Jones Family

Bath

The day before Thanksgiving we headed down to Bath. There is a military R&R place that we can stay in for only 10 pounds a night, so we decided to spend a few days there. We got there about 6 pm and got checked in. It was a little single wide trailer with 3 bedroom, a kitchen, bathroom, living room and dining room. It was perfect for us. We unpacked and watched a movie!

The next morning we headed to Bath. It was a city built a long time ago and it is where the Romans came to use the Roman Baths. I'm not too good with the history, but it is really old. We saw the Abbey, the Roman Bath's, the Jane Austen Center and walked around the town taking in all the history. It was very pretty. Then we headed back to our hotel and spent the evening playing games and watching a movie.

View from the bridge

Bath Abbey

Roman Bath's from a natural hot spring

Roman Baths

Roman Baths with Bath Abbey in background

Remi and Broden with a man in costume

Bath Abbey

Christas Market with Abbey in background

Friday morning we headed to Cheddar Gorge, the birthplace of Cheddar Cheese. It was a huge canyon with lots of caves and this cute little town built right into the cliffs. We got to explore the caves and town, then climbed the hundreds of stairs to the top of a mountain, then more stairs to the top of a tower to check out the view. The kids were troopers. They had fun and I didn't have a heart attack watching them go up and down the stairs. It was a straight shot of stairs, so one slip and you go all the way down.

Looks like a water fall, but it is all rock, not even wet!

Yes that is a straight drop off behind them.

After Cheddar Gorge we stopped in Bath on our way back to the hotel. We wanted to see the Market at and lights at night and let the kids ride the carousel.

Saturday morning we checked out and drove through Lacock, where part of Harry Potter was filmed. There are actually tons of movies filmed there. Then we drove to some stone ruins, then to Stone Henge. It was neat to see, but not really the highlight of the trip. I thought it was interesting that you pay to go walk around it. You can't touch it or get near it. You can see it without paying, just on the other side of the fence. It was neat to see, but a little too much history and speculating for me.

Lacock Abbey

stone ruins

Family at Stone Henge

Put her right to sleep

We had so much fun on this trip just hanging out and being together. I enjoyed seeing all the sights, but I think the "hotel" was my favorite part. It was so fun to play games, watch movies and read books and have no responsibilities. The kids were so well behaved too. It is getting easier to take them to do things and I think they have more fun now too. I'm excited to discover more of these R&R "hotels."

When we were in Cheddar we bought some "real" cheddar cheese. We took it back to the hotel, but were too full to eat any that night. The next day when we got home we searched all over for it, but couldn't find it. Bummer! We decided Alissa must have put it in some random drawer. Hopefully the next people found it before it started smelling:)

Pre-Christmas Activities

Remi's Christmas Program She was an elf

Krinkle elf

Watching a movie with dad

Getting ready to deliver 12 days of Christmas gift

Building Gingerbread(foam) house

Finished project

Boys building Santa's house

Finished project

Parker sneaking a cookie

Ready for movie night, snacks by Remi

Movie night with friends

Alissa hiding. It was a good hiding spot, never would have found her except she pulled everything out of the cupboard and left it.

Throwing Reindeer food so Santa can find our house

The glitter glistens so Santa can see our house and the reindeer eat the oatmeal!

December was filled with so many fun activities! We started off making decorations and buying a $20 fake tree from the base thrift store. It was actually really nice. I wanted to do the real meaning of Christmas, so we made ornaments having to do with that. Stars, gifts, candy canes, wreaths, bows, and angels. We talked about the real meaning of each and sang songs while we decorated the tree. The rest of the month was filled with so many fun activities!

Remi's Christmas program
Making and decorating cookies
Doing the 12 days of Christmas for a family
Christmas shopping
Trying to catch the Mad Elf doing 12 days of Christmas for us
Making foam gingerbread houses
Making frames, cookies and reindeer food at the Boden's house
Watching our elf, santa and reindeer grow
Coloring
Making a gingerbread house
Drinking hot chocolate
Broden's Christmas party
Broden's last day of school
Singing songs
Eating cookies and candy
Reading stories
Skype Christmas party and Piano concertat Grandma and Grandpa DD's house
Treasure hunts for movies and a Children's nativity
and most importantly thinking of ways to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving table

Parker sneaking food from Drew's plate

The week before Thanksgiving week was crazy! Blake informed me Sunday night(after watching our friends 3 kiddos for the weekend and another friend's little girl for an evening while they were at the hospital with newborn) that he was in charge of the Dental Squadron Thanksgiving dinner. Then he fell asleep before giving me any more details. I was a little panicked thinking we were supposed to provide Thanksgiving dinner for over 100 people. He cleared it up the next night though explaining we are in charge, but everyone is bringing food for a pot luck and that there are people in charge of kid activities. Basically we were in charge of organization, decorations and adult entertainment.

So, being cheep as I am, and having no time to order anything online we got creative. We went outside for walks and hikes and collected sticks, pine cones, berries, and leaves. We needed center pieces for 20 tables and some extra decorations for the walls and food tables. We didn't bring any of our holiday decorations, so we couldn't even use what we already had. They are still in Nebraska. So, by Thursday night I had 10 jars with pinecones, berries and branches and leaves in them and 6 pumpkins with fresh flowers(left over from Relief Society activity). I still needed 4 centerpieces.

I had some fabric someone had given me in Ohio that was perfect fall colors. So I cut into different size rectangles and sewed them into tubes with one end sewn shut. Then I put some rocks from outside into the bottom and stuffed them full of plastic bags. I hot glued the top shut around a stick, wrapped some twine stuff around them, then pulled some leaves off another decoration and glued them on with some grassy stuff left over from a project a few years ago. And tada, I had 10 little pumpkins that I loved.

So We decorated the 20 tables and 5 food tables and I spent a total of $0!!! I did end up buying some stuff for the kids activities, but nothing for decorations. Blake came up with some Thanksgiving word searches and trivia and a little game to figure out what language the "thank you" was in. There was a theme of Thanksgiving around the world so I made a little subway art thing that had thank you in a bunch of different languages. I wish I would have taken pictures, but amid all the craziness the kids started getting sick and Remi had an eye doctor appointment. So the top picture is all I have. I used the same things at the Dental party.

At the beginning of the week we had planned to do a Thanksgiving dinner Saturday afternoon, but when Friday came we were tired and the kids were sick and Ingersoll's kids were sick. So, we postponed it to Sunday after church. Saturday we celebrated Parker's birthday and did some of the cooking. Then Sunday we finished up the prep and had Ingersoll's, Sanderson's(Broden's church and school teachers) and Brother Marrott(his family moved back to the states already) over for a fun, yummy Thanksgiving dinner. There were 8 adults and 7 kids. We are so grateful we have friends to spend time with when we are so far from family.

Parker was so proud of himself for climbing up onto this table. I tried not to laugh, but he was so excited and was clapping. I couldn't resist clapping with him.

He's 1!!!

The week of Parker's birthday was crazy! But we are so grateful for him and had fun celebrating his first birthday.

Parker is so much fun and is such a good baby. He started sleeping through the night about a month before his first birthday and was still taking 2-3 naps during the day. He stopped sleeping through the night while we were in Brugge, but as soon as we got home he was sleeping through the night again. His last time nursing was on his 1st birthday:):(

Parker loves his brother and sisters. Often when he wakes up I will just send someone upstairs to play with him for a while before I go get him out of his bed. They will go climb in the crib with him and just play. He loves it! He started walking when he was 10 months old and hasn't stopped since. He has also learned to climb onto the little kid chairs and table we have. I was trying to teach him to show how old he was the week of his birthday. I would say,"Parker, how old are you?" Then I would hold up 1 finger. Then I would help him hold up 1 finger and start clapping and say, "YAY!" So, eventually I would say,"Parker, how old are you?" He would just look at me, smile and start clapping. It was too cute. I guess he thought we should just clap instead of showing the age:) We love Parker so much and enjoy watching him learn and develop.