Winter Boredom Busters

So currently we have a weather advisory telling us that it is dangerously cold outside, with winds blowing like crazy and it's been snowing on and off all day. Basically we aren't going anywhere if we don't have to. So with all this at home time, what do you do? If you're Leah, you dress up all day long. Yes it is wonder woman to the rescue from winter blues! She had a friend bring her a bag of dress up clothes yesterday and she' been having fun ever since. I guess it's a good thing it's too cold for her to go outside like this.

We recently got the Wii and Wii Fit, and have found it to be a lot of fun. Brynn is preparing for her ski jump, check out that form. Shea has her own board to stand to participate in the activities.

Abby and Brynn on a mandatory after dinner jog.

Brynn's 7

Brynn turned 7 last week. She is a lot of fun to have in our home. She is always kind and helpful and likes to help others. She is doing great in first grade and chose to bring in chocolate chip cookies for her birthday treat. She also chose to have a chocolate cake for her birthday. We love you Brynn! A birthday phone call while Shea eats her cake.
It doesn't take much to make her happy!

Mammoth Cave

Over our winter break we went on a short family vacation to see Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. We loaded up our car Wednesday morning and started out on the 7 hour drive down there. On our way we passed through Indianapolis and had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants. The Old Spaghetti Factory. Shea is happy to be out of the car and had fun looking at the Christmas tree in the lobby.
Mmm...You can't beat pasta and ice cream.

Enjoying the sights of downtown Indianapolis.
Once we finished eating we continued the drive to Cave City, Kentucky. I know all of you wished you could have spent New Year's Eve there! The kids had fun being able to go swimming and checking out the hotel room.

The next morning, after our fabulous free breakfast, we headed out to the National Park. It was a quick 20 minute drive to the Visitors Center where we picked up our tour tickets to see the caves. We went on the New Entrance tour which was about 2 hours long. It started out with a bus ride to take you to the entrance of the cave.

Shea had to be independant and sit by herself and didn't want anyone touching her.

Here we are in the cave. To begin the tour you have to go down a lot of stairs. The cave was incredible. There were these big open areas, narrow areas where you can look over the stair railings and see far, far below. (It made me a little nervous how far the drop was) But it was totally worth the trip.

The girls all did a great job. Leah took it nice and slow going down the stairs and mentioned everytime she felt a drop of water on her.

Some of the neat formations we got to see. They say it takes about 100 years for a stalagtyte to grow about an inch.

Mammoth Caves is the longest cave system in the world having over 300 miles of caves. It was really neat to go see.

We had to refuel with a picnic lunch after our tour.

We had a fun trip it was nice to go and do something different. Hopefully the kids will remember it. I can see it now...Remember when mom and dad took us to mammoth caves and made us go on that really long hike down all those stairs and we could have fallen and died, and then they turned out all the lights and it was completely dark and I couldn't see anything because we were so far below ground that no light got that far. Ahhh, sweet childhood memories!

Christmas Morning

On Christmas Morning the girls have what they call "Christmas cereal" which is usually something totally unhealthy like Crunchberries. Leah has been looking forward to having her Christmas cereal for days.

Brynn's excited about her giant sized chocolate bar

Leah got her pony.

Shea quickly took ownership of the pony.

Leah learning from her mistakes...Keep your presents out of reach or someone else will inherit them.

No dog, but Grandma and Grandpa did send her an MP3 player.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

We had a fun Christmas Eve, the girls were so excited for Christmas. While we are far away from family we try to keep to the traditional Christmas Eve program...the nativity, talent performances, laying out the stockings, and leaving Santa treats.This year Brynn left a booklet of questions for Santa to answer. There were 14 questions all together. Some of my personal favorites were "How do you get to all the houses in the world?" "How many elves do you have?" "Can I see one of your reindeer?" and "Can I be one of your elves?" Santa did take the time to answer all her questions.

Abby was a shepard. The top of Abby's list this year was a dog. (It was on the top of her list last year too.) Poor Abby, Santa left no dog.

Leah's list was great. She wanted a pony (we are talking about a real horse here), she also wanted a unicorn and a real magical wand that way she could just use her wand and her room would be clean.

Christmas anticipation!

Last month was a crazy one as any December is...I finally feel like I have time to post on the happenings of our family. I received a new calling towards the end of November, I'm now the Primary President in our ward, apparently the Primary puts on a Nativity pagent for the Ward Christmas Party each year. So here was our attempt at putting that on. It really wasn't too bad all the costumes are made and the script has been written, you just have to organize it. Leah on stage.
Abby as one of the Heavenly Hosts.

Brynn was a donkey

Leah was one of the sheep.

I guess the best part about the Ward Christmas party is eating jello and desserts for dinner. Our table did have a tableclothe on to begin with, Shea just kept lifting it up and knocking everyone's drinks over. We decided to ditch the tablecloth.

The Bennets

For those of you who don't know, I love Jane Austen books. The picture above is from the PBS version of Pride & Prejudice (If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it). Anyways, the main character in the book Elizabeth Bennet comes from a family of 5 girls....So now that we are having our fifth daughter you can officially refer to us as the Bennets!

As a side note, not all of the Bennet daughters made wise choices, we sure hope our daughters do!