Grandpa Dan's visit

We were so excited when Grandpa had a business trip in Tennessee and while was in this part of the country he came to see us too! He took Liam and Jonas on a walk and they ran into a Dairy Queen and got some ice cream, he worked on Build and Grows with them, we went to eat at a barbecue place called Pig in a Poke in the town over (because there isn't much in our town), and we tried to take a walk across the dam but it was so cold and windy that we only made it about half way across before we turned back. Other than that we stayed at home where it was nice and warm.

More Snow

We got a bit more snow and Nate found a sled under the house. Amazing how much better a sled works than a cardboard box. :)





Adele REALLY wanted to go outside and play in the snow but I REALLY didn't want to go outside into the cold!



She finally talked me into going out! She did a lot better than I thought she would. Her gloves are way too big for her hands but she kept them on and when they fell off she would bring them to us so we could fix them for her. She even went down on the sled a few times with us and loved it.

Old School

As in I am getting old and this is the kind of desk I used when I was in school.

I have had my eye on this beauty since I first saw it in one my favorite little antique/craft stores in town. I pretty much walk through a couple of stores in town and decorate my house in my head but this is the first purchase I have made. It was $75 and that seemed a little too high for me but I went in last week and it had been marked down to $60. Nate and I decided it would be a good purchase to encourage Liam to do his homework. When he sits at the kitchen table to do it it will sometimes take him 4 hours. I wish I was exaggerating. We thought if we had a place for him to work that was away from the chaos he might be able to concentrate better. We are thinking of putting it in Adele's room where there are no distractions. The great part is that when I went to buy it today, the booth (the store is broken up into booths from different vendors) was 20% off! So I bought myself a rolling pin too :).

Adele update

Dad can't stand it when Adele's hair is in her face. Sometimes one clip is just not enough to hold it back so he puts every clip he can find in her hair.


She loves helping around the house...



Trying on shoes...



And hanging out in the pantry...

Louisville, KY Temple

Nate got a call one day from the temple president's secretary wanting to make an appointment to meet with him. The following Saturday we decided we would all make the 3+ hour drive for his meeting and while we were there we would each do a session. We had to leave at 7 that morning to get there in time for a session, his meeting and then another session. We got about 10 minutes away from home, not even out of town, and our van started to overheat. We made our way back home and then transferred all of stuff to our little car and squished all 5 of us in.

(Here is a picture of our little car. We are very grateful to have it,
but it is not what you'd call a family car.)

So we piled in and made our way to the temple (again). We made it there too late to do a session before Nate's meeting so we hung out in the parking lot for a while.

It might look like a nice day but it was COLD!

We were under the impression that we would be able to use the Stake Center that was in the same parking lot as the temple to let the kids run around while each of us was in the temple but it was locked. They have a very small room at the front of the temple that is used for temple worker breaks and a waiting room that you can also use to watch kids. Nate was able to talk to the temple President early (they asked him to be a worker so he will be working one Fri/Sat a month). After his meeting I did a session and Nate watched the kids in the waiting room. By the time I came out we were all pretty exhausted so we decided to call it a day and go home.

The Fish

We got a fish tank for Christmas this year. Nate and I were so excited about the kids having their first pet. The day after Christmas Nate took Liam and Jonas to Walmart (the only place in town where you can buy fish) to pick out the fish. They came back with one Gourami and 3 Mollies. The lady at the store told them that one of the Mollies was pregnant, which sounded really exciting until we found out that they can have a lot of babies and that they will keep reproducing rapidly.

The pregnant Molly

We read that you are supposed to put the babies into a separate tank so the mom won't eat them but we couldn't find any of those little breeder tanks with Walmart being our only option. One day she didn't look pregnant anymore but we didn't see any babies until a few days later when there were about 3 swimming around. When we looked more closely at the rocks on the bottom we found quite a few dead ones. Shortly after this the Gourami started getting sick. When we looked up fish sicknesses, it seemed to have everything! We got some fish medicine and kept going through cycles of the medicine but eventually they all died. We waited a few days, cleaned the tank, pretreated everything and started over. Within days our new fish were showing signs of the same sicknesses. We were talking to our mechanics who live down the street (kind of sad that we have gotten to know our mechanics so well - more on that in a later post) and they were telling us that they had problems with keeping fish alive. They found out it was the water. Basically, it is horrible and you have to buy some special treatment to make it so fish can survive. So after the last of the fish died we have put the fish tank on hold. But here is a picture from when it was all good...

First Snow

We got our first snow at the beginning of January. It wasn't much but the kids loved playing in it. We had some large boxes on our back porch that Liam and Jonas had been using to build forts and things in the backyard and they used them as sleds. We finally found something our awful, hill of a yard is good for! They played outside for hours while I stayed inside nice and warm watching them through the window! It was perfect!