I have 8 kids!

 Okay, maybe it was just for two days.  My sister and her husband went on a little trip and the kids spent most of their time with their Grandmas.  I had them from Thursday to late, late on Friday night.  It was so much fun!!!  I took the kids over to Thanksgiving Point Farm on Friday morning.  All eight, by myself.  A little crazy, I know, but they were so well behaved.  Really.  I got some funny looks and a few comments, "Are they all yours?"  Even for Utah, eight is a big number.  Here we are heading for some ice cream: 

 The babies: 

 Seven of the eight, Kate did not want me to put her down.  These are all the cousins (in order of age) on my side of the family.  (Until December anyway.  My brother Chris and his wife Elise are expecting a little girl!) 

 Zack and Meg.  These are the two oldest.  They are two months apart to the day.  Eight years old. 

 Derek and Davis.  Davis is 361 days older than Derek.  Five and six. 

 Austin and Jace.  They are three weeks apart.  Almost four!

 Sydney and Kate.  Neither of them wanted their picture taken, obviously.  Sydney is 16 months and Kate is ten months. 

We picked raspberries, watched movies, ate lots of junk food, played outside, went on walks, rode bikes, made a pinata for Austin's birthday and who knows what else.  It was exhausting, but so much for to have all the kids together laughing and playing.  I think I need a nap now. 

Jace and Austin plan a day at Lagoon

I would have loved to hear this conversation.  They have become such good buddies over the summer.

The Batman Party

I wish I could take credit for this, but sadly, I can not. But since my sister NEVER blogs any more (she says it is not a priority....what?!?) she said I could put these on my blog because I know a few of you (ahem...Brooke and Liz) would like to know that she is even still alive. So Tara threw a Batman birthday party for her son, Davis' 4th birthday. It was darling....great games and chocolate rice krispie treats with frosting in bat shapes. She even made capes for all the kids with garbage sacks...very cute. We walked in to see this on the wall:

And this:
And this:
The Batman theme from the old tv show was playing as you entered the Bat Cave, it was awesome. And she made these cute decorations with things she had around the house....spending no money on them whatsoever. Is she awesome or what? Definitely.

Funny Conversation

Yesterday, I watched my sister's kiddoes while she went to the hospital to hang out with our brother James. It was a bit crazy, I admit with two five-year-olds, a three-year-old, a two-year-old and two one-year-olds. And yes, by the time I was putting my own sweet children to bed, I had had it and just walked downstairs, told Matt, I was done for the day, and went to bed. (At 8:30.) To Matt's credit, he put the kids to bed and CLEANED THE KITCHEN AND FAMILY ROOM while I slept. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Great hubby.
Anyway, amidst the craziness yesterday, was this little tidbit:

I was juggling two babies on my hips and I heard screaming from the yard. I look out the window and see Zack crying. I run out and Meg (Tara's five year old) tells me that Derek hit Zack with a plastic hoe. I supervise all of this from the deck and holler back to Zack to take the hoe away from Derek and bring it to me. Zack says, "No! He will hit me again!" So I ask Meg to take it away. Derek by this time, is hiding under the fort portion of the swing set. Ever the obedient neice, Meg climbs under the fort and start pulling the hoe away from Derek. However, Derek is freakishly strong for a two-year-old and puts up a good fight. Meg can not get it away from him. Finally, Zack steps in to help (it was a tug of war) and he and Meg together began to wrestle Derek for the hoe. Meanwhile, both babies are crying, Zack and Meg are yelling at Derek to give them the shovel and Davis (the three-year-old), who is standing on the sidelines, starts yelling, "Everyone, CALM DOWN! JUST CALM DOWN!" Finally the hoe-down was won by Meg and Zack, I hid the hoe, and I hear Meg say to Zack, "Boy that Derek sure was mean to hit you!" And Zack's immediate reply," Don't call my brother mean! He is not mean! Don't you say that again!"

**Little brother James had surgery again today. He had developed and obstruction that was blocking his digestion ( a result of his previous surgery) and part of his bowel had herniated in three places. They also took out his appendix (just for good measure. I guess with this type of surgery, the appendix is easily irritated and sometimes has to be removed later, so they took it out now so they don't have to open him up again.) He is doing great! He still has a pick line, and an NG tube and so can not eat or drink anything yet, but the doc said 7-10 days in the hospital and he will be good as new. He was in quite a bit of pain when he came out of the anesthisia, but after an epidural, is feeling really good. (note: I nearly passed out during the epidural and had to run out of the room to avoid embarassment. Because running out of the room in the middle of his procedure was not embarassing at all. :)). He is awake and talking and has lots of great people looking out for him. He is really tough. Only downside is that he will not be able to go to Uruguay with my parents for Christmas. Although we are really excited he gets to be with us!***

The Haunted Sleepover

This weekend for General Conference, we had visitors! Well, they really only wanted to be able to spend time with Jamison and my mom at the hospital, so we got to be the hotel. Tara and Brad and their kids and my brother David from USU. It was a par-tay. We enjoyed conference (it was amazing, all things I needed to hear!) and then while the menfolk headed to the Priesthood session, we had a HAUNTED SLEEPOVER. Zack has been wanting to do this forever. He saw a Brady Bunch episode where the brothers scared the girls at a sleepover and he thought it was hilarious! So since Tara's kids would be here, we decided to do it. The rules that Tara and I made were that we could only spend $10 on candy and any supplies and that everything else had to be things we found around the house. So, first for dinner, we lit candles in a jack o' lantern and had potato soup that had plastic spiders floating in it. They also ate bones ( looooong skinny breadsticks). Then, for dessert they had little skull cups with marshmellow eyeballs floating in rootbeer. We found all kinds of black clothes for them to wear and they each made a mask and a treat bag. Then, Tara took them in my room and entertained them for a few minutes while I set up a kid tent and hung streamers inside and turned out all the lights in the house except for a lantern in the tent. We then took them on a spooky adventure, although Derek freaked out and turned on some lights. We ended up at the tent and while I read a spooky story, Tara made noises outside the tent. Later on, my dad called and told them a ghost story on speaker phone. Then we let them trick or treat to all the door upstairs. They had so much fun, and so did Tara and I! Finally, we had a spooky visitor, all dressed in white with eyeballs hanging all over....the spooky visitor threw candy at them and made very weird noises. (Yes, it was Grandma taking a hospital break.) It was pretty fun and the picture in my header is the four oldest kids in the costumes they found and masks they made. It was so much fun!!

Austin and Jace

Awww, how cute, they like eachother!
Austin begins to roll over Jace, Jace takes a bite out of Austin.
Austin has had enough, Jace tries to bring him back.
Austin comes back with a vengeance.
Now everyone is happy!

Weekend at Home

I know that I don't technically live (or have ever lived more than a year at a time) in South Weber, but I still refer to it as home. Probably because Matt's family lives there, my family sometimes lives there and feel like I know EVERYONE who lives there. I love South Weber. Anywho, the Friday after Valentine's Day, I went up to Layton to help Tara pack up and move. I didn't really help that much, but we still had fun. My Grandma and Grandpa Boothe came over to Tara's new house to help out a bit and I decided to get a picture of them and six of their nine (soon to be eleven! ) great grandkids.
I put Austin and Jace on the bed while Tara and I were doing last minute cleaning and they just had a great time together, swapping stories and pinching eachother. (Okay, only Austin was pinching, sorry Jace.) But I just thought they were too cute!! And yes, Austin's head is pretty much double the size of Jace's.
After cleaning, etc., all day we spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa Sorensen's house, which the boys always love. The next morning we woke up early and then headed over to help Tara and Brad finish moving. They got all setteled and we headed home. It is always so fun to see family and friends.

Little Polls

Since my sister Tara doesn't have a computer at the moment and most of my blog readers are friends of hers as well, I thought I would post a picture of her adorable kids. This was taken this past Christmas. Meg is almost five and loves everything princessy and girly. She is so sweet and loves to help her mom. Davis just turned three and is so cute and loves to tell jokes. He loves Lion King and Peter Pan and chasing and wrestling all his cousins. Baby Jace is three months old (I think he was only two weeks old in this picture) and smiles and laughs and really, really loves his mom. (His eyes look a little funky in the picture because one eye is slightly open and the other was closesd.) They are such great kids and we feel pretty lucky that they only live about an hour away so we get to see them quite a lot.

Austin and Jace

Yes! We had another cousin born this fall. My sister Tara had a baby boy named Jace. Jace was due mid-November, but decided to show up October 26. Why does everyone have waaay shorter pregnancies than me? So not fair. This is a picture of newborn Jace and 3 week old Austin at the hospital with their great Grandma and Grandpa Boothe.
And then in December at Austin's blessing. (Austin is the one with the cheeks!) Little Jace looks just like his dad, Brad. We now have three Sorensen cousins and three Peterson cousins. We loooove our cousins!

Austin and Myles...BFF?

So cute! Here is Austin and his cutie patootie cousin Myles. Myles' mom and I were due three weeks apart (I was due first) but little Myles just couldn't wait to get here and was born at 27 weeks gestation. By the time Austin came around Myles was already 2 1/2 months old! This first picture was taken last week , they are growing up so fast. The second picture was Halloween, Myles had just come home from the hospital. Myles was about three months and Austin was four weeks. Mikel and I had bought these matching costumes back in July and couldn't wait to snap a picture. The boys were very excited about their costumes, obviously. Thankfully, Myles is doing great and we feel pretty lucky to finally have a cousin who only lives 15 minutes away!