Richins

You may or may not know this depending on if you get a Christmas card from us or not, and if you have seen me in the past four or five months but I am pregnant with baby #4. I also haven't really mentioned it on the blog, but I am 37 3/4 weeks pregnant. In case you needed a visual. This is me at 36 weeks . This pregnancy has been a little different than the others but pretty standard too. I don't mention much about my pregnancies because even though I do get morning sickness sometimes night or all day sickness in the beginning,  retain some water( my feet are so swollen that we could play a game seeing what cool things we could press in to them to leave in dents), get heart burn, don't sleep well, have ache legs and hips especially at night and various other not so fun pregnancy symptoms, I feel things go over rather well and until I get to about now sometimes later life doesn't change too much. My pregnancies are rather boring, and we don't find out the gender...

Tonight Glen and I got to go on a date. The priests and laurels  were doing a combined date night activity and Glen ask me to be his date. It was fun. We went bowling. We aren't very good, but neither were any of the youth so it all worked out. Also bowling is a little more difficult and interesting when you have a bowling ball shaped stomach, or so it seemed to me.  My mom watched the kids for us. After dropping off the youth that rode with us; we went to get the kids. On the way home Lucy wanted to play When my Grandma Came Across the Plains. She didn't want it to be in alphabetical order and any thing went. It went something like this: Lucy- When my Grandma came across the plains she brought... a house with her. Lilly- When my Grandma came across the plains she brought a house and Studio C with her. Glen- When my Grandma came across the plains she brought a house, Studio C and a duck with her. Kayci- When my Grandma came across the plains she brought...

I just missed the hug. It was so cute. The boys trying not to be too social. Books and DS's helped. Daryl correcting something we said about the ice cream cones. He just  KNOWS these things. Visiting and sharing fake ice cream. Mikayla enjoying baby Grif. Janae enjoying Eve. Visiting and baby loving. Those plastic cones sure are good, and yes I got you in the picture Grandpa. Fantastic looking Heather and Eve showing off her personality. She has opinions already. Daryl with  "O Patty" One of my favorite pictures ever!  I think it speaks for it's self. Aunt M'li with Griffin Another just missed hug. Glen and Heather.  In December we got to visit Aunt Patty's house twice. It was so nice. That house is like a haven or sanctuary  You can just rest and relax there because of the good feeling it has. I think part of that is because it is so clean. The first time we went she had just cleaned windo...

One of the last things that happens in our year is Evelyn's birthday on December 30. This one has been hard to take. She wasn't fond of 88 but 89 is even closer to 90 and she never thought she would make it that long and didn't really want too. We are happy she did and that she is with us. Being just after Christmas and right before New Years, and in the winter it's not quite the celebration that we do for Roberta in June. A celebration is a celebration though and we didn't forget. My mom made soups and bread sticks and my aunt decorated a big sheet cake. Mom told neighbors, friends and family to drop by any time after four o'clock on the evening of her birthday to give her birthday wishes. It was a great success! Roses from Marian. One of her cakes. The other one came as a surprise present.     Jaylee enjoying the party. Neighbors and family enjoying the party. More family. Uncle Grant  Derek with his beard. Evel...

Lilly has had this problem lately of forgetting homework at school. This has sent us back to the school for return trips, sometimes just in the nick of time to be able to get it before all the sweepers and the night custodian leave. It drives me nuts. We have been working on responsibility. She had a free frozen yogurt coupon she received for participating in a school art competition. She has been wanting to redeem it for some time now. Being the conniving mom I am wanted her to remember her homework. We made a deal. IF she could remember her homework, planner, everything she needed to bring home from school for a week consecutively, we would redeem the coupon. The week was to be seven school days, meaning she had a whole week and two days of another week to remember everything and not have to go back. Last Monday she had six days and just had to remember her stuff that day to make the seventh and we would be having frozen yogurt for dessert. Disaster, ...

I am only six weeks or so behind on this but here are some picture highlights of our Christmas at our house. After the the fun at our house we headed up to Grandma and Grandpa Richins for our tradition of Christmas morning waffles with them. We ended up spending most of the day at their house and then had dinner with the Egbert side of the family. I don't have pictures of either one of these events, the later because I got feeling sick around dinner time and ended up avoiding everyone and staying in Evelyn and Roberta's house and not going to the cottage were the party was.  I also know it's been six weeks since Christmas because the girls got to get their ear's pierced as a present and today they got to change their earrings for the first time. They were VERY excited.

These are the two big things we helped with for the Festival this past year. Above is the tree house with Lego guys on it. Since my nephew died it's our Egbert family tradition to donate a ginger bread creation in honor of him. This actually doesn't have any real gingerbread on it but  it fit well with the bigger theme of the year.The only thing was Lego guys are small and we couldn't keep it to just six of them and make it look as good as we wanted, so there are a few more. We take turns being in charge of the idea and plans each year. Jed, was in charge of the idea this year and it was really fun to do something out of the ordinary.  It went along with the big tree that Joe, my other brother and his wife under took with lots of help from family and friends. I gave a sneak peak of it a while ago this was the finished product. We think it turned out pretty darn good.    One of the really cool things was that BOTH Eve...