Rough Ridin' Boys

This year for the boys' Christmas presents we decided to just do a few big ones for them to share. We (santa) gave Kohl and Kaden the Razor Quad and Brady got a lil' cruiser. Then, since Kohl's bday is only 2 days later we figured for our own sanity we'd better get them another thing to ride to avoid fighting over turns. So Kohl got the Razor Dune Buggy. They have turned into riding machines. All these kids ever want to do is ride, and they will ride until the last drop of their battery is done. Kaden loves to give his mommy a heart-attack by doing his now infamous trick of doing donuts on only 2 wheels!
I think these were the best gifts ever, they love them!

Kohl getting his bday present (a day early because Jason had to work in morning)
Riding together and it was FREEZING
Christmas morning
Yes, we were all out in the rain Christmas morning while they road their new toys!
My daredevil child!!!
He'll do this forever!

Utah Part II: Sledding!

This had to be, by far, the boys favorite thing! Given the fact that my kids (and husband) are totally adrenalin junkies and love anything that goes fast, how could they not love it. Even Brady was hooked after his first hill, he was a broken record " my tee, my tee, my tee"(my turn)
The first sledding experience was right in Chris and Laura's neighborhood. We walked down to the little park which had a little hill with a bunny hop at the end where the kids would catch some air. By the end they were even trying to go down standing on their sleds.
Ally and I made a snowman together and sent of Kaden and Kohl to find all the body parts, it turned out pretty cute :)
It was a work in progress
Ta-da

The hill

Lovin' it!


Pure heaven!!!

You can you see the excitement on his face!!! Go daddy, Go!

Ya, we got a work out that day pulling him around and up the hill


Kaden taking Brady down


Justin and Kohl's air off the bunny jump!


And of course we all took turns crashing!


So much fun, good thing for lots of layers of pants! lol


Our next sledding fun was a little bit more extreme. One of the days we all headed to Capellas (I probably got that one wrong too! lol) Which is any outdoors mans DREAM store. It is probably 2 or 3 times bigger than Costco and has everything from hunting, fishing, guns, aquariums, laser shooting arcade for the kids, and it is filled with life like (used to be live) animals all over the place. It is made to look like you are out in the wilderness. (I forgot my camera that day so I don't have any pics of the store or sledding)
After we left there we headed down a frontage road to a local sledding spot. This hill was HUGE!!! Big enough that there was a guy on a quad that would drive people back up to the top after they made it down. Because it was so compacted from being sled on, you hauled butt and if you crashed it was like hitting concrete. Kohl went down first, I almost couldn't watch, since he is so light he just bounced around like crazy. You probably sled for about as long as a football field! Jason took Brady for his first ride. I wasn't sure what to expect, if it was going to be too much for him....ya right! Jason said he laughed the entire way down, lost a boot and his pacifire but was cracking up the whole ride and of course right when they got to the bottom is was " my tee, my tee" lol. I think Laura might have gotten pics of the hill, if she did whenever I see them I'll put them up.

Still to come: More Utah pics of scenery, Kohl's bday, little bit of xmas and my bday...it might be Valentines day before all that happens! haha

Utah part I: "New Years Eve"

The day after Kohl's bday we hit the road at 3am, it was Utah or bust! We were so lucky to have the Means family welcome us into their home and give us the great Utah experience. With 7 kids in the house it was always entertaining and a bit chaotic, but SO much fun! I'll start with this post, well because it's the first bunch of pics I've gotten off the camera lol! New Years Eve, which was also my 29th (tear, tear) Birthday was a blast! Laura, Jay, myself and all 7 kids (Chris had to work part of the day) went to venture out and go ice skating. My boys had never gone before and for Jason and I it had been well over 10 years, so we were very anxious to see how it would go. Luckily Brady fell asleep on the way so we were able to get the boys situated and even get out on the ice together! They caught on so fast, and did not want to get off when we were done. Kaden and Kohl had so much fun with Justin and Allison!...oh ya, it was about 16 degrees when we got there!

The Ice Rink

Woohoo Kohlie!

Jay and the kids

My handsome boys!

Chris is lucky enough to get to go hunting and had just recently got a doe elk (hope I said that right Laura lol) So I had the best birthday dinner! Fresh Elk Steaks!!! They were dee-lish!!!!

umm, umm

And thanks to Laura's great idea, we even had all 7 kids in bed by 10, well maybe asleep by 10:30! Yep, we had them watch the ball drop in real east coast time!! So once it fell in NY it was Happy New Year lol!!!

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.....Happy New Year!!!

updates coming soon....

I have so much to post I don't even know where to start. I am STILL getting all the pics from Utah, Christmas and Kohl's bday off my camera. Hopefully in the next few days I'll have a smorgasbord of stuff up!!!

All I want for Christmas is my....

....ONE front tooth! For the past week Kaden's front tooth had been getting very loose, we were all hoping it would make it until today so the Tooth Fairy AND Santa would come on the same night. Kaden was very interested if they knew each other??? But the tooth just could not hold out any longer, it completely just fell out on it's own last night. It is so weird to see Kaden smile, and it makes him look so much older!

Last week Kaden had a Winter Performance and Pajama day at school! They sang a bunch of cute Christmas songs, a few with sign language and some with bells, it was very cute!
Kaden was a little shy up on stage, but I know he totally loved it!

Kaden and Miss Long
My shy performer

Christmas at the WAP

No I am not showing the "bird", I'm picking the monkey's nose

This past year we were lucky enough to have season passes to the WAP and were able to go the LAST year of their festival of lights. It has been freezing cold out at night, so we bundled everyone up and headed out for some fun in the "snow" and to check out all the light displays.
(I know Laura and Beckie are probably laughing at me saying it's "freezing cold", since I know it's only maybe 1 degrees over their way~! lol, but for here in SD,34 degrees outside is freezin'! :)
Some of our cousins came out with us, it was great hanging out with everyone.
Krishele and Kohlie

Nathan, Kallie, Landyn, Bradyn

I love how my kids are all very different and definitely have their own likes and dislikes. Well Kaden is an arts and crafts freak! He always makes the cutest things at school although they do not have as much free time in Kindergarten he still tries to get in as much art time as he can. Kohl on the other hand, not so much. He'll come home from school sometimes and just say, "well I really didn't feel like making any projects today...I was busy riding bikes"...so Kohl.
When Kaden realized there were different craft stations ALL over the park, he was in heaven and Kohl, very annoyed lol
We came upon one and we heard Kohl say under his breath
" oh great, here we go again" OMG, it was too funny!
He did end up getting into it a little though, only after Landyn started doing them too.



After we got away from all the craft stations we headed over to the snow!!! Sadly my kids had never even seen the stuff before, but they were so excited. I really think they have a super heavy duty crushed ice maker somewhere and just dump it all out on a hill every day, but hey, the kids were loving it! Even Brady was digging around in it.
The little guys having fun

Go Kohl, Go!

Kaden crashing


Cousins: Brady and Bradyn


My lovers

Man-bag

Ever since Brady was old enough to walk, anytime we get ready to leave he grabs his shoes and ours and will bring them to us. The past few days he's changed things up a bit. I have this Christmas decoration that hangs over a door handle/knob which Brady has discovered fits very well over his shoulder. Instead of his shoes, he now grabs the decoration off the sliding glass door and puts it on to leave. To make Jason feel better ;) we'll call it his "man-bag"!

Christmas Cheer...and all that jazz

(Just a side note: You should check out the Predator Hummer link on my sidebar. The Hummer you'll see on there, Jason spent the past month completely rebuilding it, I''m talking about from nothing but a metal frame! It's beautiful!)

We are very excited it's the Holiday Season again. I think every years as the kids get older it gets more fun for us. This year I decided to do something a little different and try and add some adventure into our routine, because we live in a much smaller place than we have the past Christmases, we couldn't get our usual big, gorgeous Noble Fur tree, so I figure lets at least make getting the tree fun, right! We went to a tree farm with Gammie (Jason's mom) and Grandpa Scott to (as Kohl and Jason were singing) "Chop it down, chop it down, chop it down...." (the Matisyahu song)
The place was a maze and of course the kids loved running around, playing hide and seek...or is it more like just get lost from mom and dad? We found our 2 fave trees and Kaden made the executive decision. The Hustead men slowly but surely sawed down the tree. It was fun and different, very sticky, poky, and hard to find trees. We'd find one we liked and then tried to go back to compare and could not find it again! lol

Hustead boys were hard at work!

Mission Completed!

Not a bad shot by Kaden

The men in my life :)

Then today I took the rug rats to go see Santa. I was NOT planning on being in the picture or even buying one, I wanted to just take my own, but Brady had a death grip on me so there I am...yay! Kaden told Santa he wants a dirt bike (haha, ya right!) and Kohl said a remote control monster truck. He has said this for the past 3 years and has owned about 5 so I have no idea where that comes from? So on with the season and much more Christmas cheer to come!