the economy

okay this is just a post for me so it will be very boring. lately i have been very confused at how in the world our economy got in such a mess and how in the world are we going to get out of it. i am not very smart at politics and how it works and i happened on a news story, i think it was 20/20 and they were talking about how that most of our debt is owned by china...well i guess in my oblivious world i didn't think about that we were indebted to someone else, i just thought america paid herself back?! so then it got me thinking that if we are trillions of dollars in debt, it's hard to say we're completely free. i know the feeling of having debt and it's not fun. we recently paid off everything except our house and it feels wonderful and i know that we would not be able to stay up with our bills if we had not paid all this debt off, especially with all kents crazy job changes. so anyways in our local paper there was a story about an earmark that rexburg got in the great big stimulus package to refurbish the old west wood theatre for $150,000-i agreed with the writer that putting money into such things as these is not such a smart idea in such rough times, she quoted Thomas Jefferson "I, however, place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared." and then as we have been reading in Alma in the scriptures, all the wars and stuff-we came across this scripture: Alma 51:18 "...and it came to pass that the armies did march forth against them; and they did pull down their pride and their nobility..." and in my fun little family scriptures(which i love) President Ezra Taft Benson commented on this scripture: speaking about modern concerns in the U.S. warned us "if our blood-bought freedom is surrendered, it will be because of Americans..." and he goes on to quote Abraham Lincoln who asked: "at what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected?" and then answered "if it ever reaches us, it must spring up among us. it cannot come from abroad. if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be it's author and finisher..." this just got me thinking-i'm so glad i have the gospel and such great leaders to trust in, that makes me feel very safe and happy:) in such uncertain times!

underwear

kaden said, "mom, i need new underwear."

mom said, "oh, is yours getting to small?"

kaden replied, "well no-it's just that they have pictures on them and i need more MANLY underwear!"

i don't like my kids growing up:(

glasses

brooke loves me to read to her but she is not a big fan of reading on her own-so we were doing her homework together and she said, "mom i think i need glasses." and i asked her if she couldn't see the letters very well and she said, "well kelsi says glasses help her to read things better and i need to read better, so i need glasses!"

february in review

february went by super fast-but i guess we squeezed in a few fun activities...
the boys took off for the father and sons outing the first weekend- our ward camps at the girls camp up past ashton-so you have to snowmobile in, kent was brave and even took koy: todd and carter also came. kaden was so excited to ride his own snowmobile into the camp. koy loved when dad cooked little smokies on his snowmobile for a snack.
so us girls decided to have a girls night too-diane and hali and paige came up to rexburg...we went bowling and watched movies and painted our nails in the morning. it was fun to hang out!

kent was gone for valentines day-but we were happy he was working. i don't get much into holidays for us old people-i told kent i would rather he be nice to me all the other days of the year than just one day! which he is-

LOVE ISN'T A BIG THING, IT'S A MILLION LITTLE THINGS!

one of the little things that he recently did for me was when my car was in the shop being fixed. it was a super cold day like -21 when we woke up. so we went to pick it up and he said bring a towel, which i looked at him kind of funny. he started my car for me and went in and paid and then came out and scraped all my window for me and laid the towel on my cold leather seat. i thought that was so sweet, because he knows i hate being cold!

for valentines we decided to go have some indoor fun at blast off. the kids loved it, and i loved watching them run all over. brooke loved the rock wall and wanted to keep climbing, i didn't know on weekends that you have to pay for each climb-so i could only afford 2 times for her. she was super fast and even did the medium side.
even kelsi got in on the fun, she brought her two friends: natasha and nitchelle.
they had a big ball fight!

koy was crazy, i seriously couldn't get him to hold still even for a picture...i tried to catch him in the tunnels but he was so stinkin' fast. na na na na NA!

kaden got to play laser tag with the girls and was so excited.

we had some more snow fun this month too-we headed up to the farms above rexburg, it was a perfect sledding day: we actually had quite a few of these nice days, yay!

brooke i think would of never stopped, she was up and down, up and down, over and over.

koy loved to throw snow up and watch the dog chomp it, he did this forever and the dog never tired of it.

i love a day when the kids are all smiles!(and tired)

kelsi even hopped off the snowmobile long enough to go down the hill a few times.

kaden getting a ride back up the hill from kelsi.

kaden and kelsi went to the eye doctor and both needed glasses, they inherited my bad eyes:( kaden competed in his schools scholastic bowl this year. they take the top 3 students in each class to compete in a subject, kaden chose spelling. he did great- there was only 4 of them left in the last round and he missed his word: turquoise. he spelled it right the first time at home so it was not one we reviewed and he mixed up the u and o. he was pretty disappointed to not place, but by the end of the night he was alright. kaden is very understanding when he thinks things through-he gets that everybody has tried hard to get there and that he tried his best. on the way home we were talking about it and i said look the moon even thinks you did a great job...

it was smiling-i don't see the moon this way very often, so we're sure it was for kaden:)

kelsi looks super duper cute in her glasses but has chosen to wear contacts most of the time. kelsi was able to do baptisms for the dead for the first time-she loved being in the temple. and she really loves young womens-so does her mom! i guess i forgot how great a program it is and kelsi is just at that perfect age where whatever her leaders say is just wonderful(and she has amazing leaders). she comes home and does things without asking like cooking dinner, playing with the kids, reading her scriptures, doing family home evening. i love it! she is going to be talking in sacrament on Sunday about her experience at the temple...she says this is the not so fun part of being in young womens.

and here is the last day of february...we are looking forward to more days of blowing bubbles and riding bikes!!!

sleeping alone

maybe it's because i hate to sleep alone but i love that my kids love to sleep by each other(except kaden-he loves his own bed) i love to see them all squished up and snuggled together-it makes me just want to jump in next to them!

anger

so i hate when i get mad and it's usually over something so small and usually to one of the people i love most! i was cutting kents hair today and to say the least got very irritated with his instructions and i threw the scissors(not at him) and stormed off. well i felt terrible all day especially since he was leaving for his job for a week. i did say sorry but i still hate when i act this way. later as i was reading scriptures with the kids there was a quote at the bottom that caught my eye: "anger is not an expression of strength. it is an idication of one's inability to control his thoughts, words, or emotions...when the weakness of anger takes over, the strength of reason leaves."-Pres. Gordon B. Hinkley
hopefully i can do better at keeping my cool!

january in review

well i better get january done before february is over too! we went to Blackfoot at the start of the month, my parents were down for my nephew tyrel's priesthood ordination-i'm so glad that we have cousins who are such good examples and that my kids love to hang out with! my sister Christy has a huge pond that turns into an ice skating rink in the winter...my kids loved trying skating and i loved hanging out in the warm house and finishing a puzzle that had been started.
my dad was so nice and helped brooke, who got pretty good as i found out later when we went skating at the rexburg rink.

kent and i took brooke and koy out to lunch at wingers and they even sat still the whole time-it was really fun and koy keeps asking when we are going to go to "yummy chicken wings" again to eat.

we went to the rexburg skating rink a couple times this month-all the kids loved it except koy, it hurt his ankles, but he was fine to just slide around in his snow boots...i decided to try and all my kids are better than me-i had fun having brooke and koy pull me around!

kelsi is really pretty good and i wish we could go as often as she wants-she is very athletic in alot of areas and just picks things up naturally.

but she had her fair share of crashes also!

meg decided on a new and fun activity for play group-called flood the bathroom:) as kent would say where were all the moms when this happened? i love this picture because she looks so guilty-

koy inherited kadens old gameboy when he got a DS for Christmas and he can actually play the thing quite well-maybe a little too well, he loves it and wants to play all the time...even on Sunday when he's not supposed to, this is where kent found him: hiding under his bed being so sneaky!

we had our space derby for scouts this month-in kaden's words "that was the best pack night ever, everyone was happy!" we really did have a fun night and it wasn't competitive, all the boys were such good sports and would cheer everyone on no matter how far their rocket went. have i ever mentioned that i love scouts?

we have enjoyed some fun play days with kents sister diane and her family, they have moved to idaho falls now and it's so fun to have more family around...carter was baptised and we glad to be able to be there: this is Carter trying to put the sneak on me and get me with a snowball. a word of warning to anyone wanting to get in a snowball fight or water fight with the pingels-they're good;)

well i was sick again for a couple of weeks (irritating) and i wasn't feeling up to going to the annual snowfest in rexburg, so you will have to get pictures from the year before...i love the snowfest, it's so fun to live in a small enough community that they do FREE stuff like this-they have all kinds of fun snow games: snow bowling, snow sculpting, sleigh rides, FREE hot chocolate, snow ball targets, treasure hunting in the snow(one of my kids favorite), big sledding hills and the polar bear swim...brrrrr! kelsi and kaden were wanting to do it again and we were going to be more prepared than last year but maybe next year.

this is kelsi and kaden waiting their turn to jump in-because we didn't arrive at registration early enough they were one of the last ones to jump and had to wait out in the snow along time and i didn't even think to bring a robe or blanket.

when the kids got on the lift they kept dancing around and i thought that maybe kaden had to go to the bathroom but they said the metal was so cold it stung your feet really bad, so they actually wanted to jump in to relieve their feet. kelsi was nice and let kaden go first.

they're faces showed that it was cold.

then they got to warm up in a hot tub, that neither wanted to get out of to get dressed.

and for that they got a cute polar bear swim hat, we love FREE stuff! and we can't wait for more january snow fun next year!