CHRISTMAS

Wow! What a busy month December was for us, Chris finished up another semester and much to his surprise, he actually passed all of his classes. Andrea, kept her sanity between watching a demanding 6 month old little boy, 2 more who were out of school, baking lots and lots of treats, and shopping for gifts.

We had a Christmas party on every Saturday of the month. It started with the Stubbs family party on the sixth (also Dallin's birthday). This was a very long party, but we had a great time. The highlight of the noght(other than being together with the entire family), was the white elephant gift exchange. Someone created a photoshop version of my Grandma Stubbs with her face and the body of a model. Really funny. It really threw Colter for a loop. He's usually scared of my grandma for some reason but I think the fact that this time he saw her in a bathing suit, which made him think it was dinner time. Suddenly, his opinion of grandma changed.

Next came our ward party.

...then the Jakeman family party. Which for some reason we didn't take alot of pictures. I think it was because we were in charge of the craft time for the children so we got side tracked. We had a great time here as well and there was tons of good food and really just a good opportunity to visit and catch up with everyone.

Dallin also had his Christmas program where the entire first grade sang Christmas songs for about 30 minutes.

Christmas was great!!!!

Everybody got everything they wanted and then some, and we really enjoyed having Colter around for his first Christmas. We truly are a blessed family, and it was great to be around all of our family and spend time with them, this only helps to reinforce how truly lucky we are to have each other and to understand the gospel and the joy and comfort it brings into our lives. Andrea and I feel very fortunate to have three beautiful healthy children and means to provide for them.

On a sad note my Grandma Stubbs was having heart problems and was taken to the hospital early on the morning of the 27th. This gave a bad scare, apparently some of her arteries were blocked upto 90% and because of her being nearly 80 years-old they did not know if they could operate or not. Luckily, she has enough good arteries that with watching her diet and proper exercise they think she'll be o.k. This was great news for her favorite Grandson Chris because he can't imagine a world without her in it. She is truly one of the most wonderful women the world has ever seen. Hopefully, she'll be around and in good health for many more Christmas'. This only helped to further drive home how fortunate and blessed we are. We felt that our Heavenly Father was watching over her and our family at this time and it helped make for a humbling holiday season.

On a happier note, on the 30th my sister Amber was propsed to...and she accepted. She is now engaged to Han and they are planning to marry in May when school is out. Congratulations Amber!

Hopefully 2009 will be as good a year as 2008 was (maybe even better).

New Years Eve Don'ts

Don't stay up until 2:30 a.m. when you have children. Especially a 6 month old coming down with a cold. Uggh! One of these days we will get back to blogging.

Happy New Year!!!

New Family Pictures!

Chris's Aunt Lori (Lori Jenkins Photography) took some family pictures for us. We had lots of fun, but it was super cold. I haven't been a very good blogger lately, but I am going to try and do better.

Thanksgiving

This year we had Thanksgiving at my brothers home in Salt Lake. Chris and I switch families every other year. We had a really yummy meal and lots of fun. The boys even ate a decent amount of food. I made the rolls, which tasted pretty good but ended up looking kind of funny because I didn't roll them out right. My brother made a yummy pumpkin cheesecake that probably was about a million calories.

We had a hard time pulling Tanner and Dallin away from there handheld games. We couldn't even get them to look away long enough to smile at the camera.

Overall, it was a nice relaxing Thanksgiving. On black friday, Chris and I got up at 4:00 am to go to Walmart. What a madhouse, but we got what we wanted.

Update.... Finally

I guess it's about time for an update now that I am getting over the embarrassment of the last post of donating my breastmilk to my brother-in-law.

Life hasn't been too exciting lately besides the sleepless nights from our little boy who doesn't like to be left alone to sleep. We have been working on helping him sleep through the night or at least to go more than two hours before he wakes up (okay so let's face it I need to get a good nights sleep to remain sane in a house full of boys). Getting Colter to sleep through the night has consisted of alot of crying, not just from him but from me also. It has been so hard to let him cry. Thanks to Chris's help and Dr. Weissbluth's book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child", Colter seems to be sleeping better. It's only been a couple of nights, but he is doing much better. Hopefully, it will continue to do better so that I can catch up on all of that lost sleep.

Colter is now five months old and is growing so fast. We love his smiles and giggles, but he has a really cute pouty face as well. He babbles all the time, and has learned to scream (not cry), which can get pretty loud and annoying. He drools non stop and we are constantly changing his clothes because he soaks them. We can tell he is going to be a trouble maker because he is so curious about everything. It is about time to childproof the house.

Tanner and Dallin have been busy with school. We try hard to keep up on their homework. Tanner gets so much homework some nights that it can take up to three hours. Chris and I personally feel that this is too much homework for a 9 year old. I am planning on talking to his teacher about it, but I don't want to offend him so I haven't yet. We feel that this amount of homework is taking away from family time. Tanner just keeps plugging away with it though. We are so proud of him.

Dallin is learning to read, and he reads to us for twenty minutes everynight. He is doing amazing in spelling. He has gotten 100 percent on every spelling test, which we don't study for at home because he says that he already knows them (and apparently he does). At parent teacher conferences his teacher said she couldn't beleive that he has gotten 100 percent on every spelling test.

Chris is busy finishing up his last year of grad school. He works three days a week at his intership and is in school the other two days, and on the weekend he works at his regular job. On Fridays, I am lucky if I get to see him for an hour. Sometimes I meet him for lunch just so I can see him. This pictures shows how exhausted he is. He even has a highlighter in his hand.

I am grateful to be able to be at home with the kids and I'm having fun working on improving my homemaking skills. I am trying to lose those last 5 lbs. (well maybe 10) by going to the gym at least 4 days a week. I just can't seem to give up the chocolate and goodies. Since I have been nursing, I have used the excuse that I could have the extra calories, but now that I am only breastfeeding part-time right now I need to start doing better. Hey I am eating a yucky "Healthy Choice" meal right now for lunch, and I'm doing this while feeding the baby and writing this blog. That should burn some extra calories.

We hope all is well with everyone and hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season.

The Annual Tippets Family Halloween Party

Well, we had our pumpkin carving contest again. My Grandparents are farmers and they have a pumpkin patch and so each year we go select our pumpkins and bring them home for a contest. This year there was the added twist of my sister Amber bringing over her new boyfriend. You must know that in the past when she has brought boyfriends over they usually appear once and never return again because they think that we are either obscenely strange or just down right offensive. Apparently, this year Amber sufficiently prepped "Han" for what he was in store for because she informed everyone that she had "warned him." I choose to believe that all of her previous boyfriends were weird and that we are the normal ones.

Any how, the party was a success we carved our pumpkins, played spooky music, and ate lots of good food. Then we put the kids to bed and introduced Han to a long standing family tradition of playing Rook. He got schooled, and so we decided to bring out another family favorite...Sequence. If you know our family very well then you are aware that we are all addicted to gambling. I am currently in recovery and have been clean for almost 2 years. Any how we don't just play sequence we have to make it a little more interesting with a little friendly wager. This time we came up with the great idea of making the loser drink a cup of Andrea's breast milk. We had 3 teams; Breanne and Judge, Chris and Nick , and Amber and Han.

And the losers were........................................................Judge and BreAnne. Luckily for BreAnne, Judge took one for the team and devoured it before anyone could do anything about it. Apparently he liked it.

Also, you may find it interesting that Han liked our family he was quoted as saying the next day that "it was one of the funnest nights of his life." He also told Amber that it was going to be very difficult if they break up because he is still going to come hang out with her family.

Finally, a normal guy for Amber!

Is This a Courtesy Laugh?

I think he might just giggle out of courtesy so that we don't feel so silly acting life goof balls. Just so you are aware---the silly laughing and tongue clicking is Grandma Tippets.