Owen is six

Owen had a birthday this month.  It is the only redeeming quality January has for me.  Anyway...his birthday was on a Saturday this year, so he got to just stay home and play all day long.  He chose to have sugar cookies for breakfast, so I made them the night before.  We woke up and he opened his presents which consisted mainly of angry birds stuff.  Then he got to get out of cleaning the house because he is the birthday boy and then the kids just hung out and played with him all day long.  He wanted waffles, pancakes, eggs and sausage for dinner, so we invited Grandma and Grandpa Williamsen over for dinner.  We ate and then had cake.  I think he liked picking the food better than anything.

Our boys with presents from Grandma. I would like to note the awesome shirt Owen is wearing was made by me.  I thought it turned out cute.  The Chewie angry bird reminds me of Owen.

I would just like to note that Reagan did not have one serious picture in the bunch.  This was the most normal, and that's saying something. Reagan also wanted an angry birds shirt, so I made her one too.

We didn't even have to prompt this craziness.  It's just normal at our house. 

This is his cake.  They had clearanced out all the angry birds stuff at Target, so I was lucky to find packs of angry birds for $2.50.  Fortuitous for me!  Owen was very specific on the frosting style.  Half black, half white.  Then the kids had fun putting all the birds and pigs on the cake.  

Owen is my kindhearted, happy boy.  He will do anything for anyone, even if it means he misses out on something.  He gives his stuff to others who are sad.  This morning, he cleaned up the living room, cleared off the table and cleaned his room, all by himself, without me asking him to.  He just wanted to help.  He loves Kindergarten and loves math.  Not so much reading, but he has a math mind.  He is doing multiplication right now like it's nothing.  He thinks it's fun.  (He did not get that from me at all!)  He's a good brother and the comic relief in our family.  Love him to pieces!!

The Gift

For Christmas, I never know what to give Cameron.  Anything he wants, he usually has to get himself, because it involves electronic know how, which I do not have.  I never can surprise him.  So this year, I decided to give him "The Gift".  I got the idea off someone else's blog.  Can't remember who's, but I can't take credit for the idea.  I planned one date a month all year long.  They are all mostly prepaid, pre-planned, pre everything.  I put each month's activity inside a manila envelope and gave them all to him as one gift.  He is not allowed to look ahead to see what each date is.  We open it together at the first of the month and pick a day that will work for us and plan it then.  I tried to plan lots of different, fun stuff that we haven't done before.  Some are stay-at-home nights, some are day trips, some are just regular dates.

This month was a fondue night.  I have never made fondue, but it was fun to try.  I made two kinds.  Cheese and chocolate.  I had fun getting all sorts of dippers for it.  I got bread, broccoli, chips, and I had ham, but forgot it.  The chocolate dippers were strawberries, marshmallows, pretzels, cheesecake, and...I think that's it.

Cameron with January's date note. 

 This is the cheese fondue pot.  I think I will make a different cheese fondue next time.  All the fondue recipes called for white wine, which I did not have on hand so I looked up a substitute and it said to use beer or apple cider vinegar.  I used the vinegar and the cheese just tasted a little vinegar-y.  It was still yummy,

The little silver Hershey's kiss had the chocolate fondue in it and it was delicious!!  I sort of just wanted to eat the chocolate fondue by the spoonful.  

It was a fun night.  Amy took the kids to her house and hung out with them and we just ate fondue and watched a movie and hung out together.  We get to open next month's date on Saturday.  It should be fun!  

Post Holidays

I've not been too good at taking pictures lately.  I have no pictures of Thanksgiving and none of Christmas, believe it or not.  We got the camcorder out, not the camera.  Thanksgiving was at Amy's house this year.  Good food and it was fun to have it at Amy's house for the first time.  Grandma made up some minute to win it games and the kids had fun doing those.  You know, I am not a huge turkey fan.  I think we should change the tradition to something else.  Bacon would be good.  Mmmm Bacon.....

For Christmas, we tried to do some fun things with the kids.  We went and saw lights at Temple Square.  We saw the candy windows at Macys,decorated gingerbread men (which we all liked so much better than gingerbread houses.), went to see a movie (Frozen.  Loved it!!), and tried to just be together as a family. They even got to have a cousin sleepover after Christmas.  The one thing we did differently this year was we tried to do one act of service for every day in December.  We talked to the children about Jesus' birth and why we celebrate, and challenged them each to do one act of service every day.  At the dinner table each day, we would go around the table and tell everyone what our act of service that day was.  The kids learned to expect the question at dinner, so they would look each day for something they could do to share at night.  They all did a great job.  They found kids who didn't have anyone to play with and played with them, they helped pick up the floor of their classrooms after school, they helped mom with laundry, or folded someone else's laundry before they got home from school.  It was fun to see what they came up with.

We did get pictures of the gingerbread men after they were decorated.  We helped them a little with the icing, and they did the candies themselves. 

 They even ate their men afterward.  

Liam actually ate some of his guy, but then just ate the candy and licked off the frosting.

We had the rest of the guys for a few days and they would munch on them off and on. 

Can you tell who put the most candy on theirs?  She didn't really care about the icing.  Just wanted to get the most bang for her buck candy-wise.

Cameron was off for Christmas week.  It was fun to have him home.  The kids loved having him around to play games with them.  He was really good to play with them.  He was still studying for his last CPA test, so he made time for both.  This Christmas was the year of the Lego.  Each of the kids got a Lego something from Santa and a game.  We drew names and they bought a present for each other and I made them each a Doctor Who shirt.  We love our Doctor Who at our house hey hey!!  They got some new gloves and hats from Grandma and some fun blankets from our other Grandma.  I think it turned out to be a pretty nice Christmas.

For New Years Eve, we went to Grandma's house and played games with Grandma and Amy and Karl.  We brought all our candy we got for Christmas and snacked on candy and chips and veggies and donuts and played all the games we got for Christmas.  The kids wanted to stay up, but Cameron needed to sleep for his test, so they went to bed at 8:30.  It was funny, because the next day, when they woke up, they were so tired anyway.  I was glad they didn't stay up until midnight.

I think this is the first year in a long time that no one was sick for Christmas.  We got our fair share after Christmas, but it was nice to all be healthy on the day.

Before Christmas, I did some Christmas minute to win it games with my Cub Scouts.  One of them was a cup stacking game.  My kids loved it and have been doing it ever since.  Reagan sat down one day and made this big stack of cups and was so proud of it.  She wanted me to take pictures of it.

She built it all by herself.  She was pretty excited about it.  

It was taller than her.  It was fun to see her ever so carefully place the cups on top of each other. 

In this picture and the next, she is saying ta-da! 

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She thought up all these poses.  She is a funny girl. 

She needed dad to come and see it too.  Note Cameron's super awesome beard.  He grew it out while he was studying for his test and shaved it the day after he took it.  The kids hated it and Erin was grossed out by it.  I don't know why.  She refused to touch it.  The funny thing is that after he shaved, Erin told him he looked better with the beard.  I like him clean shaven, thanks.