Christmas

What the kids got:

Abby: Santa gave her some My little Ponies, and "Dog grandma and grandpa" gave her a Fur Real cat toy!

Kole: Santa gave him a train, and "Grma and Grmpa Dog" gave him a remote control monster truck! Ammon got the same (only different) things as Kole.

Emma got baby toys from both Santa and Dog Grandparents.

The gift from "Jessica Grandparents" was a year long pass to the aquarium for the family (plus 2 guests so when family comes to visit we can take them).

And the gift from Roger and I was a year long pas to the zoo for the family (we  will be doing a fun additional thing each time we go, like: feeding giraffes, feeding the lorikeets, watching the sea lion show, etc)

Roger got his dream dog! A Newfoundland. He's always wanted that breed so he picked one out and named him Bear.

Here are some recent pics!

Santa Paws! Every year we put flour on the fireplace and then Santa steps in it and tracks footprints around (a tradition from Amy's childhood). Bear and Chance love to eat flour!

A boy and his dog!

Sweet pic! :)

Watching tv together at the top of the stairs.

Mr. Mom

I was just called to be the Primary Secretary and I went to a presidency meeting the other night. Roger was Mr. Mom for 3 hrs. Less than 1/3 of the time I'm left alone with the kids each day. The entire time I was gone Roger was texting me asking when I'd be home. When I got home he had ordered pizza because he was too busy taking care of the kids to cook dinner. The house was trashed and he was complaining to me about how hard it had been. I was only slightly laughing inside. A lot slightly. He got a nice taste of my daily life. It was awesome. I took over mom duties and the house was cleaned up and baby fed and asleep by an hour later. And Roger admitted he didn't quite know what being me was really like and that it's amazing I ever get meals cooked and the house clean.

We are all set for Christmas! We made our "gingerbread houses" (they are actually graham cracker Nativities)!

Emma and Chance have become the best of buds!

Poke! Poke!

 Come play ball with me Chance!!!!

Laundry

Well, it's all Roger's fault! He went on a TDY so naturally the "TDY/Deployment curse" hit our house while he was gone! The fatalities include; our washing machine, our windshield wiper, and our Christmas tree (although the tree died after he got home).

The tree is staying broken and leaned against our wall until the after Christmas sales hit. There's no way I'm buying a tree at full price!

The windshield wiper will hopefully get fixed before it rains again this weekend.

The washer, couldn't wait! We just got our new one delivered today and I already love it! It's huge!

What used to take me from sun up to sun down took less than half the time! Then Ammon went, "Oh mother dearest, I see that you are happy. Let me crap my pants right as we are in a rush to get out the door to pick up Abby, just to make your day complete. You're welcome!"

Here's some more recent pics:

Abby made a door mat for her bedroom. "No men in this room but only Daddy!"

Ammon got himself dressed to go play outside!

Abby got her school pictures! We should be getting them sent out to everyone soon, hopefully along with our late Christmas cards if we ever do those! Ha! 

Kole wanted a pic of him and his rabbit.

Program

Today was Abby's school Christmas program. Unfortunately, Roger is still gone so he missed it, but he asked me to take the camera and video it. Apparently, my husband doesn't realize how much work it takes to get 3 children aged 4 and under to sit through a hour long program of kids singing. Video tape it too? Yeah right! I got two not so great pictures on my phone. You're welcome, Roger.

Today is one of those days that I will look back and laugh at, or maybe even miss, someday.

We got Abby to school and came back to get us all ready for her program. And left the house over 30 minutes early (yes, it does take that much time to get from our home to pulling out of our driveway). When Roger is gone our dog, Chance goes into 'guard family mode' and will not allow us to leave his sight. Not without a fight anyway! The loading the car went like this:

Put Chance in kennel in garage (if left in the house he'd rip the place up in an attempt to get to us)

Put kids in car.

Put Chance back in kennel (he goes crazy and busts out of it with super dog strength)

Run to grab the garage door remote before he breaks out again.

Too slow.

Try dragging Chance back into garage (he is on a mission to get into the car with us).

Fail and get whole body drug through giant puddle (did I mention this is in a rainstorm?)

Have adrenaline kick in giving me the super strength needed to over power a dog that is bigger than me. 

Get him back into kennel and get the garage door closed.

Get in car and suddenly realize my clothes are drenched from body skiing through the giant puddle.

Try to open garage door to go change and start dog war again.

Garage door won't open.

All other doors are chain locked, so I'm locked out of the house.

Remember the side door to the garage isn't chain locked, but our gate is locked.

Try breaking into our backyard. Fail and decide to go in soaking clothes since I don't have time to break in and I don't want to let down Abby.

Got back in car and remembered if I smack the garage door remote on something it  makes it work sometimes. It worked.

Ran in (as Chance ran out) and changed.

Drug Chance back to kennel and got garage door closed and got back in car.

Turned on windshield  wipers to remember that one of them broke yesterday.

Made it to school, found last parking spot open and got kids into school.

Stood in line to sign into the office.

Realized I forgot my ID in the car (which they scan for a tag for my shirt so I can go in the school).

Ask the lady behind me in line who I had been chatting with if I could just run out to my car and grab my ID and leave my kids in line so I wouldn't have to drag them through the rain. She agreed and I ran to the car and got back in to find the principal just having people sign a sheet instead of scan IDs because the program was about to start and there wasn't time for everyone to scan IDs so I didn't even need mine.

Got in the cafeteria and sat down. Abby's class came in and we spent about 3 minutes waving trying to get her attention. She looked in our direction and smiled, so I figured she had seen us. The program started, she did well.

 Then about halfway through she stopped doing the actions to the songs and by the end she was in tears. After the program we went to the front where she was crying because she thought we hadn't come! Poor girl! If only she knew how hard I worked to get us there she would never doubt my 

attendance to any performance again!

Dates!

While Roger has been gone this week and Abby got the week off of school because of a snow storm that came through (which was actually like an average Utah winter day) I decided it would be a good week for some one on one time with each of the kids! When Abby first went to school everyone told me I'd stop missing her being home and I'd end up enjoying it. Nope. Still don't. As strange as it may seem to some, I actually like my kids. Haha! That's kind of why we keep having them! Crazy, right!?

Monday night was Abby's night! We stayed up until 11pm (way past her 7pm bedtime!) cuddling and watching girl movies, snacking, doing hair and nails, and talking! Then she got to have a "sleep over" on Roger's side of the bed!

Emma joined in our picture when she was up for an hour or so.

Tuesday was Kole's night! He picked the movie 'The Polar Express', popcorn, and hot chocolate! We went to bed around 9 when the movie finished. We were both tired! He (and his "polar express" train) got to sleep on daddy's side of the bed, too!

Wednesday night we were busy at the church with the Achievement Days Christmas party (I'm the Achievement Days leader), so it was no ones night. Emma kind of gets me to herself every night, so I guess that was kind of her night.

Thursday night was Ammon's night! Filled with his choice of shows and books!

And Friday night is Roger's night because he will be getting home that night! Yay!
We had a lot of fun this week, even though daddy was gone. Although Kole told me he wishes Roger would be gone for another 150 days so that he could have lots of date nights. Whoops! Sorry daddy, didn't mean to make the kids wish a deployment on you!

When I was checking on the kids before I went to bed, I found Kole like this. So cute!

Abby is able to use our wi-fi on Roger's old iPhone to text other iPhones. So for her math practice we were texting to make it more fun. She was doing good with the ones I gave her, so I gave her one that was a little harder. I guess that made it less fun. Haha! I think her last comment was funny! "Let's stop."

Christmas Time!

We spent Thanksgiving  at our home here in Oklahoma with Roger's brother who is based 2 hours away. Now we are just busy getting ready for Christmas. It's a extra busy month with Roger having to be gone for a bit of the month  for training over at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City and Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas.
Here's some new pictures!

Abby loves boots. She's modeling her new ones with our "cow dog".

Daddy was trying out Emma's new cloth diaper! Actually he made fun of Mommy for using the wrong color of thread because she couldn't find her white thread, so mommy diapered him! Serves the pooh head right!

Emma ate a large sized safety pin that had fallen off a table and got rushed to the ER. Everyone at the hospital was quite impressed such a little system could get that pin down! We were nervous and the doc thought she might need surgery but she got it out on her own!

Amy got some fall pictures of the kids in our backyard.

We took a family trip to a children's museum up in Tulsa. It had tubes and a slide all made out of packing tape. Roger thought it was TOTALLY AWESOME and joined the kids in playing in them.

Abby lost her second tooth. She was pillow fighting with daddy and suddenly told mommy, "daddy hit me in the mouth and it came right out! Thank you for punching me daddy!!"

Emma pulls herself up to things now, has been for a few weeks!

We drove through the garden of lights here in Muskogee.

The morning fog here is pretty.

We are doing construction on the kids' bathroom. The tile was in rough shape so we knew we would need to redo the floor, so while Roger was gone to Tinker Amy ripped up the tile.