A few new things

With tomorrow being New Years Eve, I along with the rest of America have a few goals that I would like to see get accomplished. But it's different in my case. I not only want to see them get done, a few of them, well mainly all of them, NEED to get done. Example: nothing makes you feel like a bad mom like home videos. Tyler has put all our camcorder home videos on dvd for me for Christmas. I love it, and while sitting down to watch the first year and a half of Mason's life, I thought "Boy , where in the world did you blow it?" Sad? Yes. Am I crying about it right now? Yes. Did I sit in the tub and pray with all my heart that tomorrow I would wake up and it would be 2004? Yes, I did that too. But let's face the facts folks. It won't be 2004 tomorrow and I don't have a machine like Napoleon Dynamite to even try to go back in time. :) But here's what I CAN do. I can start right now to be a more patient mom. AAhhh patience. Must you be so ruthless to me? Can't you see I'm trying? I will give my full attention to not only Mason but all of my kids when they need something or are trying to tell me something. Laundry needs to be done and the kids want to play? Leave the laundry. It usually ends up creeping out of the laundry basket and up the wall anyway. This is a NEED and it is at the top of my list. It's never to late. I hope.

While watching these videos, one of my darling children piped up and said," How come you were skinny but not now?" Umm, yeah. Let's add exercise and healthy eating to the list. Not a diet like everyone else is going to try, but a real honest to goodness healthy eating lifestyle and exercise routine. I may need a little help with that one. O.k. maybe a LOT of help. But the thought of a new family picture on my mom's wall in June had motivated me to try and lose 15 pounds by then. Good luck Beck! Your gonna need it!

Also I just want to say that Tyler got me a Dyson 24 vacuum for Christmas, and if there were ever a need to share something so spectacular with others (besides the gospel of course) it would be this. I am happily grossed out at this machine! Happy because it sucks up stuff so well. Grossed out at the dust and dirt and who knows what else is coming out of my carpet. Who would have thought that vacumming could be so fun?

And so I bid you all a Happy New Year! I hope it'll be a great one for you. It will be for the Zobe's. Things are about to change.

Christmas time was here.

Christmas is over and it's time to take down the massively dead tree. We had a great week though, and it was even better that we had family come for Christmas. My parents came on the 18th and we had such a great time. First of all on the 21st, my sweet pie lost his first tooth! After weeks and weeks of working this baby over and over, I got a tissue and barely pulled and out she came!! Mason didn't even know I had pulled it out until I opened my hand. He was excited about it of course and then we lost it, found it again, lost it, and found it again. The tooth fairy leaves blue suckers and one dollar I'm told. She didn't disappoint and I had one happy boy the next day.

Tuesday was a day for trimming hair. Quiet kids+ door shut= Nat's bangs and curls around her face cut off. And a nice layer in the back. I can just hear the conversation,

Nat "I don't like my curls around my head."

Mason "Here Natalie, I'll cut them off for you."

Nat "O.k."

So here is a bangless, no curls, Missy Moo. Luckily she is still the cutest thing. And she's super cute in this dress from China Gamma Sue brought back with her. Aaahh Nat I love you. I wish you would stay four forever.

And then Christmas Eve. We've never spent one by ourselves in Washington, so we had no traditions. But Mason and Dallin starting getting sick and then Mason started getting really sick. We were up from 9p.m. to 5a.m. every 20 minutes if you know what I mean. Poor bum! Luckily and very thankfully, my mom and I had wrapped everything the night before. Nat was the first one up and she was all but beside herself with Santa's deposits. We opened presents and Mason went back to bed for 3 hours and then opened the rest of his. He was really tired. It was a great day though and I am grateful for my parents help that day. Because Tyler got sick that morning as well. I was mostly thankful that we were at our own house, not driving home in a blizzard and throwing up like last year. Honestly it was massive bad last year. Anyway, Santa was very kind to the kids as were grandma's and grandpa's.

But my parents have left now, everyone is healthy, and I am this happy that school is just one short week away from starting again!

My husband...

Yep he's amazing! Besides the obvious reasons of loving him to pieces, this is what he made our boys for Christmas. Yes that's right MADE!

It's just a Semi-truck bunkbed. Complete with trucker mirror, lights on the bottom, and a smoke stack. The door opens to a foam play area.

What's that on the wall? Oh that's just a race car track with 2 lanes for racing hot wheel cars.

This is the front with a real grill and lights. Oh, and the tires are real as are the hubcaps. What a fun place to sleep!

I love you LOVE! You are a great dad to our kids and Mason is going to love it! And Dallin will too when he realizes what an awesome bed he's sleeping in!

Technology

Technology is a good thing. It's amazing as well. But sometimes your computer does weird things and you're at the mercy of a computer guy to fix it. Hence, no blog for the past few days. Anyway on to better things. I took Nat to see The Princess and the Frog with my good friend Lisa and her girls. It was pretty cute and the music is fantastic. After 10 minutes Nat turns to me and says, "Where's Cinderella?" Um, yeah, wrong princess movie honey. But she enjoyed it, even with no Cinderella. I am finished with Christmas shopping and looking forward to not having to deal with crowds and ornery people. I am VERY much looking forward to my parents coming out in 2 Days!!!! And with that comes the cleaning of the house, maybe even a little deep cleaning. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't wipe the blinds normally, but with company coming and all..... it's spring cleaning in December. Our Christmas tree is dead. But she still burns bright and it makes me laugh. It was such a pretty green tree. Now, she's a pretty light green, needles falling off, crunchy branches tree. Oh well, sometimes you just can't pick em. It'll be a great Christmas anyway. I'll look forward to seeing those pictures. "Hey kids gather around the tree so I can take a picture of what Santa brought you. " hahahaha I must be tired because I'm laughing at myself. I better stop now.

Christmas time at the Zobes

I know that I am behind almost a week. I had good intentions to blog this weekend, but stuff happens. We did our annual cutting down of the Christmas tree last Saturday. It has been one of our traditions since we moved out here to go out on the first Saturday and cut down a tree. I love this tradition and I love real tress! They smell so good, and I like to vaccuum up the needles because then the room smells good for a few hours.

We drove out to one of the many tree farms and Dallin liked the first tree we saw, but the other kids wanted to keep looking. We were all agreeing to a big, fat, full tree. And then, the heavens parted, and a ray of sun spilled onto a pretty sweet looking tree.

We declared it ours and Tyler let Mason start trimming some of the branches off the bottom. Then the two of them cut down the tree as Nat yelled," One, Two, Three!! It fell down!!!!" We brought it home and the kids and I started to decorate. In the end it was me and Nat, and there is a huge clump of balls at the bottom. But here's how I feel. Christmas is for kids, so the tree should be as well. We have homemade ornaments from when Tyler was a kid, from me growing up, and all the little ornaments that the kids have made in nursery and preschool. Someday I would like to have a real nice pretty tree like my sisters. Decked out with fancy ribbon, and you can clearly see that she spent more that 5 minutes putting the lights on. ( I hate doing the lights) But for now, A kids tree it is. And so I now give you, the ZoBell family Christmas tree.

And since I don't know how to turn pictures around, you'll just have to turn you head.

Aaahh, good times, good times

We had a Great time going home for Thanksgiving. We travel through the night so that when the kids wake up we are about 30 minutes from grandmas house. This is the only way to travel. The only way. There's something about Cache Valley that gets in my blood every time we go home. I love it!!! I love that everything is on Main Street, with easy access to all stores. I love that I know the back roads to take to get to places faster. I love that Zollingers still had there apple cider to buy. It's the best apple cider on the planet. No really, come over because I brought some home. I love seeing the Logan Temple up on the hill and thinking back to the days where we lived 2 minutes away from it. But I guess most of all, I love going home. I loved seeing my dad in the kitchen making waffles for us as we pulled in, and my mom watching for us out the window. I love being in the home I grew up in. I like going into my old room and thinking- "if these walls could talk, we'd be here a long time," even though it's turned into the food storage room. :) I love, love, love being with my brother and sister and there families. We ate, laughed until our stomachs hurt, ate some more, had treasure hunts with grandpa, grandma didn't disappoint with Christmas presents, Frosty the Snowman brought awesome gifts for the kids and very much appreciated out to dinner gift cards for the moms and dads, and overall it was absolutley the Best! Tyler always asks me when we're there if I want to move back. And my answer is always of course I do! I'm surrounded by family and I love it. But that's also because I AM back home and he's asking me when I'm caught up in the moment of everything. I love WA too, but sometimes......


Anyway, the goofy thing is that we take our camera and then never take a picture. Dumb? Yes it is. Maybe one day we'll do it. Sadly it ws over and we had to come back to this home. I'm torn at the moment between homes can you tell. The drive back was just as good as on the way. Traveling is so much better when you don't have to worry about ice and snow. And I always wake up when we're going through Lime, Oregon. What the heck kind of a place is that? For some reason it always makes me smile. I'm weird I know. And I just want to also say that my oh so fabulous sister in law put all my blogs together in a book for me and I love it. I honestly wouldn't have done that, and I am so glad that she did. I'm rambling but I'm done. We are "home" and staying here for Christmas. My first one not in Utah and not with family. Mission doesn't count. But, my parents are coming up here to spend Christmas with us. And I am excited for that. Oh, and channel 942 has Christmas music all day long and it has put me in the best mood of my life.