Babysitting William

 A few weeks ago Taylor needed someone to watch William for her one day while she went to work.  I offered thinking "I can have twins for a day".  (William is exactly two weeks younger than Riley)  I prepped myself the night before thinking "Ok Lindsey, you can handle one day of crying....it won't be that bad!"  And I was right!  In fact, there was hardly any crying at all!  It was great! 

Zac and Emery really helped a lot by playing with William and Riley while I was busy with the other one.  Zac was just so amazed that you could feed a baby from a bottle.  He kept saying "is that really milk???!"  He even gave William one of his bottles that day.  He loved it!  Makes me think I should invest in a few bottles and a breast pump!  ha ha.  Anyway, the day went very well I think in part because I offered a few prayers the night before that I would be able to handle it.  :)

 This is just a random picture of Emery.  I thought she looked really old sitting at the computer playing Elmo games.

 Here is Riley waiting for William to arrive.

 He loved this orange rattle/ball.  We actually have a pink one too so it was pretty cute when they were both trying to put one in their mouths.  

 Happy babies!

 Zac feeding William.  

 William was a tiny bit fussy while I was feeding Riley on the couch, so Emery and Zac kept him occupied with my ipad.  ha ha.

Then Rob got home from work and wanted to hold both babies.  He said "wow...how did my mom and dad do this???" (Rob is a twin...)

We love our cousin William and hope he comes over to play again soon!

First big snow of the winter

 This year has been crazy warm!  I have been taking the kids for walks all through December which has been really nice.  But all Zac has been saying in the weeks leading up to Christmas is "I hope it snows on Christmas!"  And guess what!?  On Christmas morning, we woke up to snow!  It was a miracle!  :)  The kids were so excited.  And so was I.  I don't like driving in snow, but I have come to love it now that I have lived here for about ten years.  So the day after Christmas, we dug out all our snow clothes and went out to play in the snow.

 Duncan even joined us out there which the kids absolutely loved!

 Sadie being silly on the swings.  Love this girl!

 We even brought Riley out to experience the snow for the first time.  

 Here is Duncan getting hit by a snowball courtesy of his older brother Rob.

 Payback!

 All Emery did was eat it.  

And Riley tried some too.  She only had it in her mouth for a second.  It was a little too cold for her.

Christmas Day

 Christmas morning starts pretty early around here.  Emery actually "slept in" until 6:50 or so.  We all gathered in the front room and checked out what Santa brought us in our stockings. 

 Here is Emery right after she woke up.  Checking out her stocking.

 Santa brought me two new pillows! Usually Rob gets new pillows since he scrunches his all up and they get lumpy really fast. But Santa must have known that it had been a few years since I got new pillows.  I love them !

 Sadie and Zac got some much needed new jammies.  Unfortunately they are about 3 sizes too big.  Oh well...i guess they will fit them for a long time! 

Riley loved the toy hammer she got from grandma.

 The girls got bow headbands.  

 Emery really wanted a skirt like this.  Poofy and pink!  She wore it for the rest of the day and kept stepping on things because her skirt was so poofy she couldn't see!

 Santa brought us a perplexus ball.  Zac loves it and hates it.  He gets frustrated when he messes up, but he loves to play it.  

 This is a bad picture, but Uncle Duncan got spot it and a mind puzzle game.

 Riley also got a stacker toy.  

 Emery got some Frozen bandaids and proceeded to open them all and stick them to the floor because "it needs to be stuck down!"

 Grandma Goff and Riley.

 Crys and Riley.  

Then we all played spot it. 

Christmas was a fun day to see my kids get excited about giving and receiving gifts.  It was great to remember Christ and all he has done for us.  I am so grateful he was born and lived on the earth.  I hope I can teach my kids to always look to Him as an example.  Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was a pretty great day.  We pretty much hung around for most of the day.  We had Uncle Duncan at our house so that was fun.  Emery really loves Uncle Duncan.  In fact, I was showing her pictures of her uncles and she said "yeah...I don't like that guy because I don't like boys."  Then I said to her "yes you do! Remember Uncle Duncan?  You love him!"  Then she paused and said "Oh yeah!  I DO like boys!"  ha ha  Silly girl.  She really does say the funniest things...that is when she isn't throwing a tantrum or screaming about something else.  Ha ha.  Crys and Alan came over for dinner and brought all the stuff to make cheese and chocolate Fondue.  I mean they thought of everything.  Chicken, beef, tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, bread, mushrooms, cream puffs, strawberries, marshmallows and bananas.  YUM.  The cheese fondue was so delicious even though the cheese cooled down really fast because we didn't have a real fondue pot.  So we just took some and put it on our plate and did it that way.  It was so yummy.  In fact, it was so yummy that we all ate too much of it and didn't actually get to making the chocolate fondue.  hah! 

After dinner, we opened our Elf chart gifts.  The elves are pretty smart because they even left something for Crys, Alan and Duncan!  Fun!  Crys and Alan and Duncan stayed home with Riley while the rest of us went out to look at Christmas lights after that.  The kids were oooing and ahhhing until one time Zac said "wow wow holy cow!"  Then the rest of the trip the kids repeated that phrase every time they saw a house with lights.  Then we got a phone call that Riley was losing it, so we headed home. 

 Riley really is such a happy baby.  We love her so much!

 And she puts up with lots of smothering from the other kids.  Here they were putting bean bags on her head.  :)

 Crys and Alan cooking dinner in the kitchen.

 The kids enjoying their fondue.

 Everyone else.

 Then Sadie showed off how flexible she is.  Foot behind her head and standing up.  Pretty talented!

 Ready to open the elf gifts!

 So much excitement!

We all got new Christmas socks from the elves.  And toothbrushes of course!

Christmas Sunday

 This is what my kids wore on the Sunday before Christmas.  I never buy new outfits for holidays.  I am cheap.  :)  But I thought my kids were extra cute this particular day so I snapped some pictures.  Zac obviously was not in the mood.

 He managed to squeeze out a fake smile.  ha ha.  He is also sporting a little black eye.  He got a door slammed on his face a few days prior.  Oh the joys of parenting!  

This is the dress that Emery is wearing, but she insisted on putting that purple sweatshirt over it. 

Big discovery

 Riley has discovered her feet!  This actually happened a long time ago, but I am just now getting around to posting it.  :) I love it when babies discover their feet.  It really keeps them occupied for a long time without having to get any toys out!  Score!

 Here she is wearing a cute headband I made for her.  She will actually keep them on her head pretty well, I just always forget to put them on her.  

 Going after her big toe!

 One hand for every foot!

Festival of trees

I decided to take the kids to the festival of trees this year on my own.  Mostly because it would save us some money, but also because I wanted to give Rob a break.  Usually on our outings he is in charge of the older kids and I take the baby.  That is kind of not fair.  It is so easy to just push or carry a baby, especially if it is Riley because she is so sweet.  Anyway, so I took Zac and Emery to see the trees this year while Sadie was at school.  I made sure to take pictures of the trees I thought Sadie would like so I could show her after school.  It was crowded but my kids cooperated and it was a pleasant experience.

This is one of the awesome gingerbread houses that was there.  The salt lake temple.

Here was one of the MANY frozen themed gingerbread houses.  There were so many!

There were also TONS of frozen themed Christmas trees.  I took lots of pictures for Sadie.

Of course, I had to take a picture of the BYU tree.  My friend I was with told me not to because she is a Utah fan. ha ha

THe festival of trees is where a lot of people decorate trees and donate them so they can be auctioned off.  Then all of the proceeds go to the Children's Hospital. (I think that is how it goes...) Anyway, this year someone decorated and donated a tree in honor of a girl in our ward who has leukemia.  This is the tree.  I think it turned out great.  

We saw this life sized marble maze right when we got there.  I let Zac stand there and watch it for a few minutes and then we went on to look at the trees.  THe whole time he just wanted to come back and watch this again.  So at the end, Emery had fallen asleep in the stroller and Riley was just hanging out in the front pack, so I let Zac stand there and watch it for a good 20 minutes.  He was in heaven!  

He liked this Despicable Me wreath.

And Emery enjoyed the view of the inside of her eyelids.  :)

Another Frozen tree and wreath.

That evening as we were getting ready to go to our ward party, this was the view from our front porch.  The moon coming over the mountains all bright and beautiful.  Nature really is amazingly beautiful.