G-G-G-G-GHOST in our house!!!!

Where do I start?? I guess, this needs to go back a few days where the boys will build these really cool things out of Legos and then find their creations later to be completely obliterated. The blaming changes each time, but usually rotates between Kaiden and Claire. (only once it was the Lego ghost) Honestly, I thought it was Kaiden all along but never punished him. Whew! I guess I just really didn't care. The whole point of Legos is to build, right? "So...build it again." I would say. Well, tonight has put an end to our mystery. The kids were tucked in bed just after 8:00 and as I am leaving the room both Kaiden and Weston BEG me to please keep an eye on their Fire Station/Fire House they have built and stored nicely and carefully in the corner of their room. They even took it to the extreme and slid it half way under Kaiden's bed for protection. I assure them that I am not going to play with their Legos and as long as they stay in bed, the Fire Station will be there for them to play with in the morning.....
I guess I forgot 1 variable. Claire. This happens to be at 10:45pm. I hear this,"shh shh shh. no fire tay-shin. shh shh We-tin be mad me. shh shh Day-din be mad me too." WHAT?!?! I am thinking that there is NO WAY she is still awake. At least 2 1/2 hours of complete silence and she is still awake? Right. I decide to grab my camera just in case. I snap the first shot (above). Huge flash, right. Yeah, she pretended I wasn't there.....

So then, I call her name to get her to look at me. I wanted the picture with the face of guilt. Still no response. In fact she is still whispering her shh shh shh's....

At this point I am a little confused/trying not to laugh. So I decide it best to ask her a few questions like, "What are you building?" and "Aren't you tired?" Still, no response. I do NOT exist right now. She is no longer shh shh shh-ing. We have moved to complete ignorant silence. I'm sorry! What 2 year old knows the silent treatment?!?!?!

Then I think, well maybe she is asleep. She might just be sleep playing(?) So I ask her, "Honey are you asleep?" I wish I caught it on camera but she gives me this look like, "really lady?" and then looks back down to play again. NICE! No I am getting annoyed. It's not so cute anymore....

So I tell her, "Claire. You need to put the Legos down. Your brothers are going to be really mad when they wake up and you are going to tell them sorry for breaking the Fire Station." Silent treatment with NO eye contact. "Claire, now. It is time for bed. Let's go."

And she sticks her toungue out at me as she does her "mmmmmm" whine. I'm sorry, what?! "Claire, look at me NOW." Her response, all cute and sweet like none of this has happened, "Look Mommy. It's a tower for Daddy!" I tell her it's nice and then tell her to come to me so we can go to bed....

So she tries to hide. What do I do?!?! So cute, but SO not. Oooh she is so naughty! 2 1/2 hours! I can't believe it! I was just one floor down on the computer in silence. I can not believe I didn't hear her earlier.

She ended up getting to bed (again) just before 11:00 and stayed in there! I am going to have to chain her to her bed! Creepy little ghost. No wonder my boys are so afraid of the dark.

The question is, do I tell them it was her? Or do I let them believe that there is a Lego ghost and use it against them? You know, "You'd better get those Legos picked up so the Lego ghost doesn't come and....." I could see both of them going very badly.

World Ice Art Championships

Today immediately after Weston got out of school we headed for the World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks. They hold the competition here every year, and each time I have been to see it the ice sculptures have been beyond amazing. This year left me wondering how it is at all even possible??? What an amazing talent to have! Not that I want to develop it or even learn to try, no thanks, I am just saying....it is one thing to be a sculptor, but it is a whole other talent to be a sculptor out of ice. They carve in sub-freezing temperatures, use massive ladders and chainsaws for a lot of the designing, then the sculptors get in the with all sorts of different types of chissels and tools to create these ice sculptors in just a few days.
Not to mention, at the Ice Park they have an ice maze, 3 ice slides for toddlers, and probable 12 HUGE ice slides for adults and kids, ice tunnels, ice spinning games you can side on and get all sorts of dizzy with, an ice hockey rink, and other sculptors made out of ice for everyone including adults to play on. This year, they had 2 4 wheelers with 3 trailers attached for like a train for all the customers to ride on to view all of the neat art work. This was an amazing life saver! It took about 20 minutes to see all of the ice art, where as if I had walked thru with my kids it would have been close to 2 hours I'm sure.

Here is Weston absolutely delighted to be going downthe ice slide for probably the 12th time in a row. You can sort of see the chutes from some of the slides behind him. Basically you go in your snow gear and either go down on your bum or zoom down on a sled. He and Kaiden chose the sled and couldn't get enough of it!

Claire is about as pooped as she can be. Her and I went down on our bums probably 6 or 7 times before I gave up on her. As soon as I told her no more for the night, she argued for a second and then found this sled to sit on. A few minutes later I found her like this in a total daze and couldn't help but laugh. She is SO fearless, but luckily she still has a maximum when it comes to strength and energy! Whew! If you look closely you can see her newly busted cheek(she tripped and fell while holding legos and the legos won!), her busted top lip from the shopping cart earlier today and her busted bottom lip from some ice thing somewhere in the park earlier as well. Dear, oh dear, my poor little girl. It's a good thing she is so dang cute.

This was a childrens playing area. It was designed after the nursery rhyme with the woman in the shoe. This and the couple below are some of my other favs of the day!

So this is an ice tunnel made for the kids. It has several tunnels coming off of it into dead ends, but all the kids figured it out pretty fast. To make it not so closterphobic, they put nice sized face holes (peek for mommy holes) throughout. The picture oppotunities were just to cute to pass up.

Here are some of the sculptures worth sharing. Don't get me wrong, all of them are great and have seriously talented hands behind their creation, but being that the weather today was above 40 degrees, the sculptures have began melting. Also, I forgot my camera was set on it's lowest setting so I have a lot of not-so-great shots too. Bummer! Still though, even after most of the incredible details have melted away, the creation of each sculpture is SO neat!!!

Football Fans Thru and Thu

Well, in my family there has always been a love for football and since my mom's Birthday is Feb 5th, it usually s right around the Super Bowl! So, my mom being as much of a party girl as I am, nearly insists on having a Super Bowl party every year. Her parties are ALWAYS a blast and everyone wishes they were invited....no joke. So lucky me, not only do I get to be here in NM for another of her famous parties, the chances are REAL good that Peyton Manning and the Colt's (my team) are going to be playing in the Super Bowl this year. I am SO excited!!! I found these jerseys at Wal-Mart for $5 and i couldn't resist. My brother Nathan plays for a semi-pro team and he let us borrow his helmet and his favorite football for some pics. Thanks Nathan.

The good and the bad!!!

Alright, bad news first. Leave it to my sweet little girl to be the one who slips in the tub and busts her chin open! Call me crazy, but I would so much rather it was one of my boys ending up with this scar for the rest of their lives. I just don't like it on her pretty face. Ok, that does make me horrible! I would never wish this on anyone!

These were taken about 10 minutes after she fell. I was able to get the bleeding to stop for a bit, at least long enough to get a picture for Clayton. I knew he would want to see. This is also the point where I was able to see that we definately needed to go to Urgent Care and get some stitches!

Leaving the Urgent Care center. She was a real trooper during the stitches. They strapped her completely down of coarse but she still fought for her life. Anyone who really knows Hannah (Claire), knows she's a squirmy fighter!!! Finally the nurses asked her if she could hold still just for a sec. She said, "Ok, sorry." Then the doc went to stitch her up and she flipped out!!! Moving, wiggling, screaming...all the while she is apologizing for moving. She did this like 6 or 7 times in a row before they were finally able to get 3 stitches in. They called it quits after that even though they would have liked 1 or 2 more. Overall, she did great. I couldn't have asked for more.

She has bandaid phobias so of coarse the bandaid didn't last very long. Here she is showing off her new "owie". Please ignore the awesome photography, like I said she is a wiggler. This is one of the few that weren't blurry.

Grin and bare it, just grin and bare it....

Good news time! Her hair is officially growing!!! This is such a huge step especially since she is a couple of weeks away from being 2. I had to show her curls off too. I love how they are forming into little ringlets. So beautiful!!!!

Oh, and she FINALLY smiles for a picture instead of winces! I am so, SO happy about that too!!

I know, I know....it's been 2 months!!!!! Well, apparently a lot happens in 2 months! To save a whole lot of time and space I am going to try to keep it short! After Clayton deployed we got on a hop to the best place in the world! Fairchild, WA. Wow! I loved it there. We were able to fly out on Nov. 2nd to WA, and then stayed there for 5 days with my good friend Cassie and her family. Above is Weston ready to land the plane in the cockpit with the pilots. He was beyond excited!
Below is Kaiden. Oh this kid.....he is ALWAYS cold! As we flew he mostly sat here attached to this heater. These tubes stream down throughout the plane and blow nice, hot air. Most people might keep it on their feet to warm up their toes. Not Kaiden.....he still wonders why we have to live in Alaska?! My poor Guam baby. If only he knew how much we love it there!!!!

Here is Hannah looking out the window for her daddy. She is positive that since he got on a plane the last time she saw him, he would be on this plane. It took her a while to figure out that he wasn't on our flight so then she began to look out the windows. She wasn't all that happy to see clouds. Go figure.

I don't have any pictures with my friend Cassie or her kids :( so now we move on to New Mexico at my parents house. This is all the kids with my dad just happy to watch "old man" tv. My dad was pretty happy to have them all right there!

We stayed in NM all the way thru Thanksgiving and had an awesome time. My older sister and her family of 8 came down from Utah to pig out with us. I left on December 1st to go and see 2 more of my most favorite people alive. First I went to Colorado Springs to see my friends Toni from Guam. i got to spend 4 days with her beautiful family. We had so much fun just being together! I loved it. Oh, did I mention I didn't have any of my kids with me???? Oh yes! I was a single and irresponsible person!! It was SO weird!

After Toni's I went to see my best friend from Jr. High and up, Melissa. Oh we had a blast too. Here are 2 pictures of us just being dorks.

After I spent 4 more days in Wyoming with Melissa, I flew back to reality and got to be a mom again. Believe it or not, I totally missed it. When I flew into the airport my parents, sister and kids picked me up at the airport and we drove straight from there to Utah. While we were there we had a birthday party for my recent 4 year old, kaiden. He was so happy to have a party with is cousins!

In Utah we also went to our extended families Christmas parties, we went sledding, did lots of Christmas shopping,.....and many other fabulous things!

Not too long after we got home Weston lost his first tooth! What the heck?!?!?! I was so excited for him, but at the same time so sad. he is just a baby.....

Kaiden and Grandpa Bodkin at the ward Christmas party.

Grandma Bodkin and Aunt Lilly (Clayton's beautiful baby sister!)-0Kaiden got a Birthday present in the mail from daddy! It was a remote control dune buggy! He thought it was the coolest thing EVER!!!!Claire helping to put up Christmas decorations. She was awfuly proud of herself can you tell??

And last but not least....Kaiden is just SO excited for Santa to come he can hardly stand it!!! I just love ths picture.

So this is almost everything leading up to our wonderful Christmas, I am going to have to make that a whole different post! We did have an awesome Christmas though. We got to Skype with Clayton so he was able to be apart of our morning. That meant a lot to me and the kids and I am sure it meant the world to him.