Fins, Bones, and Fries

During the cold winter months, it's nice to have fun indoor places to go play! Here's some recent pics from visits to the aquarium and the dinosaur museum:

Logan, Lincoln, Isaac, and Emilie in front of the huge spiders and cockroaches.
Try as I might, I couldn't get a pic of everyone (and I mostly mean Isaac!) to all smile at the same time, but this is the best one I could get of the cute boys.
The kids just loved playing in the sand and water at the dino museum and ended up playing there for almost a half hour! Isaac probably would have stayed longer if I would have let him!Isaac, Michaela, and Emilie digging for dino bones. I think Emilie was trying to see how many brushes she could use at once! Michaela and Emmie climbing up a dinosaur. What cute little cousins!Emilie, evidently, is not a fan of the big dinosaur bones. When we came to one that especially large, she would get this face:Few things in life can compare with our new-found joy of having an In-n-Out burger just a few miles away from our house.The kids don't mind too much either.

Growing up!

Isaac worked pretty hard yesterday wiggling his loose tooth. His ham and cheese sandwich at lunch helped, as well as constantly moving it back and forth with his finger. We thought for sure that it would come out last night, but when he went to bed it was still hanging on.
Then this morning, he kept working on it and it was all detached except for one little corner, so we tried the dental floss and door knob routine, but it kept slipping off his tooth. So I just wrapped the floss around his tooth and gave it a little tug, and the tooth came right out! As you can imagine, he is pretty darn excited to have his tooth come out! We made him a little tooth pillow so the tooth fairy knows where to find it when she comes tonight. I'm so proud of my little man, he's just getting so big!

To celebrate, we're going to take him to see the Tooth Fairy movie this afternoon.

I'm with Coco

I am so upset that tonight is Conan's last Tonight Show! I think NBC is making a HUGE mistake of letting him go and giving Leno back his old show that HE ALREADY RETIRED FROM. What is going to happen in another year when he decides to retire again? I think the whole reason Conan's show was getting lower ratings was because Leno was turning people off with his show that had no place in prime time. I just hope that another network picks him up soon. While it won't matter, I will NOT be watching Leno's show ever again, it just makes me too mad.

One thing to cross off my to-do list

I cleaned out my freezer this morning, yeah! I don't think I had really cleaned it out since we moved in just over a year ago! Found some scary things in there, but I found some things I had forgotten about which is great! I have the top shelf for breads/breakfast foods, next one for Jarom's lunches (and ice cream), one for veggies, and the bottom two for meat. I wonder how long I can keep it looking nice like that?

Snow bunnies

Last year, we got a LOT of snow, but this season hasn't been too bad. At least we've gotten enough for the kids to play in! One afternoon, Jarom took the kids outside and built a little snowman. Moments after the pictures were taken, though, Isaac knocked him over, so it's a good thing Jarom got at least one shot in!Across the street from us is a great sledding hill, so we took the kids over there for a little sledding. Neither Isaac nor Emilie had been sledding before, so it was fun to see their reactions. Emilie was more interested in eating the snow. I think this has to be my new favorite picture of her.Isaac didn't want to stop sledding, and he had to go all by himself. Coming back up the hill was a little tricky, but he went up and down a dozen times and thought it was the greatest thing ever.

Bowling

Our big Christmas splurge was a Wii, so we spent a lot of time between Christmas and New Years getting to know our new family entertainment device. And the game of choice? Bowling, of course. And who would be our family champ? None other than Isaac! He is so good, it took Jarom a while before he could finally beat him!
Since Isaac loves playing Wii bowling so much, we thought it would be fun on New Years day to take him real bowling. We invited Ammon to come along too and made an afternoon of it.
Final score Ammon won, but we all had a great time! I would have taken more pictures, but my camera battery died! I guess I took too many pics at Christmas!

Christmas Recap

When life gets busy, blogging takes a back seat. But since I have some free time tonight, I thought I'd share a few pics and memories from our Christmas festivities.

The day before Christmas Eve, my poor sister's family came down with strep throats and ear infections and were not doing well, so instead of having our annual Sugden party at her house as planned, we changed the venue to our house instead. So all Christmas Eve day, Jarom and I were frantically racing around the house getting everything cleaned and vacuumed and ready for the big party! Luckily we were able to pull everything together and had a great evening! We missed the Eldredge clan, and the Georgia Sugdens, but at least I was able to visit with Michele and a few of her well girls before the party, and Jarom was able to get a Skype call with going with John and Katie and sweet little Hannah so we could talk with them and open a few presents together.Emilie made a new best friend during dinner. She talked incessantly with her cousin Ben. She shared her food with him and thought he was just wonderful.More cute cousins eating dinner.Without the Eldredge kids, we had more roles to fill in our Nativity reading, so the adults helped out too. Chris helped me work on my up, down, up, POSE! Ok, so I'm not ready for my photo shoot yet, but it was still fun. Chris has his look down to a science. In the morning, the kids had so much fun opening their presents. Isaac could hardly contain his excitement and woke up at 6:30am ready to go, but we made him stay in bed (our bed) until Emilie woke up a half hour later. He loves his new scooter and his trucks, transformers, and Wii games. Emilie caught on pretty quickly to the presents and had fun slooooowly opening her gifts. She got an Elmo, some doll equipment (stroller, crib, etc), and a doggie and a doll. She made sure to take Elmo on lots and lots of stroller rides!Around lunch time, Grandma and Grandpa Hatch and Ammon came over to visit for a little bit and brought some presents for everyone. Isaac loves his new Rocky truck so much, it's pretty much his new best friend.The next day we headed out to Stansbury Park for the Hatch family Christmas party. We got there a little early and I was able to help Cindi in the kitchen a little bit. I always love cooking with her and miss not being able to do that more often. We had a very delicious dinner then exchanged gifts. Ammon got this fabulous little number from Jarom (that I made!): I guess anyone who is a Firefly fan will recognize this as the Jayne hat. I'm rather clueless, but it was a fun challenge to make it. I learned how to knit using circular needles and double needles, so that was cool. Ammon liked it and Emilie thought he looked pretty darn handsome. She stuck by his side most of the day, I think she has a new favorite uncle!

Here's the Hatch crew, minus Michael who had to leave before we snatched this pic:All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas holiday!