a christmas "potpouri" (if you will)

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Our family sure did. This photo was taken after many hours of playing with new toys on Christmas day. Instead of "cheese" we told them to say "Merry Christmas". Hence the non-uniform mouth positions...and yes, it appears that Makay and Creed are in fact howling at the moon.


Good times at the Nelson house for Christmas Eve dinner. They are a wonderful and very brave family in our ward that hosts several get togethers a year with many families at once.

Kids partyin' at their own private table.

Makay and Easton at home, enjoying the orange bounties of the new vita-mix. Thanks Papa and Grama Kim!

After Christmas was over the girls wanted to be ready to ring in the new year in style...


Parker loves her red hair and enjoys sporting the "fohawk" as well as the "Kate Gosselin" look (for lack of a better description).

No matter how many times a night we cover Beckham up with blankets, he always ends up like this...bum in the air with his pillow on top.

For your viewing pleasure...

December Joys

Our daughter Makay celebrated her 3rd birthday recently and boy did she enjoy her special day! Since I'm on Christmas break from school, Berni and I took Makay and Beckham out to Red Robin for Makays birthday lunch (the other kids were in school). She had a great time being with mom and dad one-on-one (kinda), and to top it off, the servers sang a special birthday song to her and gave her ice cream. Yeah, she ate it all up...the attention too.
(She was very sad when the decorations finally came down!)

Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Button and Grandma Kim and Papa for the awesome gifts!Berni made a "strawberry shortcake" cake for Makay
Our glamour queen put on a birthday fashion show (note her face is same color as outfit-fashion always prevails over freezing temperatures).
Saturday brought a fresh blanket of snow and of course instant fun for the kids. I think I was more worried about them getting cold then they were.

Sledding is always a party favorite with this group.

Berni wanted to add some more Christmas spirit to our home, so she decided to try her hand at painting...I know I'm a little biased, but she did pretty darn good if you ask me.
Our family loves this time of year and the excitement that comes with it. We have enjoyed spending time with our children and talking about the birth of our lord and savior Jesus Christ. We hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas! Love-the Button fam

Liven' In The Ghetto Baby

You might live in the ghetto if . . .

1. you hear sirens on your street more then once a day

2. the question "what area of the city do you feel needs the most help?" is presented to the mayor and he immediately replies with the name of your community

3. there is a memorial at the entrance to the local park because of a gang shooting casualty

4. the Rite Aid closes at 6:00 pm instead of the nation wide standard of 10:00 pm

5. you find bullet shells at the playground

6. the school in your area was closed because of poor performance and the kids are know bused to other communities

7. there have been four murders less then a mile from your house in the past year

8. you accidentally slam your screen door on your way out of the house at night and a man on the sidewalk says you scared him and he was about to reach for his gun

9. a man in working on a friends car across the street and he runs up to you frantically trying to find a ride home because he's on house arrest and is breaking his curfew (we gave him the ride)

10. the local drug dealer lives a few houses down and is actually a really nice guy

and finally

11. Pizza Hut won't deliver in your area after 5:00 pm

If any (or all in our case) of those apply to you, then you might live in a ghetto.

Don't get us wrong, we love our home (not the actual house) and our neighbors are great. We have had many wonderful experiences with them. When we first moved here we where scared to death but we know that this is where the Lord wants us so we are happy to be here. It's just funny to us all the crazy things that happen in our neighborhood and we wanted to share some of them with you.

Elementry Experiences

Things the kids bring home from school. . .


1. yucky words (no swear words yet thank goodness!)
2. candy from friends
3. homework
4. dirt and paint on their clothes
5. graded work (all good so far)
6. tragic stories of who is being nice today and who isn't
7. occasionally stolen goods (money from Eastons classroom)
8. new found attitudes and gestures that annoy mom
9. a sense of independence


and



10. HEAD LICE!



Ryan and I went into red alert, lock down mode when we found them (last night). Ryan bought war supplies (a RID kit) and I psyched myself up for the battle. Today all members of the family received a nasty RID shampoo job, all four boys received buzz cuts and Parker and Makay got chopped. (I know, sorry mom.)

Parkers hair (the source of the problem) was the worst. She has incredibly thick hair and it was past her chin. That's not long for most peoples standards but for her, it's a lot of work to keep up that much hair. Ryan was two seconds away from buzzing her head and just buying her some scarfs to cover it up. After many tears she talked me into just cutting it shorter so it would be easier to RID the pests.

She's still adorable but I'm seriously considering getting her ears pierced.

Mak thought the whole day was a glamor party and loved getting pampered (her hair cut and two showers). Her hair is much more fine so I didn't have to cut hers as short as Parkers. She looks pretty darn cute.

If Ryan is going to cut someones hair you can bet that he's going to cut it weird first (just for shock value or a few funny pictures) and then finish the job. This time he didn't finish the job. Creed thinks he has "cute hair" and is now demanding to keep it. That's fine by me but he won't be leaving our house until his "bangs" (Parker calls it a third eyebrow) are gone.

I think we put a months worth of laundry through our washing machine for this ordeal. All the sheets, blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, coats, hats, clothing, combs and hair accessories that came in contact with anything got washed or boiled. We want this to be over and done with!

So thank you to our public school system for the valuable and memorable experiences that our kids are receiving at your hands.

Pickle Juice

How in the world is it already the middle of month 11! One good thing about this time of year are the colors. Ryan took the kids to the park one day and had a little photo shoot. Makay loved being in front of the camera.

I love how many trees there are around here and if there are a lot of trees, there are a lot of leaves.

You can really work up a sweat by trying to see how many leaves you can get into the air at the same time. Creed would live in a leaf pile if we would let him.

I picked up some fancy dresses at the local Goodwill for $3 each. Originally they were for dress up but they fit so well and were in such good condition that they are now our fancy church clothes.

Some parents have to struggle with their kids every day to get them to sit at the table and eat. We have never had that problem. Our main food struggle is usually trying to get them to stop. They aren't picky eaters either (of which I am so not complaining about!). Sometimes, to encourage them to stop eating we will give them the option of something disgusting or being done. This tactic usually works. . . but sometimes it backfires. This is Easton, Creed and Makay (not pictured) drinking pickle juice. Yes, I said pickle juice. Go figure.

My kids do occasionally eat normal food too; like Halloween candy. Some days I will let them pick something out of their bag for a snack. They are pretty clever and go for either a sucker or gum. Creed thought he would be a nice brother and share his sucker with Beckham. The only problem was when Beckham got a taste, he was not about to let that thing out of his mouth. Creed pulled and pulled and Beckham cried and cried (while never opening his mouth wide enough to get the sucker out) until Creed gave in and asked if he could pick out another piece of candy.

We have a little sun room off the back of our kitchen (during winters it's known as the "ice box"). Ryan and I noticed that what were once small cracks in the ceiling were now big cracks in the ceiling. We called our land lords' maintenance man Dominic to come take a look. He said he was going to have to rip the whole thing down and replace it (just the ceiling). It took a whole evening for me to clear the room out of the four food stacked shelves and mounds of junk I had in there. It took Dominic two days of cursing under his breath and breathing in toxic dust to get our room liveable again.

It looks great and it gave me a chance to organize my junk! Yeehaw! Plus, for a short time we had a room that was just for balls. Isn't that every kids dream?

Over and out.

Lampoon Temple Vacation

Lets start off with how great it was to attend the temple this weekend. Berni and the kids picked me up from school on Thursday and we were off to D.C. area to start the Button Family Quarterly Temple Vacation (BFQTV). The kids were pretty excited about all the cool perks of a hotel from our previous trips. Sorry kids, those perks don't come with this hotel. But ya know what, they still had fun. They still had fun without the swimming, the delicious free continental breakfast, and they only complained alittle when the pizza was 2 hours late. Nothing dampened their spirits. The nights were filled with the excitement of getting to do things that you don't normally get to do at home. Jumping on the bed, eating lots of junk food, getting thrown on the bed by dad, getting a head laceration (little bit of an exageration) when dad is having to much fun and throws you on the bed at the wrong angle and you skim across and hit the nightstand, watching lots of cartoons, playing old maid and go fish with mom, going to the park with dad while mom is in a session, going to the visitors center and playing with all the cool touch screen displays, having one giant slumber party every night with the whole fam, and going to the visitors center again, this time for two and a half hours because dad locked the keys in the car just as mom got out from another session and then having fun at FuddRuckers and Coldstone as dads way of saying, I'm sorry for the key thing. Yes you can't rain on this parade. Although, mom and dad were feeling a little damp when they got the $200 dollar charge for the "key thing", the $12 dollar a night hotel parking fee and the charges for local phone calls from the hotel phone. Why didn't we use the cell? What can you do?...besides being a little more aware when booking our next hotel, and maybe complaining about something at the front desk, just out of spite, like the bug infestation in our hotel room...okay so they were ladybugs, but still, a little weird. I think we counted around 14 and how could we complain about this alternate form of entertainment that our children so enjoyed sharing their hotel room with. Despite the sarcasm, the vacation was very nice and most of all the temple was wonderful! We'll pay a key lock out charge of any price, any day, if that's the price of going to the temple...but we'd rather not

Trick or Treat!

Is anyone else's family still on a sugar high because we sure are! We had class party's at school for Parker, Easton and Creed,our ward Halloween party on Friday night, a Halloween birthday party on Saturday for Eastons' friend and then Trick or Treating on Saturday night, woohoo! I'm not sure how much makeup we went through but I'm pretty sure it talked Parker out of ever wanting to become a model.

Here are our little monsters. . .

Beckham had a vampire costume on but the smudges around his eyes were hard enough so we kept it simple with him. Parker wasn't so simple, but we sure had fun! This was Saturday nights version of a butterfly fairy.

This was Friday nights version. They would have been the same both nights but I ran out of the red pencil makeup. We had fun experimenting though.

Creed is just too good at being a vampire! This year he really got into it too. He liked to go up to people with his mouth open ready to bite, it was pretty scary.

Easton, the peacemaker, wanted to bring world peace. Who better for the job than Batman!?! Masks aren't allowed at church parties so we painted this on. We should have taken a picture at the end of the night to compare, it was pretty funny where that black makeup got to. It is so much fun finding the perfect costume for your child. It's like finding someone the perfect gift for their birthday, something that you know they will love. When I saw this costume I knew it was for Makay.

She was the perfect little devil "princess" (she added the princess on herself), so mischievous and beautiful that you can't get mad at her schemes. We tried for a group shot but with Beckham so mobile it doesn't really work any more. Maybe in 10 years they will all hold still and look at the same time.

The boys received pumpkins from school events this year but Creed was the only one who wanted to operate. He ended up being quite the surgeon.

All the kids loved the final product and it strangely became a community pumpkin after that.

We took a walk on Sunday afternoon to help with the sugar detox. It was chilly but really nice.

Aaaahh, we survived the sugar highs.