The Miskin Family

During the month of February, Tanner and Natalya’s school did a Jazz reading program. They tracker their reading minutes every night for the whole month, and then in the end someone would win a bike (I wasn’t sure if they drew names or what). Natalya didn’t read longer than usual, but Tanner went gung ho. He read at least an hour and a half every night, usually more, but I never recorded more than 90 minutes on his chart for fear of him looking a bit ridiculous.

So, come March I asked the kids every day who won the bike, but Tanner said they had not announced it yet. It was well into March and I decided that Tanner must have just missed the announcement. So, one Monday when I went to do my usual shift of helping at the school, I ran into Tanner’s old Kindergarten teacher. She asked, “are you so excited?”. I had no idea what she meant. She then told me that Tanner had won the bike!  I didn’t believe her at first, but then while I was at the school the school called me to let me know, and asked if I could come pick the bike up. Luckily I was already there so it worked out great! I went to tell Tanner I was taking the bike home and it was pandemonium in his class. His teacher ran up and told me how excited they all were about it! Even she seemed super excited.

When I went to the office to collect the bike, I told the secretary how excited we were, and asked how he had won. She said in years past they would put your name in  a drawing for every 20 minutes read, and then draw a name out for the bike. So, if you read more, your name was entered more. But, that caused a problem because they didn’t know if they needed to buy a girl bike or a boy bike. So, this year they decided there would be two winners, one from kindergarten through 2nd grade, and then another 3rd through 6th and it would be whoever read the most minutes. So, Tanner had actually read the most minutes out of all the kids k-2nd grade! We were so proud of him, and he was super excited to have a new bike.

And for good measure, some more cute pictures of Nadia (and Sasha and Trent)

Our special leap year boy had a REAL birthday this year. I wanted to make it super special for him, but sometimes it doesn’t always come out as special as I would hope. We started the celebration the day before, when I checked Tanner out of school for a special lunch with just us two. He chose Wienersnitzle where he ate two full sized chili dogs (and went through about 100 napkins). After we went to the store where he picked out some treats and snacks for his birthday party and we also designed his birthday cake!

In the morning he woke up to birthday decorations spread through the downstairs (blue and white, with a basketball motif) and he requested waffles for breakfast, so waffles he got! We also let him open a few presents which included a Kings Jimmer jersey (from Grandma and Grandpa Fulkerson), and two Jimmer DVDs (Amazing and The Making of Jimmer). He was then off to school. After lunch we headed over to the school we brought doughnuts for his class to celebrate his birthday. When he came home we had tied his dinner chair with a big bouquet of balloons. For dinner Tanner chose to go out to Hibachi house and get orange chicken. Trent met us there and we had a nice family dinner. But then the trouble started.

First we got a call from Trent’s sister Kristana saying the snow was coming down super hard, and that she didn’t know if she could make it to his party! From there it snowballed (literally) and out of the many family members they were going to come, couldn’t make it. It was very understandable, the storm was terrible and the traffic was equally as bad. In the end Trent’s brother Ben and his family, as well as Kristana were able to make it. Tanner was dissapointed, but they ended after he opened some more presents (books, hex bugs, a circuit kit). When then cut into his NBA basketball cake! Overall Tanner had an awesome day!

That Saturday Tanner had a friend party that was also basketball themed. I did not take one single picture… oops! For the party Trent and I took the kids to the church building to play basketball, and all the kids seemed to have a great time!

I cannot believe my first born is 8! He is such a responsible helpful boy. While he has developed an attitude and sometimes talks back, he is always very quick to say sorry. He is so helpful around the house, and is very responsible with his school work and other responsibilities. While he often gets in trouble at school and church for being silly or talking, he is a really good kid. We think some of his behavior comes from him being super smart. He reads like crazy (usually around 90 minutes a night, sometimes longer), memorizes crazy facts, and he loves to read about facts too, so he knows the most ridiculous things. Tanner loves to play basketball (an understatement), watch basketball, play basketball video games, ride his bike, and play minecraft. He has made some really good friends this year too, which is great for him. We love Tanner and we are all anxiously awaiting his baptism in April.

Near the end of February we actually had some snow that the kids could play in. Yes I said February. This has been the weirdest winter. We had a lot of rain, the temp never hit below 25, and there was no snow to play in! So, when it did happen I had to snap some pictures… and then it melted by the afternoon.

I have said this before, but I LOVE HOLIDAYS! I love the excitement and I love all the fun things you can do. This year I bought the kids mailboxes and we did 14 days of Valentines. This meant starting on the first day of February continuing until Valentines day I gave them a little treat of gift every morning in their mailbox. Aside form a gift or treat I also meant to have activities for us to do, but that really didn’t happen, maybe next year. The kids loved it though, and were so exciting every morning to see what gift they would get.

Then on Valentine’s day I decorated the kitchen with a table cloth and other things, and put out their Valentines gifts. The older girls special gift was roses, Tanner got a balloon, and Sasha got a cute little love bug. I wish I would have took a pictures of the cute table set up before the kids went crazy, but I didn’t. We also had heart shaped egg in a hole.

As with any holiday, I had cute clothes for the kids to wear. I did not get a picture of Tanner, but he ha a Valentines shirt that said   “I’m a lover not a fighter”.

Also, I had a special lunch set up for the girls when Natalya came home from school. This included heart shaped sandwiches and we their tea set.

I was also able to help with Natalya’s class party (which is always fun!). I helped at the heart station, where kids learned all about their heart. The exercised and listened to their heart beats and we also squirted red food coloring out with syringes… and ALL the kids asked if it was real blood. We finished the night off with Trent and I’s traditional Valentines day date to Chuck a Rama!

Tanner played another season of Junior Jazz. He loves basketball. Which is an understatement. Trent was able to be his coach this year too, which was extra fun. Tanner is a pretty good basketball player, and the kids overall were better this year than last year. Tanner thinks a month is too short of a season for basketball, I think he would play all year long if he could! Some of the pictures are blurry, but they were great so I kept them anyway.

Right around Christmas time Nadia and Natalya really started playing real well together. I never had a sister, so it is fun to see the relationship develop between them. I do have to break up fights all too often, but when they spend hours at a time in their room playing barbies, or dress up, or squinkies I can overlook it. Although girls are hard, it makes it worth it to see their friendship develop.

My favorite is when Natalya helps Nadia “get beautiful” or give her fashion tips. In the morning when Nadia gets dressed Natalya will tell her how beautiful she looks. I can’t wait until they start sharing clothes.

On Friday and Saturday nights they will often have “sleepovers” where Nadia will sleep in Natalya’s bed with her. One day they were grumpy, so we told them they had to take a nap, or they wouldn’t get to participate in whatever activity we had planned that evening. This is what we came downstairs to…

A few days after Christmas we headed to Smithfield to celebrate Christmas with Trent’s parents. It seems as though we cannot open the presents soon enough. As always we were spoiled this year, and the kids loved their gifts. The kids especially loved their Harry Potter wands. A friend of my in-laws takes scrap wood and makes wands out of them for kids. They are seriously awesome.

My favorite was my new pizza stone, and Trent loved all his new tools from his Dad.

We only stayed a few days, but we enjoyed every minute we were there. The kids just played and played… and they were so good! They played so well and were actually super well behaved. Trent and I were able to sneak in some alone time too, which included seeing a movie with some of Trent’s siblings.

We were blessed to have church at 12pm on Christmas day, so there was no rush in the morning to get up and get going.

The kids woke up around 7am, not too early.

I LOVE watching the kids when they first see their gifts and hear their excitement. They loved all the things Santa brought. Tanner’s favorite was his new basketball, the girls loved their mini pillow pets.

Then the madness began! Oh and where is Sasha? Asleep like the good baby she is!

This year the aftermath seemed unusually epic for us.

For breakfast we enjoyed homemade cinnamon rolls, which were awesomely delicious! And not too much later Sasha woke up and the kids and I helped her open her presents! her favorite things were the bows, of course!

We then got ready for church and really enjoyed the wonderful Christmas program put on by the choir. After we came home we spent the rest of the day cleaning up, being lazy, and enjoying our new gifts!

Ignore the fact this is posting on March 15th…

Christmas was exactly how I wanted it to be this year. Very low key and we were able to fit in all the things we like to do on Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

Our day started our preparing our big dinner for that evening and making sugar cookies for Santa!

And we were able to use more of the candy from the ginger bread houses. It is fun to see as the kids get older, the more creative the get with their cookie decorating.

After a day filled with cookies and movie watching we enjoyed our big Christmas Eve dinner. We has crab legs and ribeye steak (my favorite)!

We aso had rolls, artichokes and asparagus. Funny story. The meat on the ribeyes was to tender that I was giving it to Sasha. Well, apparently her little body was not ready for ribeye steak because she was up several times in the night and her tummy was just rumbling!

After dinner we spent some time reenacting and talking about the Christmas story and the true meaning of Christmas. I love that my kids become better each year about understanding what Christmas is about. Especially Tanner, he seems the really grasp that it is about celebrating Christ’s birth and doing kind things for others.

Next we let the kids open one present of their choice, and their Christmas Pj’s. This years theme was reindeer!

We then packed the kids off to bed, and everyone was asleep buy 10pm… a record in our house! And it left plenty of time for Santa to come!