Stockings from Grammy!

I grew up with Christmas stockings that my mom made, and I thought it would be fun to make some Christmas stockings for my family. I started making some (found the patterns and cut out the felt for both the stockings and the design and even started sewing) not too long before I had to switch to packing and moving. I didn't get very far at all. My mother (who has much better follow through skills than I do) offered to finish them for me. On our trip down for Thanksgiving she finished all the finishing touches. She had even added some 'bling' to make them so much cuter! We were quite excited to be able to have them for Christmas! Thanks Mom!! That was also the trip where we announced that she's going to need to make another one for us... :)

Fall on the Farm

Random Pictures from the Fall

Emily's not sure what to do about Grandpa...

Shelly riding her bike down the lane - I love all the land that we get to play on!

Mark taking the kids for a ride in the wagon - following Shelly on her bike

Hi Cutie Sue!

Still not sure why she finds that comfortable...


Emily playing with Mark. She does this kind of playing a lot! It's a lot of fun! Shelly and Jason are the 'back-up singers' in the background.

Mark reading to Emily - He's a better parent than I am, just for the record

See how patient he is?

This is pretty much the only Halloween shot I got of the kids. Tragic, no? I blame the rain storm we had to work around.

There is really no chance of going Trick or Treating near our house - there's about 5 houses within a mile, and I didn't want to walk that far! Or an apartment complex with a random collection of singles and young families likely to be elsewhere for Halloween. We decided to make Becca's house our home base that night - Thanks Becca!. The kids had a lot of fun going out randomly between rain spurts. Their hat's didn't always stay on, so mostly they looked like beggars instead of farmers, but they didn't know the difference.

Mark fixed the door to our shed. It used to be a chicken coop and the door was all chicken wire (pretty much exactly like the window above the door). He took the wire out and put up some plywood to help keep the shed cleaner. He's good to me like that! Much less annoying for me to put stuff in there now that it doesn't get nearly so dusty and dirty in there. It's not ideal for most storage, but it's much better than letting in tons of dust and leaves every time the wind blows.

We found an old steering wheel somewhere on the farm, and Mark decided it would be fun to turn it into a car for the kids to play with. Some old oil drums, discarded farm tires, and a bit of manual labor from Mark - and we have a new toy!


The kids were rather excited to watch Daddy make a 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Car' (Emphasis from Shelly on the t's and g's)

The kids in the bathtub. That strange line down the center of the picture is the pull chain to the light in the bathroom... Yup, I'm good!

They love playing in the water! Bubbles don't hurt either.

Turkey Cookies

A tradition while I was growing up was to make Turkey Cookies for Thanksgiving. Mom & Dad made some with the singles ward, but the kids never made any. I stole most of the ingredients and brought them home so I could have our kids make some. It took me a few days (blame the pregnancy), but the kids still had fun, even if we had to use Mike & Ikes instead of Candy Corn...

Jason is such a ham!

Shelly still in the process

And a cheesy grin when she's finished


I confess that Emily didn't quite have what it took to follow through and make a turkey cookie of her own accord. She did enjoy eating the cookie part of it though...

Eating the end product!

Guys, the camera is over here!

Thanksgiving Announcement

We have a fun tradition that we started in our family. The missionary gets to announce pregnancies. Mark and I figured that since they were usually the last to know anything going on with the family, we could let them have the excitement of being the only one to know something, and then spread the word however they see fit. With all of our kids so far, the delivery date has almost exactly coincided with the announcing missionaries homecoming - and since my parents go to pick up the missionaries, they missed/postponed visiting for Shelly, got to see Jason in the hospital for about a hours before heading home to pack and catch a flight, and only saw Emily for a few days before leaving. This one they get lots more time. Almost a whole year! We timed this one poorly, apparently. But the good news is that Doug also got to announce Rob & Jenny's baby - sorta.

Doug decided a fun way to announce this baby of ours by writing a letter to be read just before Thanksgiving. I'm not sure he realized that Mom and Dad would have invited several of their singles ward members over and that they would get to hear the news as well... That part was a bit embarrassing, but it was worth the look on Dad's face when he got to the last sentence or two and had read about 1/2 of it before it processed what he was reading. He looked up at me shocked, and no one else quite knew what was going on. I had been feeling super icky that whole week leading up to Thanksgiving that we spent down with family, and I was super proud of myself for hiding it well enough that no body asked me if I was pregnant (that way I didn't have to lie). No one else was impressed though... Mark was, but he doesn't count.

Well, here's the letter from Doug to be read at Thanksgiving:

Having lived outside of the United States, especially outside of Irvine, Ca, I have come to be thankful for a lot of things we take for granted in the States. Among many, the main three are: my house, my religion, and my family.

1. My house. I have seen all sorts of houses here. Most of them are just cement and brick. Many of them are literally smaller than my front room. They share a kitchen and a bathroom with other ´houses´ that are close by. The people here don´t have the ability to go to their room to be alone, to have a nice table where they eat, couches are almost non-existent, a lot of people don´t even have chairs, just stools. There are also people who don´t even have that much, all they have is the clothes on their back. It is so hard to walk by people sleeping on the street and not just want to cry. To have my own bedroom with my own bed, a fridge, a kitchen, a couch, a tv, a computer, carpet. All of these things I am so grateful for.

2. My religion. There are so many people who don´t know why they are on the earth. Who have no purpose, no foundation. When something bad happens in their live they have no where to turn for comfort or guidance. That is why we have the gospel. That is why we have Christ. So that no matter what happens we know who we are and we know why we are here. It gives meaning to live and a reason to get going enough when life is tough, which it always is.

3. My family. There are tons of broken families here. Girls that got pregnant as teenagers, dads who left, kids who live on the street. The strength and protection that a family gives is invaluable. To have parents who love me and will do anything for me. Siblings that care about me and are always available to give advice or hang out with. It is a great blessing to have a strong large family that loves eachother. Even though there will be at least one more nephew that I don´t know when I get back, I love him too. Though there will actually be at least one more neice/nephew, because Rachel is pregnant.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone. I love you all. May God be with you till we meet again.

Les quiero mucho,

Elder Gardner

P.S. I'm due in early June. And Doug gets home in July of the next year.

Thanksgiving - Car Pictures

On the car trip down to California for Thanksgiving, Katie was willing to drive down with us. I think she forgot about the car sick kids (she ended up cleaning up about 5 protein spills - 4 from Jason and 1 from Emily - she's a trooper!). Luckily for us she was already in the car and a ways from home before it hit her... In between clean-ups there were some fun moments!

Sleeping is always fun!

Happy girl

Katie laughing at Emily trying to get the sunglasses on - the kids in the back were bored...


Emily playing with Aunt Katie. I'm not sure who had more fun...

Emily was trying to imitate the sunglasses on top of my head.

Shelly. She looks carsick in this picture, but she's the one who made it down with out incident.

Jason kicking back

He looks like he's trying to be patient with Aunt Katie and the camera

Suddenly she's not so happy

Already in CA, just driving around town - Shelly wanted a picture

Emily wanted a nap

Shelly still wanting pictures. Katie doing something strange...

When the kids get the camera

After downloading pictures from my camera, I found these surprises! I should learn to expect it when I leave the camera where the kids can reach it. This is only about 10% of them, but some were actually rather run to see, so I'm sharing.

We decided this was too many toys to have upstairs at one time, we took most of the big ones downstairs to come up occasionally, instead of being left out






Wow... The kids made a HUGE mess of the toys! In reality it looks like this most days, and then gets cleaned up before bed time. It's amazing no toys/bones have been broken with all this stuff lying around... I can't wait for summer to come when they can play outside again and my house doesn't get destroyed daily!!

Ward Halloween Party

The ward had it's annual Halloween party this weekend. We pretended to get the kids dressed up - they only sorta cooperated with that part. I guess the kids aren't really into dress-up yet. It probably helped that we don't really have any costumes, so we faked it with what we already had on hand.

Jason in a witch hat
Shelly in a dress-up dress with butterfly wings. I'm not sure what she's supposed to be - and neither is she. She told people about 3 different things all night, from a butterfly to a princess with wings... I don't get it either.
Maybe next year we should put some effort and money into getting actual costumes! :)