The Days of 2014 Dwindle Down to a Precious Few

Before I knew it November had blown in. We enjoyed the month with only a few snow storms. The boys continued to do well in school and the girls and I got to hang out at home, enjoying our time together in the mornings.

Evelyn seems to learn a new skill every day. We were downstairs when she decided she was going up. I really need to teach her to go down so I don't have to be as worried.

For several weeks we had limited hot water. It would quickly turn to ice cold and made bathing 4 kids rather difficult. I tried boiling some big pots of water to help fill up the tub each night but that was a lot of work. Then one day, we didn't have hot water at all. We informed our landlords. It took them a day until they could come out and look at it. The next day they came to try and fix it. The next day it still wasn't working so they had to come back and try again. By day 4 of no showers or baths we were feeling a bit crusty. We had no clean dishes or clothes and Evelyn was so sticky I had to give her more than a sponge bath. Filling up the bathtub with pan after pan of boiling water seemed like a pain that would take forever. Thankfully she's still small enough I was able to bathe her in the sink ... next to a large pile of dirty dishes. And in case you were wondering, yes, our hot water was restored and we've been happily warm ever since.

I love that our kids have all had crazy hair

Breahna has for sure had the most hair though. I met up with a friend who was a beautician to have her style and cut Breahna's hair. I wish I would have taken a before picture. This girl had a lot of crazy hair.
I love her new cut and style! She looks so adorable.
And then I tried to get a serious picture of her but she couldn't stop being a goof ... which made the pictures even better:

Evelyn turned 9 months old.
She's 17 lbs and 27 1/2" tall
She has given up worm crawling in favor of the more traditional method. She pulls herself up standing and gets around faster than I can chase her. She still has a toothless grin but wants to try and eat everything anyway. She is a very happy, social girl who really loves attention and music. She is wanting to start walking while holding on to our hands.

waiting at church for classes to start:

Jake's work requires their employees to take the week of Thanksgiving off. We jumped at the chance to get out of town for several days. We headed South to visit family in Utah.
Our first stop was mom and dad's cabin. We figured it would be snow covered and freezing since it's in the mountains. I gathered together snowboots, snow gaitors, warm coats gloves, hats, and any cold weather gear we could think of. We brought our sleds and we were all ready to enjoy being snowed it. In the 5 days we were there the coldest it got was about 45 degrees. There wasn't really any snow. So I packed all that gear for no reason.
We still enjoyed spending time together. Jake helped his dad work on some of the house projects. The boys were eager to also help.
We also played lots of games. Us adults spent most nights, after kids were in bed, facing off over a high stakes game of hand and foot.
Alexander discovered sorry and thought it was the greatest thing ever and wanted everyone to play it as many times as he could convince us.

We really enjoyed some quiet time where there were no worldly distractions and the only thing to do was was to hang out together and entertain each other.

it's official. Mom's have the hardest but best job in the world.

This is a 6 year old boy who really loves his best friend Phil

We didn't get to go snowmobiling as I had anticipated but we did get to go for lots of walks and of course, play on the four-wheelers:

the kids loved helping grandma and grandpa decorate the cabin and get it all ready for Christmas:

There were more afternoon four-wheeling rides. This is how you wear a helmet when it's cold:

Evelyn got to go for her first ride. She didn't complain so I guess she didn't mind it.

Eventually it was time to say goodbye to the cabin and head to my parents where we were going to meet with my family around a table laden with too much food.

Kaleb really liked the red jello with apple and the rolls of course are always a big hit with everyone.

We fixed Evelyn a plate with a bit of everything. She loved it all but thought thee Jello was particularly fantastic. She ate a lot of food. (Evelyn woke up with a couple teeth poking through!)

Breahna really enjoyed the chocolate cream pie:

As soon as Jake tries to relax or sit down the kids think that must mean they should go jump on him.
I love that he doesn't mind one bit:

my mom then pulled out BINGO and a basket of prizes:

A highlight of our trip was a surprise for the kids. We've been holding this secret for about 2 months and were excited to reveal our secret:

we get to ride on the train!

Our conductor:

The elves Peppermint and Patty passed out special chocolate chip cookies that Mrs. Clause had made just for us that very morning:
(Mrs. Clause later came around to give us all her special recipe)

then the chef passed around hot chocolate:

After 90 minutes we made it to the North Pole and met Santa Clause. The conductor stopped to offer Santa a ride.

115 year old train ... what a fantastic use for it! Amazing how good of condition it was still in:

Santa and his elves passed out special bells from his reindeer:

We sang a lot of Christmas songs during our journey. As we were singing 'Feliz Navidad'  I realized Alexander was singing, "falice smelly dog" I tried to correct him and he was then singing "falice snotty dog" Close enough buddy, close enough.

We all had a lot of fun riding the Heber Creeper. It helped me get in the Christmas mood. I'm excited to get a tree and to start decorating our house.
I'm excited for all the fun waiting for us in December.