Christmas Morning

I don't know about you, but we are ridiculously slow on Christmas morning. (as Josh, Wesley and Landon will tell you in no mixed words.)  There is something so beautiful about waking up hearing tiptoes to the Christmas tree and then shouts of joy as all of our little spies realize that Santa indeed did come...(even after all of Mom's threats that "Santa saw that and he might be moving your name to the naughty list...")  

We love to drag out Christmas morning as long as possible.  You know; make a nice warm fire, have a big delicious breakfast, read about Christ in the scriptures, tidy up a little, and then finally open presents.  I took this picture when we finally announced to the boys that it was time to open presents.  

We got distracted and forgot to take many pictures, but we had a perfectly beautiful Christmas together.  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABIES!!!

We can hardly believe it, but our sweet babies turned one last week!  What an incredible gift to have been blessed with these two angels.  We feel like the luckiest family on earth.  We thank Heavenly Father every day for Allison and Jackson.  Remember how little they were?  

We had a birthday party for them and we all had so much fun watching what they were most excited about.  We tied a bow on Jackson's head and he left it on almost the whole time!  He knew he looked adorable.  He is fascinated with Alli's hairbows that she always wears and he must wonder why we never put any bows on him!  

Allison was pretty surprised that we gave her a little piece of cake with whipping cream on it.  She couldn't decide if she was supposed to eat the cake or the plate...but she figured it out and had a great time!

Jackson loved the feeling of power you can only experience by holding and eating your very own piece of cake!  

The biggest hit of all for Jackson was probably the balloons!  He was mesmerized by them, as was Alli!  

Allison was such a girl!  She snuggled all of her new outfits that she got and held them up to her to see how they looked.  

Our precious babies have such wonder and excitement as they experience all these brand new things in life.  

Happy Birthday Allison and Jackson!  We love you forever and we thank you for every beautiful bit of joy you have brought to us.  Now, don't be in such a hurry to turn two...

An early Christmas present!!!

Jenna and Jeremy had a beautiful baby girl on Thursday, December 4th.  She is so adorable!  She is named Londyn and she weighed 5 lb. 12 oz.  Here is a picture of Jenna and Jeremy and their sweet Christmas present when Londyn was one day old.  Aren't they all so beautiful? 

Look at how sweet she is! 

Jenna is such an incredible mom.  She is having so much fun and we are all having so much fun watching how excited she gets about every little thing.  It is so fun watching my baby sister have her own little sweet baby.  Isn't life beautiful?

Congratulations Jenna and Jeremy!  Merry early Christmas!  We love, love, love you!

Oh Jackson...

The time has finally come for Jackson to have an all-out haircut.  He has had trims up to this point, but he is really quite a hairy little fellow.  So, Jeremy and I embarked on our daring adventure and started his haircut.  Here's his before shot...

He was so incredibly wiggly that I was certain this was going to be a disaster of a haircut.   But, then something incredible happened.  We got the clippers out to "buzz" the back and he didn't move a muscle the entire rest of his haircut.  Our other boys have all wiggled even more the moment they felt the buzzer for the first time.  But Jackson was so intrigued by his new "massage" that he stayed perfectly still.  Miracles do happen!  Here's the middle of the hair-cut we were sure was doomed for failure.  (At this point, you all would have thought so too!)

And here's the finished product.  Jackson all grown up!  What a little man!

So from now on, Jackson can take a number when it's haircut time.  He gets to get in line with all five of the Ostler men who patiently wait for their turn in Mom's hair salon. (AKA the laundry room)  :) 

We love you Jackson, you adorable little creature!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Jeremy really is weird...

Hi everyone.  This is Jeremy.  Ok, I will come clean and bare all.  There are only a few quirky things about me.  Jacquie already explained all the rules and tagged enough people for the both of us.  Here are the quirky jeremy-isms.

1.     Everyone that has been around me knows I chew my tongue when I am thinking, concentrating, working, bored, etc.  Sometimes I have to wait a few days so my tongue can grow back so I can start chewing again.

2.     I carry around a filing cabinet.  Each of my pockets in my pants have a specific item or items in them, never to be mixed up or out of order.  Hence I usually wear cargo pants with lots of pockets.

3.     I wear my shoes from the moment I wake up to the last moment before I go to sleep at night.  Jacquie is always barefoot. (I will not mention pregnant, that is not funny anymore.  We are done.)

4.     I am the only prepared one.  I carry a tool with me wherever I go.  My trusty leatherwoman. 

5.     When I sneeze, I sneeze a minimum of three times.  And I never say atchoo.  It is always a variation of such.  Ahhchow, ahhchunck, ahhchink, and many more close to the unmentionables.

6.     I can chew on a raspberry seed for hours and never swallow it.  I try to bite it in half before I claim the victory over the seed.  This is my favorite sport.  

I am Sparticus.  Or so Jacquie tells me.  Or was that Flick? 

Quirky this!

My adorable sis-in-law Randi, tagged me with this "Quirky" tag.  I must say that it was pretty hard to think about my personal quirky-ness.  I can tell you every quirky thing about all of my kids.  I had to strain my brain to remember that I am actually a real person in here! :)  Don't worry though; Jeremy didn't seem to have a hard time at all thinking of six for me.  In fact, we had to do a top six!

Here are the rules:

1. Mention the person who tagged you.

2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
4. Tag 6 other bloggers .

So, here you go...the top six unspectacular quirks of mine...

1.  I go absolutely crazy over the smell of a brand new, freshly opened can of tennis balls!  I can't explain it, but it makes me so happy.  Everyone who really loves me lets me have the privilege of opening the can so I can have that very first whiff!  If that's not quirky, then I don't know what is...

2.  I almost always chew my drinks.  Go ahead and laugh...everyone else does!  I have a hard time swallowing anything- liquid or not- that has not been first thoroughly chewed.

3.  I have an aversion to saliva.  Really...the smell of dried saliva (mine, or anyone else's) is just more than I can take! 

4.  When I sing along to any songs, I almost always sing harmony.  Melody can be so boring, but harmony never gets old.  

5.  Ever since I was a baby and continuing still, I get the hiccups almost every day!  Strange...

6.  Last, but not least:  I can hear the mailman coming up my street about a mile away!  My children call it Mom's super-sonic hearing.  The irony of it all is that quite often, I can't hear the end of Jeremy's sentences.  You know, his voice drops off to some inaudible frequency that even my super-sonic powers can not detect!  

So, there you have it!  I'll never even try to pretend I'm not quirky.  

 

And now I tag:  Jeremy, Tressa, Emily D., Brooke, Janey, Julie Mc., and Elyse. (and anyone else who wants to be tagged.)

  

We're getting braver everyday. We went to the zoo!

Thanks to my adorable Mom, we went on a field trip to the zoo!  We had so much fun!  The babies were angels and we've finally decided that we definitely need to get out more.

Isn't she adorable?  You know just how beautiful she is when she can wear an elephant hat and look that good!

Here are our little monkeys... Hogle Zoo has some incredibly cute monkeys!

We just barely missed the pacing cougar in the background of this one.  

Allison and Jackson had so much fun sitting in their stroller and checking everything out.  There was so much to see that they even forgot they were hungry for a good long time!

This year for one of our family's school projects, we are studying animals.  So, we purchased a year pass to the zoo.  Each visit, we all choose our three favorite animals to study.  As soon as we have finished our research on our animals, we get to go back to the zoo and take our pictures in front of the animals we chose to learn about.  Boy, have we learned alot!

One of Landon's favorites are the elephants.  We learned that an elephant drinks 50 gallons of water everyday!  (Almost as much as Jacquie drinks each day!)

Wesley has taught us all so much about African Penguins.  Did you know they live to be about 17 years old and they dig holes to burrow in to avoid the sun?

One of Josh's favorite animals he researched was the Bengal Tiger.  We could not get a picture in front of one...But this Spotted Leopard was pretty cool.  Did you know that Bengal Tigers weigh 400-600 lbs?  And they can climb trees!

So, thanks Mom for a wonderful day at the zoo.  We love you Boomaw!

TWO BABIES!!!

We have TWO babies!  I know that is common knowledge...But, it hits us at random times everyday.  Like when you walk into a room and you see TWO babies playing together on the floor.  

Our sweet babies are growing so fast!  They are eight months now.  In some ways life is getting a little easier.  But, in other ways the fun has just begun!  They are both teething full force and still have an aversion to sleeping at night.  Jer and I sometimes feel like this is some kind of dream, as we are sure that we are just walking in our sleep most of the time.  It is actually quite surprising just how little sleep you can get and still operate!  

Whenever we feel run-down, we just snuggle these sweeties and score some huge smiles and giggles and we realize that it is worth every bit of work.  We are so blessed to have Allison and Jackson in our family.  

The value of silverware...

We had a great dinner last week for Family Home Evening.  We took the opportunity to try to instill a little bit more appreciation in our children for silverware! (which some of our boys have had little or no use for up to this point!)  We chose the craziest utensils we could find in our house and numbered them.  Then, everyone picked a number out of a bag, and VOILA!  Silverware Gratitude 101 began...

Jer sporting his sweet whisk!

What a sight to behold!  We couldn't tell if it was all that hard to eat using our ridiculous utensils because we spent most of the meal laughing!

Shovel it in Landon!  (1/3 cup at a time!)

Wesley was a pro with his avocado slicer and potato masher... He actually totally surprised us all as the most talented participant in our crazy dinner!

How about a tea strainer, anyone?  Josh thought it was quite convenient, actually!

Angela looked dainty with her toothpicks and mini spatula!

Jacquie was left with the salad tongs, which proved to be a rather tidy experience surprisingly enough!

Overall, we had a totally fun and memorable experience.  Now, do our boys appreciate silverware anymore than they did before?  I doubt it... But, I am sure we will always remember our desperate efforts nevertheless!

A walk down memory lane, anyone?

My adorable sisters are sending around this fun post.  It is fun to remember the past, isn't it?  Oh, the fun we've all had!

1.  As a comment on my blog, leave a memory that you and I have together. It doesn't matter if you know me a little or a lot, anything you remember! 
2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see what memories people have of you. 

CONGRATULATIONS JENNA AND JEREMY!

Jenna Henna Lynna got married!  (Don't mind the nick names...it is an inherent MacKnight gene that cannot be remedied!) In case you don't know, Jenna is my baby sister.  I love that little girl!  She has an enormous heart and I am so lucky to have such angel sisters.    

She married Jeremy on June 18th, and was it ever a beautiful wedding.  She was a beautiful, beautiful bride.  She and Jeremy are such a stunning couple.  We sure love them!      

Little Landon was the all-important "ring-bearer", and boy did he take his job seriously.  Annie (Ronnie and Beronica's little girl) was the flower girl.  Those two were a beautiful little duo.

We even got a shot of our little big crew.    

We will have more pictures soon.  The photographer was so much fun and he took some incredible shots.  When we get some more pics, we will add them on here.  But for now, we congratulate Jenna and Jeremy!  We love you two! 

Check out our WIGGLY BABIES!

Here is a little video clip Jeremy took on our camera.  It's a little dark and fuzzy, but you can get the general picture.  We get such a laugh out of watching how incredibly wiggly these little ones are.  They are so excited to go somewhere, anywhere!  It won't be long and they will be running around with the big brothers.  But for right now, we'll just enjoy their wiggles while they stay put in one place...

Allison and Jackson's Blessing Day

Thanks to Brooke and Alisa for taking beautiful pictures to help us remember this special day!