Tate graduated Pre-School

Anderson Family Trip

Way back... when the summer began (in June) we had an Anderson family vacation. It has been a long time since we have been able to all get together and finally we did. We went up to Matt's family's cabin and spent a week there. We did tons of four wheeling, hiking and even horse riding. My brother in law had a buddy bring his horses to the cabin. There was even a pony for the smaller kids to enjoy.





Some other activities we did were decorate t-shirts and the girls all got to make their own dolls. It was defiantly a vacation to remember.

Valentines

(YUP, this is a bit old. I started it and never finished, but here you go.....)

We had the craziest Valentines week, but I absolutely loved it! I have sort of been on a kick lately of parties, so I thought it would be awesome to invite a few of Tate and Addie's friends over for a valentine party. Last minute my nieces and nephew joined too, so that their mom and dad could go out for their anniversary. There was defiantly going to be a party!

Tate really wanted to decorate the house for valentines and so I had him help me pull something together. It turned out pretty cute for it being cheap hand made decorations. I didn't even have to spend anything since we just collected things around the house. ...





Speaking of Tate helping me, I swear I know how to spell Valentines. I had Tate string the letters on and at some point they must have gotten mixed up. For some reason I didn't even notice until everything was all hung up. I wasn't about to pull the sign down and get the letters reorganized.


We had some cousins and a couple of friends come over. We ate heart shaped grilled cheese, decorated cookies and played a couple of games. Overall it was a success!!!

Superheroes in Training...

My cute mom is always wanting to do memorable things with her grandchildren. Last summer she held a tea party for the girls and their dolls. It was so fun. Of course she then wanted to do something for the boys. I gave her the idea of something with super heros. From there, this is what we came up with.

Made Capes

Found these adorable certificates to print at Designergirl007


Then my sister in-law and I made these fun cupcakes!

"Ok, I am a little crazy since this was only for two little boys, but what the heck, we all had fun."

Then we had to have some games so that the boys could complete their Superhero Training. Like the "X-Ray Vision Test" where we blindfolded the boys and had them guess what it was they were feeling in the bowls. (We had pasta, rice and cut up tomatoes).

The favorite was the "Speed Test". We have a small hill in our neighborhood where the boys could sled. As they slep I timed them and had them race. They had a blast!


Our last game was "What are your senses? Test". We had a list of questions we read to the boys and they had to answer them. One of the questions was a scenario where they had to pretend a bank was robbed and tell me how they were going to stop the robbers from getting away. It was so fun to hear the boys crazy answers.

After games we decorated mask and ate pizza!

Finally the boys were officially sworn as Superheroes! They could choose their own name, which Tate chose "Batman 6"???? I don't get it either?.... and then we signed their certificates and took pics. Tate's sort of looks like a mug shot. I hope this isn't suppose to be telling me something.

Looking for New Sitter......!

Sometimes it just takes four hours to show a husband how hard being a mommy really is.....

So about a month ago Matt watched the kids while I had to head out. I was gone about 4 hours. I told him to watch dinner, which was a roast in the oven, and most importantly... OUR KIDS!!!

As soon as I walked in the door Tate came running to me yelling, "Mommy, Addie peed all over the floor". I walked to the family room to see Matt sitting on the couch in loss for words. I have never seen him so overwhelmed. I asked him what else happened and he told me how Tate broke a lamp and dinner got burnt. Right then I see Addie running in the kitchen naked. Her hair looked wet and I asked Matt if she just got a bath? Matt then told me how he had given her a bath.... over an hour ago. I then asked, "Why is her hair still wet". "Oh, it's not wet", Matt said, "It's Vaseline"! So to top everything off, Addie had gotten into some Vaseline I had in a basket on her dresser for when she was a baby. She thought it was lotion or something and rubbed it all over herself and hair....



It took me three days to get the Vaseline out. I tried Corn Starch and Baby Oil. I read online you could use peanut butter or raw egg, but honestly that just seemed nasty. Luckily my cousin reminded me of Basic H2, which is an all natural degreaser and it got most of it out. After the second wash with it, her hair was back to normal.

Here are some pics of the Corn Starch washing.... Addie thought it was so funny!

Words from Tate....

Tate is full of questions. You never know what he is going to say... One day he was trying to figure out his future so he began asking questions...

Tate asked Matt, "So when I have kids you'll be a grandpa right? And when I become a grandpa, you'll be dead?"

Speaking of death, Tate has been really interested in what happens after you die and wanting to know all about heaven. One day he was crying and saying how he didn't want mommy or daddy to die. (It was very emotional) Then, he asked Matt, with huge tears in his eyes, "Is there even an All A Dollar in heaven?".

Somehow, all this talk on heaven got Tate thinking that Church and Heaven was the same thing. On Sunday we told him we were going to church and he asked to bring some of his toys. These toys were load and not appropriate for church, so I told him that "We don't need to bring toys to church". Tate then got really sad and on the verge of tears said, "But Mom, there are kids in heaven too and they need toys"!

This last Monday we talked about service for our family home evening. Here is a script on how it went....
Matt: "Tate, do you know what service is"?

Tate: "Yup"..., "Isn't it when you give all of your toys away to someone who has no toys"?....... "Then Santa Clause will bring you MORE NEW toys"!


Tuesday we were outside playing. Tate looked up in the sky and pointed to a rocket/shuttle in the air which left a stream of smoke behind it.
"Look", Tate said, "It's the bad guy chasing after Spiderman"!... (The Green Goblin is the bad guy). Tate then continued to yell in the air, "Bad Guy...... Bad Guy.... Get over here"!




Lately, Tate has really enjoyed the movie Free Willy. There is one particular character in the film who is of Indian decent and takes care of the whales. Well, in our neighborhood we have tons of construction going on. There are allot of trucks and workers. As we were standing outside, this white truck drove by. Tate's mouth dropped and he just starred at the man driving the car. "Mom" he said, "That's the guy from Free Willy"! He continued to tell me how he knew it was him. He had the same hair and skin color, drove a truck.... of course it was him!



I love Tate!

Here I am....

Once again I am months behind on blogging. I will quickly try to catch up.....
December was such a fun month. Christmas Break was the best since we had so many fun events and family get together. Although it was rather hectic.

Weddings:
We had two family weddings once again. This was defiantly the year of love or something. I don't think I have ever even been invited to this many weddings. So Matt and I's nephew got married to a cute gal and then the week after my sister got married to a wonderful guy as well. Let's just say those two weeks were full of family fun.

Skiing:
Since I am not carrying any babies in my belly, I thought I might as well take this opportunity to take on skiing. I have only been once my whole life, and that was not the best experience. I was in my early 20's, never been, it was snowing hard and I was thrown on a blue hill my first time down. Seriously! Basically you can imagine how a beginner would feel about these circumstances... After that awful experience Matt told me her would take me when he started teaching a Tate. That made this year the perfect year.

I did alright my first lesson and we decided to take another trip out to the slope on a day without Tate. We had so much fun. I wish I took pictures, but I am horrible at that. Basically you could see me going down the hill in all sorts of unique ways (backwards, sitting down, laying down, etc.). It may sound like I didn't do to well, but I did. We just had some funny moments of me trying to get up when I fell. I hated trying to stand up after a fall.

Projects:
During December I was also working on a super huge project! My parents had given me my old doll house and I really wanted to make it over for Addie. I got a late start so I sort of had to rush it. I am still not quite finished. I have one of the rooms with no furniture, plus would like to do something with the attic. I have some more ideas of things I would like to add later on. Hopefully I can get to that soon.

Anyways, these are pics from start to finish. My cute boy, Tate, helped me paint the furniture since I was in a time crunch. He was very excited to be involved in this project.