Cute background, again, Hannah!

dinner at our house

Well we had dinnerat our house for the first time last night. As most of you know there was not much room to move around. But i think the kids had fun. Here are a few pictures that we took.
the little ones playing in the playroom

the kids playing the wii

Hicks catch up

December was fairly busy for us. Charlie finished his masters program (finally!) and I finished up my semester. I lost my 4.0 finally in my financial management class (of all classes to lose it in). I got an A- in that class so my GPA is now a 3.98. I know, how terrible, right? Charlie keeps telling me it's not a big deal, but I have to admit I was pretty proud of my 4.0 and that I'd been able to keep one for so long. Oh well, all good things come to an end so they say. The kids had a ton of holiday concerts. They all did well. I have video clips of a few of them, but I probably won't post those. Video takes so long to upload. We had a nice quiet Christmas as a family. Then Mom came for dinner along with Jocelyn and her family. It was very nice. I will post pictures of Christmas morning later. We didn't do anything special on Christmas Eve. We have a pickle ornament on our tree. It's a German (I think) tradition that whichever child finds the pickle first on Christmas morning gets to open a present first. We always play "find the pickle" on Christmas morning, but this year Charlie put a bit of a twist to it. He did a scavenger hunt to find the pickle. The kids worked the clues out together and had a blast. Chelsea was the first one to actually lay hands on it though so she got to open a gift first. We did a small Christmas this year. Initially because of our upcoming Utah trip, but then we ended up buying the new van and so really couldn't afford big anyway. It worked out good that we had already warned the kids not to expect a big Christmas. They loved what they got though, and seemed to enjoy themselves despite it being small. We got each kid one big gift and then a few smaller gifts. Lexi got a guitar, Merrit got a board game called Munchkin Quest, Makayla got a used Nintendo DSi (which we only helped her buy since she had been saving up for one), Chelsea got a night in a hotel room with a pool (she had asked for this to share it with the family), Jaxson got a remote control car.

As you all know we went to WV over the new year. We were so glad that we were able to go. I don't think we've ever spent that much time with so many of you guys at one time before. It was neat. Thanks for making it such a great weekend! I love family time. Can't wait to get together again in another month!

Now everyone is back to school and not very excited about it. I think we are all looking forward to spring break already. I have two classes again. Both are on Tues and Thur. One is Management Information Systems and the other is management science. I had toyed around with taking one more class. It was an elective that the school doesn't always offer but I have to have it at some point. I'm glad now that I decided against it because the two classes I have appear to be on the difficult side.

Lexi and I have started a challenge together. We are working on developing healthier habits and so are challenging each other to see who can do the best in three different categories: exercising at least 30 min a day Mon through Fri; drinking 8 cups of water daily Mon thru Fri; going to bed at 10 pm daily Mon thru Fri. So far neither of us have had a perfect day and she is actually beating me overall so it should be interesting to see how things end up. We are going to try to go through the end of June to make it 6 month from now, but it might be hard once school gets out and we are off to Utah. We'll just have to play it by ear. So we hope that you all will cheer us on.

I have also decided that my kids need to start learning how to cook. For a long time now each of our family members has been assigned a day of the week for which they are to offer all the family prayers during. Monday is Lexi, Merrit is Tues, Makayla is Wed, etc... So I've decided that those are the days that each child will cook dinner, whatever they want. So I made up a calendar so they could tell me what they are fixing and when, and we wrote it on the calendar. That way I know what I have to shop for. They are pretty excited to do it and I'm excited to teach them so hopefully one day they will be able to make dinner more often than me (without my help). The only rules are that no one can make the same thing as someone else in the same week, you can't make the same thing yourself twice in a row and you have to include at least one vegetable with your meal (but veggies can be repeated as many times as wanted throughout the week). They were good with that. The first couple of meals they have picked are all easy ones like macaroni and cheese, ramon noodles and pancakes, but I hope that as they get more comfortable in the kitchen they will branch out and try different things. Otherwise, we may be eating mac n cheese a lot over the next few months. I'm excited to see where this takes us.

That's about it. Sorry this has been so long. I'll try to post more often so I won't have to write a huge tome next time.