Tickle Me Jon-Jon

Jon-Jon rediscovered the Ticke Me Elmo yesterday.

Living Nativity

For Family Home Evening this week, we drove to Alpine for the Living Nativity. There is a miniature town of Bethlehem with people dressed up as townspeople and lots of animals. Then there is an actual nativity with Joseph, Mary and the infant Christ. Of course, we chuckled a minute when Joseph stepped aside to take a call on his I-Phone.

Afterwards we stopped to carol at Grandma and Grandpa Ferrin's house, then home for hot chocolate and donuts.

A Visit to the Man in the Red Suit

Our ward Christmas party was December 3rd, which was also SEP (otherwise known as parent-teacher conferences) night for Eric. I took the four children to the party and we left the talent show portion early so that we could take Daddy the traditional hamburger and fries. Unfortunately, we got the times mixed up so that I missed getting to SEPs. *sigh*

Adam's new bed

In November, we decided that it was time for Jon to get off of a mattress on the floor and into a real bed. Because the three boys share a bedroom, we decided to get a junior loft bed for Adam, and Jon could sleep on the bottom of the bunk beds. I spent three hours setting up the bed. It looked great. Adam LOVES his new bed.





I came downstairs to discover that the boys had shredding all of the styrofoam packing materials. It was everywhere, all over the walls and the ceiling and about an inch deep in the family room floor. It was in every room of the house. I vacuumed for 3 hours to get it clean up. The picture of Jon is after the first time over the basement. The crazy thing is that 3 weeks later, I am still cleaning up little pieces of styrofoam. I found some behind the Love Sac this morning.

Princess Tea Party Fundraiser

Emma and Abi attended at Princess Tea Party fundraiser in November. They had a glorious time painting splarkly fingernails, playing games and meeting REAL Disney Princesses.

More Halloween Pix

Frantic Catch Up

Here are the kids. Braden got to dress up as Geronimo Stilton for the school Book Fair. It took most of Braden's shift to convince Adam to get his picture taken with the rest of the kids.






We didn't get our pumpkins carved until Halloween this year. Braden had two costumes - a soccer player and a secret service agent. Emma also had two costumes - a greek goddess and a movie star.

Boys Sick Day

Since Braden and Jon both woke up with hacking coughs, I kept them home today. However, even though they are coughing, they are acting like their normal exuberant selves, so we had to come up with some educational entertainment ideas.

We got out the "Big Loader" and the even bigger "BIG, BIG, Loader."

Today's News

News from the medical front is that Braden has a broken thumb. He was playing football with his cousin at the family party on Saturday and caught the ball wrong. X-Rays today show two breaks. The good news is that the bone is stable, and the breaks didn't occur on the growth plates. He even avoided a cast by promising to be really cautious with the splint instead. I think that the doctor preferred not to cast it since it's on his dominate hand (right). This the first broken bone for the Ferrin family. Adam has the first (and second) set of stitches, and Jon gets the award for the scariest emergency surgery with the mouth surgery of last year. I'm just so glad to have great medical care and adequate insurance to cover all of these incidences.

Pictures from Fall Break

Fall Break

Our fall break has been great. We started Wednesday night by eating hamburgers on the family room floor while watching movies. We watched "Dora and the Crystal Castle," "Bedtime Stories," and Eric and I watched "17 Again."

Thursday, we went to the the Springville Museum of Art. We ate out and then went to the BYU Museum of Art to view the Victorian collection. We met up with Grandma and Grandpa Ferrin and Grandma walked us around the HFAC (Harris Fine Arts Center) and showed us where she goes to class. Thursday night, we actually sat down and watched TV. I know, crazy behavior for us. We watched BYU women's soccer and the World Champion Gymnastic competition. (The only sport options for the pathetic people who don't have cable or satellite.)

Today, we cleaned the van. After that, we drove to Lehi and had lunch at Downtown Philly. YUMMMY! The best part of lunch was when about 10 members of the Lehi Fire Department came into get lunch. Adam had just had a unit on public safety, so policemen and firemen are his current favorites. After lunch, I took Adam over to meet the firemen. They all introduced themselves, and then one fireman looked at Adam and said, "Would you like to go and see our big red firetruck." Adam about died of excitement. I was so glad to have brought my camera.

After lunch, we went to Thanksgiving Point to the Scarecrow Festival. It was so much fun. They had several inflatables, and mini haunted house, lots of activities and entertainment. I took some great pictures. I will post them soon. One standout moment at the Scarecrow Festival occurred while we were waiting in line to ride the "Spider Speedway." The ride operator told us that the ride was temporarily closed because there was a helicopter that was going to be landing in the field right next to us. We decided to come back to that ride later. Four hours later, we were in line for the "Spider Speedway" when we were told that the ride was temporarily closing for the helicopter to take off and another helicopter to land. The kids couldn't believe our luck.

We came home, and then Eric and I went to the temple. YEAH! We stopped by the Art City Trolley on the way home for a delicious "Sweet Sensations Salad" (a ginormous salad made of romaine lettuce, fresh blueberries, apple slices, craisins, gorgonzola cheese, chicken chunks and covered with a vermont maple syrup dressing. YUMMY!) Now I am blogging it all so that I don't forget.

Tomorrow we will clean house, detail Eric's car and go to the October Ferrin Family Party. We have discovered that we though we didn't go anywhere for our Fall break, we could still have a great time at home.

The Gentleman

We were at the BYU bookstore today. As we were getting ready to leave, Adam noticed that there was a lady coming into the store, so he ran over and pressed the handicap button which makes both sets of doors open. He was very proud of himself and ran back saying. "Mommy, I was a good boy. I opened the door for that little girl." The little girl laughed because she was 6 feet tall. She mentioned that it had been a long time since anyone had called her little.

Weekend Away

Eric had a CUWP (Central Utah Writing Project)conference at Daniel's Summit Lodge in Heber Valley this weekend. I got to come along. There is nothing like sleep in, eating breakfast in bed, and watching a long BBC adaptation all morning, without children interfering.

Check out this site to see where I stayed.

Daniel's Summit Lodge

Updates on our life

Adam gets glasses.



Emma and her friend at the 4th grade Dinosaur Museum.




Puzzles are Jon's new favorite thing. He'll work on this Care Bear puzzle for hours at a time.



Lastly, pictures from the two soccer stars. Braden had a great season. He scored a couple of goals and assisted on several of the others. Anytime Adam kicked the ball was a success. He even dribbled the ball down the field once, until it was taken away, by an impatient member of his own team. *sigh*

Sunday Mayhem

Well, Eric and I have been down today with food poisoning. Yuck.. I am on the rebound, but Eric is still really sick. I was impressed with the children. Braden and Emma stepped up and took care of the household. They made all the meals, bathed and dressed the little boys, and then at 12:45 asked if they could go to church. So Eric and I took shifts with the little boys so that they could go to church. Adam "babysat" mommy and daddy during church. He brought us drinks and pillows. How cute.

We are really blessed with great children.

Primary Program and news

The Primary Program went fantastic today. I feel sad that I did miss seeing two of the 5 year old boys army crawl off the stand to the bathroom. Funny stuff.

While in the bathtub this morning, Jon announced that he needed to go to the potty. I told him that was OK and to go and sit on his little potty. He said "no way. I use the big potty." So he lifted the lid and stood there and peed. How amazing. Of course, since I was in the middle of braiding Emma's hair, I couldn't teach him the fine art of directing the stream. I'm excited that he's finally showing interest but a little less excited about cleaning up the spray that shot around the bathroom like one of those wacky sprinkler heads.

Saturday

Today has been crazy. Eric's cell phone woke us up at 5:55 this morning, so we decided to get up and go to Ream's for the early morning meat sale. Braden was already up playing Wii (messed up kid) so Eric and I went and got some great deals. They had boneless skinless chicken breasts for $1.39, and packages of string cheese for 99 cents (we discovered that the string cheese packages had coupons for $1 off more string cheese, so we went back on bought more for free). We found pears for 33 cents a pounds so we bought about 50 pounds to can.

After the store, we got home and cleaned house. Then we loaded up and went to two soccer games. Braden's team got handed their first loss, but it wasn't due to the other team. His team only had 9 members show up and the other team had a full team plus 4 to rotate in. It's a big difference to play when you have to play the whole game and you are two players short. I think it was a lesson to Braden. He learned that when you sign up for a sport, the whole team depends on you to participate. Adam's team won 4-2, but in the 4th quarter, he forgot how to play and spend the next ten minutes wondering around the field, even though he was a forward. His team only had one extra player, so sitting him out wasn't an option.

After soccer, we quickly drove to the church for the Primary Program Practice and Pizza Party. The kids did great and I'm looking forward to the program tomorrow. We had pizza for all of the kids after the practice. While serving the pizza, I got my first bee sting on my arm. I actually think it was a yellow jacket bite, but it still hurt like crazy. We put some toothpaste on it quickly and the swelling/hive went down immediately, but the pain still lingers and it's tender to touch. Toothpaste on bee stings works wonders. We always carry a tube around for emergencies.

Now we are sitting at home playing video games and watching movies since the lawnmower engine was smoking really badly. We didn't want to mow the lawn anyway.

Last night was haircut night. Neil and LeAnn came over and after cutting the hair of all 5 boys, we sat down and watched "Uncorked." This is a really quirky British movie that had us laughing one minute and shaking our head in disbelief the next. Unfortunately, it didn't release to DVD in the US, so LeAnn has one of the few copies available.

First Day of Kindergarten

OK.. you can tell that I haven't uploaded pictures from my camera in a while. This is a picture of Adam's first day of Kindergarten. Kindergarten with Adam doesn't seem so intense because he did Transitional Kindergarten last year. Transitional Kindergarten is for children with special needs. They study the kindergarten curriculum but in very small class with a couple of aides to help. He had a great year last year, and now is in the top of his class academically. Of course, he's a year behind other kids his age, but he has a summer birthday, so it's not that big a difference. He is really making progress, so I'm hoping that most of the developmental delay was maturity. We also just found out that he needs glasses, so hopefully glasses will also help the situation.

Funny Video & Gross Story and other miscellaneous stuff

I took this video of Emma and Josh (see post on Saturday Swimming) and Emma thought it was so fun that she had him dump her about 10 more times. The one time I didn't have the camera on was the funniest. Josh tossed Emma into the tube and she rocked back too far and flipped over backwards. Funny stuff. Stef and Josh, thanks so much for inviting us. We had a great time. We'll have to do it again next summer!

The gross story is about Jon. (I know, you aren't surprised.) He came up to me the other day and said, "Look Mom, a spider." He had a dead spider in his hand. Then before I could react, he popped it in his mouth. "Yuck!" he exclaimed and spat it out. *sigh* I could have told him that.

OK, I am waiting for the video to download, so I will add some of the other items. Braden and Adam are both playing soccer. Braden's team is undefeated so far. Adam's team has tied most of their games, and only lost one, but it was a doozy (0-8).

Braden has decided to join the 6th grade orchestra. He's really excited about it, and I'm not so sure how excited we will be after a year of practicing. *puts in the ear plugs* When I studied music education at Boise State, I had to take a String Techniques class and I had to learn to play the violin. That was scary and I was a grown-up.

Saturday Swimming

A couple of Saturdays ago, we went to Herriman to spend the afternoon with Stef, Josh and the kids. We had a great time. Emma proved herself to be our water daredevil.

Arrow of Light

Congrats to Braden for earning the Arrow of Light, the highest award in cub scouting. We are so proud of you! He earned 19 of the twenty activity badges as well.

First Day of School - Wednesday

Off we go to the first day of school!

This is the Place Heritage Park

We took the family to Salt Lake yesterday for a day at the Pioneer Village at This is the Place Heritage Park. It was a really fun time. People in costume "live" there and you can go to all the different buildings and learn what it was like to be a pioneer. The kids wanted to know when we could go back again.