Unfolding Miracles!

Mom getting the turkey ready. We have enjoyed staying home the past several years and inviting others to join us. Our favorite guests are those who otherwise wouldn't have a place to go. This year we enjoyed having Body and his parents as well as our friend Kevin.

Ship and Bode enjoying dinner.

Gavin

Sennika

Shipton and Mom dancing to the guitar music.

Kevin giving Gavin a guitar lesson

Dad and Senn selife

Shipton enjoyed his pie wholeheartedly

See?! :)

Playing board games.

The kids call Wednesday "Pie Day" because we make the pies ahead and usually cook ham and rolls too. Even though I truly enjoy cooking for Thanksgiving, I shoot for a low-stress Thanksgiving Day. Here is Gavin with the French cherry pie he made.

Shipton with his pumpkin pie.

Sennika with her banana cream pie (my Grandma Oldham's recipe).

Le with his jumble berry. (I also made a chocolate silk pie and that is what Shipton had smeared all over his face a few pictures above).

The aftermath. My favorite kind of leftovers.

Everyone minus me taking the picture at dinner. :)

General Conference. Check out lds.org/conference if you missed it! Left to right: Shipton (mostly covered), our friend Bode, Gavin, Leland, and Sennika

Mom working on bread bowls.

Lincoln Logs during conference

Gavin taking notes with a touch of Shipton's head.

Half way snack. It was a bit intense with 5 kids to catch 8 hours in 2 days of the general sessions of conference BUT with that being said, we surprisingly got quite a bit out of it.

Gavin designing puzzles.

Dad with co-workers

Shipton coloring

We went to the Afton, WY temple open house. We were even able to bring our friend, Bode, with his parents' permission.

Bode

Le with Dad

Senn

This was crazy awesome...we were driving down the road and finally made it to the city. Mark all of sudden hit the breaks. I looked at him questioningly, he said, "That was Roussesou back there." My brother went on a mission to Haiti and one of his mission companions ended up coming to BYU-Idaho and was sponsored to come to America by my parents. We tease about him being my unofficially adopted brother. Sure, we didn't see any other black people around, but I was a bit unsure that Mark could have picked him out so confidently in a split second driving by. I got out of the car and timidly headed towards the man sitting near the edge of the road on a rock. I was intending to keep it nonchalant so that if it wasn't him, I would just somehow walk past him. He looked up when I started coming and within a few seconds was up and running towards me. It really was him! What are the chances?! It was a fun few minute visit and he pulled his wife and kids over to say hi too. What a fun surprise to catch them!

The open house was lovely. I am grateful for a spouse who is like-minded in the importance of getting our little ones to the temple. At this point, they are too young to hold recommends, so we do all we can to reasonably travel to temple open houses. So far we have been blessed with many new or remodeled temples within traveling distance in the past 8 years to do so. Here is Shipton with Dad (temple in the background)

Gavin and Sennika building legos

Gavin as a prehistoric creature at the museum with our co-op group.

Le too.

These are (were) the full-time missionaries our ward shares with two others. We have been blessed to have them in our home often recently with Mark's calling as ward missionary. We love to feed them and love even more when we get to have friends come too.

Pig pile loves with Dad after prayer.

Dad and Shipton selfies.

Shipton coloring---mostly on the page. This mama is grateful for magic erasers!

Mark and I took Gavin out for ice-cream and had a final discussion about baptism. He was so cute about it. Being a middle child, he doesn't usually speak up and ask for much. He loved having both of us at the same time. We asked him where he wanted to go and he said somewhere that he could have a banana split.

and he didn't waste a drop of it either. :)

Mom and Ship. Right after this picture he let me rock him to sleep. I can think of one other time since before the cruise that has happened. He is growing more and more independent every day.

Mom and Sennika making furniture for her paper doll house.

Dad and Senn selfie

Thanksgiving art. I love how each child has their own little personality to these. Leland wanted all of those eye because his was an alien turkey. Shipton marked a line with a crayon for each spot he wanted me to glue a leaf.

Dad, Le, Ship, and Gav outside.

We had our Primary program practice on a Saturday afternoon. That meant I was gone with all of the 3 oldest kids. This left Dad and Shipton 1:1. They had so much fun together (as always!) :) As a side note, the program went very well. I was extremely nervous Saturday after we ran through it and I missed every cue and everything I was responsible to remember. It was weighing heavy on my mind by evening and upon my request, Mark gave me a blessing. The biggest thing that stood out to me was that he said something along these lines, "the Holy Ghost is prepared to give all in attendance their own personal experience." It was a great remind that all I needed to do was invite and keep The Spirit and no matter what happened or didn't happen, it would be fine. As I woke up early Sunday morning, the thought came to me..."well...I am all you've got, Lord." I don't know why it struck me as so funny, but it did. He and I both knew how inadequate I was to the task. He was counting on me to remember that and ask for His help to take my efforts and magnify them. Truly it was a wonderful meeting. I was expecting something big to go wrong, but nothing did. Not even something small. The kids sang like angels and everything went smoothly. The Bishop spoke for a few minutes and the full time missionaries also bore their testimonies. It was a powerful meeting taught by these precious children I am privileged to work with every week. <3

Shipton playing with the left over decorations for Gavin's bday.

Gavin making up Lego games.

Le building duplos.

Senn and Gavin playing the Lego games Gavin made up.

Sennika all dressed up.

Senn & Dad selfie.

Le getting un-dressed up.

Gavin reading.

Sennika seems to be double-jointed.

Senn

Le eating oranges. Kinda random, but I thought it was a cute picture from Mark's phone.

Ship and Dad selfie.

Le watching a silly movie with Dad.

All 4 kids doing headstands on the couch.

Gavin and Shipton

The kids have LOVED having the tree up. They like to bend the branches into knots and create "nests" for their toys.

Mom and Senn selfie.

Since we didn't take Senn out for baptism ice-cream when she was turning 8, we opted to have a girl movie and take out.

Boys jumping on the bed.

Senn had a really fun time with one of her friends. They started out playing together at our house, but then the mom took the girls to Logan to shop at Claire's (an accessory shop). She was treated to ice-cream, pretzel bites, and a few DI items. (She is showing off the butterfly clip in this picture). She couldn't tell me enough times what a great time she had. She said a few times "it was one of the best days of my life." This girl is so grateful and loves to go do girl things as often as we can...which sounds like it isn't often enough!

Gavin has loved to "torture," as he calls it, coloring books lately. Here he is reading the new version to Leland and Shipton.

Mom, Ship, and Le selfie.

Sennika made this wreath.

Shipton sharing his train table with his friend, Brock.

Gavin with his Lego plane he created.

Shipton smiling and eating his pancake.

We went iceskating with our co-op group. Gavin is in the white. Leland is crouched down. They did pretty good. Leland and Sennika needed more help than Gavin. I stayed off the ice while Shipton napped in my arms. Some of the older kids from co-op taught Senn and Le how to skate. They ended up having a really fun time.

Le holding on to the wall.

Gavin and Le again.

Gavin with his bday cake.

This was darling. Leland was working very hard on something one morning he didn't want me to see. When I finally was "allowed" to see it, this is what he revealed. It says, "I love you mom. ~Leland" What a sweetheart.

I recorded a CHRISTmas album (releasing this week). Here is my selfie in the recording studio.

Senn and Gavin dressed up.

Another banana split pic with Gavin and Mom the goof balls.

I made this cupcakes for Primary for our Birthday singing. When Mark saw how cute they turned out, he promised we could use them for his bday. He usually hates his bday being made a big deal, so likes very, very low-key celebrations.