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.

Happy early birthday, sweet Zacky! He actually won't turn five until December 23rd, but we always celebrate his birthday a couple weeks early so we can be more focused on him. Great-grandma gave him some money and a soft, snuggly Ziggy blanket that he couldn't wait to sleep with tonight. Grandpa Greg didn't get him a present, because he gets to go out and pick his own. Grandpa is starting a tradition with the grandkids where he'll take them out to eat and then shopping to pick their present. I think that will go over very well with my kids! Mom and Dad gave him some Tech Deck stuff, which caused immediate chaos and fighting. It's very difficult to have six boys and have them all be interested in the same thing. Heaven forbid it bring them closer!

He's not thrilled to be posing with Mom and Dad.

Weirdo Grandpa!

Yesterday was our ward Christmas party. It was so fun. I think it was the funnest one we've ever had, and I'm not just saying that because Jeremy and I helped put it together! We had breakfast and some songs, and then our special visitor showed up!

My kids are AWESOME. Jeremy and I wanted to take them to a movie on Thanksgiving. I was thinking we'd go to Christmas Carol, but they all wanted to go to New Moon! I was euphoric. I just saw it for the first time on Tuesday and of course LOVED it, so I was THRILLED to go again. And they all loved it, too! They all loved Twilight, especially Zack (he went through a phase where he insisted to everyone, even his pre-school teachers, that his name was Edward). As we were leaving the theater they asked me when it comes out on DVD (not soon enough!). It was pretty hilarious, although I can't say Jeremy's too thrilled about his six sons being such Twilight fans.

For our Thanksgiving feast we went to Chuckarama. Growing up, I never would've thought I would ever be okay with going to a restaurant for Thanksgiving. We had such special family celebrations every year at my grandma's. But this year everyone had other plans and I just couldn't bring myself to make a big Thanksgiving dinner for just my family, so I finally gave into Jeremy's lifelong dream of going out to eat for Thanksgiving. I was shocked at how crowded in was, but when we finally got in we had a good time. The twins especially loved their dinner of ice cream and chocolate milk (luckily they were free so I didn't have to force them to eat their money's worth).

Yesterday was mine and Kira's annual Christmas shopping kick-off in Park City. Of course, it was TONS of fun, but I didn't have much luck with Christmas presents. I mostly ended up getting things for myself (oopsies). We're considering changing the location of this event. Stupid Tanger Outlets keeps getting rid of our favorite stores! First it was the paper store, last year was the book store, and this year the toy store was gone! What the heck?

When I got home I found that Jeremy had been quite the busy daddy while I was gone. It was funny, he was practically beaming with pride at how well he had done with the children (can you tell he gets yelled at a lot when he does things wrong?). First they all pitched in to tidy the downstairs family room. They got rid of the broken air hockey table, and he said they weren't even sad about it because he let them all help use the drill to get it taken apart. After that they played for awhile, then he drove them to this cool-looking skate park in Layton that they've been begging to go to for months (turns out it's not as great as it looked - a little too dangerous). They also took the tennis rackets and baseball equipment. Then they went to Sam's Club and got dinner (why is this such a novelty to my kids? And my husband, for that matter?). When I got home at 10:00 they were all playing together in the basement.

My dad sold his house and I spent several evenings last week helping clear it out. It was extremely hard going through all of my mom and Ryan's things, deciding what to keep and what to part with. We had to re-live a lot of painful memories. Obviously, looking at photos is the hardest thing. Ryan was so handsome and full of life. I wish I had been a better sister to him. I feel like I either neglected him or fought with him. We had a huge blow-out fight shortly before he died, and I hate that that is my most prevalent memory of our last months together. I was so mean to him. Not being able to talk to him, it is so hard to let go of that guilt and pain. I know he has forgiven me, but I don't know how to forgive myself. One of my favorite pictures that I found of him was him and his beautiful girlfriend Courteney on their way to a dance. I had seen a lot of his other dance photos, but what stood out about Courteney (aside from the fact that I love her to pieces) was that her's was the only modest dress I had seen. It just reminded me of the kind of person Ryan was, and the type of people that he held most dear.

As heartbreaking as it is to know I will no longer be able to go to my mom's house, I will be glad when it's over and I can start to try and heal, again. The worst thing is how out of control I've been eating. You know, trying to fill the empty hole that can't ever be filled. Boooo. I had been doing so good.

Our Halloween was awesome. Friday night was our annual Halloween dinner. I stole the idea from my friend Gayla who's been doing it for years. I usually do soup, but since our ward party was the next day and they were doing soup, I tried something different. Didn't work out too great. Some of the food choices were not really to my kids' liking, but the hot dogs wrapped with strips of dough to look like mummies were a hit. My kids would probably eat paper if it were wrapped around a hot dog. Oh, and I have to brag about my inner Martha Stewart, which makes an appearance about once per year, whipping up these babies:

They're oreo ball spiders, and were sooo delicious.

Here's everybody decked out for trick-or-treating:

This is the first year I have dressed up since I was a teenager. It was really fun. If you can't tell, we have a variety of superheroes (Batman, Spiderman, Power Ranger), a vampire, and a zombie skater. Corben decided not to dress up this year, since he's so ugly it already looks like he's wearing a mask.

This was the first Halloween ever that we didn't stay all together. We go to Kaysville every year and trick-or-treat with Kira and her fam in our old neighborhood, but the older kids really wanted to go with their friends this year, so Jeremy stayed behind and I took the three younger ones to Kaysville. The older kids couldn't have been happier. They got twice as much candy as they normally do.