January 2013

January was the welcome of a new year.  We brought in the new year w/ the Rasmussen clan at Grandma Mary's  house kid style w/ a 10 p.m. party and sparking champagne.  It had been a fun holiday because aunt Katie had been in town for a good amount of time and uncle Dan had also visited.  We love seeing our Aunt and Uncles and miss them when the are gone.  Katie is starting her 2nd year at West Virginia University and will be graduating w/ her Master's degree in May.  She will then continue on to pursue her PHD there.  Daniel finished up Air Traffic Control School and is now waiting out the hopefully not too long wait to get hired.  He has been highly sought after for odd jobs at the center in Seattle by the head honcho lady, but so far, no go aheads to hire for the real job!

Baya got a cute new do from Aunt Katie while she was here.  Baya is not a child who likes to have her hair pulled back and done, so hopefully the bob will be a good compromise!  She looks cute!
We got together for decorating Ginger Bread houses after Christmas w/ Aunt Shannon and her crew and our crew.  It was a lot of fun.  Sometimes there just isn't time for all those fun traditions during Christmas time

The girls are so cute at night... they all love to pile in together.  Here they are zonked out after a long and wild Christmas Vacation! Dad loves to watch TV w Bradford and fall asleep during Cailou!

Abby shared her 22 long fairy tale with us all at Literacy night.  She was adorable.  She has a really cute class and teacher this year w/ Mrs. Wright.  She is growing up and tall a lot lately.  She has almost caught up w/ Blakely.

So our sweet loving hamster Prof. Niblets got out one day... by our sweet, innocent boys Cmac and Bradford.  He was gone for almost a month and during that time we found another one of our not so sweet, fast and furious hamsters that had been missing for at least 6 months.  Oh the joys!  I got in the closet under our stairs to a notice a strange smell.  We started cleaning it out and found Professor Niblets (who we returned to captivity) But, as we cleared out the closet we noticed he had built up some kind of food reserve in the back of the closet.... Gross and Crazy.  Where did he get all that rice and almonds?   The other hamster who had escaped a long time ago was discovered eating up the insides of our couch.  So, Bryan and Abby had a couch campout one night and listened to the dumb hamster crawling around the insides of the couch all night.  By morning and several failed attempts Bryan knew it was there, but didn't know if he'd find a way to catch it.  We decided to shake the couch out violently and out it came.  We all screamed and chased around as it luckily came running towards mom who was not going to miss out on the chance to snatch this loose guy up once and for all.  I cupped my hands over him as he scurried across the kitchen floor and screamed scared to death.  We returned him to a pet store later that day knowing he was too crazy for us to handle.  Hamsters are creating some interesting stories for us!

We have been to quite a few BYU Basketball games this season.  Here is the crew piled in our 4 seats w/ Dad holding Baya and Bradford on his lap.  We joke about our crew of 6 sharing 4 seats, a cougar tail and a bucket of popcorn and having a great old time!  This boy behind us seems to want to belong to the crew too!  Dad is really cute about instilling in these kids a love for BYU sports! Go Cougars!

The snow this year has been a hit w/ the kids.  Blakely took ski lessons w/ the after school program and really advanced to the point that she can ski w/ mom now.  One day we met uncle Mike up at Solitude and he took her under his wing and they got some great skiing in while the kids, Bry and I played around on the magic carpet and had a picnic in the snow!  The magic carpet is a little conveyer belt that scoots the kids up a small hill so they can try and learn to ski down.  I went up later w/ Angie and got Baya on skies.  They are cute.

On beautiful snowy days it's a little bit of a mess and a lot of work to get all the kids outfitted, but they love to go out and play in the snow and build forts, do snow angels and just eat it-- w/ their friends.  I have really enjoyed playing w/ them this year.  We have about 5 or 6 snow shovels and this has been a cute family activity for the whole group to shovel together!

Bradford and Baya are slightly out of control when it comes to bed time.  They just roll around like crazy wrestlers, Bradford is impossible to get Pj's on let alone a diaper and forget trying to keep a bed made or sheets on it.  But on the other hand, they are such cute friends right now.  The other day Baya called him his BFF... love it.  Anyway around 9 p.m. mom is done and not in the mood for these shenanigans, so it's always a battle!  Happy Bedtime to you!