At the Drive In

We love going to the drive in! We seem to go every couple of months--whenever there is a good family movie playing. Generally, it is definitely cheaper and in some ways easier to take four kids to the drive in. For instance, I would NOT want to take Keeley to a regular theater right now--she is way too wiggly and wouldn't sit still or be quiet, and those things, while frowned upon at the regular theater, don't present too much of a problem at the drive in. Although on this particular night, as you can see from the above photo, she was not happy and made sure everyone knew about it. She was upset for most of the first movie. It does take a little more work to get everythig ready to go to the drive in--you need blankets, pillows, camp chairs, your own popcorn, and a cooler with drink. So in that regard--not easier at all.

 Lexi and Scott came along and we all had fun together.

 Too bad this is such a blurry picture.

We brought Finley's round pink chair for her to sit in. This used to be Lexi's chair, but when she got married she left it in the sunshine room for Finley, who was moving in.

Daddy had to hold Keeley a lot. I also have to point out that this outing took place in July. In Phoenix. And I am not the one who dressed Keeley in those fuzzy fleece pajamas. I am, however, the one who took those fuzzy fleece pajamas off of Keeley during the first movie because it was over 100 degrees.

Anyway, we had a great time!

Twilight!

My friend Bridgette invited us to go see a special showing of the last Twilight movie that started six hours before the midnight premier for the regular public. Lexi and I thought that sounded like fun, so we bought our tickets! Above is Lexi, me, Bridgette, and Jenn holding up our special tickets. I'm surprised that Bridgette has decided she could remain friends with me, since she is a complete die-hard Twilight fan, and I am a lukewarm at best Twilight fan. She later told me that she had forgotten when she invited me that I'm not quite as into it as her. ;)

It was a fun girl's night out, especially because we didn't have to wait around for the midnight show! The 6:30 time was much more better. Above is Beth J., Bridgette J., Jenn, and Jen U. Below is Lexi, me, Kenya (Deseret's sister), Deseret F., and Lisa H. Yep, I took another cheesy movie theater photo of us at a Twilight movie!

I love going to the movies! I've frequently said it doesn't have to be a great movie for me to be up for going. And we'll just leave it at that as far as the movie is concerned...

Thanksgiving at Grammy's

We went to Grammy Jo's house for Thanksgiving this year, and had a great time. The kids had their own table, which Lexi and Megan and Ashley Noto also had to sit at.

We used the pomoegranite plates and had some delicious fried turkey and ham. (though the ham was not fried.) Apparently a large percentage of people (I'm thinking it was 80%) photograph their Thanksgiving feast, and we were not among them. Afterwards, the girls took the kids outside to play on scooters and bikes. Lexi and Sareny had to pose, of course.

Cute cousins! Fin and Chuckles look so cute together.

And I love this one too.

They had lots of fun.

The boys.

Lexi and Ashley. Megan was the photographer, so she isn't in any of the pictures.

While we were there, Sareny asked Grammy Jo if she could do lite-brite.

She had fun desiging her own picture.

Soon the other kids caught wind of a fun project, and gathered around for their turn.

The kids also had lots of fun playing Lincoln Logs.

Charlie threw a fit over something, I think it may have had to do with Finley. Maybe because it wasn't my own kid throwing the fit, I thought it was pretty cute.

It was pretty dramatic.

Friday evening, Bampa set up an outside movie on a big screen and we watched Elf. We bundled up as much as we could, but I was still freezing! Very strangely, my mom was apparently not cold. The next morning, we did gingerbread houses before Jake and Liz headed back up to Utah. Everybody had some pretty cute and creative little houses.

The Keel family with their creations. I especially liked Liz and Josh's ladder with Santa on it.

The rest of us, sans me the photographer.

The kids with the houses.

At some point on Saturday, I looked in the front room and saw all three kids clambering and playing on their Bampa. Pretty typical. I was glad I got this candid shot before everyone looked up at me. 

He even puts up with Isaac pinching his nose and will still smile for the camera.

Saturday evening we helped Grammy Jo get her Christmas tree decorated. Finley clustered a lot of hers in this spot with the ladder.

Lexi hanging up her favorites.

The little ladder was pretty handy.

Finley gets pretty excited about Christmas ornaments and liked this Canadian Mounty.

And this is the only picture I got of Isaac hanging ornaments, because lets face it, he loses interest in non-electronics pretty quickly and moves on.

And to conclude our holiday festivities, me, Lexi, and my mom went to a late show. Yes, we saw Breaking Dawn in the Pioneer Theater in downtown Overton. And they were both quite embarrassed that I asked a random stranger to take our picture. But hey, things like this have to be documented.

I realized about halfway through the movie based on the giggles and comments from Lexi and my mom and that none of us are die hard Twilight fans. I wanted to go because I like going to movies and will see most anything, but afterwards I was like, "so why did we go see that if none of us are even remotely into Twilight?" Apparently, my sis-in-law Liz is, and she was the one who had come up with the idea of the girls seeing it, but we weren't able to squeeze it in before she left. So instead, the non-fans went. Interesting. All in all, we had a great time at Grammy and Bampa's.

More Mommy Confessions

I mop my floor pretty regularly--I would say about once a week. Some of you are gasping in disgust; hopefully most of you think that is okay. Anyway, you would think my floors would be relatively clean, but you would be wrong. I recently decided to tackle the grout, and it was shockingly disgusting. It made me think of Stanley Spadowski from UHF:

And sometimes, life sticks to the floor so bad a mop isn't good enough. It's not good enough. You gotta get down here with a toothbrush and really scrub, and if that doesn't work, if that doesn't work...you can't give up. You've got to run to a window and say, "HEY! THESE FLOORS ARE AS DIRTY AS H---, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!"

I've been on my hands and knees scrubbing the grout with magic erasers for multiple days, and there is still more to go. But the improvement is obvious, no? Yikes.

Cloudy, with a chance of meatballs...

For family home evening last week we decided to do a themed dinner and watch Cloudy, With a Chance of Meatballs. I kind of stole this idea from my awesome and creative friend Debra G, and we had a lot of fun with it!

We of course dined on meatballs.

Then we decided to make donuts.

I was not in love with this recipe, but Sareny declared them, "Better than QT's!" It was a lot of fun to make our own donuts, and the kids got really excited when they spotted donuts in the movie!

The finished product.

We had a really fun family time!

Isaac's birthday

To celebrate Isaac's birthday, we
went to the movies Friday night and saw Wall E. It was Isaac's first movie (except for the free movies last summer) and he did really well, as long as we kept the popcorn coming. We used up our refill before the movie even started! We all really enjoyed the movie, and I couldn't help reflecting on the fact that this was our last Friday as a family of four...

Saturday mommy made Isaac a Cars cake, and he was so excited! He ran around saying Yay! and Hars! It was very cute, and nice to know that he appreciated the cake I made. :)

Here he is with a couple of his favorite birthday presents, Buzz Lightyear and some new Cars.

And, since I wasn't a blogger back when Sareny turned four, I thought I would put a picture of her up with her Ariel cake too.