Sweet Owen

This is the sweetest kid on the planet. He loves to give hugs and kisses. He'll come up to you for no reason at all and say, "I love you." Or rather "I wuv you." He'll also sometimes say, out of the blue, "_____ wuvs me." Usually the blank is filled in with Camberley, the little 9 year old friend of Emily's whom he adores. Occasionally he'll say one of our names. Here he is with Emily, Camberley and Logan.

Here, he's making me kiss his guy. Look at his pursed lips too.

Sweet Owen

Epcot

The Hair is a bit shorter now.

I love Ian's look here.

I'd just made Emily stand a little closer for a picture together and this is the look he gave.

Fun with Play Dough

Emily got a ton of play dough for Christmas. We spent a good hour or two furnishing and decorating a little play dough livingroom, dining room scene. It was really fun.

I made:
the couch, end tables, lamps, plants, books, phone, fruit bowl, kitchen chairs and dog pillow.
Emily made:
the bowl of popcorn, the girl on the couch and the bookcase.
Ian made:
the blue chair, the kitchen table, the flat screen tv and the coffee table, complete with a granite top.
Justin made:
the dog, dog food and water and dishes, the globe and the rocker boyfriend in the blue chair complete with his own flying v electric guitar.
Our friend, Logan, dropped by and added:
the funny penquin, Orange guy in the corner and worm.
We decide these are the weird, HUGE stuffed animals they won at a carnival. A clean lens would probably be helpful in getting non blurry pictures, eh?
Urrr.

A Florida Christmas

It's interesting being the grown up on Christmas morning. I mean, when you're a kid, you're soooo excited about opening and getting presents. When you're the mom, you're still excited. Just about different things...the Kids opening the presents you got them.

I used to wonder about Dad. He didn't really care about getting presents and would even hold one unopened forever...just not really interested in opening it cuz he was so excited to watch us open ours. I find myself doing the same thing now. Emmy was worried about me most. Making sure I had one to open and giving me turns. And what did I do. Held them in my lap for a while unopened...too preoccupied with watching the kids open theirs.

When we were first married, Christmas was fun, but you still missed home and yeah, it was a bit boring. It's a lot of fun now, though, with 5 kids so excited they wake up at 6am, sneak around upstairs for a while, waiting for it to be late enough to come down stairs, then sitting "quietly" on the couch waiting the youngest to wake up.

Listening to them took me staight back to Adam waking up super early and coming into my room. I remember reading to him from a Narnia book to pass the time once.

We had a really fun Christmas! Santa brought some scooters and it was nice enough weather (upper 70's) to ride them all over the place. We visited friends and rode their new bikes around and had a lot of fun.

Showing Mom the new clone trooper,
but he can't take his eyes off of it himself...it's THAT cool!

Santa came!
After opening this (Buzz Lightyear with vehicles) he wasn't interested in any other present.
Well, until he opened another one and it was cool too. He learned pretty quickly.

Puting together Garrett's scooter.

Celebrated Christmas British style with our friends with yummy British food and Crackers (not the food kind) which popped open when pulled and out flew a prize, a joke and a lovely little crown. :)

What a fun Florida Christmas!

Disney World (Hollywood Studios) -Where else? -DUH!

Backlot Tour

Owen knows what he wants. (Well, until he sees the Indiana Jones guys.)

Ian actually letting me take a picture of me and him.
Look. My arm is actually AROUND his shoulders. He usually won't let me do this.
(And he doesn't really look entirely comfortable with it now, does he?)


Owen's pretty enthralled with the Indiana Jones stunt show.

Comparing their Indiana Jones guys...an early Christmas/Last day at Disney Present.

A Study of Milk Jugs

Here are the Milk Jugs they sell in Florida. When we bought the first (on left) at Walmart, we thought it looked so weird.

THEN we went to Costco and they had THESE (on the right)! We laughed pretty hard when we saw these beauties. They were even hard to pour out of...the spout is too large and it's easy to spill.

Well, I can't even remember the regular Milk Jugs anymore! We always buy the Walmart ones now...they ARE different from the ones back in Utah and CA, right?

Flying the Kite

Ian and his friend Jacob put together (with a bit of help from mom) this kite Daniel's Dad gave him for his birthday a couple years ago.

They had a lot of fun trying to put it together, though reading directions was not really their style. I had to pull in the reigns a bit and make them fix a couple of things.
It took a bit of work to get it up...
including me running around bare foot, untangling the string a few times, and pulling it down off the roof, but we got it.
Fun. And beautiful weather.

Disney Quest

We got to go to Disney Quest which is a big arcade/virtual game place for free.
It was pretty fun. Here the kids played a virtual comic book game with light sabers.

Then here's the picture of me and my lovely Poster of
"Ms. Skinner, Queen of the Beasts and the Devil Dogs."
I just had to take a picture of me with it. I told the kids that I posed for the picture so they named it after me. They got a pretty good likeness, don't you think?

Emily's new Dress

I made this!!!

Emily was seriously lacking any cute dresses and she's going to soon be too old to want to wear things I want her to wear. So I made her this dress. She picked out the fabric. Isn't she pretty?
The skirt is a full circle skirt, and if we hadn't been on our way to church (everyone else was in the car) I would have taken a picture of her twirling in it.

Emily's Background Choice

Emily was looking at some of our friends' blogs and wanted to know why their blogs were so cute and ours was so...boring. :)

So even though I'm more of a plain jane in the background area, I humored her. She DID pick a cute one. (Better not let the boys see!)

The Space Shuttle Launch

We got to be on the Beach in Florida for the last night launch of the space shuttle. It was awesome. I'll try to post my video later....I was so nervous and excited to see it. We had a lot of fun. The beach was dark, but still fun. Warm and breezy.

Cocoa Beach

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Owen's girlfriend, Camberly. :) He LOVES her!!! She has made him like Emily a lot more too. Now he'll cuddle with Emily at home. It's nice.

This was Soooo exciting! We had the Merrill's grandmother on the phone so she let us know when to countdown from 10, so we all yelled,
"10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,ONE!"
That was awesome. Ian said it felt like the New Year.

We were able to go with some great friends here who know their way around all the traffic. They took us to Cocoa Beach which was great. While not the closest, it was very non crowded and we bypassed most of the traffic. The kids all had a great time with each other....happily ignoring my mean, bossy "don't kick sand!" "Don't get wet!!!" "Blah, blah, blah..."
I can be a bit annoying I think, but it just seems like it's always my kids who get sand in their eyes (only Garrett did tonight though...) or whine about wet clothes on the ride home (only Garrett again, this time.) Wish I could go back and chill out. Ah, well. Kid's aren't any worse off, since they completely ignored everything I bossed about. ;)