January 2013

After we got back from our big Christmas vacation, we still had about a week before the older kids went back to school, so it was nice for them to be able to sit around and relax at home.

Here’s Henry teaching himself how to draw dinosaurs:


And the younger four having a little tea party:


And Cynthia pretending to be Rachel’s baby:


And Rachel in curlers doing some late-night Harry Potter reading in my bed:

And all six of them hanging out together and playing with some of Tristan’s legos:

Then school started again, and Henry and Cindy were back on their own, doing their favorite things:
Puzzles (I bought some bins for Henry’s new Star Wars puzzles, and he loved doing all of them at a time and then setting them up in a line next to their bins):               


Legos:


Just like with his puzzles, Henry loves to put together each of his sets, and line them all up in a row:

Working out together:                                                    


Cindy made sure to always stay hydrated by exercising with her sippy cup full of applesauce in her mouth:


And just standing around being cute:                 


I don’t know why, but when my kids are little and don’t know any better I love tucking in their shirts and then pulling their pants up way high so they are nice and tidy.  I just think it looks so funny.  My poor kids.


Cynthia was starting to suspect that something was wrong with her jammies, maybe because I couldn’t stop laughing at her.


Giving her best cheesy double-chinned smile:


Which she may or may not have inherited from her mama:


Also in January – basketball games for Tristan and Oliver.


And a science project for Oliver:                                  


And the end of reading lessons for Henry.  He is now the 5th of my kids to finish this reading lesson book, and I couldn’t believe how quickly he got through all the lessons.  None of my kids have ever been quite that motivated.


Part of that motivation came from the “when you’re done with reading lessons” prize we had decided on – he had suggested that maybe we could buy him an enormous lego set, and I had suggested that since we already have a room full of legos, maybe Tristan would let Henry take apart and rebuild one of his big sets.  Henry thought this was the best idea in the world.  He turned on his laser focus, and seriously finished the last 10 lessons in less than 3 days.  With my other kids sometimes those long lessons at the end with big stories would take up to 45 minutes each, but not with Henry – he blew through the last 5 lessons all in one morning.

I told him he would have to wait until Tristan got home from school that day to pick out a lego set, and he almost couldn’t handle the waiting.  He kept asking what time Tristan was going to get home, and when I told him it would be a little bit after he got up from his nap, he said, “okay, Mom, well I think I'm tired – I’ll just go take my nap right now!” (It was 9:30 in the morning).                              


Tristan finally got home and Henry got right to work.  I don’t think he moved from that spot until he was done figuring out how to build that thing:                     


And now he reads anything he can get his hands on, all the time.  I love it!


The end.

2012 Christmas Vacation (Part 3) (Last One)

Part 1, Part 2
The morning after Christmas we woke up early and started the drive down to Daniel’s sister’s house in Arizona for the next part of our trip. 

It was funny, because it had been over a year since we had seen Gretchen and her family (we stayed there the year before for Thanksgiving), but as soon as we walked in the door the kids all started up right where they left off – the older kids started coloring together immediately, and Henry walked straight over to the puzzle cupboard and pulled out that puzzle box on the counter. 


Before he could finish his puzzle, though, he became acquainted with his new best friend for life.  Charles is about 6 months younger than Henry, and I guess they were too young the year before to really connect, but they were absolutely inseparable this time around. 


Meanwhile, Cindy was making friends with the dog:


And Tristan and Adalynn (11) got in a few minutes at the piano before it was time for bed. 


The next morning Henry started out with some more puzzle time:


And the other kids went outside to enjoy the awesome Arizona weather:


Oliver loved playing football with Beck (6):


Henry and Charlie doing legos together:


These two just made me so happy whenever I saw them together.  I really wanted to bring Charlie home with us, but I don’t think Gretchen would have let him go.


More piano time.  I love Adalynn.  It’s nice, because she’s right in between Tristan and Oliver’s age, so she gets along great with them, but because she’s a girl cousin, Rachel and Lizza also love hanging out with her.


Later that day Daniel’s youngest sister Audra came down from Utah with her husband and 3 kids, so there were even more cousins to play with. 


Plus Aunt Audra is pretty fun to play football with, too:


Gretchen has a great big table in her kitchen, perfect for puzzles, legos, and eating (sometimes all at the same time):                                                               


And there is also a perfect big room upstairs where all the older cousins slept:


Here we are on Friday at the Phoenix Zoo, looking at all the turtles and fish under the bridge: 


It was a great way to spend the day with all the kids:                                      


And this is what the back row of our car looked like when we got back to Gretchen’s house (in case you’re worried about Cynthia’s carseat safety, I had already unbuckled her when I looked over and saw the other two asleep and decided to take a picture):


After the zoo we drove across town to look at the house that Adam and Gretchen are building.  Their lot is in the middle of a pecan grove, and when we were done walking through the house and imagining how fun it’s going to be to come visit them again when it’s all finished, we hung out outside and the kids played catch and gathered up lots of pecans:

Charlie, we miss you!                                                              



That night Lizza tried to convince me that we need a dog by posing cutely with Dutch and showing me how happy he made her:                                                   


By this time it seemed like our trip was about over, but really we still had one of the most exciting things left.  On Saturday Daniel and I left with Tristan and Oliver to make the drive from Arizona back to Las Vegas to go to The Killers concert. 

Last year we had already had our Christmas trip all planned out when we started looking at the cities and dates of The Killers Battle Born tour and saw that the last show of the tour was scheduled for the 29th in Vegas.  We knew we were already going to be in Arizona (which is a lot closer than Texas), and the four of us decided that all we wanted for Christmas was to be able to go to that concert, and that it would definitely be worth making the 5-hour drive there, and then another 5 hours to come right back the next morning.

The four younger kids happily stayed in Arizona to play with cousins (thank you, Gretchen and Audra for taking care of them).  After driving for so long on this trip with all the kids, it was fun to have a little mini-road trip with just the older boys.  We listened to all the Killers albums on the way.  When we got there, we checked into our hotel, and then drove downtown to The Cosmopolitan, where the concert was going to be that night.   


We were still pretty early, and didn’t want to stand in line for 4 hours, so we walked down the Strip to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner.  While we were waiting for our table we went over to the Nike store to see the NFL uniform display.  Tristan and Oliver had fun trying to see how many players they knew just by their numbers.  I was surprised at how many they were able to name.  But of course I wasn’t surprised that Daniel knew them all.


Me and the boys in front of the fountain show at the Bellagio on our walk back to The Cosmopolitan.  I’m the one with my hood on and my eyes closed (it was cold).


Tristan and Oliver inside, waiting for the concert to start.  What this picture doesn’t show is how long we waited.  We got in line around 7:00 (the show was supposed to start at 8:00) and waited an hour for them to open the doors.  Then once we got inside we were happy because we had general admission tickets (so no seats), and we got up pretty close to the front.  But then there were almost 3 more hours of waiting!  It was crazy, and a little bit miserable.  During that time there were two opening bands who played, but they were both awful.  People were laughing, it was so bad.  There’s a chance the first band had decent music, but nobody could hear it, because they had their bass settings up way too loud – it was seriously vibrating the whole floor.  People in the audience was yelling at them to fix their bass, but I guess they couldn’t hear, either. 


Anyway, Tristan and Oliver both got pretty tired.  They were good sports, but it was hard for them to stand up that long when it was so late.  Sometimes we let them sit down on the ground in front of us to rest. Eventually the second opening band finished, and then we waited some more while people up on stage worked out a bunch of equipment issues.                                            
 

Finally, at almost 11:00, Brandon and the band walked out on stage.  It was immediately awesome, and somehow all of the waiting became worth it.  It was seriously such a great concert – we had the best time. 


We had to do a little bit of this sometimes to help the boys see the stage better (there were also big screens up on the sides for them to watch when they couldn’t see over peoples’ heads):


The concert got over really late and then we went back to the hotel to sleep for the rest of the night.  The next morning we got up, quickly threw our bags in the car (it’s so much easier packing up a hotel room when you don’t have the whole family), and grabbed some Dunkin Donuts for breakfast.  We drove back to Phoenix without stopping for lunch, and ended up back at Gretchen’s house around 3:00 in the afternoon.  The kids were happy to see us and excited to hear all about the concert.

That night all the cousins put on a play of “The Boy With a Drum”, which Adalynn directed.  They had been working on it over the last few days without any help from the adults, and I was impressed with how professional they were.


The next day was New Year’s Eve.  The kids started out with an early morning game of Bang.


And then there was more football and playing around in the backyard.  The weather was really great the whole time we were there, which was nice, because the kids were able to spend a lot of time outside.  .


Henry and Charlie, doing their thing:


Later that morning we drove to the mountains near Gretchen’s house to go on a little hike.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been to Arizona in the summer, but if we keep going in the winter I could be convinced that it’s a great place to live.

Everyone starting up the trail:                            


Cindy wanted to hike with a stick “like a big girl.”  That didn’t last very long.


Hiking buddies:                                              


Daniel showing Cynthia the dangers of touching cactus (his method was to have her touch it):


Heading up the mountain:                                 


Taking a little break:


Cynthia being a mountain climber:                     


At the top:


There were gorgeous views all around:                                     


Six little Motts.  You can see the temple in the background over Henry’s left shoulder. 


The cousins (Audra’s family had left to go back to Utah earlier that morning, so it was just our family and Gretchen’s.  I think this is the only picture I have that shows Gretchen brand new little baby Eden):


The trail was pretty steep going back down, and it was funny to see the kids’ different approaches to getting down the mountain.  Lizza basically ran down the whole way, slipping and sliding all over the place.  Rachel was super nervous and either scooted slowly on her bottom or held onto Adalynn’s hand for dear life.


And Henry had his own method:

I love his “no, I’m fine” at the end.  That’s what he says whenever he gets hurt – he’d rather just shake it off and get on with things.

After the hike we went to the Queen Creek Olive Mill for lunch.  It’s an actual functioning olive tree grove and mill, and they had really great food, too.

Tired boys:


Waiting for lunch:


Back at Gretchen’s house, Cindy doing a little bit of reading time:


The kids having their fancy New Year’s Eve dinner of pancakes with peaches and whipped cream (the grown-ups went out to eat later):


Plus some orange juice mixed with 7-up for a really fancy drink (haha – sisters, does that mixture remind you of every single New Year’s Eve when we were little?  Although now that I think of it, maybe sometimes Dad splurged on Koalas or New York Seltzers)


Then on New Year’s Eve we decided to add a little drama to the end of our vacation by having Daniel and Adam take all the kids to the park to play football, and then on the last tie-breaking play of the game, Tristan breaking his collarbone.  Poor kid.  He was in so much pain.  Daniel was pretty sure it was broken, but we didn’t want to take him to the emergency room on New Year’s Eve, especially since they don’t really do anything for broken collarbones except put a sling on them.  We gave him some Ibuprofen and wrapped him up with a homemade ace-bandage sling.                                                 


Then to make matters worse, a few hours later, he was staying up playing games with us and he started throwing up all of a sudden.  We thought maybe it was either from the Ibuprofen or just the general trauma of breaking his collarbone, but he ended up throwing up all through the night (which was awful, because he couldn’t even sit up or move by himself, so he needed a lot of help).  We got to bed around 3:00am, and we were supposed to wake up at 5:30 to finish packing and leave to drive back to Texas.  About 10 minutes before my alarm rang, I woke up and realized I was going to be sick, too.  So somehow both Tristan and I got some sort of stomach bug, just coincidentally right after he broke his collarbone. 

It was an exciting 15 hour drive back to Texas, but we survived.  I took Tristan in to the doctor the next day where he got it x-rayed and then put in a sling.

I’m just glad that if Tristan was going to get a broken bone at some point on our trip, he was considerate enough to do it on the very last day.  The rest of our trip was awesome, and we’re already planning our next one.