We had a talent show for Grandma Shelly's birthday party. This was Nate's talent.
Here are the words in case you don't catch them all.
Once there was a dragon, and he was flying in the sky.
He was flying to find people he would like to eat and kill.
Nate and Daddy were sheriffs and they got their swords and Nate was a daddy.
And there was daddy.
And they were so big.
And they can fight.
Then all the people said "Thank you sheriffs."
And Sheriff Nate said "Just doin' my duty!"
Ashlyn had 3 friends over for a little party. It was a cooking/sewing party. We sewed aprons and then made braided pizzas and braided dessert pizzas. By the way...Ashlyn's friends in this picture are all older. Two are older by 2 years. 1 is older by 1 year. And yet she fits right in with her height. 
Speaking of height...Sadie's good friend is next to her. She's about a head taller than Sadie, and Sadie is older than her by 2 months.
Ash just finished opening her presents.
Dave took the day off for Ashyln's birthday. We took the kids on post to go bowling. We had to stop to see this tank.
Nate puts his pants on backwards just about every day. Dave helped him find a frog and he was soooooooooooooo happy with his friend. He asked me: "Do you like frogs because they give you rubbies on your hand?" I guess fruvin was tickling Nate's hand and it felt like "rubbies" (our word for a backscratch). Nate had a birthday party that morning and that's why his face looked sort of like an elephant.
The girls went from sewing and cooking to shooting at her party. Ashlyn's holding her birthday present from her dad. I'm sure it's what all 10 year old girls want for their birthdays. Ash loves it. She said "I'd much rather shoot guns on a date than go out to dinner." We wrote that one down.
We've all had fun with Ashlyn's gun.
Maybe this could count as modern art? I was in a hurry to get the box of noodles down, and didn't realize it was already opened. I reached for the box and the noodles came spilling out. I thought they landed in a cool position with the oranges. Had to stop my rushing for a picture.
A cute science teacher with some cute students. They can't get enough of science time with Dad.
Doing "Horsey, horsey on your way" with Grandma Walton.
Snuggles with Grandpa John.
Grandpa Hatch lived to be 91 years old. He lived a wonderful, simple, meaningful life. His funeral was mostly a celebration of his life. There were plenty of tears that flowed from all of the love we had for him. And of couse we will miss him. It's hard not to just be happy for him that he is back with his wife and so many loved ones (I did ask if he would hand deliver a message of love to our girls in heaven...and he cheerfully agreed). 
Playing dress up at Aunt Cindy's house. This one scared me just a bit. Ash wearing Cindy's wedding dress.
We had fun playing at Julie's house! With brand new baby Luke, we have 3 boys and 3 girls!
Catching up with dental school friends. Just a few babies were added since we left San Francisco.
We had lots of fun playing Pit with Grandpa Walton.
Walton cousins! These kids had so much fun playing together.
Fishbein cousins...playing a gum trading game.
Sadie got to go on her "I'm turning 8 date" with Grandma Shelly a little early since we were in town.
Ash riding a horse...our tradition with Aunt Cindy.
Nate loved riding the pony. He fell off 3 times (the pony wasn't in the best mood at first) and Nate kept wanting to get back on. Nate didn't completely fall. Dave was holdling his shirt and caught him as he was falling...but it was still scary.
Before our trip to California, Heidi and her family came out for a fun weekend. Dave wanted to try feeding Rollo a live rat. So he saved the show for our friends. This was traumatic for many of us. Rollo never did end up eating the rat.
The oldest 4 played together in San Francisco when they were tiny.
Dave and the girls looking at Rollo through our macroscope. 
Yesterday it finally hit me that Nate would be a sunbeam and go to primary today. I remember when we first moved here and thinking how crazy it would be that Nate would be in primary for a few months before we leave Missouri. Well, here we are. Nate is officially in primary. With the theme for primary being about the scriptures and knowing that we ask the children to bring their scriptures each week, I realized I needed to get Nate a scripture bag. So Nate and I ran downstairs to look through material to find something "boyish" as he calls it. We couldn't find anything we loved. Dave started to help us hunt. He came down with an old pair of pants that we could use. They turned out to be just the right thing. Nate loves his scripture bag and held his scriptures out during all of primary today.
When Dave picked Nate up from his class, his teacher said that towards the end of primary, he whipped out his pen and notepad from his scripture bag and started drawing. Right when we got home from church, Nate ran for some paper and started drawing. I thought his position was cute. He is so into drawing and coloring right now.
For a long time, whenever Nate asked Grandpa what he wanted for Christmas, Grandpa always said "NATE!" Nate said he was going to hop in a box and get mailed to CA for Grandpa. But since that wouldn't quite work, we went for a wrapped box at the airport. Ash and Sadie ran ahead to meet G and G and said that Nate stayed home with Dad. So they were really surprised when they saw a box sitting there for them to open. Nate had to wait a few minutes and I couldn't believe how still he was. A couple times I poked my head to tell him that they were almost here. Nate would reply "Close it, Mom!!!"
We had a birthday party for Grandma while they were here. We didn't have 58 candles, so Dave had the idea to use our 6 and 3 candles to make 63 and then a minus sign, and then 5 candles = 58!
We played this trick at our Christmas party as well. It went over so well, we thought we should try it on Mom and Dad. We wrapped up a box with our snake in it. Rollo is getting big and heavy. Dave snapped the picture at just the right time. Dad dropped/threw the box and and the snake fell out and landed right under Mom's foot. It was quite a moment.
The girls spent a long time making a movie theatre for us. We had movie tickets (with ticket stubs returned to us), all sorts of snack choices, blanket rentals, etc.
The girls with their special dolls from special Karla!
For Grandma's birthday party, Sadie planned a talent show. Nate's talent was telling a dragon story. He got so into the story and acted out what the dragons were doing. Sheriff Dad and Nate came to the rescue at the end and after the people thanked them, they replied "Just doin' my duty."
Mom brought nativity costumes for us to use. Nate was the donkey and took his job very seriously. We heard "hee-haw" the rest of the night.
The day after G and G came, we woke up to a white Christmas Eve and the snow stuck the whole time they were here. That made for a couple snow walks around the neighborhood, buildling a snowman and sledding at the junior high.
Harry Potter snowman...attacking Ashlyn.
Sledding!
Stories with Grandpa!
Ash and I were racing to finish our books. The race started at the beginning of the books. I was reading Harry Potter and Ash was reading Anne of Green Gables. She was ahead the whole time but I came in for the win at the end. We were within 8 pages of eachother for the finish. The girls were about to go to bed, and I knew Ash would climb in bed and read to the finish line. So I ignored the dishes and we sat down to the final race. It was lots of fun. She wanted to win, but was sure happy to finally have her mom reading Harry Potter.
The girls and I made a special quilt for Grandma and Grandpa with pictures and drawings from all of the cousisn. It was lots of fun to make and even more fun to give!
At school this week we've been studying about Africa in its earliest years that we know about. In our history book there were several recipes to create an African feast...using ingredients they used way back when. We spent the whole afternoon cooking up our feast. In those days, Africans would often paint shapes on their faces, hands and feet. So the girls made shapes on headbands for us for our costumes. We made so much food that we decided last minute to invite some friends over for our feast.
Chicken over figs and grapefruit wedges. (Ashlyn's dish)
Papaya fried rice (Ashlyn's dish)
Yams and apples (Sadie's dish)
Date/Banana bars and Date Chewies (Sadie did the bars and we all did the chewies).
The girls told/acted out a couple African stories that have been passed down from generation to generation.
