Christmas Memories...

I really can't believe that Christmas is over already! I haven't gotten all of my Christmas decorations up yet. Here are the pictures to document our CRAZY Christmas...

Sydnie with her graham cracker house. Grandma Strong puts these together for us every year.

Grady started eating his house before he even put frosting or candy on it.
Amelia takes decorating her house very seriously! It turned out practically perfect!

On Christmas Eve Amelia wasn't feeling very well so Jason took the kids to his parents house while I stayed home with her. After a couple of hours of just laying in bed on Christmas Eve Amelia was 'feeling better' or more like, 'feeling left out' so we decided to head to grandmas. When we got there I realized she really wasn't doing so well still and I called the doctors office. They advised us to head to the ER to have her checked out. After 'stealing' her blood and a cat scan the Dr. decided that her appendix had ruptured and she would need to have surgery. My Bro Nate and his sweet wife Airaka agreed to put our kids to bed and Amelia gave them strict orders that if they saw Santa they would tell him to come back later! The Surgeon came to the hospital from his Christmas party to check Amelia out. After an examination her told us he thought that she didn't have a ruptured appendix, but instead some big word I don't remember, that meant she had swollen lymph nodes that were causing her pain. To us it was a Christmas miracle! We were so happy that he had figured it out. The nurse told us the same thing had happened to her son, but they didn't figure it out until they had already done the surgery unnecessarily. We are so blessed! Our greatest Christmas gift was having everyone home together on Christmas morning!

We have a silly tradition of blowing up tons of balloons for Christmas morning. We couldn't disappoint the kids, so thanks to Nate and Airaka for staying at our house till after 2 AM making sure we were ready for Santa to come!

Grady's Santa stash...

It looks like Santa was a little cheap this year. I was worried that the kids would be disappointed, but the girls saw our gift to them in the family room downstairs before they came upstairs on Christmas morning. They were really excited about the wii and couldn't really focus on what Santa had brought.

Ainsley loves her new bike and tiny puppy. Sydnie was amazed that even though Ainsley didn't ask Santa for a bike, Santa new that she would love the bike.

Amelia would have been happy with just balloons and her necklace.

Grady with his Laser gun from Grandma and Grandpa.

Sydnie LOVES beads, and the pink Sparkly dress that Santa brought to her. I think Santa must have had a hard time finding a pink Sparkly dress that Syd could wear to church or school in the summer or winter. Good job Santa!

We hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas too!

When the dog bites, when the bee stings!

Our talented and adventurous Amelia Joined the school choir, and a couple of weeks ago we were able to go and watch her sing her heart out for us and all of the students parents. Her favorite song was a little tune from the Sound of Music, My favorite things. We had to borrow the movie from Grandma so we could sing it over and over and over.... They did a great job! Even Dad found an extra 30 minutes to spend with the family this Christmas season!
Grandma & Grandpa Strong came to watch also. Even active Ainsley sat still staring strait ahead at the kids the entire time, I wish Church could be that short and entertaining!

The next day Grady was playing quietly in the living room, (quiet is never a good sign in our home) suddenly the quiet ended and the screaming began. Grady was screaming and holding his foot forever before he finally was able to calm down and tell us that a bee had stung him. Usually Grady is pretty honest, but I wasn't going to fall for that lie! It's the middle of December! While looking around the house for evidence of his crime I was pleading with him to tell me the truth so I would know how to help his foot feel better. The only evidence I found was crawling across the living room floor, a WASP!

Ever since watching the Bee movie I have tried to be more kind to all insects (besides spiders) so we let this guilty bug go... outside in the snow. Grady had a red splotchy swollen foot for a few days, but he is all better now. I tried to help Grady remember a few of his favorite things but Grady hates me to sing to him, good thing Dad was home!

Birthday boy.... uh... MAN!!!

This is my HUNK a HUNK of Burnin' LOVE, at the ripe old age of 33. No longer can you pass for 26 my love! Thanks for sharing 10 of your 33 years with this lucky lady. I love your guts!

Hope you enjoyed your early morning meetings, teaching Elders quorum, eating leftover turkey sandwiches and opening your red rider BB gun. I'm so glad I could be a part of making all your dreams come true!

Two things keeping me stuck in this house...

SNOW! Wayyyyyy too much of it! Yesterday I decided if the school didn't call a snow day I would declare a Nielson family snow day. This morning I got the good mom guilt in the pit of my tummy. So I bundled them all up and ventured out into the great deep and got them all to school, only 7 minutes late! Getting around all of the stuck cars and hills to our house took me a half hour to get less than a mile home. Amelia will be out of school in an hour and a half, I better make this quick so I can get out on the road and be there on time to pick her up.
I really can't believe that I am posting this most disgusting picture of my normally kissable Ainsley. She is a good sport about getting her nose wiped, she hunts me down and hands me a tissue. This morning she was hunkered down on the heater vent and refused to come and get her nose wiped. I only want to share these boogers online with all of my loved ones, we're not going out to wipe them on shopping carts !

Halloween '09

This is the story of 3 sparkly ballerinas and 1 strong, RED power Ranger with church shoes and no mask, and their Halloween season 2009. For FHE we painted pumpkins in our PJs! We should have done it before bath time, but mom & dad got a little excited after 'fall back', we were hoping to get the kids in bed an hour earlier than normal.




Ainsley and I shared a pumpkin, she painted a little on the pumpkin and a lot on herself.

Sydnie insisted she be there for her Kindergarten Halloween program, even though she had been up all night with an ear infection. Sydnie memorized and recited her part perfectly, "T is for trick or treating, U is for ugly masks", all while in great pain and on lots of medicine.

Ballerina Syd in the Doctors office.

Halloween day was mostly spent at the church setting up for the ward Halloween party that Jason is in charge of. We set up lots of tables, hundreds of chairs, stretched miles of spider webs over the tables (which were later choked on by kids who got their cookies or forks stuck in them), cut out pumpkins and shapes to glue on the pumpkins to make paper jack o lanterns, baked a hundred cookies and stirred up a huge pot of yummy cheesy potato soup! In the spare moments here and there I was trying to prepare my YW lesson on drug abuse... yeah, really inspiring. I have to say that the kids were real troopers helping all day, but by the time we were ready to party they were done, D. O. N. E.

Ballerina Ainsley

Strong, RED power Ranger Grady with church shoes and no mask

Sparkly Ballerina Sydnie, when she asks if you saw the picture of her on Halloween please tell her, "YES, you did have lots of beautiful sparkles on your hair and face and clothes!" And, "NO, your mom didn't use the rest of the sparkles on Amelia."

Ballerina Amelia, who started the sparkly ballerina craze at our house this year.

Here are the thrilled little spooks right before trick or treating, 3 sparkly ballerinas and one strong RED power ranger with church shoes and no mask.

I do not LOVE HALLOWEEN!!!

One determined Daughter!

Amelia has begged and begged for her own room! I painted her room her favorite BRIGHT color, and bought her a dreamy bed, we painted huge flowers on the walls and they have the only carpet in the house that is less than 20 years old, what more could she want? Let's just say that Amelia has developed the talent of tidiness, and Syd lacks that talent!

Our problem is that all of the bedrooms are already taken. We only have the 'family walk in closet' left, the little unfinished storage room in the basement where I dump all of the clean laundry until I find time to fold it... which is almost never lately and it usually ends up being worn again before it ever gets folded and put away. I definitely can't give that room away! Besides, it is unfinished which means it is 'SCARY' and cold, and I recently noticed a small bullet hole in the window!

So, the answer was NO! Until I got really sick last week and Ainsley and I each took a three hour nap. I woke up to the sound of furniture being pushed on the cement floor. I called the kids upstairs and they told me they were moving Amelia's bed out. I informed those silly kids that there was no way her bed could fit through the door! End of discussion, back to lala land for me...

UNTIL, bedtime came along and I went to my 'family walk in closet' to find some clean Jammies for Ainsley. I found a bed! A bed with a headboard and side rails and a footboard and a mattress and box springs, and sheets and blankets and pillows and even the electric blanket to keep my girly warm in the cold, 'SCARY' room. I laughed till I cried. I was so proud of my 7, 5 & 3 year olds who had taken apart a bed and put it back together, the right way, with no tools. I have no idea how they did it or how they knew how to do it!? Yet, I was also Mad... I knew that I would be the one to take it apart and put it all back together and... THAT IS A LOT OF WORK!

AMELIA'S NEW HOME SWEET HOME

Amelia is back in her room again. She enjoyed 5 days of having her very own clean room. On the 6th night I came home from YW's to kiss the girls goodnight and they were both in Sydnie's bed, snug as two bugs in one little rug in a warm & safe room.

Pioneer Day, Nielson Style!

I am getting behind on my blogging again... I always depend on my

SUPER SISTER SARA She lets me steal her posts so I can keep up to date. This is a bit more about the time we spent with them last weekend.

http://danielolsonfamily.blogspot.com/2009/07/pioneer-day.html

We also took a little dip in the pool and ate some lunch with Jasons Fam.

Amelia in mid air, such a poser!

Syd never wants to get her ears wet, she uses the "I got tubes" excuse. She "got tubes" two and a half years ago... nice try!

Grady prefers dumping buckets of water on other people.
Ainsley likes the tub, but not the cold pool.

Dillon and Amelia kept running and jumping in the pool, I love this picture of their faces!

Here is a picture of a head first dive, only toes left!

Who wanted a dog?

Daisy has been hanging out at our house for a few weeks now, I guess you could say she is our dog. Of coarse as soon as we start to love her she gets a big huge owie on her foot, that I'm sure is going to come with a big huge vet bill. Ainsley is Daisys best friend (Ainsley is a really messy eater) and Daisy is Ainsleys best friend (Ainsley finally has someone smaller than her to pick on). It's a love/love relationship!

Welcome to our family Daisy, hope you feel better soon!

What in the...

On our morning walk my lil' Sis Brookie and I found a little creature, one and such as we have never before seen on a morning walk. How it got into the middle of the road no one will ever know. We tried to talk him into getting out of the road, but he didn't understand us. After returning from our walk and having heart healthy whole wheat pancakes with lots of butter and syrup we took the kids to find our new friend, hoping he wasn't smashed. In two hours he had traveled quite a distance! We took a minute for a quick photo with the kids, and then rescued him from the road and delivered him to a little swampy area at the local park, where I'm sure some naughty boys will fish him out and torture him till he dies.

Good luck in your new home our crawdad friend!

Do you hear and answer every childs prayer?

The last couple of months Grady is finally saying his own prayers. He's always been so shy about it, maybe he knew I would blog about his prayers to the entire world.

TONIGHT:

Dear Heavenwy Father.

'Nank you for this day.

Bwess that Daisy (that's the dog) can 'wun fast.

Bwess that I can catch gwasshoppers.

Amen.

I screwed it all up!

Oh well, I tried. I managed to almost catch up, just in the wrong order. Sydnies birthday was one month ago today, and Amelia's birthday was yesterday. Does anyone know how to fix that? I thought I had done that before, but now I can't figure it out.

That past two months have been absolutely crazy, and through most of it I kept my house clean, my yard looks great, but I completely dropped the blog. Thanks to all of you who have helped me get through the madness of it all.

First, Sara and my Mom who watched the kids several times so that I could prepare my talk for Stake conference, and to my MIL Pam for watching them while Jason and I spoke and for feeding us afterwards, there was no way we could eat before we were so nervous! To Laurie who I pawned off all my YW duties onto that week. Speaking in Public isn't something I do! So So SOOOO glad that event is over!

Thanks to all who watched my kids so that I could spend three days working with the youth at youth conference. As a stake we painted 2 houses, poured cement in 2 driveways and about a mile of sidewalks, installed a sprinkling system, yard work, yard work, yard work! Reroofed 3 homes, two of them even got new plywood, removed trees, laid sod, planted tons of flowers, cleaned & painted inside of homes, dug ditches and the list goes on! It was seriously a miracle that it all got done and that none of the youth died doing it! I'm grateful to those who helped watch my kids, including taking them to swimming lessons so that I could be a part of it, especially Jason who went to work at 2 am so that he could be home early to help out! NO Thanks to a certain bishopric member who put me on the program to speak in sacrament meeting about the whole experience without telling me about it!

We also added a member to the family... I guess. Today is the last day to take Daisy back to her owners if we decide she doesn't work for us... I'm probably going to take the entire day to decide. She is a great dog! She's little, cute, doesn't shed, doesn't yap, let's the kids torture her, she's potty trained and kennel trained. BUT she's a dog and that means more work no matter how you look at it. Grady is terrified of most all animals so we needed something to begin to break that fear, and all Amelia wanted for her birthday was a dog a new church dress and a bouncy ball. Even if she had to forget about the dress and the ball she would as long a she got a dog. There are still a few more hours for me to change my mind so I won't post any pictures of her till it is official.

Over the past 7 weeks we have had 4 parties, and there are no more on the calendar for now. We only have 1 reunion planned for July, could things actually be calming down?

I'll try to get back to blogging, but you all know I have never really been good at it! Thanks for still having faith in me and checking back every once in a while!

Sydnie turns FIVE!

Happy Day to our growing little princess.... SYDNIE JANE! Sydnie wanted a 'Pink Pony Party', I think only because she saw a cake that she LOVED in the cake book. Here's Syd and Richelle, cuties
Lilli and Syd, Lilli won the pin the tail on the pony game.
We also had a piniata, and painting pretty ponies. Here's Artist Amelia.
Here is the cake that inspired it all (or at least my pathetic version of it).

Sydnie wanted to have a corndog picnic, and we all thought that was a great Idea!

Even though Sydnie doesn't eat meat she LOVES corndogs. The other day Amelia teased Sydnie and told her that hotdogs were made out of meat! Silly Amelia! We had a little trouble getting her to eat corndogs for a while, but she's back to eating those meat free delights again.

After the picnic we took a hike to the grotto. Ainsley loves hanging out with her Dad in this backpack!

Syd crossing one of the many log bridges.

Jason making fun of her.

Happy Birthday Sydnie!

WE LOVE YOU!