It's New Years Eve!

 Happy New Year everyone!!! Here is how our night has gone!

Playing on our Leap Pad Explorer.... 

...and playing Monopoly Electronic Banking by the fire... 

...and watching Star Wars movies in our big snuggly comforter....

 

 

...and zonking out because it was a long day at work...(no, I didn't ask permission to post this) :P

And as for me...drinking my last egg nog of the year in my favorite Borders.com mug!

 

Happy New Year! I'm so excited to see what 2013 has in store for us!

Goings On

 What have you been doing since Christmas? I can tell you what we've been doing...playing! Well, except poor Travee...he's been having to work, which makes me feel guilty, a bit...but still...isn't playing with my kids part of my job?

I know this is all blurry...but...if you look carefully, you can see that the entire table is covered in Lego's!  

This is what Spencer got. An Electronic Banking Monopoly. I have played this with him. I made a rule that the game must end in 2 hours. He beats me soundly every time.

 

 Puzzles...puzzles...puzzles...this has consumed a lot of my days. She refuses to put one together unless I help. Funny thing is, she wants to do 99% of it herself, but won't proceed without my presence. I'm not complaining, mind you. I actually went to Dollartree and bought her four more puzzles the other day.

I really love her little Lalaloopsy table...so does she. Here she is playing with her Play dough. She has colored pictures and played with her little dolls here too. Best...purchase...ever!

So, everyone knows I am totally stupid when it comes to fashion. I honestly don't really care all that much. For one reason...I'm too fat to really look good in the styles of today, and also, we are too poor to go out and buy the fancy stuff. BUT...my mom, she tries to get me fancy stuff. This picture was taken to send to my mom to ask her if I was wearing the shirt and scarf thingy correctly. haha. I thought at first it was a little sweater to wear over the shirt, but when I took it apart, I was like, what the heck do I do with this big giant circle thingy? Good thing I follow Mrs. Olson's blog and have seen her wear the same type thing. :-)

Lastly for the day, I signed up to do a 12 week fitness challenge. My childhood bestie who lives in Utah posted it and invited me to join. I sooo need to get my big old behind in better shape and shed some poundage, so I accepted the challenge. It started today...not a day too late! To get myself all pumped up for the challenge (and for the coming year), I broke out one of my favorite motivational books. Larry Winget tells it like it is. I like his no nonsense approach. So...here's to a successful next 12 weeks and to better health!

Christmas 2012

Christmas was wonderful!

Christmas Eve opening of one gift. 

I was tired. Travis thought I was cute. I think he's blind.

 

Christmas morning. They had been up for a while, but still looked so tired.

Connor loved everything he got, which included a DS game, Angry Bird comforter, and Mario plush toys. 

Elizabeth squealed at everything she got. She was the best thing the entire day. Just watching her sheer joy was all I needed. She got Lalaloopsy stuff (including a little table), puzzles, puzzles, and more puzzles, pink legos, and a Dora house. Spoiled, I tell ya.

Spencer got a Monopoly Electronic Banking, the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, and a few games for his Nintendo 3DS. Oh, and a gigantic pack of markers. 

Joseph=Lego's. That pretty much describes what he got. A LOT of Lego sets. He was, as he said..in total Heavan! 

 

It was a wonderful and truly blessed day. Travis had to work in the middle of the day for a few hours, but was home in time for a ham and potato Christmas dinner. 

Jingle Mouse Day 26..the Final Day

Our last day with Jingle Mouse. He will be leaving us until next year. He left us a going away gift. It's a lovely letter thanking our family with gift cards to Subway and a visa gift card so that our family can go out together and create fun family memories. I enjoyed doing this little project. I'm going to print all of the pictures of Jingle Mouse and make it in to a little book for the kids.

We left cookies out for Santa and even a hot cinnamon roll. Connor was very concerned about leaving a treat out for Rudolph too. (cause he feels bad that the reindeer weren't nice to Rudolph. Such a soft hearted boy)

 

Here are pictures of the final product before I go to bed. It only took me until 1am to get it all done!
So, Merry Christmas to everyone! We are so grateful for this holiday to remember the Savior and to show more kindness to each other. I'm looking forward to a new year!

Jingle Mouse Day 25

Hiding in the tree this Christmas Eve.

Jingle Mouse Day 24

Mmmm...Jingle Mouse brought some yummy kisses to share! It looks like he might have sampled a couple himself! (who can blame him?)

Also, I sewed more little bags. This time they are for my sweet little senior nursery class. Each child got their own fabric and I ironed on the first initial of their name. Inside they each got a box of crayons, some Hershey kisses, and a giant home made Rice Krispy treat with a note thanking them for a fun year. I hope they like them!

Jingle Mouse Day 23

Jingle Mouse got out the dry erase markers and wrote a reminder to the family on the bathroom mirror...3 days til Christmas! (so be good!)

Oh, and Spencer just informed me that he is gathering evidence....he knows that I ordered his Monopoly game...that is supposed to be delivered from Santa. sigh. My kids are too smart and Spencer is far too logical.

Jingle Mouse Day 22 and the End of the World

(small disclaimer...this is supposed to be Friday's post, but, I'm too pooped to wait up until after midnight to post, just to get the date right...so, please pretend this was posted on 12/21/12. Thank you)

It's the end of the world and we know it, and I feel fine....I have that song totally stuck in my head...thanks to the Mayans and their prediction that it is the end of the world. I REALLY hope it's not because I've worked really hard to make this an awesome Christmas for the kids this year...and... I'm not ready to meet my maker quite yet. I have some serious work to do on myself before that can take place. So...I'm hoping that tomorrow is not the end.

It seems that our kids are getting more and more complex as they get older. They are all definitely more moody! We are seeing more and more interesting traits come out with Spencer. His OCD has gotten more pronounced, and I'm pretty sure that if we ever decided to put a label on his behaviors, we would hear Aspergers. Joseph is super hormonal and his temper flies. And Connor is suddenly very overly sensitive to everything. An example for Connor...last night he watched "The Tigger Movie" for the first time. He said it brought tears to his eyes. Today he was depressed and in tears all day because Tigger never found his real family. As you can see in the picture below, Connor spent all day trying to make our Tigger happy and feel a part of our family. So, even though my children drive me absolute bonkers sometimes, I'm proud of their tender hearts and I love them with all mine.

In Jingle Mouse news...it looks like he found a friend to play Battleship with today!

Jingle Mouse Day 21 and Facebook

Jingle Mouse was playing with the world globe! There's a note on top that says Santa lives here...and a note pointing to Washington that says, In 5 days, Santa will be here! Five days! Wahoo!

In Facebook news...i deactivated my account for a while. I needed a break, and there are so many strange people that I waste my time and let get to me. So, for a while, I will take that break and focus on my family.

Oops...in other news...

I published before finishing and I'm too lazy to go back and edit...blah blah blah. Haha
In other news...Connor decided to be like Ebenezer Scrooge and have bed curtains...so Elizabeth helped him hang them and he now sleeps in his new Scrooge bed.

Also, Joseph went to joint Mutual on Tuesday. It was his first white elephant party. We didn't have anything to send, so we made a chocoholic emergency kit. Joseph said the girls liked it, and a girl took it home. He got a totally cool Harry Potter game. He had lots of fun.

Jingle Mouse Day 20

Jingle Mouse decided to help get the wood burning stove all ready for a fire! Out here, where it is always cold and always very humid/wet...people burn fires in their homes year round. We haven't spent the money on getting big loads of wood yet, but are seriously thinking of getting some soon, cause power in an old, leaky house is expensive!

Jingle Mouse Day 19

Tonight Jingle Mouse brought a treat..and a tiny note that reminds the children to be nice and be good. 

And here is a note for me. Travis was trying out a cool app on his iPad called Paper. This is what he wrote to try it out. I'm a dork and hurried and took a picture of his iPad. It looks cool and i like the words. 

Jingle Mouse Day 18 and Youth

Jingle Mouse is swinging on the Christmas lights tonight! Hmmm....wonder what was in that egg nog?!

Church today was pretty cool. Although, I was totally bummed a bit too. See, I spent all Saturday night cutting out a bajillion little pieces of nativity scenes. My plan was that each child in my class would color and assemble their own nativity scene...then take them home and tell the Christmas story to their families. It was going to be awesome! But...i had to go to a special meeting for teachers and parents of the youth, so I didn't get to do my lesson properly and my children went home with a less than cool bag of paper pictures.

Anyway...I'm super thankful to Sister Honor for taking my class last minute and staying twice as long as we thought it would be!

As far as the cool parts...first off...i still get a thrill watching my oldest son pass the Sacrament. I can't watch him too much because if he catches my eye he gets distracted and waves at me. But, still, I'm so super proud of him. Secondly...the Priests sang. All four of them. It was so beautiful! Those young men really brought a great spirit to the meeting. Thirdly...(is that a word?) The meeting that Travis and I went to for two hours was awesome. Bishop Goodworth led the discussion...talk about an amazingly wonderful man. (and he's funny too!) The Church has a new way of teaching the youth. I'm really excited about it because I think that it's going to help Joseph grow and learn more about the Gospel. We will be able to be part of the process. It looks to be a very good change.

Jingle Mouse Day 17

Jingle Mouse appears to love egg nog as much as we do! He's in the fridge, wearing a little scarf, drinking egg nog out of Elizabeth's tiny tea cup.

***side note concerning Lizbet...today she ate an entire personal frozen pizza and half the plate of goodies that the neighbors brought over! I do here so declare Little Miss...CURED! Woot woot!

Jingle Mouse Day 16

The past few days our house has seen more than its fair share of grumpy kids...and teasing kids...and hormonal 12 year olds...SO...Jingle had no choice but to report to Santa about all this negativity. Santa was very disappointed and sent a note back with Jingle Mouse for the kids to read. It basically says to please find your Christmas spirit, dont forget the true meaning of Christmas, and be kind to each other. We will see if it has an impact or not.

Jingle Mouse Day 15

Oh, Jingle, Jingle, Jingle. Shame shame. Haha! I saw this idea on one of the many Elf on a shelf idea pages. I know it will make the kids giggle.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures!!!

Today I took pictures of the kids for Christmas cards and also for school pictures. (cause I never got around to doing those) We started out with a little sun, but it very quickly turned nasty on us. Since I had started, I refused to let some dark clouds and a little rain stop us. It takes a lot of work to get these kids to cooperate, so once we were on a roll, I went until we were done. The kids were troopers and I'm very proud of them!

I have been fighting with Blogger all evening, trying to get the pictures to line up and be evenly space etc., but I'll be darned if they will go where I want them to. So...I apologize for the slightly haphazard way they are posted. Luckily the kids are all so cute that I'm sure nobody will notice. ;-)

The Nelson kids 2012!

I will have to do a side by side comparison of last years and this years picture.

Joseph- 12 years old



How did my child get so old??

So proud of the young man he is becoming.



Spencer- 10 years old



It started to rain and got rain on Spencer's glasses...he was a trooper!

Of course Spencer had to wear a tie.

Connor- 8 years old



Connor requested this hair style...I usually leave some on the forehead,
but, this is more like Daddy's



I love the tree stump in our front yard!

I told her to smile pretty, so she growled at me! haha!

Elizabeth- 3 years old

Here she said, "I show my teef."

She's learning how to pose!

 

 

I just LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this picture! She's such a ham!

 

 

One other thing...I wanted to throw these in. I sewed these little bags for my brother's family. We have their names. Each bag is filled with toys and candy and goodies. I made my kids each these little bags and they love using them to hold Lego's and Elizabeth puts her lipsticks in hers. Something different and fun.