Santa's Coming to Town

Santa's coming to town . . . but he might be skipping over the Kelm house this year. Here it is 9:45 p.m. on Christmas Eve and look at what I have still awake at my house. Eating treats and cracking walnuts with daddy. Someone really should tell these boys the rules that Santa can't come if we are all still awake. We all got to open our Christmas pjs tonight and then we made hot cocoa and went and drove around looking at Christmas lights. The boys were especially fun this year because they "OOOOED" and "AWED" in all the right places. Once we started opening the pjs the boys wanted to keep on going and open more. Yesterday they got a head start by sitting under the tree and opened up a couple. The girls hollered for us and when we got in the girls said that they had the boxes in the kitchen so that they wouldn't be tempted to peak in them. How funny. Well, good night boys and sweet dreams.

Train Filled Weekend

We added one more activity this weekend to our big train adventures. We heard that 2 weekends in December people throughout the valley open up their yards so that the public can go and see the different trains and tracks that they have set up. We had never done this before but we thought that the boys would get a kick out of it. Now I don't know what I was really expecting in my mind, but it definitely wasn't what we saw. I think that I was expecting some little train that they put on a track across their grass, or something like that. OH NO! The train tracks and villages and stuff IS THE BACKYARD! People have painted their fences to be different sceneries, made tunnels, canyons, etc in their backyards and even some front yards. One house even had hidden characters throughout their set-up that you were supposed to find. They had them listed on a paper that Jessica and Jocelyn took around. I don't think that they found 1/2 of the characters on the list. The kids all had a ball...especially the boys. They loved the "choo-choos".

Okay, so now for some pictures. The last house that we went to was most impressive. The house belongs to the owners of a restaurant here in Mesa called Tia Rosas. The house in itself was so impressive, but then you go around the corner and see this huge garage that is opened up and is FULL of trains. I am not kidding, floor to ceiling trains; it was amazing.

You then went through the garage and there was the backyard. The yard was HUGE and it had tracks going throughout the whole thing. To let you know just how big the yard was, my 7 year old girl got lost. There were so many people and it was so big that she couldn't find us. (Yes, she was found.)

He had 5 trains going at one time on different tracks. His little operation was not so little, he had several workers running around all over the place making sure that the trains stayed on their tracks. Some of these pictures are coming from azbigtrains.org because ours didn't turn out that great. As we were wandering through the yard we noticed that he is adding on to the train tracks. It will be fun to see that in the coming year. The last picture must have been taken before he was done with the main section. It is now all done and beautifully landscaped. The website says that he has 3,500 feet of tracks on 4 acres.

The last pictures I got off of the website. We didn't go to these particular houses, but I wanted to show pictures because again, our pictures didn't turn out. I am sure that we will be going back to see the trains next year.

Christmas 2008 Family Picture

This is our Christmas 2008 picture. It was so small over on the sidebar that I thought that I would post it now until I can figure out how to post it bigger somewhere more permanent. Merry Christmas to you all!

Flashback Moment

Whenever one of my kids has a birthday I go into reminiscing mode. I tell the kids what we felt, what we were doing, and what the first little bit of their lives were like. The girls love these stories. Jacob & Jayden don't care yet, so I will share my little flashback moment with you. When we told the girls that we were having twin boys Jessica was estactic. Jocelyn was not so much, in fact she made me cry. She said that she DID NOT want little boys in our house and she didn't want to talk about it again and that she wasn't going to tell anyone about it! And she didn't. A couple more months went by and we started talking about names for the boys. We finally decided on the names Jacob Terry & Jayden Parker, we just didn't know which boy was going to get which name until we saw them. We liked the name Jayden and Jocelyn liked the name Jayden because there was a little boy in her class at the time that had that name. From that point on she liked the baby that was going to be named Jayden, but not the "other one". (Let me put a side-note in here that everyone kept telling us that Jocelyn would change the second she saw her little brothers...little do they know our little Jocelyn!) The boys were born and the only baby she liked was Jayden. Jacob was only supposed to have all the old stuff, not the new crib, new bouncy chair...nothing, and she would only hold Jayden not "that one". She never called Jacob by his name, it was always, "that one". It took a few weeks for her to come around to loving these little boys. You now would never know that there was once favoritism at our house. The girls love those little boys equally and are so good to them. There is nothing that makes a parent happier than seeing the kids love each other and knowing that they would do about anything for their siblings. I know that is the case for our kids. By the way, Jocelyn doesn't remember doing any of this and usually claims that we are making this story up. We are here to tell you that this all happened.

Happy Birthday Boys!

On Thursday the boys turned 2 years old. They definitely act like little 2 year olds, but it is still hard to believe that they are ALREADY 2! Where have those couple years gone? We have all enjoyed them so much in our home. It is fun being the parents to see the love that Jessica and Jocelyn have for their little brothers.

The boys are really into trains lately. So Jared and I decided to take them to the McCormick-Stillman Train Park in Scottsdale, AZ. They have a fun little train that you can ride on, a carousel, and lots of playground equipment to play on. They weren't so sure about the carousel once they were on it, but they loved the train and loved running around the park looking at the trains. We then took them out for lunch where they got their favorite thing...french fries. They discovered that they love dipping them first in ketchup and then ranch dressing. . . "YUMMY"

That night we opened presents. What little boy doesn't love balls and throwing them? So we got them a basketball hoop that they can now hopefully have a constructive place to throw their balls. Friday night we had a little party with our good friends the Bickmores. I spent that day working on their cake. I don't know why, because I have never done one before, but I decided that I was going to make the boys' cake. I had it pretty much done and sitting in the fridge. I came into the kitchen and found that Jayden and Jacob were in the fridge and Jayden had a big handful of cake. Part of the engine was now gone. I tried and patch it up with LOTS

of frosting.

We had been practicing trying to blow out the candles but when the spotlight was on them they didn't perform. Sounds like a typical kid doesn't it? Hopefully they had a great couple days being spoiled rotten. We love you Jacob & Jayden and Happy Birthday.

Christmas Piano Recital

We had our piano Christmas recital tonight. For our family members (and anyone else that is interested) here are a couple video clips of both Jessica and myself playing at the recital. Yes, even though I am the teacher, I still play a song or 2. It helps to remind me of what the kids are all going through on the day of the recital. It is a very scary experience to get up in front of others and play. The recital was short and sweet and all of my students did such a great job. I was especially proud of Jessica. She practiced really hard for the recital and she is progressing nicely in her piano skills. Enjoy!

TIME

Jayden is getting caught up in the latest news by reading the latest edition of TIME magazine! Is he going to be a future politician?

Barbie Cake

Here are a couple pictures of the Barbie cake. Thanks Aline for sending the pictures to us.

Christmas Decorating

We have spent the last couple days putting up lights and getting the house decorated for Christmas! We usually try and get as much Christmas stuff up as we can the weekend of Thanksgiving. It seems that once the month of December comes it gets even crazier to get stuff done. I found out this weekend that Jared has always wanted a train to go around our Christmas tree. Well, on one of Jared's many trips yesterday to Home Depot for lights and etc. he came home with a train set. I don't know who was more excited about this train, the kids or Jared! So far the boys have been pretty good about the decorations around the house. That is probably because most of the decorations around the house are "child friendly". The only things that we have had to put up so far were the ceramic Mr. & Mrs. Santa Clause. The boys were loving them a little TOO much, so I put them back in their box for another year.

Happy Birthday Jared!

I surprised Jared for his Birthday by getting a babysitter so that we could go out to dinner on Wednesday night. He decided that we should go and try The Melting Pot. It was VERY tasty. Being Thanksgiving Eve, we walked right into the restauraunt. This is a fondue restaurant where everything comes in bite size pieces and then you dip it in a sauce or cook it in a broth. You start out the meal with breads, cauliflower and baby carrots that you dip in a yummy cheese sauce followed by a Cobb salad. They then brought out a platter of different meats and vegetables, there was some chicken, steak, pork, lobster tail, salmon, and shrimp. These came out uncooked. You put a piece of meat on your little skewer and cooked it in the broth. After all this they brought out the best! We had a dark chocolate with cherries fondue. We dipped rice crispy treats, strawberries, bananas, coconut covered marsh mellows, cheesecake, and brownies. They definitely saved the best for last. We were shocked when we found out that we had been eating for 2 hours! Happy Birthday Jared!

Kelm Visit November 20-24, 2008

Last weekend Wolf & Aline came down to visit. We all had a nice visit with them. The girls talked them into going to the school and having lunch with them both. That was the highlight of the entire visit for the girls. Wolf was concerned about how much the lunch was going to be and Jocelyn piped right up with, "Just bring your whole wallet Grandpa." The boys even loved their "ornery" Grandpa. All weekend we would find them sitting on Grandpa's lap. They would keep getting books and climbing up on his lap so that he could read to them. It was very sweet.

Saturday was a busy day with 2 soccer games and youth conference activities. They made it to Jessica's soccer game (it was a good game but they lost) and were able to see Jared reffing the game, but by the end the heat had them worn out so they weren't able to go to Jocelyn's game (which by the way...she is STILL undefeated!) That night Wolf was the guest speaker for youth conference. He did such a fantastic job. For those who don't know him, here is a quick run-down of his life. He was born in Germany during the Hitler era. He was part of the Hitler Youth, lived through the bombings of Berlin, and was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints throughout all of this. He was then asked to go on a mission for the church when he was 17. Okay, so that is only a snippet of his life, but you can tell that he has let a pretty remarkable life. As I sat there and listened to his talk I was so moved that I am able to be a part of this family and able to pass down this heritage to my family. I also kept thinking about all the teenagers that were there. This WWII generation is soon going to be gone and these kids were all fortunate enough to get to listen to one that lived through that terrible time. What I got the most out of his presentation was prayer. During trials we pray a lot harder, but we still don't always get the answers that we think that we should. The Lord though is always by us and will often whisper other answers to us, if only we listen and follow the promptings.

Sunday was a much more layed back day. The girls and Grandma did a little baking and made a Barbie cake. Good times. (Sadly, I don't have a picture of the finished product...they did a great job on the cake!)

Monday morning they "headed for the hills". Thanks for coming down to visit!

Who Knew?

While I was in Utah a friend gave me an Abba cd (Mama Mia). Anyway, this past weekend I learned something new about my father-in-law. I turned Abba on so that the boys could dance a little and get their wiggles out, when my father-in-law said, "Hey, they aren't too bad." How funny to watch him, subconsciously of course, bob his head to the rhythm of the music. He had even heard some of the songs before from back in the day. Okay, so this may not be funny to most of you, but to us it was amazing because my in-laws listen to mostly operas and classical music. Who knew?

Utah Trip

It has been a little bit since I have written about our family's comings and goings. I went up to Utah to visit family for 5 days mid November. Yes everyone you heard that right. It was just me, myself, and I that went up. It was so delightful! I had such a fun time hanging out with my mom, visiting my new little niece & nephew, and mostly just being "me" for a couple of days.

These new little babies were so fun to sit and hold. Ty is such a cute little butterball who likes to eat, and eat, and eat. Every time I got to hold him it seemed that he wanted to eat. I was able to go little Ty's blessing on the Sunday that I was there.

Little Alyson is such a sweet little girl. I was so scared of picking her up the first time. She still has her feeding tube in, and I just worried about crushing her ribs and hurting her. After awhile I got used to the tube and just became more comfortable holding her. She is still only about 9 lbs so she is just itty bitty. Every time I would see her I would get teary eyed thinking of what she has gone through so far in her short little life.
Jared was the lone caregiver to our 4 children. He did such a great job. He took all the kids to the roadshow practice, the actual roadshow (in addition he took one of Jessica's friends), and made it to church (8:00 a.m.) almost on time. I am so grateful to him for letting me go up and hang out with my mom for a few days.
I didn't get the warmest of welcome homes though, besides Jared of course, whom I'm sure was counting down the minutes. Jacob didn't want a thing to do with me for an entire day, and when I went to pick up the girls after school Jocelyn looked at me disgusted and said, "I thought that dad was going to pick me up!?" Welcome back to the real world JoAnn! Well now I feel like a brand new mom again since I was able to put aside the mommy duties for a few days.

Family Memories

I was going through pictures last night and came across so many fun ones. I love looking at pictures because they just bring back so many memories. I need to be better at taking more pictures of my kids just doing everyday things. I thought that I would share a few (okay several...how do I stop at just a few?) of my favorite pictures! Enjoy!

The pictures with the boys in their blue dog shirts is one of my most favorites! Those 2 pictures were taken as we were getting ready to check out from the hospital. Poor little Jacob was having such a hard time, and of course, he didn't ever take a binkie! Jared happened to take the picture as Jacob is crying...the next thing we knew, Jayden plopped up his elbow for Jacob to suck on. Aaahhh. I love it because it shows how close they were in the womb. For several weeks after they were born they usually had a leg or arm going across the other's body. Very sweet. Now the boys are rambunctious toddlers, but Jayden is still the comforter most of the time for Jacob.