Santa came to Florida

Excited kids, Christmas p.j.s from Grandma Fulks, ready to hang their stocking and head for bed. I made these stockings last Christmas, when I was still pregnant with Cooper. I made Cooper's little stocking and remember it hanging on the hook last year...being so excited to meet him. It was so fun to have him with us this Christmas. He didn't really know what was going on, but he sure loved the paper and the boxes.

The kids all had a great Christmas day. We spent it all alone... in our pajamas, doing whatever we wanted. It was heaven. The kids didn't even come down until around 8:30 or 9:00 (we have trained them well). We did the whole present thing, then had our traditional Christmas brunch which includes breakfast casserole, and monkey bread. We lazed around watching movies, taking naps, and enjoying new gifts. We talked to our families on the phone, and even made a call to my sister Linda on our new "web cam" that she gave us. We gave one to both grandparents, so we should all be set up soon. We love things that make us feel closer to family. We are very grateful for such a nice Christmas day.

Count down till Christmas!

In the Lopez house, there was much excitement for Christmas. We had a fun and busy season full of shopping, and visiting and parties. We went to a fun Christmas festival in our town square of our neighborhood. There is a giant tree in the center of the square and it was so fun to see that every day driving or jogging by.















The week-end before Christmas, we went down to stay with my sister Linda and her husband Randy. They live in South Florida. Andrew, their youngest son, just got home from his mission, so it was so fun to spend time with him. The kids are his biggest fans, and he spent hours playing with them. We all call Andrew "Howard" as Carver came up with that name for him before his mission. He just started calling him that one day...and it stuck. While we were at Linda's house, Linda kept mentioning "Andrew". Finally Carver came to me and said, "mom, Linda said Andrew is here...where is he"? I told him that he had been playing with him all day. Carver looked up at me and said, "You mean Andrew and Howard are the SAME PERSON"? And enlightening visit for sure. We sure had fun eating and lounging and partying with Linda and her family. We came home on Christmas eve.



On Christmas eve, we had a huge Christmas party at our house with seven families. We did the same thing last year, and both years have been so much fun. There are quite a few families here that don't have family close by, and so we just become family to each other. We had more delicious food than I could have imagined. The kids had a huge bingo game, and played football in the back yard. The adults played some fun couples games, then we had a kid gift exchange...followed by a good old game of "dirty Santa" for the adults. You should have seen the amount of "gift stealing" and trash talking going on. It was so much fun. There was still time at the end of the evening to have our own little family "Christmas Eve" and that turned out to be so nice as well. I definitely had some excited kids.







Here is Kinsey and some of her friends at the Christmas party. The party ended up having a little group of kids for each of my kids. Teenagers, tweens, rowdy little boys, and crawling babies. We are grateful for such good friends.

SAY CHEESE! PLEASE!!!!! I'm begging you!

If any of you have ever tried to take family pictures, you can understand when I say that it is only slightly better than pulling teeth. I figured it was time to have an updated family photo. Important...considering we have added a 4th child to the mix. Well, I love photography and take all my own pictures of my kids and occasionally take pictures for other people, so I have the hardest time going to a studio. I like to be able to control the setting, the light, the composition...and make sure our arguments are only within the earshot of just a few passing neighbors. So what is the answer...hmm...THE TRIPOD! Well, I think we got some good pictures with the tripod, but I have to say that the experience was all too comical (at least now it seems that way. At the time it was a little more frustrating that that).

No matter how much warning I give my family, it always seems like the "family picture photo session" is coming as a complete surprise to everyone...and possibly might ruin their lives. There tend to be arguments about clothing and hair and color schemes. Or, if you are Carver... the argument would simply be over the fact that he has to wear "long pants" and shoes. Just kill him now. Though I have to say, Kinsey was in the best mood as she is now old enough to want the picture to be all about her. So in between the "don't touch me" and the "everyone just hold still and pretend you like each other", we somehow got some good shots. And hey, you can't always tell that I have just pushed the button...and sprinted into the picture.

I love this shot. John's trying to make Cooper look at a lone camera on a tripod like it is the most amazing flashing light in the whole world, (boring), Kennedy is sweetly strangling Carver, and me and Kinsey are posing perfectly, oblivious to the others.

I love Coopers face here. He looks like he looked much of the photo shoot. Like he is thinking ..." these are the five people I am stuck with forever"?

Oh how I love that baby face!

Cooper is 10 months old. In no time at all, the first year of his life will be in the past. NO!!!! Cooper is my last baby and I am enjoying every single moment of this experience. I sometimes wish I could freeze him at this age. I love all the "baby" stages, and I just think I am going to be sad to see them pass...for the last time. This boy brings us all such joy. Half the time around our house you can see us all gathered around Cooper as he entertains us with his many noises, facial expressions, tricks, and silliness. It's even cute when he throws his food on the floor (well...not for the person that has to clean it up). We love it all. Cooper took a long time to care about being very mobile (a true blessing and a wonderful thing for a veteran mom). He was just happy kind of sitting and doing his own thing, or slowly scooting around. I could put him in one spot and know that he would stay there. It was AWESOME. Well, in the past month he has wanted to be more mobile and started crawling. Though he is into everything and has pulled the huge bar chairs on top of him a couple of times, pulled two lamps off of tables, and keeps trying to eat the cell phone chargers, and constantly has something new in his mouth (legos last night), it really is cute seeing him crawl. I just love this little baby face. I want to kiss it all day and see that cute smile. What could be better than cute little chubby ball of joy that brings such happiness to everyone. What a blessing. Maybe I could shrink all the kids back down to this size. Okay...maybe not. There is something to be said for a child that can bathe and feed themselves. But I sure enjoy this little boy!

Carver and Madi

For Thanksgiving, my brother Jon, and his wife Jodi came to visit us all the way from Utah. They have two darling girls, Madi is three, and Tyli is 11 months. We had such a wonderful visit with them. We had a great Thanksgiving day full of food and fun. They stayed for a week so we also went to the beach and the pool and shopping and the movies and we played games and just had a great time. We are so glad that they came to visit. I was looking through my pictures the other day and found all these great shots of Carver and Madi. Carver and Madi were literally inseparable the whole time they were visiting. They are the cutest little friends. They may be two years different in age, but you would never know it by closeness of their friendship. I think they played non-stop, even late into the evening for the whole six days they visited. I don't remember one fight or argument. I just love to watch them together and see the love they have for each other. Always holding hands, hugging, or helping each other with something. What a neat thing. Cousins are the BEST!

Highchair Goo

It's been so long since I posted, so I had to ask myself, "what in the world have I been doing". I thought of a few things to answer that, but I have decided that it all boils down to High chair goo. Cleaning it up that is, which leads me to a few other things that have been taking up my time,so I thought I would list them, starting with...cleaning, taking care of a baby, cleaning up after that baby, cleaning up after those other three, getting those three to clean up after themselves, playing with baby, kissing baby, changing diapers, getting homework done, driving to tennis, driving to soccer, driving to dance, driving to piano, going to volleyball games, picking up from volleyball practice, feeding Cooper, cleaning the food off the floor and walls (because of Cooper), doing mountains of laundry...and then doing it again, school projects (a lot this past month), doing stuff for my church calling, enjoying having company for Thanksgiving, running errands, giving lectures on "loving one another", primary presidency meetings, cleaning the kitchen, getting kids to clean the kitchen, making chore charts, reading stories, singing songs, cleaning up piles of toys that Cooper as dumped, changing diapers again, making meals, sometimes making kids get their own meals, scripture study, Family home evening (which sometimes ends up being Family home argument), vowing to never yell again, making enough jewelry to accesorize a small country, having a huge Christmas jewelry party, decorating for Christmas, redecorating (when Coop pulls things down), training for my next triathlon, doing my friends hair for a fancy occasion, carpooling home from school, snatching a few moments with John here and there, drying tears, trying to find one solitary pen or pencil in my house, running the girls to the church for activities (25 min. drive), trying to get the grocery shopping done before the baby melts down, cleaning my floors...again, Christmas shopping, making Christmas cards, going to playgroups, figuring out how to switch from baby mode to teenage mode on a dime, kissing boo boos, listening to girl drama, advising against jumping on the furniture...again, cleaning the goo off the high chair, cleaning the goo off the baby, cleaning the goo off of myself, breaking up fights, making kids mad at me, giving hugs, putting together train tracks, enforcing consequences, witnessing tantrums, babysitting a friends kids, giving baths, cleaning up towels, giving the "no towels on the floor" lecture, getting one particular child to realize that a clean room is something that needs to occur more than once a month, doing bedtime, attempting to have a little "no-kid" time, sending a kid or two "back to bed"...and...cleaning more goo off the highchair.

I know that just about any mother in my stage of life could pretty much write that same paragraph. There are days that I don't feel like I get to sit down. Sometimes everyone wants to talk to me at once. Sometimes I am in the car with the kids all afternoon and into the evening, and sometimes between work and church stuff, me and John don't get to see each other all that much during the week. And truly, most day...by bedtime for the kids, I feel like I have run a marathon and that I need to be "off duty" for a while (too bad that occurs before bedtime and not after). But...I also feel more joy than can be expressed when my tiny baby puts his chubby little arms around my neck, or when he grins at me and babbles some wonderful babytalk. When my 5 year old tells me that he loves my hair and that I am the prettiest mommy ever, or I hear him say a prayer where he remembers to bless everyone and everything under the sun, this also brings me joy. I find true contentment in seeing the amazing students my girls are, and seeing how they deal with the pressures in their lives. I see the good decisions that they make, the good examples they set, the kindness they show, and I couldn't be happier. There are moments when I look around the room and see these five people that belong to me and I know that this is what I want to be doing. Of course I could be snapped out of that dream of contentment by a little "She looked at me weird", or "He's sitting in my spot"...but at least it occurred. I just thought I should write some of this down...because I know that someday when things calm down...I will miss all this craziness (I think). I wouldn't trade my life with my husband and 4 kids for anything. This is the life I always dreamed of...believe it or not. I love these five people so much. Highchair goo and all.