No Joke!

No April fooling--the blog is back! Though I am kind of at a loss as to how to start up again, I hate to think of all the stories that have gone unrecorded since I stopped writing. Because, let's be honest, I'm not journaling them anywhere else. (I just realized how much my phone is affecting my writing when I wanted to put an emoji after that sentence. Yikes!) Plus, I still just plain love blogs.

Today we are getting ready for our friends from Missouri, the Wheelers, to arrive for an Easter weekend visit. The kids are sooo excited that they're not even complaining about getting their rooms "company clean." We will be hanging with them, watching General Conference, and having Easter dinner with the branch missionaries this weekend. Looking forward to all of it!

Last weekend we got together with the extended Nelson family for some early Easter celebrations. It was the usual--delicious food, an egg hunt that goes faster and faster as the kids get older, and a confetti egg fight. Then, the unusual--the women and most of the girls (Aubrey included this year!) finished off the night by going to the Women's Session of General Conference together that evening. Loved that!

Ahhh, good times! Those kids can crack those eggs on each other hard.  And even though I requested not to have any eggs broken on my head, I still ended up with hair and a hoodie full of confetti. I think we all did. Stinkin' kids. Ha!

This weekend I'm hoping to start a new tradition. On campus on Monday morning, some anonymous group had left eggs filled with candy and scriptures all over. The college students were loving it, and I thought it was such a fun idea for kids, too. So instead of another egg hunt, we are going to fill our baskets full of plastic eggs with (non-melting) candy and an Easter scripture/message inside and drop them around town for people to find--at the park, on cars in parking lots, etc. Hopefully we will make some people smile, and spread the message of Easter: He is Risen!

30 Days of Thankful: This Day

Need I say moore? Hope you all had your fill of sweet potatoes, pie, and plenty of laughter.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

30 Days of Thankful: Cousins

We are so happy and thankful that Shelly and family moved back to Texas this summer so that we can get cousin time, like today's impromptu visit, even more often. I know how much I treasure childhood memories with my cousins, so it makes these moments especially poignant.





We wish even more of you lived near!

---

Pope Francis on Sunday [Oct. 13, 2013] preached about the importance of gratitude and thankfulness for the Christian community and for family life....

“Saying ‘thank you’ is such an easy thing and yet so hard,” his homily continued. “How often do we say ‘thank you’ to one another in our families? These are essential words for our life in common.”
 
The Pope gave special attention to the need to show consideration for one’s family.

“If families can say these three things, they will be fine: ‘sorry,’ ‘excuse me,’ ‘thank you.’ How often do we say ‘thank you’ in our families? How often do we say ‘thank you’ to those who help us, those close to us, those at our side throughout life? All too often we take everything for granted.”

From "Pope Francis: Thank Your Family" in the National Catholic Registry

New York: At Home

While we spent the majority of our time in NY going and doing, we did have plenty of downtime where we just let the kids play together at home. Especially since, in the first week, a random "phantom" fever passed through all of the kids save for Shayne and Lauren and necessitated a little more rest for our motley crew.

Shayne and Ethan spent much of their time battling each other with Ninjago or Bakugan...things. I don't get it (like they instinctively seem to), but it kept them busy. Seriously, there were a couple of times I made Shayne come and sit by me for a minute or give me a hug since I felt like I got to see him so little; he and Ethan were always off doing their own thing, which is a good thing.

You can see that the other kids did a pretty good job of partnering up with their cousins as well:

"Best cousins," Lauren and Gracie, skipping through the park holding hands.

Simon and Aubrey. What a pair these two are! Trouble with a capital T!

This is a moment of sweet sharing between Jillian and Alex, but rest assured it was not always two-year-old bliss.

Aside from their partners-in-crime, Shelly also made the downtime awesome by working ahead of time to amass a ton of fun projects for the kids to do...

Paper airplanes with rubberband catapults. I don't think we'll ever make paper airplanes again without this. Totally the way to go, easy enough even for the littles to catch some huge air.

Marshmallow Sculpture Contest

"Lava lamp" water bottles

Sponge water bombs

Water balloons and water balloon volleyball

Tie-dye tees

Marshmallow Poppers

We are missing all the fun so much! And not just because all of the above took place in temperatures below 100 degrees!

Let's Make a Deal!

Long, long ago, in a childhood far, far away...when the Oklahoma cousins would come down to Texas for a visit, my parents would sometimes put together their own version of the game show, Let's Make a Deal for our entertainment. My dad had a sweet blue leisure suit he would wear as the host, Monty Hall, we would put on crazy costumes and wigs and gather things to trade, and the fun would begin.

Jenny and "Monty Hall" circa 1986  

The rest of the crew...with me in the middle in the suit and tie.  

This memory was resurrected over Craft Weekend. Dad's blue Monty Hall suit is no longer with us, but he visited Goodwill to find a suitable replacement. And Mom and Aunt Helen put together some sweet prize packages for the kids. (It's funny, my memories of the game involved a lot more gag prizes like cans of cat food and bags of trash, but now that the people in charge are grandparents, we ended up with more items like gift cards, movies, lip gloss, candy, etc. My, how times have changed!)

We gathered the kids together and explained the game, and how one of the rules is that you have to dress up in a crazy costume to play. I kind of expected them to put on their regular stuff, all matched up, but instead was cracking up at their mish-mash selections. This was just like old times.

Then Monty showed up...

 

And the wheeling and dealing began!

   

Wait, what is that you are wondering? Who is that in the background holding Aubrey? Well, let me introduce you to...

 

Brendo with hair! (Though he does need a trim, it appears.)

All for some Let's Make a Deal fun. I'm not going to lie...it was a little crazy and a little long, what with so many little kids, some of whom didn't quite "get" the game. But the older ones were loving it and are already looking forward to next year.

Thanks for a fun tradition revived Nana, Papa, and Nanny!

12 kids, ages 9 and under

That title should pretty much sum up my post about the kids and craft weekend. Shelly's four, my four, Shannon's three, and Bryant. Phew! We knew we had to keep them busy to keep ourselves from going insane, plus we wanted to help them start creating some lasting memories of cousin time, like we have with our Oklahoma cousins when we were younger. So, they had their own set of activities for the weekend.

They had their own crafts...

 


(The "magic" black painting idea came from eighteen25, and the rubberband maze idea came from unschool me.)

A money-making venture...

And swim time at Nana's.

 

That all went, well, swimmingly. Then, on Sunday, we found out what happens when we don't have things planned out for them. By the end of the day we had wrestling matches on the living room floor (Simon and Bryant had been eyeing each other and looking for a throw-down all weekend)...

 

And a silly string battle in the backyard.

 

In other words, some serious chaos. Fun in its own right, but a bit more trying on their poor mothers' nerves. But, hey, here's to the memories!

Oh, and on Saturday night the grandparents orchestrated a throw-back activity that had us all laughing and the kids already asking for it for next year...but that gets its own post tomorrow!

For her

 

In case you've never been formally introduced, this is Emma, Brendon's mom. She's made some appearances on the blog here and there over the years, and even had a post dedicated to her supermom skills last Mother's Day. Every time I hear a crazy mother-in-law story, I say a little prayer of thanks for this woman. She is very loved.

Early in February this year, Brendon emailed his siblings and said, "Hey, it's Mom's ---- birthday this year on Thanksgiving, let's throw her a party!" From there, the planning began for the biggest Moore family surprise ever, and last week it finally all went down. Mom thought she and Dad were going to Tyson and Kimmy's house in Colorado for a quiet Thanksgiving with just their little family. Bwahahahaha! When the other TWENTY-FOUR of us showed up, it was the shock of a lifetime. It was the best.

Let me tell you, I don't know how it actually stayed a secret for soooooo long. Oh wait, yes I do...everyone pretty much stopped talking to her, poor woman! She thought her children and grandchildren were all too busy for her these days, when really it was the fact that no one wanted to keep lying to her, or worse, accidentally spill the beans. Boy, are we all glad that is over! Keeping a secret is exhausting!

We had a terrific time in Colorado and were sad when our visit came to an end. (Thanks, Tyson and Kim for hosting us all!) We have so many pictures from the week that I couldn't bring myself to choose just a couple for this post, so I created a photo album of some (many) of my favorites. The link is over on the right if you want more of a play-by-play of our week.

Happy Birthday, again, Mom. We love you and promise to call you soon. No more tricks!

(And Happy Birthday TODAY, to my mom as well! Love you!)

Friday Photos: Part 1

Three separate Friday Photos posts are on their way! (Yes, this is me, acknowledging my slackerness.)

We have to go back a few weeks for the first couple sets of pictures. The last weekend in August, cousins Ethan and Lauren came to stay with us while Shelly and Allen were getting to know their new stomping grounds in New York state. (I'm still in shock and denial that they're moving!)

The weekend involved lots of play-do messes that kept them busy...

   

some lightsaber duels...

                

and sacked out kids at the end of each day.

                 

After the cousins left, Gracie fell asleep before dinner and slept right on through until the next day!

Also, it just so happened that that same weekend, two other cousins were having a very big weekend: both Jarrett and Rachel got baptized! While we couldn't make it all the way up to Ohio to be a part of Jarrett's special day, I did decide at the last minute to drive up with Mom to Rachel's baptism in Oklahoma, all the kids in tow.

 

It was a brief, but fun visit...that scarred the poor children on ever getting baptized themselves.

Totally just kidding, Shannon! ;)

The story: Rachel does not like to put her head under water, so the whole "baptism by immersion" thing was pretty scary for her. What the kids actually took away from it, and have been talking about ever since, was how brave she was in overcoming her fear in order to do something so important as being baptized. Way to go, Rach!

              

Congrats again to Rachel and Jarrett! (Rachel and BFF cousin Ethan are pictured here.)