Stop action film

Jackson is a busy baby.  He has been like that since he figured out how to move.  He started walking this last week or so--9 1/2 months. That's just a little later than Dallin's and Landon's walking age.  Of course we thought it was great with Dallin and Landon.  We are wiser this time around and wish we could postpone the inevitable loss of parental control that starts with walking.  

But it sure is cute.

Scroll through the pictures to get an idea of what is keeping us entertained pretty much all the time.

Murphy's Law

It will always be true that no matter how many awesome safe toys are available-

This little guy is guaranteed to find...

The one Polly shoe in the box.

My favorites for Christmas this year--

New stockings with our names embroidered on the front.  It seriously made me smile every day to see eight stockings on the mantle.

Jackson. We had so much fun watching a baby.  It made the year for us all.

The kids.  We asked them what they wanted for Christmas and they all wrote down "my cousins" and "everyone happy" with a couple of other things.  They are awesome.

Pictures.  I finally went through and found a bunch of the pictures from previous Christmases and put them in frames.  So Fun to look at!

The adorable tiny sled Grandpa Hatch made for the babies of the family. Jackson could not get enough!

Treats. We were completely and utterly spoiled this year.  The kids started calling the china hutch "the snack bar" because it was so full of yummy stuff.

Christmas on Sunday.  It was a beautiful and perfect day.

And of course the best--visiting with all our family. We always look forward to family. We would have every single one move in on our street if we could!

Can't wait for an awesome 2012!

Albion 'Normal' School

I am slowly but surely working through all the pictures of the last few weeks.  As soon as I get my camera that I left at the Hatch's in Franklin I will finish the month of December!

Our Patterson family spent a great weekend the week after Christmas at the Albion Campus Retreat in Albion, Id.  The house was part of the old Normal School College campus that has been abandoned. 

It has 16 bedrooms and tons of beautifully restored space. The halls are super wide with corridors of beautiful doors and the old brick is exposed through the plaster every once in a while. It is a beautiful house.

Each bedroom has an attached bathroom which was important because  we had a nasty case of the stomach flu running through the house--Rustin threw up all the way from Twin Falls to Albion and Ashlee was hiding a barf bag behind her back in most of these pictures.  I think every single member of the family had varying degrees of stomach sickness that lasted from 12 to 24 hours.

While we had everyone home we took pictures for the first time in years!

This was the first time we had all seven siblings home (from Ohio, Australia, Utah and Idaho...) together for a couple of years.

We missed Jeremy who had to work but the rest of us had a blast--little ones went skiing for the first time (I spent the day hiking up and down the bunny hill...), Lindsay made a bunch of 'Minute to Win It' games, we made pretty crafts, played games and of course we ate a ton of food.

 It was a great week and a perfect start to the new year.

Writer's block, Paperwork and Pretty things

This year  for Christmas I printed the past three years (haven't done 2011 yet) of blogs into books.  We love them!  It's so awesome to find the kids looking back and laughing at the books all the time.  It's fun to look back at past pictures and remember things we had forgotten...

There's just one problem--I am now suffering from the biggest writer's block I've ever had.

Why?

 I think it's because I feel so much pressure to blog about everything.  I keep thinking of all the things I should have written about that I haven't so I tell myself that I will go back and write about things that happened and add them to the blog and edit all the photos so they are bright and vibrant and suddenly I have a huge unfinished project looking at me every time I turn on the computer...

The longer I wait to write, the more things I miss and the cycle continues.  So for now I am just going to write about today and worry about the rest later.

Speaking of procrastinating, I have a pile of gorgeous fabrics that I fully intended to make into gorgeous pillows-

Isn't this red paisley pattern beautiful?!

I was also inspired by these awesome organizing containers from Pottery Barn Kids.

 I totally intended to head over to the wood shop and build a bigger version of the cubbies to organize all the kids' papers--kind of like this--

Then I was browsing on Pinterest (oh how I love Pinterest!) and I saw this--a cereal box covered with patterned paper.

I decided to combine all my unfinished projects and clean off the side of the fridge at the same time!

And now I have this-

I'm not sure I love the blue fabric mixed with the red but it is very colorful and fun and I LOVE having a place to put all the paperwork--lunch menus ball game schedules etc.

And best of all--I finished a project.

Rhyme time

Christmas 2011

Our Christmas was warm
in so many ways,
Not snow, but fun
has brightened our days.

The wish lists for all
were short and sweet,
"Have our cousins come over!"
they each did repeat.

Parties and family and games and fun
We spent time with family-
every last one.

This New Year's Day
 brought such a big change-
Our new ward boundaries
 have switched all the names.

Our family's been loved
and blessed through three years
We've shared laughter and fun
and shed very few tears.

Twenty-twelve is exciting
great fun will be had,
driving (Dallin and Landon) baptism (Benson) and a deacon (Austin),
turning 40 for dad!

Most important of all
we surely will tell,
our dear friends and family
will stay safe and well.

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Queen Solomon

We have six kids.  They are quite messy. Fortunately they are also good at cleaning up at the end of the day. Someday they will learn to just to keep things clean and then evening pick-up time will be super quick but until that day...we have chores.   Evening chores are usually just picking up, vacuuming as needed and dishes/dinner--Saturdays are for actual cleaning--when we get to it.

The way we divvy up the evening chores depends on the time of year.  In the summer we have a job chart that we rotate every week.  It works well because everyone gets a chance to do every job.  However, the job chart doesn't work during then school year because we never have the same kids home in the evenings.  We usually just assign each child who is home a room to clean. So that's where we were last Friday night.

Dallin and Landon had been assigned the big back family room but it had already been mostly cleaned so I reassigned one of them to help me with the dishes.  Dishes are NOT the favorite assignment so they decided to let rock, paper, scissors make the determination about who had KP duty.

After a minute I heard one of them say, "Yes! I knew exactly what you were going to do! I won!"

Then they both came in to the kitchen and declared victory.
 Hmmm.
Austin and I questioned and listened and questioned and we could NOT tell who really won. We went back and forth with everyone laughing hysterically.

"Dallin you lost--I can tell by the smirk on your face!"
Laughter from Landon.
"Okay Landon it was you.  I can tell. You can't stop laughing."
Dallin bends over slapping his leg, shaking with laughter.
"Okay Dal it was you.  I'm sure this time."
I'm not actually sure. I don't know whose voice I heard.

We couldn't tell.
So I had a brilliant idea.
"Okay let's just do it again. Rock, paper scissors..."
Dallin popped right up ready to go.
Bingo.
It was Landon who won.
Dallin did the dishes.