearing shorts in this picture and the other two always have shorts and tee shirts on.  I swear these kids were meant to grow up in Florida or something.

Getting Valentines cards from Mom and Dad was exciting!

They also got very cute cards from Nana and Papa with some strange poems written by a sleep-deprived Nana:) and a huge package of goodies and cards from Granny and Grandpa.

The goodie package came with Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory candy apples for everyone along with lots of other yummy treats!  And this was all before the candy onslaught from the school parties.  

Oh and the biggest event on Valentine's Day this year was that my little sister got ENGAGED!!  We are so excited for her and we love her fiance Matt.  He is a big fan of good food so we think he'll fit in with the Monson clan very well:)

So with a little help from lots of sugar and fun family times we made it through the blah months!  

baa finky, nangamie, and baynkee

The children in this family love their blankets so I thought it was high time to do a post dedicated to those wonderful little comforters!

First came Nangamie.  We don't really know why Rylynn called her blanky nangamie but that was the name she came up with when she was 1.  She got this pretty pink blankey from my voice teacher and mentor growing up, Melanie Jensen.  I loved her so much and her daughter was my flower girl at our wedding.  So when she threw me a baby shower she gave me this blanket and told me that she had one for each of her kids and they couldn't live without them.  Well that proved to be true for Rylynn too so we ended up buying her an alternate so we could wash it and never be without it.  When Rylynn got older she discovered the awesome reality that she actually had two and she sleeps with both every night.  These blankets have held up really well too so I guess they are worth the 18 bucks that they sell them for.

Next came Baa finky.  Carter actually had some other little blankets before Baa finky, but none of them stuck like baa finky.  He loved the really thin, soft blankets from Target but we kept loosing them and then one day my friend Ali Day in Ohio stopped by with some things she was getting rid of and as I was looking through her trunk, Carter spotted Baa finky and fell in love instantly!  So from that moment on, he couldn't live without it.  Unfortunately, it was really thin (one piece of flannel) and has had rip after rip until finally I realized we needed to take drastic measures or baa finky would be no more.  

So I first sewed some white flannel backing on so I could repair all the terrible rips and shreds.  Then I covered the back with the really soft, minky fabric that is on the back of Rylynn's blankey and which is very durable! Also very expensive as it turns out:) Yay for 50% off coupons at Jo-Anns!

Carter is thrillled!!  And now there is hope that baa finky will last through many more years of loving and cuddling.

I have a feeling baynkee isn't going to be as lucky.  I can't figure out a way to save this thing because it is woven and it's ripped in two.  That is because Beckett used to bite this blankey until it got an enormous whole in the middle and finally just ripped in two.  This became his blankey after he lost his original blankey which was actually my blankey as a child.  It was white with red and blue little berries on it and we lost it at our last house.  He loved this one though because he could get wrapped up in it even in the summer and not be too hot since there are tiny holes in it.  

I'm not really that worried though since Beckett actually has 4 blankets.  Can you tell he is the spoiled youngest child?  He has haiplane (airplane) blankey, quack quack blankie (which I made for Rylynn before she was born and has been passed from child to child), Nana blankey, and other one baynkee(the one that is ripped in two).  He often carries all four, well five if you count both halves of baynkee, around with him.  I think maybe Beckett has four because he never took a binkie like Rylynn and Carter did.  Since he had bad acid reflux he would just gag on them so his blankets were his only comfort object.

Well I have to admit I never thought I would have blankie babies since no one in my family really cared about their blankies that much but I am happy they are!  It is so cute to me that they have these little blankies to comfort them and know that everything is okay in their little world.  So now I have the blankies documented for posterity.  Now I just have to find the perfect blanket for baby number 4!  Oh and that baby will be arriving September 5th so I better get a move on:)  See I have had a good excuse for being such a blog slacker the last month!

Carter turned 5!

Our little Carter man turned 5 on New Year's Eve.  I still can't believe he is already 5 years old!  Carter is our sweet little shy boy who loves to build and create and learn and also loves to do crazy ninja moves and rolls from room to room.

Carter has always hated having his hair done because he hates getting water on his clothes.  If he gets one drop on his shirt he will go and change.  In fact he often changes his outfit 5 or more times a day.  He loves changing into shorts and a t shirt right after school.   This is why I was a little shocked a few weeks ago when Carter came and asked me to do a "mowhawk" for school.  He all the sudden wants his hair to be done but he is still not a fan of the "sticky stuff" in his hair.

Carter is a big fan of spiderman, batman, and most superheroes at the moment.  Unfortunately, he also saw Ironman while he was over at his friend's house so he loves him right now too.  Seriously, who shows a 4 year old a pg-13 movie?!

Carter has always had family birthday parties since we are usually gone over new year's but I promised him that for his 5th birthday we would have a friend's party at chuck-e-cheese!  He was so excited about it and reminded me pretty much every week all year so that I wouldn't forget.  We decided to have it a few weeks early to avoid all the Christmas craziness.  He had a monster truck party so I attempted to make a grave digger birthday cake.  It's far from professional, but he got really excited when he saw it and that's all that matters.

This is the cute invitation my friend Erin helped me make for the party.  He was so excited to hand these out to his friends.

Carter and his buddy Lincoln.  Carter was pretty excited about the birthday crown since it had a bunch of tokens in it.

Rylynn was the only girl invited and she was so excited for Carter.  Behind them is the ticket blaster which Carter got to go in and grab as many tickets as he could.  I only got video of it, but he did great.  It does make me laugh though because he is so opposite of Rylynn.  She would have been jumping around and being crazy but he just stood there calmly and swiped a bunch of tickets from his side and then shoved them in his pockets.

Beckett was a huge fan of the birthday party but especially of the root beer!

A few of Carter's buddies: Sam, Preston, and Lincoln.

This game was a big ticket winner.  He played it several times.

Gotta love skee ball

Another funny Carter moment was when he was supposed to stand up on his chair and cheer really loud for Chuck E to come out.  He kept looking at the lady like she was crazy and then when Chuck E came out he just gave him a quick high five and then sat down to eat his cake.  He is so much like his father!  Actually I was talking to Garrett about this after Carter's party and he told me that he hated having birthday parties when he was a kid because he hated being the center of attention.  That is totally how Carter acted and I remember when he turned three he started crying and ran over to me when our friends started singing happy birthday to him because he didn't like every one looking at him.

Carter loves Star Wars right now and he was so excited to get this cool sticker book from his friend Aiden.  Aiden and his family also surprised Carter earlier that day and took him to Toy Story 3 on ice.  He had so much fun and then Aiden got to come to his birthday party that night.  It was a very exciting day!

Carter got some really fun toys from his friends.  Monster trucks, cars from Cars 2, a dart shotgun that he has wanted forever, and a cool sled.  

On his real birthday he got to open some really sweet cards from my Grandma, mom and dad, Aunt Danielle and Jordan, and Molly and Ben.  He scored almost fifty dollars so we went to Toys R Us and he was so excited that he could buy whatever he wanted!!

  

Here's the loot!

For his birthday dinner he chose his favorite dinner,  chicken enchiladas and chocolate raspberry birthday cake.  It's so fun to have a birthday dinner on New Year's eve every year and when he gets older I think he is going to love having his birthday party that night.

Carter is loving being in pre-k this year and is so excited about learning new things.  This was his Christmas concert and he was so excited about having a "mowhawk" for his party.

This little girl is Autumn and was Carter's first crush of pre-k!  He switched to the pm class a couple of months ago and his teacher sent us pictures of all the kids in his new class so that he could start learning their names at home.  From the moment he saw her picture he was a huge fan:)

Carter is getting so good at writing his letters and doing math.  He loves to pull out his notebook while Rylynn is doing her homework and do math problems with her.  He also loves that he can write his name all by himself and he's getting really good at writing all his numbers too.  He has started to really love coloring this year too and he can draw really cute people and stay in the lines too.  This is the cute christmas card he made for us this year.

This was one of the christmas presents he made.  It's a coaster made out of different colored glass that he glued onto a tile.  We just adore our little Cartchie man and love watching him grow up and learn new things every day.  He is still not the greatest sharer, but he's getting much better and he is really making a big effort to let Beckett play with him more and they are become great buddies now.  We laugh all the time at how he summersaults from room to room rather than walk.  His teacher said he does that at school too and she had to tell him that he has to walk when he's at school:)  He is still very athletic and can't wait to get into sports this year.  He is dying to take karate as he thinks he is already a ninja.  He got his moves from watching kung fu panda!  Another thing I love about my little Carter is that he loves to organize his desk.  He is quite anal about organization which he got from me, which is part of the reason he doesn't like to share when people come over because he is so concerned about messing his room/toys up.  I have loved watching his sweet little testimony grow this year and I especially admire that he never forgets to say a prayer.  He often times is the one to remind me at lunch time when I am running around getting it ready.  He also sets a great example to his brother and sister about saying please and thank you and always remembering to take his plate to the sink.  His favorite movies right now are kung fu panda and Cars 2.  We love you so much Carter!!

There's no place like home for the holidays...

This year after much changing of plans we ended up staying home for Christmas and it turned out to be a wonderful Christmas at home!  My brother Jordan and his family drove up to celebrate with us.  Our first item of business was to go downtown to see where Daddy works and to visit Santa of course.

Here are the two brave Daddies with all the kiddos standing in line to see Santa. 

This is the tree at the mall downtown.  It is beautiful and ginormous as you can see.

Baby Gracie was happy as a clam all bundled up in Mama's arms.

Beckett was so excited to be hanging out with Daddy that he didn't really mind the line.  We of course are all cheap so we weren't about to spend 20 dollars on a lame picture with Santa so the kids all just sat on his lap and told him what they wanted for Christmas.  They got a big candy cane too which made their day.  After Santa we went down to the children's museum to eat lunch but we didn't stay cause the babies were long overdue for naps.  

The next day we baked and delivered goodies to neighbors and even squeezed in some caroling!  Caroling was a big tradition in my family growing up but Garrett is not a huge fan so we haven't done it as a Hall family, but Jordan and I wanted to relive some Monson memories so we gathered the whole group and went caroling for old time sake.  The kids were great singers, and even Garrett was a good sport:)  That day the kids wrote letters to Santa too and they couldn't wait to see if he would write them back the next day.  

Well of course he did!  They were so excited to go to the mailbox and find a letter for each of them with a candy cane and a special letter inside.

After reading the letters they were very relieved to find out that they were each on the good list and would be receiving presents contrary to what the parents had been telling them each time they got into a fight:)

They are naughty but oh so dang cute!  They really did have so much fun together and we even got to celebrate with Ollie for the week!  Jordan and Danielle brought him because Abby was out of the country for Christmas.  I didn't tell my kids he was coming because I wanted it to be a surprise and it was so fun to see them freak out when he jumped out of their car.

On Christmas Eve we had our yearly Holy Land Dinner.  This year we decided to have the theme be on the three wisemen and specifically the meaning and importance of the three gifts they brought to Jesus.  We started out with the famous Challa bread, stew, and cucumber and tomato salad.  While we were eating we showed the kids the new wiseman video on the church website.  Then Danielle had the kids unwrap each of the presents that the wisemen brought.

They got to look at and touch the gold while Danielle explained the significance of the gold.  

Then Danielle brought some real Frankinsense for the kids to all smell.

Rylynn loved the smell as you can tell:)  We couldn't get ahold of Myrrh because it was really expensive but we printed out a picture of it for the kids to see.  It was so cool for them to learn the meaning behind each of the gifts.  Then we told the kids that in honor of the three wisemen, they would be getting three gifts this year.  We ended with the delicious pomegranite jello salad and bubbly.

Then the kids got to open their Christmas jammies.  Carter was sad because Skyler got spiderman jammies and he really wanted them.

Rylynn was so excited because her nightgown came with a matching tiny nightgown for her doll.  Beckett was thrilled with his elmo jammies too.

Carter got over his dissappointment pretty quickly luckily.  

Christmas morning came nice and early!  The kids love opening up their stockings before breakfast.

Santa brought some awesome stuff this year!!  Some movies...

A spiderman watch...

cool new lunchboxes...

And fun coloring books!

Then it was time for the grown ups favorite part, Christmas breakfast!!  We had the famous carmel apple pecan french toast, red potato and egg casserole, bacon, homemade candy cane hot cocoa, and orange juice.

After we stuffed ourselves silly we had to get back to business and open the presents.  I surprised Garrett and asked Jordan to pick out some new basketball shorts from the BYU bookstore.  He picked the perfect pair and Garrett was thrilled.

Beckett was all smiles about his new cars from "sissy"

This was by far Carter's favorite present of Christmas and it was from Grandma Ryan (Garrett's Mom).  It was a really cool airplane set that does all sorts of cool things and it comes with little pilot guys that look like they are from Star Wars which Carter loves at the moment.

Beckett got this cute little Cars book from Grandma with tiny cars to play with in the back.  He loved them!  

Then came the parade of Razors!  It was definintely a razor Christmas as Thais, Rylynn, Carter and Skyler all got their own new razor scooter.

Rylynn was so excited that hers was pink!

Carter got a Cars scooter!

Skyler was so excited about his tool set so he could be just like his Daddy.

After the two presents from Mom and Dad and the presents from Grandma and Grandpa the kids got to do their treasure hunts to find their big present from Santa.  Santa did a great job writing witty clues this year and the kids were so excited to see their big surprise!

The boys got a train table to share and they played with it from the minute they saw it.  There was really no reaction just immediate playing.  That's always a good sign!

Rylynn was thrilled that Santa got her exactly what she wanted...

A doll house with all the furniture and dolls to go with it!!  She and Thais spent hours playing dolls that morning.

Gracie loo who, as we like to call her, slept through most of the festivities but when she woke up she went right for the wrapping paper!  Nothing better than crinkly noisey paper for a little baby:) Rylynn couldn't get enough of Grace and held her any chance she could get.  If she was playing she would usually run over to her, give her a kiss, and say, "hello beautiful, beloved, Grace!" and then run back to playing.  She was so proud of that nickname she came up with. 

After the festivities died down, the parents all got to take naps while the kids played endlessly with their new toys.  Yay for 1:00 church!  Gracie wore her new fancy Christmas outfit to church and looked like a snow angel.  It was a beautiful meeting and I got to sing in the choir which is always a highlight of the season for me.  

After church it was right back to the kitchen to make the fabulous tri tip steak that was marinating for two days and was soooo delicious!  Jordan made some killer garlic mashed potatoes, and we had Christmas pomegranate salad, and bacon brussell spouts as well.  Then for dessert Danielle made her mom's famous English triffle.  It was amazing!!  

Oh and we can't forget the homemade egg nog!

Carter is sporting this beautiful stache which was a present to Garrett from our friends the Albrechts.  Basically it was love at first sight for Aric when Garrett wore a creepy mustache to a Christmas party last year so they thought it only appropriate to give Garrett the mustache collection as a gift this year.  I think Carter is wearing the casanova but I can't remember.  Yes, they all had names!

The rest of the week we ate yummy leftovers, watched movies, stayed up chatting till way too early, played in Ceour d'Alene, and just had fun.  This picture is to document the momentous day when my Christmas present saved the day!!  We all bundled up to go to the beach in ceour d'Alene and to play at the awesome wooden playground they have there.  So while we were playing Garrett had both my phone and his in his coat pockets and then he took the boys to go to the bathroom.  On his way back he was running and messing around with the boys and somehow dropped both phones on the ground.  When he got back I kept having this nagging feeling to ask him for my phone but I didn't.  So when we got in the car I immediately asked for my phone and he couldn't find it.  We were already driving away when I started to freak out because he couldn't find either of our phones.  So we turned around right away and I started saying a prayer that we could find them.  As soon as we pulled up to where we had parked I saw Danielle jump out of the car and run across the street to talk to some random guy.  Garrett had just given me a new bright red phone cover for Christmas and somehow Danielle noticed that this guy was walking down the street with a bright red phone in his hand!!  So she ran up to him and said that we had lost our phone and asked if that was his.  He looked at her and said, oh I just found this in the mud and handed it back.  Then he said, it's a good thing you guys came back when you did!  Then we asked him if he had seen Garrett's phone and he said no but we were all a little bit suspicious so Garrett and Jordan asked the guy to show them wear he found my phone.  So they walked back to the general area and out of the corner of his eye Garrett saw something shiny in the grass.  It was his phone face up in the dirt.  I still can't believe we found both phones!!!  I'm so thankful for those little whisperings of the spirit and the power of prayer in my life.  They have saved me from so many little and big disasters!  So Christmas was fabulous and we are sad to see it end, but my pants aren't sad to see all the holiday food go:)  On to losing the holiday pounds!!