Five for Friday

1.  I made rolls this morning for Sun's school Christmas party....................the house smells delicious!!  I am just sad that I didn't pull one out to eat before I sent them all with her to school.  I will have to make some more later :-)

photo credit:  sltrib.com

2.  We started our holiday celebrations early.  Last night Drew and I went to a friend's house and watched the BYU bowl game.  It was amazing!!  I LOVE football. It was Van Noy's night!  Two touch-downs by the defensive back!  Plus numerous other things that I will not bore you with.  He was totally amazing!  The game was completely boring until the fourth quarter and then we made some adjustments and just exploded.  It was AWESOME!   Go COUGS!!

The big boys went and hung out with some friends and watched a late showing of the Hobbit.  They didn't get home until after midnight.  Because we were all up late, we slept in just a little and everyone was late for everything this morning!!  The big boys got up grumbling for family prayer and went straight back to bed.  I forgot that Smiley had a class performance this morning.  Yes, he was late, and because I was late taking everyone everywhere, I didn't get to see him perform.  Drew had him sing his little song for us in the car as we were driving.  He wasn't too happy about that because it was a solo instead of a class performance.  Needless to say, not a great start to the day.  I think we should have just cancelled today and started the holiday last night.

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3.  Cereal.  We even had cereal for breakfast and we were still late!  Cereal is a BIG deal at our house.  About six years ago we quit having cereal around almost all the time.  I started cooking breakfast every day.  It is also when we started making all of our bread.  I cut out the cereal because we were looking for ways to improve the budget and I couldn't find any more places to cut.  Praying about it, I was told to start cooking breakfast and to make all the bread.  When we made this change, we could save $200.00 on our grocery bill----NO JOKE!!  Who would have thought cereal and bread would cost so much, but at our house, it did.  And I was not even a nice cereal buyer!!  The most sugar I would allow was Honey-nut Cheerios and Frosted Mini-wheats--------no Captain Crunch, Frosted Flakes, Count Chocula----none of that!  Even though we were so totally late for the day, the kids were very excited for breakfast!!

4.  Pitter-patter of little feet.  My baby has started running through the house, especially when he is chasing or being chased by one of his brothers.  It is soooooo cute!  I love the sound of his little feet running across the hardwood floor.  The only thing cuter is hearing the stomping of the feet on the bathroom floor because some little boy has waited too long to make the trip and can barely hold it in while he is trying to drop his drawers.  I made that comment in front of the older boys the other day and one of them looked at me quizically when my husband jumped in, agreed, and offered his opinion.  It was too sweet to see that the memories of little people in the house had a soft spot in his heart too.  Then the boys asked if all of them did it.  Hmmmm.........yep, all of the boys did it, not their sister, just the boys.  I guess we'll be hearing those little feet again in another year or so, as we enter potty-training.

5.  Swimming.  Just an updated report on our swimming expeditions:  We have not been swimming as much as we were in the summer, but we have continued once or twice a month.  Smiley is dog-paddling!!!  Woohoo!!  He still will not float on his back or his face, but he is almost confident enough that I will not have to worry about him too much in the pool, though I would be a lot more comfortable if he would just choose to float!  We will keep working on it!  Shorty is all over the pool and so is Sun!  Yea!!  I was so worried about how we were going to teach them all to swim and how we were going to pay for it!! 

That was another prayer answered.  The only pool we have open is a 20 minute drive, so the time, plus the gas, plus the number of times we would need to go to be proficient, plus the lessons, for the number of people-----OY!  I didn't know how we could possibly manage that.  So since last summer I have been thinking and praying about how we could do it some other way---maybe a hotel in the area would rent me some pool time??  Heavenly Father had a better answer.  A friend who is investigating the church and has children my children's ages, moved to a complex with a pool.  They were allowed to bring friends.  We made a weekly play-date at the pool.  The kids learned to swim and we talked about how to apply the gospel to your life.  Win-win all around----temporally for us, and safety issues, eternally changing for them.  Gotta love it when the Lord's plan is so much better than yours!!

Here is Heather's five things today!!