My Wisconsin trip and Christmas

I am trying to play a little catch-up here so I have to write about some of the things I missed since Halloween!

In November, our family stayed pretty close to home. We celebrated Thanksgiving at Josh's parents' house in Ashton and most of his siblings were there for lunch as well. It was a very large group. I was going to try and count it out in my head but decided I was too lazy. So I'l just say probably around 30+ people I bet.

Then in December I decided I was going to take a little trip to Wisconsin. I had actually booked my flight back in October because I had some free sky Miles that I wanted to use up. So I was only there for about 4 days but it was nice to take a little trip by myself! Josh had off that weekend and I had a neighbor and Diane help with the kids while I was gone. I actually would've loved to stay there longer but it was enough of a delicate web of babysitting for the 4 days! While I was there I did some Christmas shopping with my mom and got to see my grandma Dahlke's new condo that she moved into about three days after I left!

When I got back to Idaho around mid-December, I had a lot of little Christmas things to get ready - as does everyone in those last two weeks - and was busy helping with Gabe's school Christmas party and other things. Josh helped me make this "Pin the Nose on the Rudolph" game and we also did a little Christmas Bingo game. The kids had a lot of fun. Someday Gabe will probably be embarassed by his mom hanging around but right now he loves it. As the matter of fact the other day when I dropped him off at school I got talking to another mom and he started to have to go in the school with his class and he stopped at the door and yelled, "Mom! You forgot to give me a hug!!!" And I had to run over and give him his hug so he could walk in with the rest of his line. It was cute. I know THAT won't last for long! :)

So, for Christmas Gabe and Caleb were all about the remote control vehicles this year. Josh wanted - I mean, um - GABE wanted a remote control helipoter. It was one that had tiny parts and said ages 8 and up, but Josh insisted Gabe was advanced enough for it. It broke within about.... 2 hours of opening it on Christmas. A few too many crashes within the two hours. The also both got a couple remote control cars. Caleb is pretty into Super Heroes still. He got some Captain America and Batman toys. Gabe loves animals and was pretty excited about this A-Z animal zoo with a letter on each animal. I think it's probably meant more for toddlers but he just loves taking the animals around in little pouches and backpacks and making up little stories with them. Caleb's more rough and crazy. He discovered Power Rangers on Netflix unfortunately.... and he loves it.

Sometimes the boys get wrestling and Gabe is like - competitive and wants to be the best at everything because he's older, but Caleb is like a little tazmanian devil when he gets mad so it's usually a pretty good fight. Then sometimes Josh jumps in there and stirs the pot even more (why? I don't know...) but I always end up just comforting whoever keeps getting hurt. Then after their 5 seconds of sympathy from me they run back to the pile and continue again. It's craziness.

So, in December we seriously had like 3 snowfalls maybe and they each had just a dusting of snow then melted right away. Now that it's January, we finally got our first real snow like, 3 days ago. It was actually to the point where there was about 4 inches on the ground and everything looked really white. The boys were soooo excited. They had only put on their full snow clothes probably one other time this whole Winter. So last week we woke up and got them all bundled up and they played witht their trucks in the snow and went sledding down this little hill in our neighborhood. Then they both had school for a couple hours from about noon to 3:00 and came home and went back outside again.

I am going to post some pictures now of December, Christmas, and snow fun and then I'll write my next big post for this past week!

This was Gabe with his Baby Snowman in one of are tiny snowfalls in December.
















This is just Caleb being Caleb. He does this pose a lot when he says, "Cheese!"
















Gabe at his school Christmas program.














Here's Caleb being impatient during Gabe's Christmas program.

Halloween!

I am just getting worse and worse about the blogging.... I heard a friend say recently, "I am just so bad at blogging, on a good month I will blog about once every week...." I was thinking, "I am struggling to do once a MONTH!" I just want to keep it up though because last year I printed a blog book and it was so cool! Like an instant scrapbook/journal.

So, with that as my motivation... I must go on!

For Halloween, Gabe told me about a month before Halloween that he wanted to be a robot this year. I said, "Well... we'll see.... hopefully we can find a robot costume somewhere..." and he looks at me like, "Uh no!" and says, "You have to make it!" I was like, "WHAT?!" I am not really one of the ambitious crafty mom types. I would much prefer to just go to Wal-mart and buy one. But, since he insisted, I could not turn him down. So, I went to work on it about a week after he first told me about it. Luckily, Caleb was easy to please. All I had to do was take him to Wal-mart and show him all the size 5 Super Hero costume choices and he was in heaven. He looked at Transformers, Iron Man, and the Green Lantern but finally decided on Captain America. It even had the built-in muscles. I loved it and so did he, so he was set. For Gabe, I used some boxes and some spray paint, some dryer tubing stuff for arms, and some empty two-liter bottles for rockets on the back. It actually turned out pretty cute. This one guy handing out candy on Halloween told Gabe that was the best costume he'd ever seen! (Possibly an exaggeration... but still...)

Our Halloween festivities this year included Gabe's school carnival, a trip out to Harriman State Park for this haunted hay ride and little cabin trick-or-treating (it was pretty impressive, but I am waaaay glad we got there before the insane rush of people.... some people waited in line for 2 hours to get it!) and then we did our pumpkin carving and stuff a couple days before Halloween. Or I should say, JOSH did his pumpkin carving.... for all of us. I am really bad at it. I did bake pumpkin seeds though, which were really good.

On Halloween we first trick-or-treated in our tiny neighborhood. Then once those five minutes were over... we went to Bryan (Josh's bro) and Jada's house and trick-or-treated their big neighborhood. Caleb got to the point where he was saying, *Sigh* "Is THIS their house???" he was ready to be done and back at Bryan's house playing with his cousins. :) They both got more than enough candy. Gabe's little rocket packs were full to the "Ready for Blast-off" line!

I can't believe it is already halfway through November. It has snowed once or twice here already, but right now there's green grass outside because it usually melts pretty quick. I am already wishing it was June again! If I were 60 it would be time for me and Josh to fly south for the Winter. Some day...

Gabe and Caleb are both loving school. Caleb's is all fun and games. Every day he comes home with a cute craft or some great story about how they did "Planet painting" (marbles in a tub of paint) or some fun song they learned. Meanwhile, I feel like Gabe is growing up so fast! He has to learn how to read and everything!!! I swear, I did not learn how to read in Kindergarten. I thought it was about second grade... All I remember about Kindergarten is different play stations - my favorite one I would dress up and play house - and struggling to learn the difference between left and right (I have conquered that finally.)

So, that is pretty much the highlights right now. Oh yeah, and I am in serving in Young Women's at church again! ("You can run, but you can't hide..." comes to mind!) Just kidding. I actually would prefer to be there than anywhere else. Except in the back row, as the hymn book hander-outer. That would be nice too.

Josh is keeping busy with work and in his spare time, bulding a play house. Not many husbands wake up one morning and say, "I think I will build a playhouse in the backyard!" But Josh does. It is both strange and impressive.

That's all for now! Here's some pictures!!

Trick-or-Treat!

Harriman Haunted Hay Ride

Mom - someone was looking for you....

Little Pun'kins!

New house

I am actually cheating and adding these pictures at a way later date (Feb. 4, 2012 to be exact) but I took these pictures a long time ago and meant to post them and forgot! So here they are! Our New House! We officially closed on it August 26th, 2011 and moved in a couple of days later. We love it!

First Day of School Pictures!

I am pretty behind on posting pictures but tonight I finally sat down and cleared out my whole camera. Here are the boys on their first day of school. Gabe started kindergarten this year and we are so excited that the school he goes to is right across the street from our new house! He goes every day from 11:40 - 2:25. Then Caleb started at a preschool (the same one Gabe went to ) and he goes to the three-year-old class Tuesday and Thursday from 12:00 to 2:00. So far they are loving school! Caleb's class even took a trip to the campus planetarium last week after studying about planets this month. Gabe is busy learning his letters and numbers some more. The last picture is of Josh by his police car. I just thought that was funny. Sorry I don't have one of me in front of Northgate!

Lots of Changes!

Oh my goodness, it has been a while! I finally have a moment to write a quick blog. Since my last post, we have been to Wisconsin for a visit, quit the full-time apartment manager job (I am now a part-time assistant manager) and bought a house of our own in Rexburg! Gabe has also started Kindergarten and Caleb has started 2-day-a-week preschool. Lots of changes in the Rhodes family! Josh is still a policeman, but everyone else in our family is making some big daily schedule changes. The biggest and most benefical one though, is that I feel like I will finally have more time to spend with my kids. As a manager, ever though I worked out of the home, I felt like I NEVER LEFT WORK! It was getting to be pretty overwhelming. Now I feel so happy to be able to do my four hours, then get in my car and drive home and spend the afternoon and evening with my kids, without any interuptions over AC's not working, or the volume on the movie theater not working, or a room mate complaint over dirty dishes! It has been SO NICE and it's only been a week since we moved out! We also feel so lucky to have found a brand new house that we love, just across the street from Gabe's school, that we bought from the owners/builders of our apartment complex for a really good price. Josh just thinks the one thing missing is a new dog...
that is one change that I am not sure I am ready for yet.

August Wisconsin Trip

Here's some pictures from our trip to Wisconsin! We drove out there on August 10th and spent about a week then drove back, just in time to move out of Northgate into our new house!