Mother's Day

Today was a day that has been filled with surprises.  Part of those surprises has been a puking 22 month old that started this morning. The greater of the surprises were my sweet gifts from my cute kids and husband: a homemade card from Reagan, a handprint school project from Rees, and a similar school project from Jackson plus some cute bows he made me at scouts.  How I treasure these!  But if I can say the greatest surprise was from my husband who gave me an airplane ticket to UTAH so I can be there for my sisters endowment session!  Rarely do I cry over a gift, but this opened the flood gates!  With my fathers declining health it means that much more.  How grateful I am for a loving and considerate husband who buys me things I would never buy for myself.  So Mason and I are homeward bound for a few days in June and I don't think even puke can make me not love this day.  How grateful I am to be a mom.  It is the reason we are here and I count my blessings daily that I'm living my own happily ever after, puke and all!

Snow Fun!!

"Snow"Much Fun!!  Although the hills are a lot more scarce in Michigan, we do have a decent sledding hill not to far from our house that we have played on at least three times so far.  My kids love it, especially Mason.  Here are some pictures from those outings. 

Elf on the Shelf

Elf on the Shelf!

Our Elf was sent to us by my sweet Sister-in-Law Jennifer Landon.  After much excited discussion an agreement was made on a name for our sweet elf----James Jimmy John Landon  (Reagan is still upset we didn't thrown in Christmas Tree or Candy Cane).  This has been a fun adventure for our little family each morning.  Rees, are early-riser inevitably finds him each day and then broadcasts it to the world and wakes up the others.  He has hidden on various light fixtures and on shelves, on a wreath, and on windows and in closets.  One day he played with Jacksons legos and built a spacecraft sled that we assumed he used to get back to the North Pole that night. Last night we think he was playing hide and seek with Cookie monster because we found them hiding together this morning.  Our favorite has been when the Elf decided to be naughty (Jackson adamantly defends the elf as just trying to be funny).  The Elf was found hiding on a shelf in the morning holding a marker.  He and the four children had mustaches drawn on there faces!!  Rees in the morning was classic--she ran downstairs and exclaimed "MOM I have a mustache and the elf does too and he's hiding upstairs with a marker!!"  This is going to be a great tradition--  

Christmas Season in Michigan

The Christmas Season in Michigan

We went to a fun GLOW festival.  The kids made crafts, saw reindeer, ate roasted chestnuts --(not that great), roasted marshmallows, and saw some cool ice sculptures.  We are sad we can't be with family for this holiday season, but gratefully our new friends here in East Lansing have made the transition much better.  Just last night we went to a friends home and sang christmas carols and drank hot chocolate and ate cookies.   What an amazing ward we have been blessed to be a part of, the Lord is always in the details.

 Here are some super fun photos we took after our awesome cousins sent us some fake mustache's
To get the picture we knocked on the neighbors door and said " we 'mustache' you a question---can you take our picture?"  HA HA HA HA.

Well I'm trying to figure out this new blogger thing....yea I haven't posted since Christmas...a few things have changed....We now live in Michigan!!  Trent was accepted into a PhD program at Michigan State University and we decided that we needed to take a leap back into student life.   So I'm staying home with my great kiddos and Trent is busy doing his graduate program and teaching classes on the side.  I'm loving staying home with my kids. Jackson and Rees are is school full time so Reagan and Mason and I get to hang out all day!  I thought life would slow down a little now that I'm not working and I have more kids in school, but oddly enough it stays pretty busy, a good busy.   East Lansing is beautiful and the town and ward have been very accepting.  We have good neighbors and the kids are adjusting well.  We all miss family and cousins.  I'm not promising to be perfect with my blog, but I'm going to try to occasionally update it.  We have been so blessed.  The Lord has helped us with this move and so many things have fallen into place.  Its a new adventure for our family and I'm saddened to be away from those friends and family we love so much, but I do think we as a family are growing together more.  Life is full of changes and we are excited to grow.

Christmas

Anxiously Waiting!! Mom can we open a dag gum present yet??

Here is some christmas pictures-- Our Holidays were super busy with lots of partying on both sides of the family!! Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, I actually enjoyed it--I think it helped us to keep the holiday in perspective! We are so blessed to have such great family and friends!

Fun Halloween Costumes!!

Rockstar

Chinese baby

Flower

Captain America
Some other weirdos!