2014 Countdown

Ellie and Lila spent the night at Mimi and Grandpa's so we had to go to Mt Green to retrieve them and so Steve could install the surround sound.  We spent a couple of hours there crashing their little gathering. :)  Then we came home gathered our supplies and went down the Olenslagers--they had invited us and the McConkies (April's family) to come for pizza and enjoy the evening with them.  The kids always have fun playing together.  We enjoyed pizza and ice cream and visiting.  Andrew started to get a little feisty around 8 so we headed home where the girls found our banister decorated with crepe paper, balloons filled with coins and jokes, New Year glasses and tiaras, and some firework poppers.  

Andrew latched onto one of the balloons that had begun to shrink and enjoyed shaking it around like the girls to hear the clinking of change.  Ellie tried sitting on her balloon to pop it, but that only caused it to become misshaped so we got out a pin.  Lila was still too nervous to pop the balloons.  They enjoyed the jokes and gathering their coin treasures.  Here's a few for your enjoyment:

Q: What do you call an alligator in a vest? 

A: An Investigator

Q: Why can't you give Elsa a balloon? 

A: Because she will Let It Go.

We then watched the King Julien count down on Netlix and popped the poppers.  Bless Lila who was worried about the mess they would make and asked if they should do it outside--I told her it was too cold outside and we could vacuum afterwards (honestly they didn't make that big of a mess and it was very festive).

Another note to remember from the end of the year is that Andrew has started folding his arms during prayers.  It isn't something we have consciously taught him yet, but I saw once that he looked around and saw us all doing that and so he folded his arms.  I used this to talk to the girls about the power of examples and how wonderful it is that Andrew can see us praying and wants to be like us.  Well the kids are in bed.  Steve and I started a movie, but decided we are both to tuckered out to finish it--maybe tomorrow.  Tonight we will sleep for the rest of 2014.  Happy New Year!

White Christmas After All

Carole and Russ joined us for Christmas this year.  We were so excited to have them here and share our Christmas fun with them.  They arrived Christmas Eve, we visited and caught up on life with them.  Then we grilled steaks and made our traditional Christmas birthday cake--delicious made from scratch devil's food cake.  After dinner we watched the new bible video The Nativity

After leaving a piece of cake for Santa it was off to bed with the kids.  They were pretty good and only came out once to move their Christmas tree out of Ellie's room and into the play room (the tree had been taking turns in their rooms since the toy room was not an option with Andrew roaming around).  Then Christmas morning around 7:30ish Lila finally awoke and was roaming around here asking if Santa really did come.  We said yes and sent her to wake up Ellie so they could see what he brought.  Later when Lila saw the video camera she asked if we got a picture of Santa Claus with it and we said we didn't turn it on at night just as they came down the stairs--maybe next year. ;)

Andrew went around taking a bite out of everyone's orange from their stocking.  He loved the stuffed animals his sisters gave him from their collections.  Then Grandma helped him open this big car track which all the kids love.  He finally got into tearing the paper into small pieces and handing it to me.

It snowed on Christmas day which added to the festivities.  After opening presents, Ellie, Lila and Grandpa went outside to build a snowman.  Lila came in to get carrots for their noses and when she went back out Grandpa threw a snowball at her.  Lila said, "Grandpa, I don't think that is an appropriate activity."

Stan and Denice joined us for our Christmas lunch.  Steve and I cooked our first turkey and it was quite delicious.  We enjoyed it with all of the fixings.  Then we watched the new movie Santa brought, Planes, Fire & Rescue.  The kids enjoyed playing with their new remote controlled cars from Grandma & Grandpa Moore and relaxing.

We went up to Mt Green to go sledding.  It was nice to be able to go right outside my parents house--we could send the little ones in to get warm while the older ones enjoyed a few more runs.  It was a little rough as some of the thistles still stuck out.  Ellie tumbled head-over-hill a couple of times but still kept going.  Lila some how out got of balance and her face dragged on the ground for a bit.  It was a good thing I packed hot chocolate because it is nice to take a hot cocoa break after such incidents to get feeling better.  Fortunately Andrew did not have any bad runs and would not let go of me to go back inside.

Carole and Russ were able to stay until Monday, the 29th.  We enjoyed playing card games, watching movies, laughing at Andrew's crazy stunts, and the girls especially loved crafting with Grandma.  On Sunday we were able to have Steve's sister Melanie Flake and her clan of 9 join us for church and Sunday dinner.  We of course made another chocolate cake. :) It is always fun to share such special memories with family!

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

This year our Christmas tree is placed on top of an end table to keep Andrew from rocking it.  The day we put the ornaments up he took a pencil over there and stood on his tippy toes waving the pencil trying to reach anything he could.  We love our little boy and can hardly believe this time last year he had just entered our lives.  Now our house has been Andrew proofed and he provides great entertainment for our family.  Last night we spent 30 minutes watching him walk back and forth between all of us; one of his new tricks.  He also gives kisses, it's so cute and he will even make a little kissing noise to go with it.  He loves music and will shake his little leg to the music.  He still has an ear piercing scream that is so loud and high it can be quite terrifying.  Hopefully we can continue to expand his vocabulary and cut back on the screaming.  Right now he says Mom, Dad, Lila, Ell, bye-bye, no, boo and can make complicated sounds when he jibber jabbers making you feel like he is carrying on a real conversation.

Lila started kindergarten this year and is in the Chinese immersion program so she goes until 1:30pm taking a lunch. She loves to teach Ellie what she learns in Chinese, but is too shy to do in front of anyone else unless Ellie will do it with her.  She is a good reader and got a Barbie book from the library that she takes every where with her.  I cannot believe how much she is learning and how fast she is growing up.  The other day she was trying to make a decision between two good activities and asked if she chose A could she do B tomorrow and I said maybe.  She responded by saying, "I cannot make a decision when you say maybe, I need to know yes or no so that I can decide." 

Ellie started the 3rd grade and is reading like crazy.  At one point she was in the middle of 3 or 4 series at one time, that would drive me crazy, but she seemed to manage it and just kept reading.  Her favorites have been Wilma Tenderfoot and currently the Janitors series.  Steve coached her soccer team this year which was fun for her.  She continues to enjoy playing the piano and is doing better at sight reading so Mom doesn't have to help her with practice as much, but I still enjoy listening to her practice.  She is a wonderful big sister who helps out with Andrew while I try to make dinner and looks out for Lila at school.

Steve has been really busy at work juggling several different clients, who always manage to have similar deadlines making late nights for him.  He still enjoys his work and the guys he works with so we are very fortunate.  We spent a lot of time working outside this spring putting in a play structure and finishing the garden area so he still hasn't had much free time for the Datsun--hopefully some day.  I enjoy spending time with the kids on our little adventures, reading, crafting, play-dates, homework, etc.  Life has been quite busy this last year and at times when I think of all we've been through and what we've been able to accomplish, well I'm in awe and grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who guided us, gave us strength, and softened our hearts when we needed it.  I am so grateful for the knowledge I have of the birth of Jesus Christ and the light it brings into our lives every day.  He is the Gift

Merry Christmas!
Steve, Britney, Ellie, Lila & Andrew

Deal or No Deal

We had the Buckley family Christmas party today.  We had planned on going skiing, but due to lack of snow and Steve's leg still hurt a little from his biking accident that we postponed skiing and decided to do our party.  After dinner the kids opened up their pajamas from Mimi & Grandpa.

Then Mom & Dad had us all go downstairs while they set up a game.  We came upstairs to Buckley Deal or No Deal.

Venessa was the first one to play.  The boxes contained amounts ranging from $1 to $900.  It was fun and a very generous gift.  As you can see Andrew was fascinated with the bell and eventually became difficult to distract from all of the boxes.  We all had fun playing, but I have to admit that mine was the most intense game.  I got down to the last two boxes $1 or $700 I was a little sick to my stomach at that point and took the deal offered.

We then exchanged presents and visited for a bit.

 

Christmas Recitals

Lila had her Christmas dance recital yesterday and had a lot of fun showing us some moves and doing her dance.

Then we went out to dinner for our Anniversary--I thought it would be fun, but Andrew was a handful.  He was entertained for a while by using a straw to poke a roll.  Then Lila began to melt down due to lack of sleep from all the activities.  Well I didn't have to make dinner and it will definitely be a night to remember.

The girls have been singing Christmas songs they have been learning at school.  Lila has been learning We Wish You a Merry Christmas in Chinese.  When I asked their teachers about a program I was informed that it was a simple assembly where each grade level performed a song in front of the other classes not something parents usually attended, but the girls really wanted me to come.  Lila especially kept asking so I went and she saw me as soon as she walked in and kept waving to me and blowing me kisses.  Unfortunately my position did not give me a good view of Ellie performing her song (I even tried to move).  Oh, well it was fun to see them and it made their day.  :)

Steve's Crash

We've had such lovely weather for the beginning of December--we're talking 60s.  When we watched the weather forecast the other day we were only 4 degrees cooler than St. George.  Anyway, Steve and his riding buddy, my cousin Matt, decided to go cycling today and enjoy the lovely weather.  They were about a mile from home when Steve hit a 2x4 in the road causing him to fall straight to his side and sliding several feet down the asphalt (they were going 18mph when it happened).  Matt felt so bad because Steve was drafting behind him and Matt didn't see the 2x4 in time to warn Steve due to a passing car.  Steve was not upset at all, he knew it was just an accident (he's good like that--coming from a wife who may or may not have hurt the bumper on his beloved Audi earlier this spring).  Any how, he managed to ride the last mile home, got in the shower where there may or may not have been a few tears during the cleaning process--imagine road rash up the whole left side of your body.  We bandaged him up and I made him take some tylenol.  He tried going to urgent care because he think he broke his pinky on his right hand (his handle bars must have twisted his hands or something because that is the only injury on his right side), but urgent cares weren't open and the ER was busy so he came home.  He's going to be sore for a while, but we're really grateful it wasn't worse and that no cars were involved.

This picture doesn't do it justice. He has a huge bruise on his hip where he hit first and road rash all up his leg.  He had a long sleeve shirt on which protected his arm.

1/2/15 - Update: his muscles were bruised and sore for about 10 days.  He managed to do normal activities by bandaging up and then ace bandaging to keep his pants from rubbing.  The scab is gone now, but the skin is still healing.  We have the best home teachers who came and checked on us the day after they found out and offered to help with any Christmas projects we had and brought some delicious pumpkin bread--Steve's favorite.

Andrew's Antics

He needs another post for his shenanigans.

Last month one night when the girls were doing homework, he insisted on being at the table with them coloring. If I tried to set him on the floor with paper and crayons he would scream.  He now constantly tries to reach something off the "craft" table.

Almost captured his scrunchy face look.

He found the cute tips and will pull the cotton off the ends and then eat the stick.

The day of his fever he found a lollipop in the Halloween candy buckets still on my bedroom floor.  Look at that face, he knows he's been caught and he doesn't want it to be taken and I can tell he isn't feeling well so I let him finish his treat.

No breaks for Mommy, I just went to use the restroom quickly and I came back to this.

He loved to climb onto the fire place in Mt Green which we tried to manage because we didn't want him falling and getting hurt, but he would still manage to get up and this time he decided he didn't want his slippery socks on any more.

Finally I've arrived at the big kid table with my cup of milk (man, transitioning from a bottle is rough for everyone--probably not a good idea to do it over Thanksgiving when there is no routine, but we survived and if all goes well the bottles will be put away soon).

No vember = No school

That's right we had the whole month of November off of school.  I thought it was a wonderful month to have off and then day light savings ended--some what unexpectedly here at our house and you know what happened the first Monday of our break?  The kids were up at 6 am and so were we.  Not quite the first relaxing morning I was hoping for.

The girls had swim lessons at the Clearfield Aquatic Center for the first two weeks.  It was nice to have a planned activity each day and good for them to continue to practice their skills from the summer.  Ellie can efficiently back crawl now and Lila is learning strokes--she can still jump in and go to a back float which is a good skill.

Below you can see Ellie swim through hoop while Lila jumps in and back floats and Ellie went down the slide several times on the last day of class. :)

We had dental cleanings.  Ellie was referred to an orthodontist--poor girl and her crazy teeth.  Since we went straight from swim lessons to the dentist, we had a special lunch and went to Sub Zero to redeem our coupons.


I canned chicken and beans and made my first batch of refried beans from my canned beans--yummo.  We also updated our water storage and 72 hour kits and talked about emergency preparedness with the girls.

Andrew helping me can.

The Natural History Museum had their annual behind the scenes tour and members reception so we went to that.  It was fun.  They collected corn DNA and learned a little about DNA.  Then we saw all the collections of rocks, fossils, plants etc.  The girls and Steve went into the wet collections where they have preserved things like snakes and bats (Andrew and I waited outside of that room).  We had bagels, fruit, cookies, and punch at the members reception and then gave Steve a quick tour of the museum since it was his first time.

 


Later that night we went to Red Robin for dinner for my birthday.  It was a wonderful day with everyone.

Andrew and I ready for church after my birthday celebrations.

Steve and I took a little trip to Pheonix.  We had air miles that were expiring and with the temperatures dropping we decided it would be a nice late 10th Anniversary trip and heaven knows we could use the extra sleep.  Although I almost postponed it because Andrew woke-up Monday night before our trip with a fever of 102.6.  It broke after 24 hours so I'm pretty sure it was due to his 1 year vaccinations he had just got on Friday-poor critter.  So we spent 4 nights in Phoenix.  We had a goal to go to all three temples there and made a good effort.  We went to the Gilbert temple Thursday evening after arriving and it is beautiful.  It was a wonderful experience and I could just fill the wait of life being lifted off.  Friday morning we drove out to the Phoenix temple that was barely dedicated the Sunday before we arrived.  It was a fun drive and we enjoyed the session there.  After that session I've set a goal to start family history work in January--I've always had a desire and feel like this blog and my efforts to preserve current family memories is a part of family history, but I want to get to know my ancestors and teach my children about them (it's just a matter of balancing everything right).  We stopped at a local Italian restaurant and enjoyed lunch.  Then we had scheduled massages and enjoyed an evening in watching a movie.  Saturday we decided to go for a hike and although there were good local hikes we wanted to go to Picacho Peak since we have always wanted to that hike while living in Tucson.  Unfortunately as we started to hike I started experience some vertigo and a little headache so we took a break and drank some powerade and ate some snacks which helped, but didn't take care of it completely.  We reached the point called the saddle and although we both wanted to go on, I think we made the right call as to not risk it.  This is not an easy hike--we had just climbed practically straight up the middle of the mountain and if we had continued it had steel cable hand rails take you down about 800 ft before having to pull yourself up hand-over-hand on said steel cable hand rails for another 1500 ft before reaching the top.  

 












Left: a few hundred yards into the hike with this other peak in the background. 
Right: at the saddle with the same peak in the background-quite a ways up.

This is what you had to climb down after reaching the saddle to then turn around and climb to the peak.

The official top of the peak is there to left of Steve.

The saddle is the middle section of the mountain there that dips.  The peak is just under my finger at the top left (I was trying to block the sun from the picture).

We stopped to eat lunch and did some shopping at the outlet malls on the way back to Phoenix.  Then we showered and were ready to go do sealing with family names at the Mesa temple when that headache came back with vengeance causing nausea so I had to lay down and we just had to take it easy the rest of the evening.

Sunday we went to a wonderful sacrament meeting there and decided to stay for the Family History class (because of my above new goal).  It was nice to go to Sunday School with Steve since my current calling does not allow me to.  We really enjoyed our trip and it was a little weird to not have little munchkins waking us up, but it was so nice to come home to them. Thanks to Mimi for watching the kiddos.

I scrambled to unpack and clean the house while preparing for Thanksgiving.  We enjoyed our traditional surf-n-turf Wednesday evening thanks to Venessa and Nate.  Then Thursday we had a lovely day with the whole family.  Grandpa Elwood Olenslager came down with my Dad to spend the weekend with us and they brought some of his old slides.  My favorite part was watching the slides and hearing the stories, which we videoed (see that counts as family history too, right?).  Friday Uncle Mike Olenslager brought his kids and grandkids up to Mountain Green and we enjoyed visiting and watching a few more slides.

When we arrive for surf-n-turf Andrew held out his hands to be held by Grandpa O, he reached back for his blanket and then snuggled into him (he never snuggles--it was a priceless moment).

The kids dressed up as Indians and Lila taught Izzy how to bow down to a queen--they all took turns being queen and doing these dramatic bows, it was so cute.  Andrew of course caused a little havoc as I think the early pilgrims may have done for the Indians.

Lila said meeting Anson was her favorite part of the whole month.

It has been a wonderful weekend and I have so much to be grateful for!  I think my experiences this past week have reminded me of how grateful I am for the gift of the Holy Ghost and how it constantly prompts me in my daily life (as long as I'm striving to do my best) and I feel the guidance of my Father in Heaven in my efforts as a mother, wife, daughter, leader and I know it is because of his guiding power I am able to do and enjoy so much of life. Life is good!