A SUNBEAM A SUNBEAM

This is the most recent picture of just Hayden

and I already used this on the aquarium post

and he his not in his church clothes but he is still cute!!

It's official my baby, Hayden is now a Sunbeam in church. How and when did this happen. I can't believe it I guess he really is a big boy now. Luckily for me, about 2 Sundays before he was to move up to Sunbeams he said he didn't want to be in Nursery anymore and wanted to be in with Talmage. For the past 1 1/2 months he has done great. He transitioned better than any of my other kids. I think part of it is there were 2 nurseries and half of his preschool buddies were in the other nursery so now he gets to be with all of them plus his cousin who was in the other nursery. They have a pretty big class of I believe 5 boys and 5 girls and 3 teachers. Unfortunately, I only got to see him in the big Primary room the first Sunday (I was a sub) since I am no longer a teacher. Since I have connections (Christa being the President) she will inform me if he gets crazy and so far no reports. I think having them in the front row helps a great deal they aren't distracted from the older kids so they actually sit there and try and sing the songs and do all the hand motions. It is way cute. Last Sunday, was the first time he got to go up on the stand in Sacrament meeting and sing with the other Primary kids. He sang the chorus but was distracted with the little boy next to him who was bumping into him and then bumping into his sister who was on the other side of him. Luckily for me, he still lets me call him my baby boy.

Change

As of January 1 st I am no longer a Primary teacher at church. I loved being a Primary teacher but after 2 1/2 years am ready for a new change. Of course I can say that now knowing what my new calling is. I am an activity day leader and I love it. There are 3 of us leaders with about 15 girls ages 8-12. We meet twice a month during YM/YW and cub scouts. I love the fact that I can be with Primary age kids and still be able to go to Sunday School and Relief Society. I haven't been to Sunday School in yikes almost 6 years because being in the library before being a Primary teacher we were always busy during Sunday school because lets face it a some people skip it. When I was younger, I never thought much of Sunday School. I always thought of it as way boring. Now that I am back I love it and have come to the conclusion that it is the teachers that make all the difference of it being way boring to being and a great learning experience. We have 2 great teacher and I have enjoyed going so far. I can't wait until August then both my girls will be in activity days.

Happy New Years

New Years day we just hung around the house until dinner time. We went over to the Bugee's for dinner and game playing. Since my dad was watching football all day, he wanted hot dogs for dinner. We brought over our Wii so some of the kids could play on it since the big soft play toys are put up. They did have the toys to play with. They were moved to a corner in the basement. This time Morgan and Taylor were around to play games with us.

New Years Eve

I took absolutely no pictures of our New Year's Eve get together. We partied with the Bugee's and Tady's. We had it over at our house since my parents are moving the big soft play toys out of the basement and moving all of the back bedroom toys out of there to get ready for Cheri and her family to move in the middle of January since Preston has gone back to school and between his 2 classes a week and doing a non paying internship that he needs so many hours for for school money is well pretty slim for them. Luckily, he only has to go to school for a total of a year and only has 6 more months to go. Anyway, Christa bought some big cheese pizza's from Sam's that we doctored up a bit and added our own toppings to. We also had a green salad, fruit (I want to say strawberries but I don't really remember), and IBC root beer (Not so good when your recycling box is not usable because of all the cracks in it so we just had to place the bottles in their box on the grass next to the garbage cans and the box doesn't say IBC root beer in big print but if you drive by real slow and look real hard it does say soft drink on it. Our neighbor had to do a double take.). We also had ice cream sundaes later in the evening. The kids were scattered around the house playing Wii, watching movies, on the computers, and playing with toys. There were only 10 kids so they all played very well together. Morgan and Taylor didn't stay to long. Just long enough to grab a bite to eat and chat for a bit. Then they were off to their own church dances. The adults played board games. Then about a hour before midnight we lit off some fireworks. It was chilly outside so we were all watching from in the garage. By the time that was over we got out the fancy glasses (well cheap fancy looking glasses) and got the non alcoholic sparkling juice ready and watched the count down on TV.
Not too long after all the shouting and drinking everyone left. We threw our kids to bed and I stayed up a little bit longer to wind down a bit. It was fun.

Finally, something cheaper the more kids you have

Today, December 30th, we went to the Tennessee aquarium. It is about 1 1/2 hours away from our house. We haven't been there in years. Since the GA aquarium opened the Tennessee aquarium added a whole other building. The original building focuses on fresh water rivers and lakes from around the world. The other building has salt water things, a butterfly garden, penguins (I think they had penguins before). Why did we go there instead of the GA aquarium which is an hour closer? I can answer that in one word $$$$. We have all been to the GA aquarium within the last year. My parents, Morgan, Taylor, and the Tady's were able to join us as well. As I was on the Tennessee Aquariums website checking out prices to compare a year pass to a daily pass, it was cheaper for our family to get a family year pass than 8 individual day passes. A family pass consists of 2 adults and all your children. So in this rare case we saved money because of our large family. I love places that have family year passes because we almost always make out better than the daily rate. We used the Christmas money from my Grandma Bugee to pay for our pass. If we bought a year pass to the GA Aquarium we would be paying over 3 times the price since you have to buy individual year passes.

Connor

Talmage and Lorin

Hayden Looks like the camera focused more on the fish than the person

Otters boy are these things fast. I just had to keep pointing and shooting and hoping for one in the shot

Love digital for that reason

Little gator or is it crocodile???

Hayden

Payton, Sonoma, Lincoln, Kennedy, Talmage, and Lorin

When we finished the first building we walked across the street to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. It is a good thing we got there a little before noon because we had a large group and service was way slow. I think they were down by about 3 people that day. By the time we left, the tables were all full and they were waiting longer than we were because there were only 2 table filled when we got there. Then we headed over to the new second building.

Hayden He loved the butterfly garden and didn't want to leave

Probably because he got to hold a butterfly that was 1/2 dead sitting on the ground because it could barely fly

Hayden

After the aquarium, we headed for home. It was a great fun day and we will be heading back there I'm sure many more times during the year.

Sick to my stomach

The day after Christmas I went to a few stores to see if they had any good deals. Jon went with me again this year. I love having a babysitter right in my own home. We started out at Target. Target was a bit disappointing again. Halloween and Christmas they only had their candy 30% off. That being said there was tons of candy still on the shelf. I guess it was good so I wouldn't be tempted into buying it. They did have their non candy food 1/2 off so I grabbed some Christmas Oreos. We bought a few stocking stuffer items to throw in the treasure box. Then we headed over to Hallmark and bought a few ornaments and wrapping paper for next year. We also brought home some donuts for the kids for breakfast.

Later that day, I forgot I wanted to go to one more store to look at their ornaments for our 2 small trees that need a little sparkle. As I was driving to the store and was stopped at a traffic light, I looked down at may hands and noticed my diamond was missing from my wedding ring. That is when I felt sick to my stomach. When I got to the store, I looked in the car checked my pockets and nothing. So I said a quick prayer and went into the store and called Jon. I told him I was by the fireplace a lot today folding clothes by the fire and just hanging out keeping warm. Jon immediately gathered all the kids and told them mom lost her diamond in her wedding ring and then he picked up a popcorn kernel from the floor and told them it would be like this size. Just then Payton picked something off the floor and said do you mean this. And there it was my diamond and it was close to the fireplace. Jon immediately called me and when I heard my phone ring I thought no way they couldn't have already found it, but I hope they did. So when I got back into my car I said another quick prayer of thanks. Now I have to take it in a get it fixed. Add that to the list that never ends.

How could I forget

I forgot one last thing from my Christmas post. My Christmas present. I was fully prepared when Jon asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told him I wanted my blog made into a book. I didn't even know you could do that until a few months ago. When I first started my blog not quite 2 years ago, my plan was to print out each blog entry and put it in a binder so I would have a hard copy. Well I only printed out 2. So I was very excited when I heard about blog books.

I love it. I only did 2008 and when I am done with 2009 (hopefully I will get done with this year already since we are into the first week of February) I want to make that into a book as soon as possible. It was very easy to do. They just import all your blog entries you choose. I checked off all the 2008 ones and some in 2009 since I am always behind in posting. Then they are downloaded in a book pictures and all one post per page/s. The only thing I didn't really care for was that they placed all the pictures on the side of the page and I usually type under each picture who is in it. So I had to tweek it a little. All in all it was very easy and didn't take a lot of time. It wasn't too expensive either. I chose a hard bound book with no dust jacket (Connor would rip that to shreds one of these days) and premium paper which was about $3.00 more. I had I believe just under 100 pages and with shipping it cost around $60.00. Which if I was to print each page out colored pictures and all would have been way more $$ just for the ink and it wouldn't have been on premium paper and stuck in a 3 ring binder. If I was more on the ball and would have ordered a week earlier I would have gotten free shipping. At least I got it before Christmas which is what I was shooting for.