The Budding Equestrian

Lately Claire has expressed an interest in horses. Luckily for her, we have some friends who happen to own four horses. Their daughter, Laura, said that she would love to have Claire come over and ride horses with her, and help her take care of the horses. Here they are combing out the tail. It was apparently very knotted. Claire had to use some de-tangler on it.

Here Claire is brushing one of the horses. They were very dusty. This horse's mane and tail were not nearly as tangled.

Claire helped to clean 3 of the 4 horses. I told her that her arms are going to be very sore tomorrow. She worked for 3 1/2 hours brush one end or the other of these horses. Laura offered to let her ride today. But Claire said that she wanted to get to know the horses first. Now she feels as if she knows them, and she is anxious to go riding next time. We will see. These friends live very near to Grandma and Grandpa Wright's house. They live off of Van Geisen.

BYU-I or Bust

Saturday, January 2, 2010, 7 o'clock in the morning. Richard is preparing to embark on a 12 hour journey to Idaho. He has to drive the whole way by himself. He packed his car full, front and back.

Mom gives him a kiss good-bye, and wishes him luck. Is he scared? Is he excited? Well, it depends on when you spoke to him. At 7 am, Richard was very nervous. Almost down-right-scared. He was driving off into the unknown. He said the only other time he was this scared was the day he entered the MTC. Big Richard gave him a father's blessing before he left, and I said a family prayer with him as he was leaving. I believe Richard showed true courage in both these instances. Courage is not the absence of fear. True courage is the ability to move forward in spite of your fears. As the drive progressed, and he got closer to BYU-I Richard's fears turned into excitement. And by time he called us from his new apartment, he was certain he was where he wanted to be.

Christmas Day

Christmas day we spent up at Grandma and Grandpa Hoopes' house. We fixed a wonderful dinner with ham and Dad's famous smoked turkey.

After dinner most everyone took a nap. The kids had been up since 3 am that morning. Here Claire and Dad are enjoying the new Snuggies that they received from G-ma and G-pa. Claire sleeps best when she is being squished by someone.

Stone fixed the pillows just right and fell asleep as well. Once all of our naps were finished, we gathered in the family room. I read a story by Pres. Faust about the true meaning of Christmas. And I introduce the pickle jar. This year our family is going to collect coins throughout the year and put them in a large pickle jar. Next Christmas we will cash in the coins and use the money to give service to a needy family. Little Richard started us off right by pouring in a container of coins he had been storing in a footlocker during his mission. Then we played a game of Apple 2 Apples.

Richard shared a Canadian Christmas tradition with our family this year. Have you heard of Christmas Crackers? Dad thought the brightly colored packages contained crackers that one would eat with cheese, and wondered why I paid so much money for them. Imagine his surprise when he pulled on the ends and a loud snapping noise occurred and out fell some toys. Inside each cracker is a party hat, and a small toy. We are wearing our party hats. The unfortunate part was that we forgot to do this on Christmas around the dinner table. Which is the usual tradition. So we did it the next day in the kitchen.

Christmas Morning

Ahh, bright and early on Christmas morning. Claire opening her first present. Of course it was the one that Lindsey gave her. She sure worships her older sister.
This was Dad's Myspace photo of Stone and himself. Stone looks thrilled.
This is the quilt I made for Little Richard to take back to school with him. I put Richard's symbol in the center, along with the inscription,"RT3" That is how Little Richard refers to himself. Richard received many practical school gifts this year.
Well, I guess pigs do fly, Hell has frozen over, and Mom has lost all her marbles. Because I actually purchased a video game for my kids. I decided that this is not a regular video game. It is a fun interactive family game that everyone can enjoy. Not to mention the fact that Dad has always wanted a family band, but could never induce any of his kids to take up the guitar or drums. Now he can have his band. They have been on it for over 2 hours now.
Aiden received a super sonic Nerf gun from Little Richard. He enjoys shooting it at the person who is messing up the most in the Band Hero game. And he has to shoot while simultaneously making loud noises. Aiden just likes any excuse to make loud noises. He's a boy.
Here is a photo of the carnage that is left of our livingroom. I have even done a little cleaning up before this picture was taken. And now it has all moved into the familyroom.
Claire has put on as much of her new clothing as possible. She desperately wanted yellow jeans. and her sister got her the Hello Kitty shirt and necklace. And Santa got her the snazzy cowgirl boots. And she has on her new yellow watch. Although she struggles to tell time on an analog watch. Thanks to digital clocks everywhere. We need to teach her that.

I will post more tomorrow with pictures of our Christmas evening activities.
MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!

Christmas Eve

During the day of Christmas Eve Claire and I made sugar cookies, and gingerbread man cookies. Dad is the only one who will eat the gingerbread cookies though. Claire is wearing her special Christmas apron that she made.
Aiden saw young Richard using my chopper thingy and freaked out. "Slap Chop!" He loves the Slap Chop infomercial guy. So he confiscated Claire's apron, made a label for the chopper, and posed for the camera.
While we were baking, a friend of mine called and informed me that he had 1000 lbs of cheese at his house that he was trying to get rid of. Aiden is always asking me to buy him block cheese. I like to buy the pre-shredded cheese that he doesn't like. So now as you can imagine, he is in hog heaven with his 42 lb block of sharp cheddar cheese. Now we have to figure out a way to cut it into 1 lb chunks. A project for another day.
In the evening we had our traditional food fest. We invited Grandma and Grandpa Hoopes down to partake. We planned to eat, and watch "A Christmas Story". Several of my kids had never seen that classic movie before.
Here is a close up of the feast. Notice the crab, shrimp, cheese fondue, and papoosas. At one point I noticed that Claire had the ring of shrimp just sitting on her lap enjoying herself. I made her put it back on the table.

After eating, but before the movie we had to play the annual Christmas bingo game. The rule is, if you get bingo you get to open one present that night.

The festivities ended around 10 pm. Little Richard invited all the kids to sleep down in the basement in his room so that they could watch videos and play on computer all night instead of sleeping. Then Richard and I began the arduous task of wrapping. We got to bed around midnight. Only to have our children come running in our room at exactly 6 am. Richard noticed something as each child entered the room and was silhouetted by the hall light. Our kids are really big. None of them are small anymore. Not even Claire Bear.

More Sewing Projects

Claire had her friend over again, and this time they made Christmas aprons. They wore them to the Ward Christmas party that night. Claire immediately removed hers, but Brianna kept it on the whole night.
Claire would like their next sewing project to be a quilt. She has made them once before with another friend. That is an all day project though. Her friend is very anxious to try out the Big Sewing machine.

Crab Feed At Grandma's

Grandma Wright invited the kids over to her house for an All You Can Eat crab feed. The grocery store had them on a good sale, so she bought one whole crab for each child.

Here is a photo of the feast.

This was the dessert. It is hard to tell, but this is an ice cream cake.

Another photo of the festivities.