Update

This week has been weird. Corbin didn't have school on Monday. On Tuesday Gabby had the barfs. It wasn't too bad. Luckily I caught her on the first one and ran over and caught it in my hands. I HATE trying to scrub barf out of the carpet. Before Corbin went to bed on Tuesday night he said he wasn't feeling very good so I sent him to bed with a barf bucket and sure enough he barfed in the night...in the bucket. Score. So I kept him home from school even though he seemed fine and he was, he never puked again. Weird. So we just pretty much had the TV on all day Tuesday and Wednesday since we had sick kids and I wasn't up to much else. Everything was fairly normal the rest of the week. We went to the indoor park on Thursday and had a play date on Friday.

I started exercising this week. I got a few exercise videos from the library. One was a Jane Fonda and she keeps talking to me like I'm a grandma (you know because that's who the video's target audience is) and the other is an insanity video that is INSANE! I need something in between. The girl I visit teach texted me and a few others to see if any of us wanted to go running with her on Saturday. She wanted to go 5 miles. I'm super out of shape but I decided that this shy girl was reaching out so I better do it. I went with her yesterday and I did it but it was a struggle. Luckily she is a slow runner, so that helped a lot. My knees were killing me all day yesterday and today every muscle in my legs are crying!  I might try to run with her on Saturdays. Hopefully my body will adjust, because ouch!

That's about all. Scott is still working really hard, we think it's going to pay off one of these days. Hopefully soon. January is getting long. I need a project or something to help me to get through it. My friend had our house key. She had to lock our house up for us when we were out of town and took it to her house. I'm glad we got locked out so we knew it was missing.

These girls have been little puzzle doers. 

Poor sick Gabby

He is such a rascal! He goes from causing one bit of trouble to the next.

Fuzzy, action shot.

Here is a video of us, watching THIS video. We are watching the first video of Gabby pulling faces. We think it's sooo funny. The kids love scrolling through the blog and seeing their pictures and videos. It's so great!

Update

Ryan was sick all week. He had some sort of eye infection and had very goopy eyes and a runny nose all week. He would wake up in the morning totally crusted over. He finally got over that and yesterday he puked all of his breakfast and lunch. He hasn't puked since then but since we weren't sure we had to cancel on our babysitter last night. It was our ward temple session because of ward conference and I was excited to go with Scott. He and I haven't been to the temple together in a long time. Oh well. I also stayed home with Ryan from church because we for sure didn't him puking at church. He seems to be feeling better but still slightly under the weather.

On Tuesday we walked to go pick up Corbin from school and we got locked out of the house. Earlier in the day the back door was unlocked and I didn't recheck it before we left. When we got home we discovered that the backdoor was locked. We further discovered that our spare key was missing. Awesome. I called Scott and he couldn't come home for about an hour. I was going to walk about a half mile to my friend's house to wait it out but Ryan was crying and freezing by that point so we went next door to our older neighbor Connie's house instead. She was very kind to take us in for an hour. She is a grandma and has a kids room chuck full of toys. While we were there the kids discovered some of her puzzles and put some together. They really enjoyed it. I've never thought to buy my kids puzzles because I hate them so much but after that I went to DI yesterday and bought several puzzles. Gabby especially enjoys it. I put together Corbin's 100 piece puzzle and it was hard for me to do. I don't think I've actually ever done a puzzle that big before. Ha. So I did something crazy and bought a 750 piece puzzle. My dad LOVES trains and puzzles so I bought a train puzzle in honor of him. We will see if I actually do it. I'm pretty sure I cant' do it. The whole thing is scenery. I totally should have picked a puzzle with lots of distinctions like lots of different colored houses or something. Anyway back to the being locked out story, my kids want to go to Connie's house everyday now and our spare key is still missing.

Scott has been working very hard all week. He has a goal so hopefully he will make it. 

Yesterday I went to Goodwill and found lots of stuff that looked brand new. I love it when that happens. I love thrift stores. I would say I go to a thrift store 10 times to 1 without buying anything but sometimes you find real treasures. Love it. 

Corbin: After asking Corbin several times to empty the dishwasher I finally said, "Corbin do your job. Don't make me say it again or there will be consequences. " To which he replied, "Like no video games? Because I don't care about video games anymore, I only care about science.

Piper: After taking away the iPad Piper said to me later, "mom, I just hate you mom." That was the first time she's ever said that. It was kind of sad and kind of cute all at the same time. That's okay with me, I'm pretty sure your kids are supposed to hate you sometimes.

Cuddles with poor sick buddy,

Winco gives away free turkeys at Thanksgiving so I finally cooked it up, I made the Thanksgiving sides to go with it. It was pretty good but it's not the same when your mom doesn't make it or when you eat it in the middle of January.

Ryan's nutella beard.

I did most of that puzzle but Corbin helped me. That was a big accomplishment for me. Ha.

Gabby exercising with Mommy.

Update

Scott was in Salt Lake most of the week getting extra training for his job...basically they told him to not give up and he's almost there. So time will tell. Things went pretty well all week. There was lots of yelling on Monday especially during Family Home Evening. Ha. Love that. Those are the moments that you wonder if you are doing more damage than good. Well better luck this week aye. On Tuesday I drove out to Anna's house for a visit to help break up the day. I discovered long ago that when Scott is out of town the days are extra long and it helps to get out. That certainly helped me that day, maybe that's why there was less yelling. On Wednesday we went to story time at the library as usual and that night I had a girls night at my house. A big group of ladies came and we just ate and gabbed the night away. Scott came back on Thursday...hooray. It seemed like a very long week without him. On Thursday morning Gabby wanted to write Scott a letter because she missed him. Luckily he was already on his way back home. The indoor park also opened on Thursday and I took my kids there and they loved it. Ryan especially loved tromping all around. He is an active one.

My friend Katrina  is back in town and she is my favorite babysitter, mostly because I love her and because she drives herself over. So great. Scott took me out on a date Friday night with our trusty sitter at home. We went to White Water Pizza and to Unbroken. I was kind of feeling lousy by the end of the night and so Unbroken was kind of extra painful as my headache continued to get worse. We came straight home and I took some drugs and went to bed. That was a bummer but what can you do. Scott and I enjoyed Unbroken (as much as you can really enjoy a movie like that). The book was much better but seeing it on the big screen is good too.

Yesterday I dragged myself out to a Love and Logic seminar that was being held. I always have to kind of force myself to go to things like that but I know that once I'm there I will really enjoy it. It was pretty good. It was a good reminder for me of things I need to work on and do better. Parenting is really hard, trying to parent well is really, really, really hard. I just like to think that everyday we start fresh (hopefully if not too much damage has already been done). Ha.

Quotes:
Corbin 7: "I feel like I want to fast next Sunday." Me:"Do you know why we fast Corb?" C:"So we can starve to death."

Gabby 4: "Mom it's foggy." Piper 3 immediately yells out, "Mom it's froggy!"

Gabby: "Mom, Ryan's in the bathroom making trouble." Corbin "like playing in the toilet."

I don't know if these quotes read very funny but in the moment they are hilarious! Love my sweet, rotten, kids. Ha.

Piper always complains about the seat belt on her neck so I made her a seat belt pillow. As these things usually go for me when I try to make something without a pattern it didn't turn out quite right but hey, it gets the job done.

Piper's hot air balloon from story time.

Scott brought back the Christmas presents that didn't fit, so it was like Christmas all over again.

Winter time sure gets long. Gabby took 2 one hour baths on Monday. Why not?

Cute Ryan. He is sicky bears right now. He has pink eye or something. Both of his eyes are oozing like crazy. Scott stayed home from church with the little guy. Yay for good dads/husbands. I seriously hate missing church. 

His best laughs were before we captured it on video. Corbin did a pretty good job recording it. 

Happy New Year!

Greetings. It's been a busy week. On Monday we were still in SLC. We hit up Hires one last time and did some more sledding. It snowed just enough to make the conditions pretty good for sledding. It was a blast. It was super fun to watch our kids be pretty fearless and having a great time as well. That night we went to the extended Cannon Christmas party. I spent most of the night following closely behind my 14 month old who certainly could have caused some damage to Rich and Judy's beautiful house. Piper may have stolen the show and become infamous when she decided to moon the family while Corbin was introducing his siblings. Classic!

On Tuesday we drove home and it felt like it took forever! We made a few extra stops and had lunch and man it made it feel like even more of an eternity. After I got home I immediately went to work unpacking our luggage, doing laundry, putting away all the Christmas decorations, and party supply shopping. While I was buying party supplies Scott sent me a text of Corbin barf all over the kids room. So when I got home from errands it was time to scrub and do more laundry. Wow I was tired and ready for bed after that day. I couldn't decide if I should cancel my party or not because I knew my friends would freak out knowing there was a barfing child on the premises. So I decided to wait it out and see how he was feeling the next day. He was totally fine. Kids just barf sometimes. I told Scott we could go ahead and have the party but we could not share our horror barf story at this time. Seriously I know that maybe I'm the other extreme but my friends are freaks when it comes to worrying about sicknesses and germs. But seriously back to the barf it was unbelievable. Corbin managed to barf all over the edge shooting barf below and in the cracks and mattresses of Gabby and Piper's beds and all over the floor. It was truly horrible and epic.

On Wednesday I spent the day getting ready for our New Year's Eve Party. I was pretty tired and didn't do as much as I wanted but I managed to put up a few decorations and clean a bit. We played our usual games. Scott had his music playlist that people had to guess the song and artist. The Holyoaks always win. After that we played Heads Up after we discovered that our Catch Phrase has died on us. After that we played a short round of pictionary. It was time to ring in the New Year and we finished out the night playing Tripoly until 2:00 am. It was a great night. I also had presents that we had to open at different times throughout the night. One box had a quiz of the events in 2014 that they had to place in order and the other box had a quiz where they had to guess the new years resolutions of celebrities. The last box had noise makers and other things to ring in the New Year. It was a bit of a whirl wind but it was fun.

New Years day was great! It was freezing but Corbin was determined to try to sled on the tiniest hill at Jullion park on the wimpiest tube. The kids bundled up and I took them over there and waited in the car while they played. Sledding was a bust of course but they continued to play for about 45 minutes. After that we relaxed. Scott and I took a nap. We had snacks for dinner. We watched the Sound of Music and played games with our kids. It was really nice.

 I spent Friday and Saturday getting ready for Corbin's first birthday party. Just writing about this week makes me tired. It was a zombie theme but I didn't really come up with anything super great. Corbin only wanted to invite the boys from his primary class so there were 5 boys total including Coribn. I thought it was kind of perfect because it's actually kind of hard to do things with larger groups especially indoors. Plus they all know each other really well so they had fun.

Kelsey and Justin stayed at our house Saturday night on their way home to Washington. We played some games with them and they got up at drove home at 4:00 in the morning.

Today we had 9:00 church after having 1:00 church and it's super hard to adjust at first. I could not get up as early as I needed to and it was a mad dash to church. Scott left for Salt Lake for work training and by 3:30 I was needing to break up my day! I loaded the kids up and crashed in on Gabe and Christy and spent several hours there eating their dinner and messing up their house and adding about 1000 decibels of noise and stress. The kids had a great time and it sure saved my Sunday for sure!

Well this is long! Peace.

I was going to spare you all but decided that I wanted to be able to remember this epic barf fest! Ha. Although I really should try to block it out.

Piper laying down to eat the snow at the park on a very freezing New Years Day.

The Toxic Zombie cake. Putting those zombies on the cake seemed like a good idea but they left the most horrible plastic taste on the cake. Gabby took a bite and started bawling and spit it out. I had a really bad piece too! The boys didn't seem to notice or care. I told them the cake was not good and one of the boys said, "this is not a bad cake." Well Scott managed to eat 2 toxic free pieces. On my second toxic piece I threw the rest of the cake away! In the background are the zombie goody bags.

Scott drew this great picture. The boys had to shoot the zombie with Corbin's Christmas crossbow.

Zombie Zone

That hill is so much steeper than it looks. I went on in twice and it was terrifying. Ha.

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Christmas Vacation

Scott and I learned this dance and performed it 2 years ago. I never posted it to the blog.

Christmas Eve Singing

What a great week we've had. On Monday we got packed and ready. We were possibly thinking of leaving that day but Scott's work stuff took too long. I was kind of bored realizing we would be stuck at home so I made some cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. I was happy to have a yummy distracting project. We woke up early Tuesday morning and loaded up and headed down. We made it in time for some delicious Hires and then the ladies all snuck away for a pedicure. It was great. My nail technician (I don't know what to call her) did a great job. She rubbed my feet and my calves and made my toes Christmas ready. Loved it. That night we went with the kids to check out the window displays at the Grand America. That is the most beautiful hotel. Ryan had a blast stamping all around that place. He is not scared of people so he just walks all around and people better get out of the way. We drove home through temple square and saw as many lights from the car as possible. It was crazy crowded. It was nuts. The lights are spectacular.

We shipped all of our presents to Utah so I had a ton of presents to wrap when we got there. That kept me very busy for a good long while. All of our presents made it but one, you know the one we paid $15 in shipping, ya that's the one that didn't make it. We need to call and complain about that one! On Christmas Eve we went to the movie Big Hero Six. We all enjoyed it. That night Mandy and Carole made amazing fondue for dinner. It was kind of nuts to do with kids and it took a couple of hours by the time it was all said and done but it was very good. After that we sang Christmas songs and finished out the night with The Musical Scrooge. We didn't get to the gingerbread houses, talent show, or reading of the Christmas story.

Christmas morning we had our kids open up our presents and then we headed next door to Colie and Rustin's for breakfast. It had snowed beautiful snow in the night! That is always my Christmas wish. It was so beautiful. After breakfast we headed back over and opened presents for a few hours. The rest of the day kids played with their presents and went sledding. That night we had Janet's delicious Christmas dinner. After dinner we had a little talent show, Scott and I rein-acted famous love scenes! It was terrible! Or rather, I was terrible. Then we played a new game. Later on we played the game Spit well into the night.

On Friday Colie and Rustin took the kids to the Madagascar movie. Later in the afternoon Richard and Cat came over with their kids to sled. They lasted for hours. Their 4 and 2 year olds were little dare devils! So were Corbin and believe it or not, Gabby. Corbin sledded for about 4 hours! Nicole and Rustin's backyard has the most amazing sledding hill. The best part is it's right in the backyard. When you get tired or cold you walk in the house, It's amazing! That night we decorated gingerbread houses. Those dang things are hard to build!

Saturday was Corbin's 7th birthday! We went to the Museum of Natural History to check out the bug exhibit. The kids were loving it there and we were at the museum for 2 1/2 hours which is about 2 hours longer than I like to be in a museum. Ha. But the kids were loving it so that's all the matters. After that we went to Red Robin for birthday dinner. Corbin ordered 3 entrees and got a huge stack of on the house onion rings. After that is was back to the house for donuts and presents. Corbin made a killing. He may have a Christmas birthday but he also gets to spend his birthday with the Cannons and gets extra presents. After presents we played one of his birthday games with him before bed.

This morning we drove down to Orem to attend sweet Hannah's baby blessing. After the blessing we went and had delicious brunch. Tonight is Janet's Sunday dinner and hopefully some games. Fingers crossed.

Gabby gassed out during the movie.

Papa reading his own version of "Twas the Night Before Christmas"

I love sleeping kids pictures. I especially love when the get right next to each other.

Corbin sleeping on the floor with his head under the bed.

Christmas morning!

Piper loves her new sleeping bag from Aunt Colie.

Corbin got so many science lab kits. We are going to be very busy and scientific.

Gabby crafting with her Christmas presents.

Christmas wishes do come true!

Love!

This stupid house caved in on me so many times. I was finally victorious!

Yes please! Ha.

Wowza!

Sicky Bears

I have been sick on and off this whole winter so far. It's been so annoying. My kids have been too. They pretty much have an ongoing cough situation and Gabby was so sick Thursday night that Scott gave her a priesthood blessing. Hopefully we are working it out this week and we will be better for Christmas. I have had a sore throat all week and could barely talk all week. I also had serious coughing fits that brought me to tears and nearly barfs one time. Seesh. I went to the temple yesterday and I had been doing well all day and throughout the session but then I started coughing and despite having a cough drop I continued to cough on and off for what felt like forever! It was horrible. I was so embarrassed. I was red and sweating from embarrassment. It was a sight to behold. Luckily the coughing finally stopped. Phew! Today I was barely able to sing in the ward choir, we sang 4 numbers. I had to stop singing at choir practice to try to save my voice for the performance. It was a really great sacrament meeting today. I loved it! (Probably because I was on the stand and Scott had to manage the beasts alone). There were also a lot of amazing musical numbers as well. Scott didn't seem to think it was as amazing as I did, (I wonder why?). Ryan did manage to escape and walked from all the way to the back of the chapel onto the stand heading straight for the cello. He's a rascally one. 

I went to the movie Meet the Mormons with a friend this week. It was at the dollar theaters so I found someone to go with me. Scott didn't want to go badly enough to pay for a babysitter. At this stage it's often easier for us to leave the house in shifts. Scott actually went on a nerd date of his own this week and went with his fellow nerd coworker and friends to the new Hobbit movie. He and his boss have similar tastes and personalities and are both somewhat anti-social so despite the former the latter caused them to wait only 4 years to actually do something together outside of work. Unfortunately the movie was a bit of a disappointment although the social aspect was not. 

On Saturday night we had a game night with friends in our ward. We had a good time eating and playing games and being kid free together for a few hours. 

I can't believe Christmas is in a few days. Crazy. Corbin is so excited to be on Christmas vacation.

Quotes; Piper:"That's a scary part." G:"Don't worry it's not real."

Gabby: "Mom, what this? Me: "It's reindeer food." G:"Is it real?" Me:"I don't know, it's for Santa's reindeer." G:"Oh, then it's real." Ha! I loved when she said that. Kids are the best!

Cupcakes for Corbin's class for his "birthday." Luckily he wanted the exact same ones as last year. That made it extra easy.

Gabby hung up the stockings herself and stuffed them.

I decorated Corbin's class for their Christmas party. 

Gabby quote: "This is the coolest thing I have ever made!"

Well I am finally breaking down and throwing Corbin his first friend birthday party. He said he wanted a zombies party. I have no idea what I'm going to do but I have Christmas and a New Year's Eve party to worry about first. (Scott designed the invite card). Nicely done!

Update

I love Christmas time so much but it feels like it goes too fast. I just don't feel like I can get my fill. I just want to do Christmas things all the time. My kids just want to watch their regular shows and I can't understand it. I just want to watch Christmas stuff all the time. I even watch really cheesy bad acting movies for the sake of Christmas. I can't help it, if it's a Christmas based show I get sucked in even if I think it's terrible! Ha. 

Last week I was busy getting out our Christmas cards and taking neighborhood treats. I bought and packaged gifts for all of my kids' primary teachers. We went and delivered most of them last night. We ordered all of our Christmas gifts online and we are having them shipped to Scott's parents house. Scott is going to have to do an amazing packing job on our way home. 

We did a service project for our Relief Society meeting this month. 8 of us were able to go downtown and help serve in a soup kitchen. I don't know if it's the small town girl in me but it's really weird to realize that I live in a city that's big to have soup kitchens. I don't know anyway sometimes the realities of city life is weird to me. It was pretty neat to see the work that goes on down there.

Piper quote: "I'm allergic to this dinner." Ha. She said that because it was a dinner she didn't like and also because they have a friend in the ward who is allergic to almost everything. Every time she comes over her mom has to leave me with an Epi Pen and instructions. No joke she is allergic to dairy, gluten, pork, beef, nuts. You can't believe what that limits her diet to. Like who knew that fruit snacks have pork in them? Or that taco seasoning has gluten. Crazy. Anyway needless to say because of her my kids have taken on a whole new interest about allergies and keep asking me what they are allergic to.