Christmas 2013

Christmas Day. What a magical Christmas. Just wonderful!!  On dec 23, Monday, we drove down to Lafayette for Ryan Routsongs baptism. It was a simple, yet special experience. We then spen the night at the Routsongs home to Christmas Eve. The big boys had a slumber party with Ash, Ryan, and Jack in their theater room. Dawson, Kay and I slept in Cassidy's room. Dawson was so sleepy he went right to sleep and slept all night without a stir. An angel baby :). Kaylee and I snuggled and we both slept all night too. I woke in the morning stepped on a sleeping Cooper. He had snuck in in the night and joined us in the room. It just made me smile. I had 3 of my little ones surrounding me and all were peacefully  sleeping. I watched each one and my joy was just overflowing. 

Christmas Eve is the Routsong family traditional celebration. The whole family was there besides Nicks family in Arizona and Grandma Great who was with her sister.  A total of 16 kids, so happy to see each other. After our feast we spent a nice Cristmas testimony meeting, which has become an annual tradition. I had a chance to express my appreciation and love for my Indiana family and for their examples of strength and inspiration to me. Next came presents, one from a cousin and one from grandma to each child. Everyone was smiling when I looked around the room.  The adults then exchanged "our favorite things" in a white elephant form.  It was super enjoyable!

We set out for home and everyone but Dawson slept in the car. Arriving home we ate some pita dinner, wrote up our gifts to Jesus, opened up our Jammie's and watched The Nativity together. We tucked the kids in and let Santa do his magic:)

Christmas morning was completely magical. Everyone was happy! Everyone was smiling, and gracious, and filled with joy. The spirit in our home was one I'll never forget. Pure joy and true happiness being together with the ones we love the very most. The kids all opened their gifts of the same category at the same time till everything under the tree was gone.  They chose to open the Santa sacks last, which was cute. As they got more and more gifts the words that they said were things like, "this is the best day ever!" And "this is the best christmas!"  And that just makes me smile.  All of our efforts to make it that kind of day apparently paid off.  Nate gave me a beautiful silver necklace, and I have him an NIV Bible and a book which holds 4 different bible translations side by side for deeper study. After presents, we ate the breakfast things that they found in their stockings and the kids played with all their new goods all morning and afternoon.

In the late afternoon we met 3 other families at a local assisted living home and we went caroling through the hallways bringing Christmas cheer one last time before the special day was over. The families returned to our house afterward for a Christmas feast. We played christmas charades on the stage, put together a simple nativity scene while reading from Luke 2, and then watched a couple versions of the Nativity to remind us about the true meaning of this day. All of it was magical and memorable. I hope that every Christmas will be as enjoyable as this one:)

Visiting with Santa

While the boys were in school one day, and Nate and had a slow work morning, we took Kaylee and Dawson to the Embassy Theater Festival of Trees.  It is a huge beautiful festival inside such an amazing antique theater that is an heirloom to our city.  There were a few hundred Christmas trees there, all decorated with different themes and creative styles.  The kids enjoyed it!  Santa was there in one area, so we took the Littles to go see him.  He was there with Mrs. Claus.  Both kids were pretty uneasy about the whole idea, but it was fun anyways!  They are such cuties!

Christmas at School

The kids each had classroom Christmas parties and I was able to go spend time with them at their parties.  The parents prepared games and treats and snacks and festive activities for the kids.  Of course it was a blast!  Miss Martzell was Cooper's student teacher for the first half of the school year. She came to the Christmas party for one last visit with her students.  Cooper really enjoyed her!  One of his favorite Christmas party games was when they tied a tissue box around his waist full of jingle bells and he had to dance around until he got them all to fall out.  Fun times!

Cooper's class had been working on learning the entire song, "The 12 Days of Christmas."  Each child (or 2 from each class) was responsible for 1 of the days.  They had the number to hold up high, and they would sing their line when it was their day.  Cooper got Day 1, a partridge in a pear tree.  He knew that entire song by heart by the time school was out for Christmas break.  He sang it loud and clear around the house and he sang it loud when we went caroling too.  

Jaxton's class also had some fun activities.  Jaxton's favorite one involved using a candy cane to stack nuts and bolts.  He has an eye for detail and fine motor skills and loved tackling this contest!  Of course he loved frosting cookies and eating all the sugary sweets too!

 The first graders at Cedarville performed in a Christmas Concert.  Each class prepared several songs and performed them.  Jaxton loves to sing.  He enjoyed himself out there singing and dancing along.  He looked so cute with his spiked hair.  He has been refusing to get it cut!  But when he lets us put gel in it, he looks so handsome.  It was fun watching him with all his little first grade friends!

Thanksgiving 2013

As tradition, we hosted Thanksgiving here at our house for all the Routsong family.  It was also our deadline to finish our basement and home theater room.  Nate had spent hours and hours and working till 3 in the morning this week finishing lights and electrical and flooring.  The fireplace stone was put in the day before thanksgiving as well as all the appliances and the furniture were all delivered.  But it all came together in time for families to arrive Thursday morning.

Grandpa made the turkey and stuffing of course, and everyone else brought dishes to share and it was a marvelous feast!!  Everyone except Nick and Carissa's family came, though they came through face time that evening :). Aunt Marion and Grandma Routsong and Uncle Greg also came.

We began a new family tradition: a Pie Contest.  Everyone was to bring a pie to enter the contest and we would vote to see which pie was the ultimate favorite.  Uncle Greg's fabulous pecan pie won.  The winner of the pie was announced on our new basement theater room stage!!

After the announcement, everyone participated in a number of skits and performances many of which were prepared ahead of time. Some were improvised right then and there by many of the kids.  Jaxton did a magic trick where he turned himself into Cooper.  Nate and I did one where we swore we were so in tune that we could read each others minds by the way we acted.  The audience chose a phrase for Nate to do motions to and I amazingly knew the phrase :).  

After the skits some people headed home and others went off to the movies.  We stayed home with our littles and some of the cousins and just enjoyed the company and the evening.  That night, the Owen family and Mike and Km Routsong family stayed overnight.  The kids all had a blast.  I'm so grateful that we can have so much family nearby and lots of cousins for the kids to love on the Routsong side of the family.  It truly is a remarkable thing to have people that you can love and become closer than friends with because they are extended family.  We cherish the relationships we have in Indiana as well as those in Utah. I'm grateful for those relationships, especially for my kids.  All in all it was a wonderful Thanksgivibg holiday!  

Jaxton's 7th Birthday

Jaxton turned 7!!! Where is the time going!  My little man is just growing up so fast!  We took some cupcakes into his classroom for his birthday, each cupcake was topped with a lego.  His favorite thing :-).  He was very excited to bring in cupcakes.  We had a family party for him on Sunday with Grandma & Grandpa Routsong.  He got packages from the Giraldi's and Grandma & Grandpa Hutchinson in the mail.  Everything he asked for and everything he got was LEGOs!  That's his love right now!  He got so many lego sets and some giant lego idea books.  You can imagine that we didn't see much of him after his birthday.  He has been very busy building and creating with legos.  He also had to have a lego cake, which made me have to get a little bit creative!  Here are some fun things about Jaxton at 7 years old:

1. First and foremost, his favorite thing to do is build with legos.  He is so very creative.  As a little boy, he loved to build with blocks.  He would build cities and amazing creations with regular blocks.  Now, as his fingers are able to work with tiny objects, this has transformed into lego play!  He can follow the directions that are intended for a 14 year old and build amazing things.  Then, he always puts his creation on display somewhere and will never break it down.  So after a while, we actually did kind of run out of legos because all the legos were used up and sitting on display in our upstairs office shelves.  So he picked and chose the ones that were not as important to him and he broke them down to create more.  Really, though, he amazes me at his creativity and focus.

2. Jaxton enjoys soccer as his favorite sport.  He really is very good at soccer.  He is very good with his feet.  He is not afraid to get in the action and steal that ball.  His other favorite activity has been Tae Kwon Do.  He is very good at this as well.  He enjoys advancing by belt and earning level after level.  He loves to succeed at things, and in Tae Kwon Do, he can advance and succeed, and that is exciting to him.  We have taken a break from Tae Kwon Do during school because it gets demanding with practices, but he is currently a camoflauge belt in the Tiny Tiger Program.

3. Jaxton's favorite subject by far is math.  He is a math whiz!  He wants to understand high school math problems!  He understands already so much multiplication and division.  He is not fully able to figure problems on paper, instead, he will do problems in his head.  It's amazing.  Since he is interested so much, I have worked with him a little bit to teach him how to multiply by place value and divide numbers using long division.  Though its a little complicated at his level, he can follow the steps as we work through it together.  Then, he will ask me some random question about the x.  What does the x mean?  And so I proceed to teach him basic algebra, trying to figure out what the x is worth.  He's interested in decimals and has asked what the dot means.  So I have taught him basic info about decimals and fractions of 10.  Further, he wanted to learn fractions, so we drew pizzas of different amounts of slices and worked to discover different fractions as well as adding fractions, or adding the slices of 2 pizzas left to figure how many slices total were left.  He amazes me.  It is amazing!  He is soo soo brilliant!

4. Jaxton is a sweetheart.  He is maturing so much.  I see such maturity in him as he has grown older.  He is definitely not a little boy, but he really is growing up.  We can hang out and talk together in regular conversation, which is so fun.  He is an amazing helper around the house.  Though he'd rather do something else, he is so good at helping out, especially with his little brother and sister.  He also does not like conflict, and so he will avoid it.  He enjoys bugging his little siblings, just like any older brother, but for the most part, he avoids conflict and avoids getting hurt in wrestling matches.

5. Jaxton will say that his favorite food is Mom's homemade mac & cheese.  He would eat it every night.  He also loves bagels for breakfast.  He has never been super picky in his eating as a little kid, but he is getting more and more particular about his food as he gets older.  Which may mean that might end up being a fabulous cook, cooking exactly the way he prefers his food.  He likes to scramble eggs, but won't eat them contentedly if we did not mix them with milk or add cheese to melt over them.  He likes his water cold from the fridge instead of from the faucet.  I usually have him get up and change whatever he needs because I can't cater to 4 different menus :).  And he does, which makes me believe he will be an excellent cook one day.  He also has told me over and over how much he likes noodles.  I understood that he meant pasta with alfredo sauce.  But every time I made that, he said this is not what I mean.  One day when we were pretty much out of most food, and I didn't have the energy to cook up something great, we cooked up ramen noodles.  This, he exclaimed, was what he was talking about!  He apparently absolutely loves ramen noodles!!  Funny boy!

6. Jaxton loves gadgets.  He loves numbers and he loves to be very particular.  So for Christmas we got him a nice watch with a digital clock, timer, alarm, clock, and a few other features.  He wears that thing night and day, taking it off briefly for a shower and that's it.  He has the alarm clock set to wake him at 7am every morning, and on weekends or school cancellations will just turn it off and roll over and go back to sleep.  He loves his watch!  It's also been great helping him understand time and different time frames.  When I say we are leaving in 10 minutes, that is a hard thing for a kid to really know how much time they actually have.  Now, Jaxton has a very good concept of time.  He can watch the minutes go by and understand how much time he has.  It really has been a great thing for him.

7. Jaxton is a very social kid.  He loves to be around other kids and doing fun things in groups.  So we got him into a Cub Scout Tiger Scouts group near our home.  He loves getting all dressed up in his scout uniform and being a part of the group.  They work on projects and earn things also at home and it has been fun for him to earn patches and beads and work towards goals.  He also has been giving our Family Home Morning lessons using his Tiger Scout goals.  It's been a great opportunity for him.  They had a rocket derby and the kids got to build rockets.  Then, they had the classic Pinewood Derby.  This was our first derby, and the car he built was not the fastest car.  He knew it, and he was ok with that.  But when his car got 3rd place on some of the rounds, he was thrilled that it wasn't the slowest.  It turned out to be a great experience and he now has all sorts of ideas for his car next year.

8. Jaxton says he wants to be an engineer when he grows up.  He loves building, he loves numbers, he loves computers and gadgets, and he is so dang smart.  We had to get our old HP computer fixed, and the computer guy gave me back the old broken power supply out of our computer after he had replaced it.  He said the kids would probably love to take it apart and play around with the wires and things.  I had never thought of such a thing, but what a fun activity!!  So, we waited a week or so before playing with it to ensure that it wouldn't send out electrical shocks to the kids, and then Jaxton went to work.  He opened up that thing with screwdrivers of different sizes.  He examined the wires, changed them around, and played with that for a long time.  Nate helped him to rearrange the wires to the fan that was part of the power supply.  They made some kind of electrical circuit and by putting the wires in the right positive and negative places, they made the fan work.  Jaxton was amazed!  He loved it so much!

9. Jaxton loves little kids and babies.  He is so very good with them.  He already is a great little babysitter at home, but he will be an amazing babysitter someday.  He gravitates toward babies.  He will googoo gaga with them in their face and make funny faces at them to get them to smile and laugh.  He is gentle and sweet with babies.  He is great with Dawson too, and if I give him the option, he will choose to play with Dawson.  He will make forts or walls out of boxes or toys and barricade Dawson in his room or in the toyroom so Dawson can't escape and get into things.  And then the two of them will just play.  I love to sneak in and watch them.  Dawson loves the attention.  Kaylee has some friends that come to play sometimes too.  And Jaxton is so good with them.  He loves to take the little girls and build them slides out of table and forts.  Then he will read stories to them and create obstacle courses and games for them to play.  He is so great with little kids!

10.  Jaxton loves to read.  He has excelled at reading so much!  We love to read chapter books aloud to each other, and he is able to read to me too.  It is so much fun.  It is one of my favorite things to do, to read books together.  He got a clip on bed lamp for Christmas and he put a bean bag up on the loft area of his bed.  He will get cozy there and read from his "book box" before bed.  I just can't believe how much he is growing up!

Happy Birthday Jaxton!!!  We love you forever!!!

Halloween 2013

Halloween was a lot of fun this year!! I love Halloween.  I love the childhood joys of the holiday, dressing up, the fun parties, pumpkins, fall time, beautiful weather and scenery.  We always try to figure out what the kids want to be for Halloween way in advance. I enjoy making costumes, too, which takes time.  The boys both settled on ninjas, inspired by Ninjago.  Cooper wanted to be a blue ninja, and Jaxton wanted to be a black one.  We put together their costumes and I think they looked absolutely great!! They loved their costumes.  Kaylee wanted to be Cinderella.  Halloween was quickly approaching and I was running out if time to make this difficult sounding costume.  But after thinking it through, I decided I would regret if I never had another opportunity to make a princess costume for my little girl.  I headed to Joann's and got all the fabric and supplies I needed.  I followed a Pinterest blog of instructions and sewed together the cutest, most fabulous Cinderella princess costume ever, complete with long white gloves and glass (jelly) slippers and blue headband.  I'm a rookie, so there were some things that didnt turn out perfect, but for the most part, it was gorgeous.  I'm so proud if it!  And Kaylee loved it!  Dawson was a skeleton, glow-in-the-dark that is.  He is such a cutie!!

The biggest Halloween event was the church trunk or treat party.  It was a chili cook off and was all decked out with a couple hundred people all dressed up in all sorts of costumes.  The kids had an absolute blast!! Outside they held a trunk or treat for the kids.  The big boys took off and made it 3 or 4 times around the parking lot!! Kaylee and Dawson and I went around almost twice.  At first Kay was a little unsure of what to do.  She got shy and tried to hide her smile when people told her how beautiful she was as Cinderella.  But by the end of the trunk of treat, she was running from car to car as fast as she could go!  Dawson enjoyed all the hustle and bustle and all the interesting faces and outfits.  What a fun night!

On the actual Halloween night it was raining. We got in the car to go to the mall to be indoors, but the rain had stopped biscotti.  We decided to chance it and take the kids to a Grabill neighborhood before it got dark and started to rain again.  The kids all had fun, even Nate and me.  We beat the weather and the kids their bags to the rim with candy candy candy!!  Another Halloween down!   Wonder what next Halloween will bring!

Jaxton Update

Jaxton is growing up and turning into a big kid!  I just can't believe how much he has matured.  He has become more responsible, surprising me when he does things without being asked.  He is motivated in his academics and he is soo very smart when it comes to school, reading, writing, and math.  He loves to excel in academics.  Jaxton was on a small soccer league this summer.  Again it was mostly a skills clinic with small scrimmages amongst his own team.  He learned all sorts of skills and tricks with the ball and his soccer skills are definitely increasing.  I love to watch him play.  He has become a very confident player with determination to get the ball and shoot the ball and work at winning.  He loves the sport!

Jaxton is an artist.  He loves to color.  He loves to draw pictures and color them in and he loves to create designs with shapes and color.  He is very careful in his drawing and also very careful in his coloring in.  He is also always very confident and proud of his own work.  

Jaxton has begun losing his teeth!! They are falling out!!  He's lost 3, but has 3 more that are loose.  They seem to be all falling out at the same time!  He has been excited about the tooth fairy, but disappointed that she only brings him one dollar each time he puts a tooth under his pillow.  Silly boy!  One time he lost a tooth at school.  So he got sent to the nurse who gave him a special tooth treasure chest to keep his tooth safe in.  The tooth fairy opened up that treasure chest, took the treasure, and left him a dollar and the empty chest as a keepsake.  

Jaxton is a wonderful big brother.  He is wonderful with Dawson.  I can almost fully trust him with Dawson.  He loves to play with Dawson in Dawson's room.  He blocks the door with Dawson's crib and then builds his brother obstacle courses out of the cusions and throw pillows and toys in there.  Usually its a disaster when I have to put Dawson to bed, but he has been a trooper at cleaning up the obstacle course before Dawson goes to sleep.  Dawson loves spending time with Jaxton too.  Its very apparent that he is having fun when they play!  Jaxton is also wonderful with Kaylee.  Today he read her a story before her naptime.  He knew that she wouldn't be able to follow all the words very well, so he just told her the story by the pictures in her level of language.  It was awfully sweet.  He is so kind and good to his little brother and sister.  With Cooper, he loves to wrestle and play hard with Coop.  They love to play together.  Often still, their play will end in some kind of fight or problem.  But it is always short lived before they are off again.  The other day during a fight, I brought up a large daddy shirt.  I had each of them get inside it and share the head hole.  In the midst of their fight they were laughing again wondering what in the world I was doing to them.  I told them it was their "get-along shirt" and that they had to wear it until they were getting along again.  It took less than a minute before they were happy as ever and ready to play again.  I'm so glad they have one another!  Love you Jax!

Fort 4 Fitness Half Marathon

Fort 4 Fitness again!  This time I got Nate to run the half marathon with me.  As we trained for it over the past weeks, I realized that Nate is much too fast of a runner for me!  So we couldn't run it together, but we both ran it and it was a lot of fun to finish it together!  I ran with Summer, my good friend whose pace we seem to match perfectly.  We chat the whole time about kids, and anything else on our minds.  It passes the time.  As long as we can keep our conversation, we can keep running!  We had been running together early on Saturday mornings before the sun came up and a week prior we did 12.5 miles.  So we felt ready.  We finished the race about 5 minutes sooner than we did when we ran it 2 years ago.  This time we finished in one hour and 57 minutes, which brought our pace to about 8:50 per mile.  I was excited to have beat our previous time!  The race was the same event as the kids race the previous night.  So the finish line was over Home Plate.  It was very exciting and thrilling and there were over 6000 people there that day.  I don't know if I could ever do a full marathon, but I would love to try some kind of partial triathlon someday.  I think that would be a lot of fun and a great accomplishment!!

Kids Marathon

We have some racers!  The boys entered a race as part of the Fort 4 Fitness race to do a 1 Mile Race.  The goal of the race was to begin early in the summer and do 25 miles on their own or as a family over time.  This race would be the final mile in their 3 month long marathon goal.  Well, we started out doing a little bit of running, but we got nowhere near 25.  Regardless, this was a super fun event!  They were really excited!  Jaxton got motivation from somewhere and just took off!  Parents got to run with the kids, and Nate and I also took Kaylee and Dawson in the jogging stroller so they could participate too.  It was difficult to keep track of the big boys in the crowds.  Jaxton would run as fast as he could, but being the little mature guy that he has become, he would slow down, and wait and watch until he could see me and I could see him.  Then, off he went again.  I would panic in those moments that he was far ahead, but was always so grateful when he slowed down to "check in."  Cooper was much more nervous about the crowds.  He wanted to see me all the time and was worried about getting lost in the people.  Secretly I was grateful for his nervousness because then I wouldn't have to panic about 2 kids at a time!  We found some of our friends there and Cooper ran most of the way with his friend Cameron.  After the race he told me that if we had gotten separated from each other, that he had had a plan.  His plan was (in his cute 5 year old mind) that he would stay near Cameron and then he would just go home with Cameron and borrow some of Cameron's jammies.  He would spend the night there and he knew that Cameron's mom would call me.  :-)  It was cute that he had it all planned out what he would do if worst came to worst.  He was grateful that it didn't happen though.  Cooper did take a fall in the middle of the race.  There were so many people and he was trying to keep looking for me that he lost his footing on the curb and tumbled.  He scraped up his elbow and knee and broke down crying.  Nate helped him up and got him motivated again while I took off to keep up with Jaxton.  The next thing I know was Cooper had caught up to us and was racing on ahead.  I love that boy's determination and passion!  He fell, got up, got himself together and kept going!  That is Cooper all the way!  What a fun race!  The race ended at the Fort Wayne Tin Caps Baseball Field.  The last lap of the mile was in and around the actual baseball outfield.  The finish line crossed Home Plate.   The kids all got a medal for finishing!

Kaylee Update

Kaylee Joy continues to be a joy in our home.  She is learning and growing so fast!  She has so much to say and so much to do all the time.  She is a great little communicator and a sweet little singer.  I love to listen to her sing in her room during nap time.  She sings her little heart out!  

Kaylee loved to go out in the garden.  She had her rain boots from Grandma Hutchinson and her pink princess gloves and she would get out there in the dirt just like the rest of us.  We usually had to changer her clothes every time she went out to the garden, but thats alright!  She really loved it out there.  She also loved picking all the red strawberries and munching on berry after berry.  Her basket of strawberries to bring into the house for our morning smoothie never really got very full. :-)

One day we were drawing with chalk on the patio.  All of a sudden she announced that she had drawn a K.  So I looked, and indeed, she had!!  She had made a K without trying to and she recognized it as a letter of her name!  I was so impressed I had to snap a photo!

One of Kaylee's most favorite things to do is to jump off of mommy's bed onto the beanbags and blankets on the floor.  The most fun comes when her brothers join her.  They have a blast doing this.  We've only had a handful of bumps and bruises from this activity so far....  (Knock on wood).  

Pretty girl!

Kaylee is all potty trained.  She figured it all out back in February!  We've had some hits and misses, but for the most part, she is fully trained!  Great job girl!

Kaylee and Dawson both love to take rides in the bike stroller.  Sometimes we pull it behind the bike, and other times I will just push it while the big boys ride bikes.  She is such a great big sister to share her snacks with Baby Dawson and she loves looking out her side window and watching the ride!

Kaylee is a Daddy's Girl.  And Nate is wrapped tightly around her little finger.  She adores him, and he adores her.  He took her on a date the other night.  He asked her if she would go on a date with him, and she misunderstood thinking that she would be left home with a babysitter.  When Daddy explained that it was mommy that would be left home with the babysitter, she just grinned from ear to ear realizing that she was the one going out!  Daddy outdid himself by putting her carseat in the front seat of his one-row ranger truck so they could sit together.  He took her to Kroger for some groceries, but was sure to buy a red rose for her.  She was so proud of that rose.  We put it in water and its still in her room, slowly wilting.  What a fun time for Daddy & Daughter.

Kaylee is a little artist.  She still will "color herself to sleep."  She prefers a pen over crayons or pencils. She calls it "mommy's crayon."  She uses a hard book as her "table" and she will color and color and draw with that pen until she's out asleep.  Her drawings are incredible.  Usually they are portraits of people, complete with feet and hands and hair.  One time she drew a portrait of someone that was shaped like an egg with legs, arms, hands, and feet.  We saw a book once that had illustrations almost identical to Kaylee's egg person!  It was amazing!  She surprises me with her detail in her drawings.  She does not scribble, but carefully draws out details.  

Kaylee also loves to do the dishes.  She and I do the dishes as our dinner chore after dinner every day and she loves it.  She loves the library story time.  She loves to read stories together.  She loves the sandbox and she loves the swings.  She loves having a headband in her hair everyday and loves to be "pretty."  She is such a happy little angel.  We love her to pieces.