Snow fun

This morning we woke up to a good 3 or 4 inches of snow!  Nate and I immediately began moaning and groaning about it, but the kids were ecstatic.  So it's no surprise that the first order of business for our Saturday was digging out the snow gear and playing around in the white stuff.  

Lilly and Jayne made snow angels.

Jonah helped with the shoveling.

And played a little snow-shovel-guitar. 

Then he made a snow angel too. 

Then we came in, took off all of our wet gloves, hats, and boots, and enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate.  It was nice to be reminded that snow can be fun.  When I look at it, all I see is cold, wet, and miserable.  Everything looks better through the eyes of children! =) 

Let's Play Christmas Catch-up

Thanks to our busy December, I've been pretty M.I.A. as far as the blog is concerned.  Now that the hustle and bustle is dying down, I figured I'd better get things posted before I get too busy again.  So this post will cover three or four different outings/events.  

Temple Square Lights

A couple weeks ago, before all this crazy snow, my mom, sisters, the kids and I visited Temple Square in Salt Lake City to see the Christmas lights.  We started with some dinner and then enjoyed walking around.  The kids loved the fountains the best, as usual.  They each brought a couple of pennies so they could throw them in a fountain. 

Aunt Sarah, Grandma Laurie, Aunt Rachel and the kids

One of the many fountains that we had to stop at, and stop the kids from jumping into. 

Lilly insisted on having her picture taken in this spot.  I tried to get her to move so that we wouldn't have the fabulous view of the donkey's rear end, but she wouldn't cooperate. 

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir with David Archuleta and Micheal York

A friend of ours who moved out of state had received four tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Christmas concert featuring David Archuleta and Micheal York.  At the last minute, she and her husband weren't able to make the trip, so she called us and asked if we'd like to have her tickets.  We went with a couple of our friends. It was a wonderful concert!  We were sure to get there early, over an hour early actually.  It was a good thing though, apparently there were hundreds of people with tickets who couldn't get in because they weren't there early enough.  
The choir was amazing, as always.  I'm not a huge David Archuleta fan, but he's very likable and has an amazing voice.  He did a wonderful job.  I really enjoyed the telling of the story of the tabernacle choir by Micheal York.  I'd never known the history of the choir and he made it feel like an enchanting tale.  Another highlight of the concert were the bell ringers.  During my senior year of high school, our choir director managed to acquire a set of hand bells for us to learn to use for Christmas.  They are so fun to play, but they definitely require a lot of practice and the way these bell ringers at the concert were playing them was wonderful!  
It was a great night.  Thank you Erika for thinking of us.  This concert was the highlight of my Christmas season this year!

Christmas with the Barnums

Nate's parents and sisters were in town the weekend before Christmas.  We enjoyed having dinner together and opening presents.  And the kids had a blast playing with Aunt Emily, Aunt Amanda, and Grandma.  As one of our Christmas presents, we got a port-a-potty.  It's meant to inspire us to camp more, since Lilly is deathly afraid of outhouses.  Each of the kids had to sit on it and smile for the camera. 

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

We spent Christmas Eve at my mom's house with all my brothers and sisters and my Grandma Bennett.  It was a fun night, albeit short, full of delicious food and laughter.  My mom asked if my family would do the nativity this year.  Lilly was Mary, Jayne was the Angel, Nate was Joseph, Jonah was a wise man and I was the narrator.  We had to recruit my sister, Sarah, to be a shepherd.  It was a less than perfect telling of the Christmas story, but it was fun to watch.  

Lilly aka Mary

Our Angel Jayne

Nate helped our Angel take flight to make the scene more realistic. =)

Jonah, the wise man

All the kids got new "softies" or blankets from Grandma Great.

Lilly giving the camera some "Chubby Bunny" love.

About a week ago, Jonah asked me if we could do something special on Christmas morning.  He said that before we open any presents, he wanted us to kneel down together as a family and say a prayer to thank Heavenly Father for sending us the gift of His son, Jesus Christ.  Isn't it amazing how a 6 year old can put things in perspective for you?  So on Christmas morning, we did just that.  Before any gifts were opened, we had a family prayer to give thanks to the Lord for sending His son to Earth.  
The kids loved all their goodies from Santa.  

Jayne the pirate with her pillow pet.  I think she was still a bit groggy.

Lilly and her unicorn pillow pet.

Jonah's jellyfish lamp. 

All the kids got books from Cathy and Loron.

A few years ago we started our strict "stay-at-home-on-Christmas-day" policy.  It's been our favorite tradition.  We don't go anywhere.  If family wants to, they can come see us, but we spend our day at home.  The kids get to play with all of their new toys and Nate and I get to just relax.  Then in the evening, we take a drive to find Christmas lights together.  This year, we decided to make a turkey dinner for Christmas.  Nate took over the turkey and it turned out so delicious!  I've informed him that it will have to be a new tradition, Daddy's Turkey on Christmas Day.  He says he's up for it and wants to try new recipes every year. 


Well, I think that's about it.  We had a wonderful Christmas and we hope all of you did too! 
 

Our December Family Letter

Dear Family & Friends,

It's that time of year again. You know, the time for snow, wish lists, Christmas lights, baking, caroling, partying, and stressing out. But, most importantly, it's time for our yearly recap of life as a Barnum. Don't worry, I'll keep it short and sweet!

Jonah is in 1^st grade this year. He loves school. He's reading way above his grade level and excelling in everything else as well. Jonah loves to read the Zoo Books magazines about crocodiles, sharks, snakes, etc. Jonah played soccer this last spring. It was his first experience with organized sports. He wasn't a big fan of it. He would get easily frustrated when he didn't kick the ball just right(that's the perfectionist in him). But since he got a trophy at the end of the season, he keeps talking about playing again next year.

Jonah favorite thing to do is to make a “project”. He'll get out paper, scissors, glue, staples, crayons, string, straws, pencils, paper cups, plates, napkins, utensils, and pretty much anything else he can find and spread them all across the table and begin creating. He comes up with some pretty interesting stuff. It can get frustrating when he uses up all of my scotch tape on his catapult or duct tapes all the pencils in the house together, but I just keep reminding myself that one day he may be creating new inventions, or building beautiful bridges or buildings or something like that.

Lilly turned 4 this year and is going to preschool four days a week. Lilly is learning to read. She knows all her letters and sounds and is working on sight words. Lilly loves to watch Scooby-Doo and she really enjoys playing with her friends. Lilly's quite the social butterfly at school. Her teachers tell me that she is a friend to everyone and it's easy to see. Whenever I pick her up she has to say goodbye to and hug all of her friends. Lilly's not too happy about winter time. She's more of a summertime girl. Several times in the last month, she's come out of her room all dressed up in her swimsuit and wanting to play in the water. I finally had to hide that thing until next summer.

Jayne just turned 2 in October. She is such a fun little girl! She talks like a pro and loves to sing songs and “ballerina”. That's what she calls dancing. Her favorite thing to do is put on her sparkly shoes and her little tutu that her Grandma Barnum made her and run around the house dancing and playing. Lately she's really into watching the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and reading “Pinkalicious.” She's definitely girl through and through.

Nate had a big year this year. He finished his bachelor's degree in Spanish and criminal justice through Weber State University. I'm so proud of him for sticking with it and seeing it through to the end. Nate also recently started a new job. He's a sales representative for Verizon Wireless in West Valley. He's only been there for a couple of months and he's already ranking among their top sales reps in his area.  It's been such a blessing to not have him doing such hard labor out in the elements, especially now that it's winter. Nate just got called to serve as assistant scout master in our church ward. He's excited to go on the camp outs with the boys. They'll be doing a winter camp in January.

Nate got his tonsils taken out this year, which has made a huge difference in his health. Usually he's had some walking pneumonia or tonsillitis by this time of year, but so far.....nothing. When they took them out, the doctor was surprised by how large and infected they were. He couldn't believe we hadn't had it done sooner. I'm so glad we finally got those monsters taken out!

As for me, Ashley, I guess my biggest news this year is that I'm back in school. I started in the summer working on my bachelor's degree in family studies through Utah State University's online program. I'm really loving it so far. I've been taking two classes per semester, but I'm going to bump it up to three in the spring. I'm also serving as a Webelos den leader in our cub scout program, which is fun. It definitely helps keep me busy. I've also been doing a bit of babysitting, which is totally uncharacteristic of me. I've never been big on babysitting, but I'm enjoying it and the extra money is always helpful. We watch a friend of Lilly's after preschool twice a week and we just started watching a little two month old baby girl this week while her mom works part time.

And there you have it. That's our 2010 in a nutshell. We hope you all have had a happy, healthy, and prosperous year! Have a wonderful holiday season!

Love,

Nate, Ashley, Jonah, Lilly, & Jayne

Winter Fun

Well, not fun for me, but the kids had a pretty good time.  We recently got a couple of big snowstorms at our house.  We're talking a foot of snow falling in about 24 hours.  

Nate's Jeep had been parked on the front lawn as he often does. (sigh) He had a great time getting it out though.  He was excited about the big rooster tails of snow coming up off his back tires.

The morning after one of our big storms.

I sure am glad Nate was home to help shovel us out.  Even with both of us working on it, it took  us an hour to get the driveway and front sidewalk cleared.  I'm seriously considering investing in a snowblower.  It would definitely save us from all future chiropractor expenses we're going to have if we have to shovel this stuff every year.

 
The first thing Jonah said to me the next day was, "Can we go play in it mom?"  After putting it off as long as possible, mostly because it was insanely cold outside with highs in the 20's,  we dug out the boots and snow pants and gloves and took some time to play in the snow.  

Jonah just had to build a snowman first thing.  About half an hour later, he pulled the carrot nose out and ate it for a snack.  Funny kid.

The kids thought it would be fun to climb on top of the mountain of snow.

Lilly likes to make snow angels.....on her tummy.  She says the wings look better this way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter has arrived and I am less than thrilled.

 Yesterday morning we awoke to 12 inches of snow outside and no power.  What a way for winter to make it's debut.  "Hey everybody!  I'm here to make you cold and miserable and NO! you can't even use your microwave or stove this morning to make some hot chocolate so that you feel better about all the snow I brought with me!"

The power went off sometime in the night, I think around 2 or 3am.  Since my kids are such tossers and turners, we had to get up a few times to make sure they had their blankets over them to stay warm.  One look out my window in the morning had me burrowing back under the covers.  We all kind of slept in a bit.  
At 10:00am, when the power still wasn't on, we decided we'd better get dressed for church so we could be on time.  When we arrived at the chapel, we noticed no power there either.  Luckily there were enough of us in the chapel to generate a bit of heat and enough light coming in through the windows for the pianist to see her music.  Despite the lack of power, the meeting was wonderful.  I left feeling so grateful for my blessings and looking forward to spending the day with the ones I love the most.  
The power did come back on about fifteen minutes before the meeting ended, but we were all told to go home rather than continue the block.  It probably had something to do with the fact that the rest of the church was still freezing cold and it takes a while to get that heater going.  



They say that when you live with a person you begin to take on some of their characteristics.  Nate and I have been living together for over seven years now and for the past seven winters I've listened to him tell me just how much he hates the snow and the cold.  I regret to announce that he has finally brought me over to the dark side.  I don't like snow.  Sure, it's pretty.....for about a minute.  Then you have to shovel it and drive in it and try to keep from freezing your nethers off.  Winter? No, thank you.  Give me sunshine and balmy breezes any day. 

I can't believe it's been a week since Christmas already! We've been spending that week here in Las Vegas with Nate's family. We left Magna in wee hours of the morning last Saturday and we'll be headed home in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow. Once I get home and semi-organized, I'll do some fabulously long posts about Christmas and our trip and all that holly jolly stuff. I know you'll all be counting the minutes. But for now I just wanted to say that I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and has a Happy New Year!

The Ward Christmas Party

We had our ward Christmas party last night. Nate is the activities committee chairman in our ward and, as he has told me many times, I am his committee.

Planning activities always requires a bit of work, but the Christmas party is definitely the hardest one of the year. I was very proud of Nate this year. He actually had a meeting with his committee members (Nate hates having meetings--he'd much rather just do it all himself) and made some assignments. There were a couple of people who didn't carry out their assignments, but I guess that's just going to happen we took care of it. But we also had a lot of help this year, much more than last year anyway.

Anyway, so back to the party. Nate wanted to do breakfast for dinner this year. We hired a caterer and had biscuits with country sausage gravy, fresh fruit, and scrambled eggs with ham and cheese. We also asked everyone to bring their favorite dessert to share. We love doing dessert this way because we always get a big variety of treats and there's always plenty for everyone.

The food turned out great. I had several people asking me for the recipe for the gravy. Our only problem was that we ran out of biscuits. Apparently Nate's activities draw quite the crowd. Last year we had around 200 people at the Christmas party. So that's what we planned for this year. Nate did a head count while people were coming through the dinner line and he counted a little over 300. I guess we learned our lesson. If we still have this calling next year, we'll be planning for at least 300 people.

We had a short little program. A family read and acted out a little Christmas poem and the primary sang a song. We also had Santa and Mrs. Claus pay us a visit and bring goody bags for the kids(we almost ran out of those too!). Then we had a room set up where the kids could make their own Christmas cards to take home. This was very popular, but very messy. I don't think we'll be doing that one again next year.

For decorations, Nate brought home a bunch of huge boxes from work and we had some women in the ward wrap them. We stacked them in the corners. At the end of the night all the kids were asking if they could take the giant boxes home with them. I just sent them to ask their parents. At the end of the night, we only had one big one left to throw away, so I guess some of the parents said yes.

Overall, the party was a success. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and we got lots of compliments.

I do just have to get one thing off my chest. It really bothers me that the kids just run wild at these things. I understand that the parents want to sit and visit and enjoy their evening, but when your kids(mostly teenagers) are throwing food around the church, playing in the primary room, or giving Santa a hard time and asking for extra treats and destroying decorations, please take a minute to be a parent and remind them how to behave. Thank you.
Oh, and also, FYI...it is not polite to take entire plates full of treats before everyone has had a chance to get their dinner. And this one was adults too.

Phew! I feel much better now.

It's NOT winter yet Mom!

Jonah and I had the following conversation while looking out the window a few minutes ago.

Me: Look! It's snowing outside.
Jonah(sounding really annoyed): Why is it doing that Mom?
Me: That's what happens in the winter Jonah, it snows.
Jonah(looking at me like I'm stupid or something): It's NOT winter yet Mom!
Me: It sure looks like winter out there right now.
Jonah: Winter is not until December 21st, Mom. It really shouldn't be snowing yet because it's still Fall.

He's right. The first day of winter is not until December 21st. Someone needs to inform Mother Nature right away.