We just got back from our fabulous trip to Disneyland. I love family vacations and the temporary escape from every day tasks. To get it out of the way, I would first like to make a list of the unpleasant occurrences on the trip:

* Brody telling me I have a big butt.

* A Disneyland employee ruining my first night there by being a jerk. I took it as a bad omen, but the workers were wonderful the rest of the time.

* For the SECOND time, while on a family vacation, Jeremy forgetting his belt and us having to go to Walmart to buy him a new one.

* Seeing some girls in a fist fight in the Walmart parking lot.

* Having twins and only ONE of them is too short to ride several rides.

* Six boys who couldn't go 24 hours without fighting if you paid them.

Seriously, it was a magical week. We all had such a great time. I rode Winnie the Pooh with Brody and Jace no less than 25 times. They got super scared on Space Mountain, but other than that they loved everything. Zack was a little more brave than they were, but he still got a little freaked out on some of the rides, which surprised me. He always acts so invincible. Corben, Trevor, and Lance just wanted to get on as many rides as they could. We were able to go for five days, so we got to do everything we wanted, and then some.

I'm so glad we were finally able to take another big family vacation. There is nothing like the closeness you get to experience when there are no other distractions. And a big love and thanks to Jeremy for being such a hard worker to make it possible. It kind of sucked that he had to take a week off from his job when he had only been there a month, but they were really cool about it. I'm glad to be married to such an organized person. He made the trip run so smoothly, I literally didn't have to worry about a single detail (besides breaking up all the above-mentioned fights).

Some of my favorite pics from the trip:

A few months ago my dad moved out of his house and was getting rid of most of his furniture. Since I've never had a nice bedroom, and being the oldest sister living in the country, I felt justified in speaking his bedroom set. My sisters were very gracious about it. I've wanted a nice bedroom for a long time. My bed didn't even have any sort of a headboard or anything, just the mattress and box springs, and two mismatched broken down dressers. So I was THRILLED to get this set, and I also got the matching bedding. I was so happy. I love being in my room now. It feels so different, it even feels cleaner, and I'm much more motivated to make the bed.

The problem is at the head of the bed there's this big mirror. After we got the set I noticed fingerprints on the mirror every time I went in there. I'd go get the Windex and clean them off. This would happen several times a week. I finally got sick of it and lectured the kids to stop mucking up my mirror. Surprisingly, they minded.

A few weeks ago I was reading my friend Heidi's blog. She had a link to this woman's blog who had just had a traumatic experience. She had briefly left her baby alone in the tub and when she came back he had drowned. By some miracle they revived him at the hospital and after a couple of weeks he made a full recovery and returned home. I became obsessed with following her story. It was every mother's worst nightmare, and I'm so glad it was a happy ending for them. Her story changed me. Ever since reading it I have been so much more grateful for my children and have tried to practice lots of patience and not sweat the small things. I've done well. I would like to say it's a permanent change, but we'll see. I'm not too hopeful. It's too bad that it's human nature to need to nearly lose someone to show them just how grateful we are for them. I will keep it up as long as I can, though. I walked into my bedroom a few days ago and glaring out at me were several little handprints, all over the mirror. Now they make me smile every time I see them. I'm going to leave them there.

My sweet Trevor had his birthday party today. We had the usual crowd over and enjoyed Trevor's requested dinner of Chinese food. He definitely has the most developed taste of all my children. He turns 10 years old this week! I love this kid so much. He is the sweetest thing. He has the shortest fuse of all my kids, but definitely the shortest turnaround time. It takes him minutes to get over something. He is the best big brother. He cares so much about his younger brothers and really helps to look out for them. I love his tender heart. Great-grandma wasn't able to come to his party because she's pretty sick. Trevor was a little glum all day, and when I talked to him about it tonight he finally admitted that he was scared his grandma was going to die.

For his birthday he got money and some puzzle toys from Great-grandma (she sent them with Grandpa Greg) and a basketball and scooter from his parents. Grandpa Greg will take him for his birthday outing when they can arrange a time.

So glad this boy is in our family!

What is up with my nearly-four-year-old getting an ear infection?! (Thanks, Det and Kenny) Lame. Jace was up half the night last night because his ear hurt so bad. It's frustrating being up half the night and knowing you have no choice as to when you get up in the morning. I am SO grateful that Jeremy found a job so quickly, but I won't lie. It was so convenient having him, for lack of a better phrase, at my disposal. Three weeks ago I wouldn't have worried about being up half the night, I would've just planned on sleeping in and having Jeremy take the kids to school. But with his new job he has to be to work before they go to school. So it's back to the grindstone for me!

In all seriousness, we feel so blessed that Jeremy was able to find a job so quickly. He got the offer three weeks ago and started last week. I'm so proud of him. I think that getting a new job has a lot to do with luck, but Jeremy really worked hard. He was in his office several hours a day, sent out lots of resumes and went on lots of interviews, and did a great job of networking himself.

So I'll just deal with the next couple of sleepless nights while the ear infection heals, because that kind of stress is a lot more manageable!

Happy birthday (a week late) to my sweet 7-year-old. Lance is the most tender-hearted of all my kids. He has always been very quiet and subdued, but it looks like he's going to outgrow that before too long. You just can't get noticed around here if you're not loud and obnoxious!

So we enjoyed two birthday dinner parties, one with the Hills and one with the Cardons. Lance got a new scooter, some Club Penguin toys, and his favorite: money!

This is Lance with his best friend, Brayden. These two are inseparable. I love it! Brayden lives right across the street. Having him in our lives definitely makes Lance my easiest child!

And here he is ripping up the basketball court. He is so good! I was so surprised, because he's got some kind of hip ailment and sometimes has trouble running, but I couldn't even notice it when he played. I think he's found his "thing!"

I love you, my sweet Lance!

Yesterday Kira, Lindsay and I had our own personal Fitness Day. We basically spent the day at the gym. We've been trying to plan this for months and it finally came together. It went perfectly. We were all able to hang in from 9:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night, with a couple hours break in the middle of the day for lunch and visiting. It was a blast, and we all did so well and finished the day without quitting. What made it easier was that the day consisted mostly of classes at the gym. I can't say enough good about doing a class, as opposed to trying to go it on your own. It makes working out so much easier and more motivating.

Cycling

Body Step

Body Attack

Body Pump (this is my favorite gym instructor of all time, Natalie)

We also did Body Combat, boot camp, and a little bit of our own thing on the track. It was a great challenge for us and we felt so accomplished when we were done!

Jeremy was very considerate about staying home with the kids all day; didn't complain once. There were a couple of things I had been wanting to do for weeks now, and asked him if he could do them if he had time. One was to re-pot a plant that I got for my birthday. It was a Christmas clearance plant so it was in a Christmasy pot, and I have a nice pot I wanted to transfer it to. The other was to get the kids to write Christmas thank-you notes to their grandparents. Well, he accomplished both, in a man's way. The plant was, indeed, transferred. The original pot was round, and the new one is bigger and square. So there sat the plant in its perfectly circular shape of dirt, sitting in the big square pot. Not to be outdone was the effort put into the thank-you notes. He took three plain white pieces of computer paper and scrawled the names of the grandparents on the top, then had each child that can write scrawl an equally as attentive line, basically "Thank you for the present," written in pen or pencil. And sitting right there on the counter waiting for me to do the only hard part of that task; find envelopes, find stamps, address and mail them. But of course since I had been gone all day, and he HAD, technically, done what I asked, I couldn't very well get mad. I think I even mustered a half-hearted, "Thank you, Hun." It sure makes me wonder: Are men REALLY that simple-minded? Or do they just REALLY know how to play us women? It's like when you ask your 8-year-old child to clean the bathroom. It ends up more disgusting than when he started. Is the message I'm supposed to take from this, "That'll teach you to ask me to do such daunting tasks."?

Whenever I hear people say they're relieved Christmas is over, I always think to myself that they just have the wrong attitude, and aren't focused on the true meaning. Well, that judgmental attitude sure came back to bite me this year, because I was TREMENDOUSLY relieved when Christmas was over. Jeremy's employer was kind enough to lay him off at the beginning of the month, right before Christmas. Even though they give a generous severance package, it still made for a very stressful Christmas. I was disappointed in the gifts we had gotten our children. I like to really spoil them at Christmas time, and this is the first year I haven't really gotten to do that as much as I'd like. They were so cute, though, about making sure we knew how much they loved everything they got. They made me feel a lot better about the situation. Ironically, the favorite present by all of them costed $5. It was a gift card for a one month membership on Club Penguin. They've been on the computer nonstop since Christmas.

My attitude was also boosted when one night our doorbell rang at nearly 11:00 at night, and we found a huge pile of groceries and a Walmart gift card on our porch, and then when two days before Christmas a couple in our ward brought us our neighborhood gift, which was a bottle of Sprite, and they also had a big bag of different meats for us, and then the wife snuck a significant amount of cash into my hand. I will always remember these examples of Christ-like love, and how it helped remind me that Heavenly Father hasn't forgotten about us and uses his angels to help us remember how much he loves us.

We had a super fun Christmas Eve party at our house with the Steffensens, Giff and Shirelle, Denny, and Grandpa Greg and Stephanie. Oh, and of course Geddy:

The evening started with (of course) lots of good food, and Grandpa brought his gifts for the children to open that night. It was pretty funny, because he had put all of the gifts in this gigantic bag, as tall as he was, so it was almost as good as seeing Santa Claus when he came in with that big bag hung on his shoulder. Before he handed the kids their gifts, he talked to them about what Christmas means. It's kind of embarrassing that my kids don't know quite as much as they should, because that's nothing but a reflection on me and the efforts I make, which are obviously going to improve for 2010. This is how interested the kids were for the spiritual portion of the evening:

I'm glad he does it, though. I think Christmas feel so much more special when we focus more on the Savior than all the other "exciting" aspects. I hope I can do better on that next Christmas, as well as all year round.

After everyone left the kids opened their Christmas Eve jammies:

I'm so grateful for my children. I'm sure they would be shocked to hear that (especially after today when I spent all morning acting like the meanest drill sergeant you've ever seen trying to get them to clean the house), but I love them so much and am grateful every day that I have them.