Category: General

    Clyde

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    What is the ugliest boy name you can think of… well that is what we nicknamed our baby for his pre birth name and now it is sticking. I can’t think of a real name cause I feel like he is CLYDE. Packer can’t even fathom the idea of giving him a different name at this point and truthfully I am having a hard time also. We have been calling him Clyde for 4 months or so and I still recognize that it is an ugly name BUT it makes me think of this little guy that is growing inside of me and I kind of like it now.

    Anyway. I have ONE MORE MONTH of being pregnant! One month until we get to meet Clyde and give him a real name, one month of being large and uncomfortable and not being able to put on shoes. One more month to cherish the ‘easy’ life of only 4 kids. The joy of putting kids to bed at 8pm and knowing that none of them will need you again until the sun comes up. One month to hold Rose as much as possible and cherish that snuggle time that will be harder to come by once little brother comes. And One Month to get a lot of chores crossed off of my TO DO list.

    Here we go…

    Categories: General, Jana

    Christmas Day 2011

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    7:20am Benji wakes up and checks things out, wakes up mom and dad and then all of his siblings!!

    9:30 Christmas is unwrapped! Cinnamon Rolls for Breakfast and then time to get ready for church!

     

    Ben made some killer rolls - yummy!

    I loved having church on Christmas Day. It was really nice to have that time set aside to think about Christ and all that he means to me and to this world. Singing the Christmas Hymns and hearing testimony of Christ were a wonderful way to spend my Christmas morning!

    And that afternoon we were able to go over to Ben’s parents house for Christmas Dinner!! I don’t remember the last time I had a real Christmas dinner. It was awesome. Unfortunately Rose decided to be barfy on Christmas Day so we came home early. We ended the day playing with new toys, watching the Green Bay Packers, and setting up the kids new beds!

    Benji and Packer LOVE their new bunk bed! It is still under debate who will get the top and who will sleep on the bottom. I believe the Nettesheim boys rotated every month so that may be our solution as well.

    Cali got Benji's old bed with NEW TINKERBELL sheets and blankets!! She loves having her own bed and the girls have adjusted well to being in the same room.

     

    Categories: General

    Christmas Eve 2011

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    We love our Christmas Traditions and are super lucky to have so much family close by to share the holidays with. On Christmas Eve we have a big feast – we bring whatever food we want, no holds barred πŸ™‚ We like to think that we are letting in a little bit of Udine’s Guatemalan culture but either way we always have a lot of yummy food. Tomales, special punch, poppers, chicken noodle soup, breads, chips and dips and of course some cream puffs, cake, and pie. Mostly we eat all night BUT we do let the kids dress up and act out the birth of Christ and we decorate cookies for Santa which is always a hit. This year we went to Michelle and Udine’s house and Mom and Dad came and Emily brought her kids.

    Mary ( she was so excited to get to be Mary), Inn Keeper and Shepherd.

    2011 Cast: Luca, Packer, Micah, Kiah, Diego, Cali, Benji, Lalo, Mia

    and Rose - "the crying sheep"

    Cookie Time:

    Cali

    Packer

    Benji and the big boys

    We came home at a decent time to get our new pajamas on and leave a note for Santa. Benji made sure to leave 9 carrots for each of the reindeer. They each left their favorite cookie for Santa and a glass of milk. The excitement on Christmas Eve is SOO much fun. Our kids are the perfect ages for anticipation and pure joy. This is definitely one thing that I will miss when they get older.

    “to Santa the cookies and milk but the carrots…” Benji got a little side tracked and forgot to finish the note πŸ™‚ Good Night!
    Categories: General, Nettesheim

    My Husband

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    Ben is awesome. Today he is taking the day off and instead of taking advantage of the one time to sleep in he is up with the kids, getting bottles, doing advent calendars, making hot chocolate and being a great dad! I love that he loves the holiday season and brings so much fun and joy and perspective for our family. Today kicks off the holiday chaos for us – we have family gatherings today and tomorrow and Christmas Day and somewhere in there I am packing our bags to head to California at 6am on Monday. I am actually feeling quite prepared and ready so now it’s just exciting… Here we go …

    Ben and the kids

    can't believe these guys are all mine! love'em all

    Categories: Ben, General

    Walmart

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    Let it be known that taking 5 kids to Walmart did me in. It was 2 days ago BUT I was sooo worn out. I think I finally recovered –  I am counting the unborn child because he was responsible for some of the stress and technically I did take him with. Anyway, I decided to get my snow tires put on at Walmart so that the kids and I could just shop and not have to wait in a waiting room and… well Walmart took FOREVER on those tires. We shopped until we couldn’t think of another thing to shop for. We browsed and played and waited. I even had to call Ben as backup cause it was his lunch hour and I was not going to make this trip on my own. Rose had a stinky diaper and threw a fit every time she saw food that she wanted. The other kids were actually really good, they just got tired and there are a lot of them to keep close so noone gets lost in the Christmas rush. And it really is hard to push a cart when 1-2 kids are in it, the other 1-2 are hanging on it and the baby wants to be held so you only have one hand. Anyhow – enough whining from me already πŸ™‚ Here’s a picture of the crew that wore me out so quickly:

    my kids and I - on a Sunday - this is not our Walmart attire

    This Christmas vacation is crazy! No wonder the teachers don’t want the kids in school. My kids have been bouncing off the walls all week. Christmas is in the air. I haven’t had any peace and quiet since last Friday. It is an exciting time. I’m glad that they are so excited.

    Look at these happy kids!

    Cali gives the best hugs! and she was my super envelope licker for our Christmas cards this year!

    And today I was recovered enough to make a quick trip to Trafalga – the kids were able to get some craziness out so it was worth it.

    Happy kids playing 'glow up golf' !

    Categories: General

    pictures

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    destructo baby

    sometimes my mail box hands me this - NOTHING with my name on it

    This one needs time outs - and yes we are incorporating the hands above the head torture technique - might as well build those basketball shooting muscles, and she seems to enjoy timeout if it's just the nose on the wall

    Rosie, thinking she is pretty big stuff next to Ellie!

    My Cute Nephew - Thomas Jett Robertson was born on Wednesday the 14th, we get to meet him in about 10 days!

    I love when Rose actually plays toys - SO CUTE when she disappears in the toy room.

    Categories: General

    Dentist

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    We are getting our 6 month cleanings at the dentist this week πŸ™‚ I know my mom and Tracie would be proud. This was Cali’s first time going and she did great. Packer and Cali both went back by themselves and did everything they were asked. I thought they’d need me but they did not.

    Cali' first realt trip to the dentist

    Packer making his "grow toy" grow in the cold water

    Rose got a new tooth brush too!

    Cali told me today that the hygienist knew she had popcorn the other night cause she found some in her teeth  – oops. Packer seems to have my wimpy teeth πŸ™ while Benji and Cali have Ben’s strong teeth πŸ™‚ some things in life just aren’t fair. In fact I had to hear all about how it wasn’t fair when Benji found out that his siblings got to go to the dentist and he didn’t. He was very sad that he didn’t have the new tooth brush and the prize from the prize machine… He is going on Friday… but it is hard to wait.

    Categories: General

    Oh Christmas Tree

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    We bought and decorated our Christmas tree on the Saturday after Thanksgiving…

    checking the lights

    all ornaments at kid level πŸ™‚

    Packer got to put the STAR on top!

    checking out the tree and ready for bed

    Joel came to play/help πŸ™‚

    We decided to sleep out by the tree with the kids to kick off the holiday season. Popcorn, cookies, Home Alone and finally… sleep.

    Categories: General, Nettesheim

    The Ultimate Update

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    I haven’t blogged since November 3rd and that happens to be the day that Ryan and Tara found a place to live and started moving to the house in American Fork. They moved most everything on that Wednesday and Thursday. I had sick kids so I stayed home and helped with kids and cleaned what I could here. It was an adventure having another FULL SIZE family living with us πŸ™‚ We have had several live ins and we love it. It is like extended family vacation and that is how I feel now. I feel like I am trying to RECOVER from vacation. Lots of late nights and games and kids running around and non stop playing and toys and traffic and double the cleaning and dishes and mess. It was a Fun but Crazy 4 months. The good news is… we now know that this house can be home to 12 people! If you had asked us 5 months ago we were a little worried about squeezing the 7th member of our family in, but now we have no worries πŸ™‚ I have a bad case of the cleaning nesting organizing bug, wanting to get all of my closets and book shelves de-cluttered and usable, so that’s what I’ll be doing in my FREE time for the rest of the year.

    Now on to the pictures… what we’ve been doing in the last 2 weeks without our live in house mates to entertain us…

    November 3, 2011

    We are still obsessed with Plants Vs Zombies – the kids have spent hours playing with these cones. It’s one of those natural toys that I know I should go hide them back in the garage but they are played with daily by all of the kids so I keep leaving them out.

    November 6, 2011

    This is where I found Cali on a Sunday night after I had sent her up to get her pajamas on. When you zoom out you will see that she took off her church clothes, pulled out her jammies, removed her diaper and then somehow ended up asleep in the nude, in the closet. This is not a normal occurrence – she and Rose both got thrush under their tongues from the amoxicillin so they didn’t eat while we waited for it to go away = hungry, grumpy, tired girls for a few days.

    Zoomed Out

    November 7, 2011

    Rose has found her voice and is constantly yelling and grunting and trying to get us to read her mind and do what SHE WANTS. The girls finally got over their tongue issues and that same night Packer claimed that his tongue was hurting. He had not been on antibiotics so I knew it couldn’t be the same thing that Cali and Rose had but he was worse off than the girls. He stopped Eating and Drinking Completely and then he stopped talking because it hurt to open his mouth. I finally took him to the Dr and he was diagnosed with canker sores – yep, regular old canker sores right on the tip of his tongue so we just had to wait it out again. We forced him to eat and drink enough to keep his energy up but he was out for almost a week.

    November 7, 2011

    Sicky Boy Packer

    November 8, 2011Hide and Go Seek Time

    When the cousins moved out I had to give Benji a big lecture about not getting to play with a cousin EVERY day and that he would need to play with his brother and sister and have more family time. He didn’t love that news BUT he had a good attitude about it and we have had some fun family time and I have enjoyed watching them have brother and sister time again.

    Brother Time

    Sister Time

    Daddy Time

    I Found Him

    November 9, 2011

    Still Recovering from the Sore Tongue

    Every November we get to clean up the leaves from our massive tree. We usually pick a night and invite some cousins over and have a big leaf jumping party BUT this year we were heading out of town on Friday and our ward was doing a pickup that Saturday morning so we had to do a quick Friday afternoon clean up. Packer and Cali still got to enjoy the leaves but Benji actually cried when he realized that he would not be leaf jumping this year.

    November 11, 2011

    Packer Flying into the LEAVES

    Cali getting some Air

    Ben's turn!

    Jana's turn!

    I did not do any leaf jumping this year. I was exhausted after doing my part of the raking. Baby number 5, or Clyde as we have been calling him, is due to be born in 3 months from this day. I feel like that is still far away but it is also coming fast. After Benji got home from school on Friday we loaded up the Dodge Grand Caravan and headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon to spend the night at a cabin with the Nettesheim Cousins!! It has become tradition to kick off the holiday season with family and plan our Christmas Traditions and just enjoy each others company. This year we stayed at Bear Trap and it was AWESOME! I have a few pictures from that so I think I’ll post those separately.

    November 13, 2011

    Marlee and Rose!

    We had our weekly Robertson Family Sunday Dinner… Marlee was excited to play with Rosie, she carries her around and takes her wherever she goes. She and Rose are buddies. We ate Pizza and actually got a few games in after the 49er game (can’t believe they are having a killer season). Than and Sam Hancock stopped by so that was fun and My siblings were being crazy and wouldn’t go home until after midnight – I kept telling then that this pregnant sister can’t stay up all night but they didn’t care πŸ™‚  and… Benji was up all night throwing up. The first one was bad and it was dark so he missed the toilet but after that he was a perfect sick guy. He counted 6 times that he threw up, a few of those he handled completely on his own. We kept him home from school on Monday but he felt fine all day and just played with his siblings. In fact everyone was full of energy so we headed to the park for the afternoon.

    November 14, 2011

    perfect park day

    Monday night we invited Ben’s parents over to watch the Green Bay Packers beat up the Vikings. The Packers are amazing this year and it was fun to watch with Grandma and Grandpa and eat some Pumpkin Pie at halftime. I love November just for the pumpkin Pie! Today is a good, normal Tuesday. We are healthy. I went on my morning walk. Ben is working. The boys had school. The Girls had cousins over to play and I am finally blogging πŸ™‚ “Vacation” is over and now I think the hangover from the 4 month “vacation” is also over πŸ™‚

    November 15, 2011

    She Can Stand Up Now - only about 20 seconds on her own but she is definitely in stand up mode.

    Cali wanted to invite Anna and Mia over to play. When I signed Packer up for afternoon preschool I was thinking that would be the perfect nap time for the girls BUT Rose takes 2 naps still and is never napping when Packer has school. So it has turned in to Cali’s play time. She often gets to play with her cousins for those hours during the week and they seem to love it.

    Anna, Cali and Mia

    Christian came to play today also and he and Rose followed the big girls all over the house.

    Categories: General, Nettesheim, Robertson

    One more park Day

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    Guess who is sick – again?? Yep, Rose has another ear infection. She is super grump when she isn’t feeling well. We went to the park on Saturday. The weather has been amazing. We had PERFECT weather for trick or treating as well. I keep thinking that we’ve had our last park day cause the cold is coming but we will see…

    Categories: General