Vacation Day 3

Sunday was our 3rd day of vacation. We slept in and then got ready to go to Cocoa Beach. The weather was beautiful. The kids loved the beach. Rilla loved playing in the water and searching for sea shells. We made a sand castle and Gil buried Walter and Jem in the sand. We had a picnic lunch and then headed home. We were there about two and a half hours. We ended up with a lot of sand in our van. The only not fun part was me getting sunburned even with sunblock on. I hate that I sunburn so easy. Luckily, Walter and Matthew take more after their dad and don't burn as easy. Rilla takes after me and burned a little, although not nearly as bad as I did. We all watched a movie together that night.

Vacation Day 1 &2

Last week was Spring break and we took a trip to Florida. We left the previous Friday afternoon and drove a few hours before we stopped at a hotel for the night. We stayed at my favorite hotel, Holiday Inn Express. I love their beds, bedding, continental breakfast, and they have a good military discount. Shirley's asthma unfortunately had been getting worse and that day we were having to give him treatments every 3 hours. So he slept propped up in the chair to sleep that night.




We had a great Breakfast Saturday morning and continued on to Florida. We had an uneventful trip. We stopped for lunch at a rest stop and the weather was beautiful. We got in to our town home we rented for the week around 6PM. We got settled in, ate dinner, and headed to Magic Kingdom for their fireworks. We really had fun. It was very exciting. We saw part of the electric parade and got a pretty good spot by the castle to watch the fireworks. After the fireworks we went exploring and found lots of fun rides to go on without any lines, Like Pirates of the Carribean and Splash Mountain. Rilla loved Splash Mountain. We really had a lot of fun and the kids made it till 1AM when the park closed. The last picture is them on our drive home to our hotel. They fell asleep right away in the car.

Jem's 7th Birthday!

We celebrated Jem's 7th Birthday the Saturday after Gil came home. Jem was sick the weekend of his birthday and Rilla and I waere sick the following weekend so we waited until Gil came home to have his party. It was fun. I made him a Volcano cake and had a few friends over. It sure is amazing how fast they grow up.





Jem is such a joy to have in our family. His funny personality sure brightens our home. He loves nature and natural disasters (rocks, tornados, volcanoes, etc). He wants to be a Geologist and part time Storm Chaser when he grows up. He is also a great big brother. He can be quite a Drama King sometimes, too. Here are some pictures of him when he was younger:

Daddy's Home!

Gil's home! I am so excited. We had the Welcome Home Celebration last night. It was really exciting. We even got to watch the plane land and the soldiers get off the plane. The kids loved it all.






I am so happy the deployment is over. It has been a long but good year. I am a much stronger person.

Merry Christmas!

We had a very nice Christmas this year. Two days before Christmas we had friends over to make sugar cookies. The kids had lots of fun cutting out different shapes. Especially Shirley. This was the first year I let him since he is allergic to wheat. He loved playing in the flower a little too much and I finally had to stop him and tell him no more since he started scratching his wrists and around his mouth where he kept touching his floured hands.














































Then some of the kids painted the cookies with colored egg yolk and sprinkled with sprinkles before the cookies were cooked. They turned out really cute. I meant to take pictures but I forgot. We made other cookies and treats and delivered them Christmas Eve day to our friends. Christmas was nice and quiet. The kids slept in till 7PM (yeah) and then we opened up our presents. My favorite were the blankets my Grandma made for the kids. She always makes them presents and I love that. The kids get to open up their Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve.




I bought this Barbie carriage with 6 ballerina barbies and horse for Rilla at a yard sale for three dollars a few months ago at a yard sale. She loved it. We even had a white Christmas. It wasn't a lot of snow, but it was still white.

































































The kids had lots of fun playing with their new toys. It was also nice spending the day together. Here are a few more pictures from Christmas Day.

Sentences!

My favorite discipline when my kids get older is writing sentences. I like that they have to think about what they are writing. My boys haven't been putting the toilet seat up when they pee and It is really annoying to sit on a wet toilet seat. Rilla was constantly having to wipe off the toilet seat before she could sit on it. Finally, after several times telling them to lift the seat up I came up with the consequence of writing sentences. Their first offense was 20 sentences. Their second time was 30. I told them I would add 10 sentences each time they "forgot". They only had to write sentences twice and have been putting up the toilet seat.

About 6 months ago I was having trouble with Walter lying. He kept doing it so I finally made up 2 weeks of sentences for him. He had to write 100 sentences a day and each day what he wrote was different. I even looked up scriptures about being honest so some days he wrote a partial scripture. I would real him the scripture and talk with him about it. Twice during the end of the two weeks he went to get the papers for writing sentences and found that his sentence for the day was already written 100 times (by me). I told him I wrote then for him because I love him and that is what Jesus did for us when he atoned for our sins. He payed the price so we can return to live with Heavenly Father again. It worked great and he stopped lying.