Did I tell you I got a pasta maker for Christmas? I love it and had so much fun making noodles. Here is a picture of Jerika helping me. She loved turning the crank and did all of it while dad and I fed the dough through. They were super yummy noodles.
So it finally snowed in Oregon and we are so happy. It happened yesterday and my kids played in it all night. They even went out with Dad and built a snowman in the dark. Here are some pictures of the fun. Good thing they did it too, by the middle of the day today it was all gone. Melted, all... Gone... Crazy!
So we started a tradition last year of doing ginger bread houses as you might recall so we did them again this year. We got the Costco kit, which turned out to be pretty neat. It even had gingerbread men and a tree, plus coconut for the snow. We once again had a blast.
Also we went to our wards Christmas Party, which was lovely. We only had Trenton with us as the Girls were with Grandma at her Annual Nutcracker weekend. Here is a picture of Trenton with Santa. He did not even cry or worry, he just went up there and sat, smiled for his picture and got his toy. I was amazed.
Moving on...
So as I told you all last year we don't wait until Christmas to open presents, no way!! not us!!! If you did not read it last year CLICK HERE and read what we do.
Once again we are having a blast opening presents before Christmas and our kids think we are the coolest parents ever. Here are some pictures of the last few days.
And finally, we had our Christmas with Jonathan (our foster son) and our girls Birth mother, it was fun and Jonathan loved his gifts. Birth mom gave all of us gifts too, which was so kind of her. We had a lovely time together seeing them. Here is a picture of Jonathan. His mom says he wont keep clothes on and that is why he is in only a diaper. He kept clothes on when he lived with me, not judging, just saying. He was so cold, I wanted to dress him, but she told me not too, that he would just take them off. Whatever.... It was still a fun time seeing him again.
The Christmas Spirit is in the Air at our house.
It is always so fun to decorate, put up the lights, the ornaments and the kiddos love it. But first we have to pick out the perfect tree.
We have this tree lot that is down the street from our house and we walk down there to buy our perfect Christmas tree.
There are so many great ones to choose from and it takes awhile before we find the right one. Even so, this year it was a bit too tall and we had to cut off the top.
Then we walk home with our tree. Joe carries it and we all follow like his little ducklings. It is so fun and a great tradition.
Here is our tree now that is decorated with love by my excited Children. The tree was taller than normal so the angel on top is touching the ceiling. 
So we had to get our pictures taken for our Christmas Card and our photographer had to have surgery so we decided to just do it ourselves. I really like to get Christmas cards out early so...I took my kids out on a day they had off from school and tested out some good photo spots, the kids modeled for me and we had a great time. Here are some pics from out adventure.
We found this school that had those neat pillars. But while we were taking pictures a lady came out and told us we could not take pictures there during school hours. So we had to leave. but before we were kicked off the property I got some cute individual shots too.
Then the next day we went out as a family and took the family ones. It was hard to get the littlest kids to look at a tripod and camera instead of a person but after many pictures we got a few good ones. Here are some of the ones we did not use in our Christmas Card.
On Christmas I will put up the actual card. I designed it using photo shop then had Costco print in Card form. Hubby picks them up today. I am super excited.
Well Thanksgiving was weird this year.
We were on our way to our Friends the Conners, home and we got lost. Crazy. They are our best Friends how did we get lost? Well we did, and we were running late, so Joe got stressed and started driving really fast. I kept telling him to slow down, as it was a huge down pour, he didn't, and it was scaring me to death.
So then I started thinking and talking to Joe about what I was thinking.
I told him that maybe we were going to get into an accident. I explained that we had all our Christmas shopping done, maybe we had been prompted to do that because we would be in an accident where one or both of us would be hurt so badly that we would be out of commission, or in commas until Christmas.
Then I reminded Joe that we had wrapped all the presents the night before. That was even more evidence that we may well have been prompted to get all Christmas preparations done as we might be in a terrible accident and would not have time or energy to do it later. Perhaps I, or the kids or even Joe would be too injured.
We are definitely not people who are completely ready for Christmas by Thanksgiving. We normally haven't even a purchased even one gift by this time of year. We are week before Christmas type of shoppers. Once again, more evidence that we are acting strangely and it will probably lead to a devastating rollover that could very well happen today if Joe did not slow down.
Well at about this point in the conversation, Joe is bugged and still stressed so he decides to Jerk the steering wheel quickly and veer the car off the freeway going like 80 miles an hour and scare me to death. It was so terrifying, it felt like we could have flipped over at any second.
I of course screamed then I started crying.
Well, not even 1 min later as I am silently sobbing a car veers into our lane, I really let out a scream then. Luckily due to our previous conversation Joe was on high alert and was keyed up to do some defensive driving, he veered out of our lane onto the edge of the freeway. We could have easily crashed and flipped and certainly been in a terrible accident.
But thank goodness accident averted.
Instead of slowing down in the storm, he sped up to about 90 and passed the car that had almost hit us. I of course cried the whole way to the Conners house. (I know a bit dramatic but that is me.)
We got there, told them our scary story, got hugs, Joe apologized for being insensitive and all was well.
Dinner was yummy, we played Wii, and card games, but my two youngest had turned into Wild Kids.
Jennedy and Trenton were working on destroying things. Jennedy Shredded the case of the video rented from block buster. Trenton pulled of the letters on the wall in Coles room, ground play dough into the floor, found the pens and colored all over his face, and arms. You can see a bit of it that we could not get off in the pictures below.
Trenton found Cole's soccer trophy, ripped out the ball and proceeded to gnaw pieces of it off. This made Cole very upset of course because he had earned that trophy and Trenton decided to eat it and spit it out on the floor.
Jennedy found Coles Nintendo DS and chewed on the Mario cartridge so that it no longer works.
Trenton then went into grandmas room, and took out pictures which he then relocated to different places in the home. Then he got into the Conners grandmothers meds and ate two of them, we had to call poison control. He took a water pill and a cholesterol pill, so they said they were not a big deal since he only ate one of each and spit most out. We found a pile of spit out Turkey mixed with pink pills. He was fine. We also were unable to find the pill box he got the pills out of.
Then Trenton and Jennedy decided to wrestle on the couch and did a hug fall into the side table and Trenton split his head open, right between his eyes.
I heard him screaming and ran to from the kitchen to the living room. I saw a huge amount of blood as Joe picked him up then I ran back to the kitchen saying "blood" to those in the kitchen who handed me a towel. I then went and grabbed him and put the towel on his head. I applied pressure until the bleeding started to subside.
I had snapped into crisis mode, which I am really my very best at. I started giving orders to those around me, who responded with speed.
"Joe get the blood wiped up from all over his body. Mike, get some childrens Ibuprofen. Dawn, get my kids shoes on we need to take him to the ER. Joe, I'll set up Trenton holding the towel and you give him the medicine. Trenton, drink the medicine. Mike, do you have butterfly band aids or sterile strips."
He did and I taped Trenton's little wound together. He looked perfect, he was happy and smiling. It looked so good we thought about not going to the ER but I know Trenton and there is no way he will leave a band aid on his body for any period of time.
So he needed to go to the hospital. He looked perfect, he was happy and smiling and we were able to process for a moment and decided that Joe and I would go to the ER and the kids would watch movies at the house until we picked them up later. I wish I got a picture of my doctoring skills. I should have said "dawn, take a picture" during my crisis mode.
Here is the injury just after the doctor pulled off the strips, the bleeding that started was crazy bad, right after this picture was taken. Blood pulled in both of his eyes and ran down to his ears. The doctor could not keep up with the blood. Joe had to stop looking as he was getting really queasy.
Here he is with some lidocane taped to him to stop the pain when he got the shots. It worked some but you could tell he was hurting during the shots, he did not cry but was clenching his little fists. He did scream during the bleeding and sewing.
Here he is today with his 3 little stitches in. He has such a pretty face he needed a scar to make him tough huh.
3 stitches.
Tonight I was watching some of "Criminal Minds" that I had recorded on the DVR. My kids were nestled in their beds and my husband was out running an errand for my SIL. When I heard someone walking around upstairs. The floor creaks and I could tell someone was up there. So I yelled upstairs "is that you honey" NO answer. Then I said "Joe, are you home." NO answer. Then I ask if it is one of the kids, I go through the names of the kids old enough to open doors. NO answer.
Well the walking and squeaking continue and I hear the freezer or fridge open. I keep asking who it is and still...NO answer. Well maybe if I had not been watching a scary show about serial killers I wouldn't have been so scared, but I was. Still those are my babies up there and if there is someone in my house that wont answer me, I would rather risk my life than let them hurt my kids. (I actually had that thought.)
So I ran up the stairs and found my daughter in the kitchen. She was pulling up her pants. That is when I noticed the wet floor. She was sleep walking/peeing. She had walked into the kitchen, opened the freezer, (which is a bottom drawer freezer), sat down and went potty. Luckily it all went through to the bottom of the wire basket onto the floor. So I start cleaning up the floor and sanitizing it and she is just standing there so I tell her to head off to bed, and she starts to walk downstairs. She is still asleep. So I grab her hand and pick up blankets down the hall that she had carried on her sleep walking adventure and put her to bed. I am pretty sure she slept through the whole episode.
Silly huh.
We had a blast this Halloween.
Here are the kids when we went to our Church's Trunk or treat.
Here we are carving pumpkins. We actually did this two different nights. Our kids picked otu a lot of small pumpkins.
Here we are out on the streets begging for candy.
Here are superman and Rapunzel.
Look at Trenton as Superman. Here he is just before flying off.
Check out his superman hair doo.
Here we have Mulan, Superman, Snow white and Rapunzel.
They sure do love each other.
Here is our crew that went out trick or treating. The kids loved Trick or treating and all the candy that comes with it.
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