Thursday, December 31, 2009

Christmas Eve / Christmas Day

Our Christmas eve party consisted of a lot of finger foods...that we didn't eat most of them. Vegging out watching A Christmas Story! Daddy reading the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Twas the Night before Christmas and then the Christmas Story from the Bible. Christmas Morning: All the presents left by Santa. Checking out their presents Christmas morning. The girls in their new robes and slippers. And Abbie excited about her new spongebob toothbrush. Cierra with her Christmas Presents. Abbie with hers. And Jesse with his! His favorite is his new i-touch and the Aggies blanket Grandma McCammon quilted for him. My parents came up Christmas day to see what the kids got for Christmas, we watched a few movies, ate popcorn and put together Cierra's new puzzle.
Here's a few pics of the kids getting our tree ready for Christmas! This year we decided to put the tree up in the basement so that we could enjoy Christmas with our fireplace. My thought was to get a smaller or at least skinnier tree for up stairs. I get tired of the tree fairly fast when its in the way, but I didn't ever want to pay the price for a tree for upstairs and I can't say that I really missed it that much. The lights and garland on the banister railing are plenty for me. Putting on the Lights which Bill hates doing because I like a ton of lights and he barely want's to drape them on! The girls looking through their boxes of ornaments. Great Kids with a beautifully decorated tree.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Utah Family Parties

Every year the Saturday before Christmas eve we get together with our families and have our Christmas parties. My parents do a morning brunch and Bill's family does an evening party so it works nice that we can do it all in one day. We start breakfast at my parents house at 10 am and then open presents play and visit. I am so grateful for the great families we've been blessed with. This is Abbie with her cousin Gracie. My sister in law Diane and her 3 girls Darcie, Stacy and Heather and her granddaughter Makaya. This is Grandma giving out her first gift to all the grandkids. An emergency kit for their backpacks. If your over 12 Grandma gives cash. This year it was wrapped under the label of a can of CASH-ew Nuts!!!! Cierra also got a Webkinz from grandma, a can of nuts and a bug vacuum from her cousin. Abbie got a webkinz and can of nuts also and from her cousin she got webkinz clothes. Jesse got golf balls and a golfing tool. At Bill's parents house we have dinner and sing Christmas Carols until Santa comes. Everyone takes turns sitting on Santas lap getting their presents. The grandkids all get Jammies and the adults get a treat. Here's a picture of all the kids with their new Christmas jammies on. What a great looking bunch all thanks to Santa.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

8 Teeth a pulling.....

Cierra and Abbie both had some teeth pulled yesterday. Four teeth each!!! Cierra's were the top four on either side of her two front teeth. All she has for Christmas is her two front teeth. It was quite traumatic for her!!! It took about 35-40min for them to deaden the area and by that time she had had it. She was crying, I was crying, she wanted to go home, I wanted to go home!!!! It was very emotionally draining. The Dr. and nurse left the room and we talked about it and had a little prayer. Then the nurse came back in and bribed her with 4 toys and she was ready! It took 1 minute to pull the four teeth. We showed up at the dentist at 11am and left at 1:08!!! Seriously we were so tired! Cierra still has 1 more to go. But I think we'll wait for the trauma to wear off before we go back. Abbie on the other hand was calm. She needed me for the first needle prick then after deciding that it wasn't as bad as she thought she let Jesse sit in the room with her while I attended to Cierra. Her teeth came out a little easier, but the roots had already started to disintegrate on her teeth. Today they seem to be doing well. A little paranoid about the packing that is in the holes but not too bad.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Say Cheese!! Or how about Ouch!!!

Semi Annual teeth cleaning, certainly never enjoyed, but pleasantly tolerated I suppose. Abbie and Cierra went to theirs a couple of weeks ago to find out they should make a trip to an Orthodontist. Bill asked around at work and quite a few recommended Dr. Hillam so this week, Abbie on Monday and Cierra on Tuesday, we had consultations with him. They went in and had full panel x-rays and their pictures taken. It was a relatively painless...except for the extreme boredom that Cierra professed to be going through while waiting!!!
The verdict for Abbie is...crowding, lots and lots of crowding. Right now Abbie will have 4 teeth pulled. She's gotten all four of the teeth on the top and bottom so they will pull each of the next ones out. The canines or eye teeth, they are still baby teeth, so it shouldn't be too bad, but it will help make room for some of her other teeth to come in. She'll end up with braces when she's about 13 I imagine and he said they will end up pulling 4 of her permanent teeth, well 3 actually, but only because she doesn't have a permanent tooth in one of the spots. Cierra on the other hand needs a little more immediate attention. Besides severe crowding also, her front tooth on the right came in behind the baby one. So they will be pulling 7 of her baby teeth and then she will get a retainer to help bring the one coming out the front, back and the one that sits behind her bottom teeth, forward. She had a dentist appt. on Tuesday for cavities to be filled so they went ahead and started pulling teeth. The one on the front bottom left (not the two in the middle, but the next one out) was barely hanging on and Cierra is just too panicky to pull it, plus the new tooth is already growing in behind it just like the one of the top did.
Here are the teeth they pulled. The one that was ready to come out is the top one, the big long one was the next one to the left of it, its the bottom canine Cierra thinks it looks like a shark tooth. Here is Cierra's cute letter to the Tooth Fairy and the Tooth Fairy's reply.
(notes: the white stuff in her mouth is the packing they put in the hole, and beeing is suppose to be begging)
The tooth fairy brings only $1 per tooth and so the next morning when Cierra showed me the note that she left I asked her why she asked for $4 when she knows she only gets $1 per tooth. She told me she measured it and it was $3 worth of tooth! I guess the tooth fairy didn't think so because she only left $2. By the end of the month Cierra should be rich after having 7 teeth pulled, don't you think??? And I should be poor!!!

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Ward Christmas Party

Does anyone have great memories of Ward Chrismas Parties past? I don't think I recall much of anything when I try to think of the things that our ward did when I was a kid. I remember sitting on Santa's lap and getting a brown paper bag with peanuts, an orange and a candy cane. Strange thing to remember.
Abbie singing.
Cierra not singing.
Jesse playing the "bells".
Abbie on Santa's lap. Cierra sitting on Santa's lap.

Monday, December 7, 2009

I really hate my carpet!

I took on the task of washing wall and baseboards and cleaning my carpet in the living room last week and I can tell a little bit of difference...but not much. The craziest thing is when we put this carpet in our house to begin with it was so much darker than the carpet in our house in Nampa we thought it would be great. Much to our dismay its not as dark as we thought! It soo funny to me too because you can totally see where the couches sit most of the time! BEFORE: AFTER:
Can you see the difference?

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Once there was a Snowman!!!

For our enrichment Super Saturday this year we made the cutest snowman kits that fit inside a paint can. It was so cute and the kids just couldn't wait to use it. November 28th it snowed for the first time this year, Bill's brother and wife came up with their kids and they all went out and played in the snow. They had a lot of fun building their snowman, but as you can tell my girls are lazy snowman builders if Jesse isn't out there to do all the work for them! Nice lump of snow eh?
Here's a couple of pictures of the kids just playing in the snow.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Jesse's Birthday!

I am a terrible mother!!! Its official! Jesse turned 16 on his birthday in November and we didn't even celebrate it! It was a tuesday, which means YM/Scouts and they went to the ice caves up in St. Anthony not to return until nearly 10pm. So no birthday celebration that day, Wednesday Jesse has debate nights at school on those nights, thursday I was at Girls Night, and all day Friday and Saturday was the Joust Debate Tournament at Hillcrest and Jesse was gone. Then Sunday morning bright and early I took Bill to the airport for his trip to China and he was gone until that Friday. Nothing was working out for us, until Wednesday night before Thanksgiving.
Jesse didn't want an ordinary Birthday cake, he wanted Hot Wings, no ordinary hot wings either he wanted his dads famous hot wings! So Jesse's birthday celebrations was hot wings, little smokies and ritz crackers. His gift, well, he didn't get one of those either! (See I told you I was a bad mother!!!) I guess I should say yet. Last spring Bill got tickets for March Madness this year. A ticket for each of them, they were expensive enough we are calling that his gift. Aren't I a bad mother?

The sunday before Jesse's birthday we went down to Utah to see my nephew give his last talk in church before his mission. Bills parent's came over and gave Jesse's his present...Jesse's favorite...CASH!!! And a really cute card. And my parents gave him a couple of golf balls, one was from the US Mint and had $100 in it, they also gave him a little cha ching!

This picture is Grandpa McCammon, Jesse and Grandma McCammon.

We are so lucky to have Jesse as part of our family, he is such a great kid!! Some days Bill and I ask ourselves what line in the preexistence did we have to wait in to be this lucky! Jesse is a normal teen that has his mood swings, but he is inherently good. It is his personality, that's who he is. Bill and I get after him a lot, being the oldest we pick on him probably more than we do the girls to be 'the perfect child', but I really don't have much to complain about. When he's asked to do something he may say no, but he's in the process of doing it while protesting. Maybe he has the Ella Enchanted Curse!!! We love him very much and appreciate all that he adds to our family. It brings tears to my eyes when I think of the few years he has left in our home. We love youj Jess! Yesterday (Sunday) Bill also was able to ordain Jesse a priest. I am just so proud of him!!!!!