My Babies are 4!!!

So here I am - Ginormica (for you Monsters vs Aliens fans!) 4 years ago. This is the morning Kevin and I headed to Reno to have the twins:

Here they are 4 years later! Hammy Sammy is punching each fist in the air and singing "Happy Birthday to us! Happy Birthday to us! Happy Birthday to us! Happy Birthday to us! Happy Birthday to us!"




4 years old! I can't believe they are such big boys now! Happy Birthday my Sammy and Daniel! We sure love you!

Merry Christmas

I have been so behind on all my presents I am making that I haven't even mailed out the Christmas newsletter yet! So some of you are getting this via the blog.......SORRY! This is the exact same copy everyone without email/internet is getting.....anyhow, here it goes:

December 2009

Dear family and friends,

Most of you follow our lives on our blog. www.kevinandamylords.blogspot.com. For those of you that don’t, there is the address. Feel free to take a peek at our lives and here are a few highlights our family has had this past year.

We had a great summer! We started by going down to Encinitas, CA for a week. We could see the ocean out our window and played there frequently. Daniel isn’t allowed to play in any water but well chlorinated pools and the ocean. So we are grateful to a good friend and her sister who paid for our room down there! We LOVED it and can’t wait to go back and play some more. We have some other great friends that let us come over to their personal pool frequently this summer and play. We did not lack for want of water play this summer.

Our next fun summer trip was to Utah. We went over a few days early to stay with my sister’s family. We went to the Oquirrah Temple Open House. We were introduced to fondue by my sister and have become fondue addicts! We then had a Lords’ Family reunion. It was a lot of fun! We pulled up and there was an inflatable water slide…..need I say more? No, I don’t, but I will…..games, playing at a park and an amazing community pool! FUN!

The highlight of our year easily was Daniel’s Make-A-Wish. Picked up in a limo, flown to Salt Lake City, rental van waiting, Hilton hotel, zoo tickets, shopping spree at Deseret Book and 1 ½ hours with the prophet…..Thomas S Monson! AMAZING! He is a prophet! He is kind, gentle, loving, a story teller, funny, just plain amazing and everything you ever imagined him to be! We had an amazing time and Daniel and Sammy still pray to “see President Monson again and ride on the airplane”. If you would like to read about this, check out the beginning few entries of November on our blog.

Samuel & Daniel turn 4 on the 23rd. Can’t believe how big they are getting! Daniel is almost 16 months post transplant. He has caught up and passed Sammy in weight by 4 pounds and is about 1 inch taller. He has never been the ‘big’ brother! He has had 3 biopsies this year. The last one being in October. He results came back that there was no signs of rejection, no Prograf toxicity and we were able to wean him off the NG tube that gave him his nightly liquids. We are less than 2 weeks off the tube and it’s pretty exciting! Daniel and Sammy are really fun to watch play. They are into their animals! They each have a little back pack they load and unload all day long! Sammy is still our “Hammy Sammy’. Always trying to make people laugh. Our favorite thing he does is get this serious, loving voice and say, “I love you so much!” It melts your heart!

Nathan turns 6 in January. He started kindergarten this year and has a really good teacher! His speech is coming along really well and we think it is because he is learning to read. He is really trying harder and harder to pronounce things. Nathan is really caring and helps a lot around the house. He is a great helper and ‘picker-upper’ (as he calls it). Vacuuming is his favorite job! He’s a keeper!

Bryce is 7 and in 2nd grade. Bryce is still our passionate boy. (I wonder how many years in a row I have said that.) He is a really good student and loves to go, go, go! Bryce is very artistic and is often trailing paper and drawings all over the house.

Comptyn is 8 and in 3rd grade. He was baptized in June by his father. It was a wonderful day! He also started Cub Scouts. He is already done with his Wolf and is excited to work on some electives. Comptyn is in GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) at school and is LOVING it! Comptyn still loves to help a lot and is an avid reader!

Ryan is 9 and in 4th grade. He still does really good in school and enjoys GATE, too. Wednesday are his and Comptyn’s favorite days of the week! Ryan just completed his Bear in scouts and has earned a few arrows already. Ryan is joining 4H because we have just gotten 8 chickens! We have some Banties, Leg Horns and Road Island Reds. He is really excited! Actually all the kids are! They finally have a pet, they say. I am just excited to get eggs!

Kevin was ‘forced transferred’ from the Junior High Principal to the High School Principal this year. He was sad to leave the Jr. High. The HS has been a challenge and the first month was really, really hard on him! But things are getting better and running smoother. He is 2 ½ years into being Bishop and also still working on his dissertation for his doctorate. STILL! With all these other time requirements, he has little time left over to write! We are hoping May 2010 to graduate.

I am still just doing mom and wife things! My home based business is doing well. Grateful for that! I have been taking voice lessons for a few months now. I have a great teacher! She is very patient with me. . I had my first solo at our Christmas recital……everyone else was very nice and said it went well. I hope my nerves don’t get the best of me so much at the spring recital! I have been reading most of the books for our book club this year. I made a New Year’s Resolution to read Miracle of Forgiveness, Jesus the Christ and Christ The New Testament. I am on the last book and have a few more weeks to finish it. They have been my 3 favorite books for 2009. They are amazing books! They have helped my knowledge, testimony and love for my Savior grow.

How grateful we are to have that knowledge, testimony and love for our Savior! We know that He is the source of all our blessings. May these holidays be happy and safe for you and your family. We also hope that 2010 will be filled with many blessings. May 2010 be a wonderful year for you and your family!

Love
The Lords’ Family
Kevin, Amy, Ryan, Comptyn, Bryce, Nathan, Daniel, Samuel
amylords@gmail.com

What I was playing with today......

So I started the morning out over at my friend's house....you know, the one that is going to take voice lessons with me! ;-) (gotta keep dropping hints, T!) She has a sewing machine that does embroidering. So I took the kid's aprons in that I made for them for Christmas and put their names on them. Here is a sample of Sammy's. Cute, huh?

These are not showing up very well in the pictures, but the last one does better. If you click on the picture and look at the blown up one, you can see it better. These are the pictures of the kid's teacher's Christmas presents. I am LOVING my vinyl making ability! Anyhow, the first one says "Love" with teh "o" being a heart. The second one says "Learn" and that is what the teachers are getting. The last one says "Friend". That one you can see OK. I should have played with the lighting. Anyhow, I call it playing.....it's actually a way for me to get Christmas presents done and not stress that I am STILL BEHIND and not ready yet! Stay tuned for the Christmas letter! It's gonna be on here, too! Still haven't mailed those out! So it's gonna get blogged!

My kids on YouTube!

Check out my cute boyz! These are the 2 corn cobbers that took all the kernals off the cob. Thanks Jen for helping me and great visiting!


In this one, can you tell Bryce was told not to put his fingers in the cobber? He chucks those corn cobs in!

Saturday at Lattin Farms

We are just falling in love with Lattin Farms! It's a fun, family owned farm here that the kids go to pick pumpkins and berries during school. We went and got our raspberries for our family earlier this fall. So Saturday we went out to get some FREE (can't pass that up!) corn for our chickens! Their corn maze is dead and they let people come in and harvest and crack their own corn. I forgot my camera, but they gave us these pictures! (Otherwise I wouldn't have been in them!)

We went into this room that had all these tools. I can't imagine doing this hundreds of years ago whenever I wanted flour or corn meal! This is the cobber (I dont' know if that is the actual name!) You stick the corn cob in the top and crank it thru these teeth and the kernals pop off and the cob falls out! The kernals are really hard, so it is quick!



This is the cracker. (Again, dont' know if it's the official name!) But you then take the kernals and load it into this machine. Crank it and you have cracked corn. This is what our chickens are LOVING!

So after you crack the corn, you bring it to these mills. Here is where the corn meal is made. We came home with about 8-10 cups and had AMAZING corn bread that nigth! Fresh corn meal really does make a difference! Took a LONG time to get those little bags of meal, but it was fun! Had a good talk to the kids about cleaning their room for 10 minutes or all this work for 1 1/2 hours! We still have a garbage bag of corn in our van we need to go up and do!



I am such a lazy person, I have decided! How did the pioneers ever do anything but make food?

After Lattin farms I had my voice recital! I am taking voice lessons (started in September) and had my first ever recital! I seriously thought I was going to throw up! Sang "The First Noel"...played piano while doing it. Old enough to be ALL the other student's mother! But a friend of mine (you know who you are, T!) is going to take lessons, too so she can be in the spring recital with me! Anyhow, I loved hearing all my boys cheer, clap and "Yah Mom!" afterwards! Made it all worth it! And I didn't throw up!

Ward Christmas Party

Here are some pictures of our ward Christmas party Friday night. Santa came....apparently Bryce and Comptyn are on the "Naughty List", according to Santa. They are earning their way off, though!








Here are the kids reinacting the birth of our Savior! Ryan and Daniel were scribes of Herod. Comptyn and Sammy were Wise Men. Bryce and Nathan were shepherds. It was really cute!






Here is our Elder Wolverton.....he has been here for 7 months! Tomorrow he goes to Reno. Reno....you are lucky to have him! We will miss you Elder Wolverton! (These were the only boyz home when he came by....other ones were in school.)

Dead as a Doornail.....

NO! It's not the chickens! My children pray CONSTANTLY for those chickens!

I have started reading Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol" to the kids at bedtime. My friend, Kristine, let us borrow her BEAUTIFULLY illustrated copy. (Illustrations by P.J. Lynch.....gonna get my own copy someday!) Anyhow, if you have read the story, on page one it says "Old Marley was as dead as a doornail." Well, first my kids started to giggle because "there are no nails in doors!" Sure enough! Our door has no nails! So I explained it was just a phrase. Then they asked what it meant. (See why it takes so long to get thru a book?) Anyhow, we googled it....like we do everything else.....here is what we found:

In The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, a correspondent points out that it could come from a standard term in carpentry. If you hammer a nail through a piece of timber and then flatten the end over on the inside so it can’t be removed again (a technique called clinching), the nail is said to be dead, because you can’t use it again. Doornails would very probably have been subjected to this treatment to give extra strength in the years before screws were available. So they were dead because they’d been clinched. It sounds plausible, but whether it’s right or not we will probably never know.

Anyhow, that was pretty interesting to all of us! I know we asked that question at book club when we discussed the book, too! So maybe tonight I can get thru some pages without explaining things I DON'T know! We might have to have the laptop sitting next to us on the bed for quick googling!