Family Home Evening Pictures

My dear little ones,
So one of my goals last year was to take a picture every Mon for the year. I thought it would be fun to watch you slowly grow up and change. I thought we might also have fun looking back on some of the activities that we did. Well, I wasn't very good at remembering to take pictures, especially during the activities. I kept trying though, even though months would go by before I would remember my goal. I'm sure there were a few others I took too but never remembered to put them in the right folder on my desktop. Here are the ones that I got.
Family Home Evenings from 2015, in chronological order:

It is pretty fun to look back on a whole year of being together. Baby, you have of course changed the most! I like seeing each of your personalities too.
I love our family. I have to often remind all of you to be kind, or to say sorry, but we have a whole lot of love and fun going around too. I am very thankful that the church set aside one night each week for us to spend time together. I love that Dad and I get to teach you what is important in life, a little bit at a time. You learn about faith and hard work and ancestors and service and values and what makes a strong family. Last year we talked about each sentence in the family proclamation and how to apply it in our family. This year I want to focus again on why God sent us to Earth in families. Families make us strong! They sustain us and cradle us and build us up.
I think Family Home Evening will get more and more important as you grow older, so I am glad to be establishing this habit now. I have a lot of hope for the future. It's a little nerve wracking at times because I see sad stories on the news about the realities of the world that we live in, and I'm raising 4 souls who have to go out into it every day more and more! However, I really think that what you learn in our home will make you guys live with integrity and kindness. You will have faith that God loves all of His children. There is also a lot of good in the world and I love helping you be a part of that.
Love you my sweet family,
Mom

7 Year old Hammer

Dear Hammer,

You are 7 years old now! Your birthday was super exciting!
We started the day off with your favorite breakfast: deviled eggs!:

You opened a present from me and some presents from Great Grandma, then you were off to school with a poster and treats for your class. You were happy to be the line leader and you said everyone wanted to play with you at recess since you were the birthday boy.
After Dad got home we opened more presents:

You picked hamburgers for your special meal and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for dessert!:

Your birthday was on a Wednesday and it was hard to wait for your party on Saturday. You were super excited for your Super Mario party.
Finally it was Saturday afternoon and your friends arrived.
First things first I had the girls put on crowns and the boys put on mustaches:

Then we went down for some games. We did a yoshi-eggs hunt and ghost balloon games and freeze dance and watched a Mario cartoon:

Then suddenly when I told you to come dance along with all of your friends you started crying. I couldn't get you to stop, even when it was time to blow out your candles.
See the cute Mario cake I made?:

I  hope you liked it, but I don't know how much you even saw it since your eyes were closed and you were crying! Here you are not blowing out the candles, so Lulu is about to. She would have but your friend Maya beat her to it!:

Well while your friends ate their cake and ice cream, Dad got you to calm down. I'm still not quite sure what happened there. Maybe sensory overload? It was just too much birthday? You joined the party and ate your treats fine.
Everyone loved the "Fire Power" cheezballs. Dad had to go around handing them out like a full time job!:

Baby enjoyed the treats too:

Luckily you perked up and enjoyed opening presents:

Anya came along to keep Lulu company during the party. They decided to wear mustaches too at the end of the party:

Then your party was over and we gave out thank you bags with 7up (because you earned 7 up, or 7 lives on Mario, get it?) and candy.
Here you are saying bye to Grammie:

It doesn't really seem weird that you are 7 now. You are gone to school all day and you read books like nobody's business and you don't need snuggles and you fight for what you think is right. I mean, I almost feel like you are a teenager already! That is until you start crying at your own birthday party or you want me to feed you your salad or get you dressed. While those things surprise me and sometimes even irk me, it's actually a good thing that those age-appropriate actions come up so I remember to cut you some slack and treat you like a 7 year old! I often need to speak a little more tenderly and let you play a little harder. Dad and I do still expect a lot out of you though because we know that you have it in you. You are a fighter, but you can accomplish anything when you direct that energy in the right way. 

You are so creative. One of your favorite past times is writing books! I get mad at you because you use up all my grocery list papers for stories, but you don't want to use scrap paper. These are real books to you that you like to keep and read over and over. You are so proud of your creations, especially when they are funny.

At 7 years old you love Legos and your new marble run and Mario and taking pictures and videos. You love playing games on the Kindle Fire too. Your love for cars has significantly decreased, which made me a little sad. You still love bugs though, although we of course haven't seen any since it's snowed!

You sleep on a doggie pillow pet and you really love the doggie night light you got for Christmas.

One of your very favorite things to do is to play "house" or "pretend" with Lulu. Sometimes you let Mr T play along too. You get really into these make believe sessions.

You are learning to play the piano and doing really well! You memorized your Christmas song without me even asking you to. And you love to make up songs on the piano! You remember these little melodies for months! It's a little hard to get you to practice though. You only do it when you are in the mood.

You eat most foods still and I appreciate that. You don't love fish any more. You really love your new Uncle Jordan. You love the attention that he gives you and how he makes you feel important and cool. You said "Mom guess what? Jordan and I like everything the same! Almost. Cool huh?" When Jordan said he loves fish, you said "I'm starting to like it again." It was cute, and sure enough last time we had it for dinner you didn't complain and you ate a little more than you used to. Your favorite is still sandwiches I think. You chose to eat out at Subway for your special out-to-dinner choice after the party on Saturday.

You love sweat pants, or soft pants as you call them. You are getting pickier about what you wear to school though. Yesterday you told me that your skull t-shirt was too "boyish" for school. Whatever that means! 

You like to have your beautiful red hair combed to the side, but it's so thick and stubborn that just 2 hours later it's laying straight forward again, even if we used gel!

You haven't lost any baby teeth yet, and your freckles are my favorite. 

Today was your birthday photo shoot. Just a few days late. We tried some outside shots since the snowy trees made a beautiful backdrop. It turned out that even though the sun was behind the clouds it was still too bright and I wanted to see your handsome hazel eyes better. So we took some inside too. Here are my favorite ones:

Happy Birthday my handsome boy. Thanks for being you Hammer man. You are a fun kid. I sure love you,
Mom

December Edition

Life According to Our Phones

Hammer, first thing you left Freddie a book:

Hammer really loves his gorilla baby:

Date with Hammer to get ice cream!:

A picture of Daddy that we found at Grammie's that I think looks just like Baby:

Two really mad boys, although I can't remember why now!:

Dentist appointment. They called me to go in early before Dad could go with me, so I went with all 4 of you and we survived!  Plus no one had cavities! Yes!:

Ward party!:

Shopping at Smith's for presents for you guys to give each other. You each got one sibling and got to pick one present out. Then we found this train table and played there while Dad did his secret shopping. It was hard to get Baby to leave!:

Grammie and I got to see the manger scene at temple square and then...:

 ...see the MoTab concert!:

It was a lot of fun, but the traffic driving home was horrendous!:

 Caroling with our cute friends!:

We love this caroling tradition:

Lulu was proud of her snowball. It snowed and snowed but we went caroling anyway!:

 Hammer had the pinkest cheeks after playing in the snow one day:

We drove through the Lights Before Christmas again, always a fun tradition:

One night it was so bright outside with the nieghbors' light on and the almost full moon reflecting off all the snow. It was beautiful:

Another fun tradition: Breakfast around the Christmas tree:

Lulu, I found these notes in your backpack from your best friend and they cracked me up:

These letters to Santa that you guys wrote also cracked me up. We found a website where you could email him!:

From Hammer:

 From Mr T:

 From Lulu:

I printed real Christmas cards this year. Here is a picture of our copy!:

Lulu and I went to the nutcracker with all the big girls in my family! 

It was sure a lot of fun, even though it was a pretty unprofessional version. That actually made it fun though, especially the girl who did a back bend and fell on another girl's face, and this little tiny one who was looking at the decorations instead of dancing. It's hard to see, but she's kneeling down right there front and center!

Baby got to come hang out and Grandpa's with Ava while we were at the ballet:

And we got to hold Baby Coen!:

After Lulu and I went to the nutcracker and to a wedding reception for my cousin, Lulu had her first sleep over at Grandma's. 

Lulu, you got to go to a family party where you saw Santa!:

You played with cousin Ava:

I made eggnog bread and Lulu made most of the snowflakes and then we took these treats around to our neighbors and friends!:

Pictures from Kayleen from Christmas day at Grammies:

Little Buddy wearing his robe:

Lulu loves her new doll from Santa!:

 We went to a family party at Grandma's house and you guys looked so cute sitting at your own table with Ava:

Oh look! We can't leave the train table again when we went to Smith's to buy storage bins!:

New Year's Eve glow in the dark tubby time!

Phew! That was a lot of pictures!

Thanks for the great month. We had so much fun, even though we got sick with croup just in time for Christmas! We didn't let it get us down.

Love you all!

Mom