Okay. so you're probably sick to death of me blogging by now...but really, what else am I supposed to do after the house is clean and we are all packed up to leave for vacation?? But really, this will be my last post for a couple of weeks, I promise!!
So, I found this AWESOME ribbon in my bag of party goods the last time I returned home from the Dollar Tree. Apparently Noah thought we really needed it! Oh how I have to watch these children like hawks!!!

One year ago...

How time flies!!

Our sweet Larkin turned one yesterday!! She is such a joy. I think that she has been my happiest baby. She is always ready to smile and giggle with any willing participant. But, she is also my most stubborn. She fights tooth and nail until she gets her way. She won't cuddle but LOVES to give kisses these days. I just love it! She has turned into a picky eater lately...actually she won't eat much of anything. She is certainly not as chunky as she should be. It makes me crazy!! She likes to play with her siblings and pull every toy off the toy bins that she can reach. She is a mischief maker, she is!
Happy First Birthday, Sparkly Larkily!! Oh how we love you.

Here she is in the darling outfit that Grandma Carrot gave her. She also loves her new baby doll. She is taking a nap with it right now!
Blow out your candle!! Me and the boys made her a big pink heart cake... that turned out better than any cake I have ever made. But, when I was folding laundry, two disgusting trolls climbed up on the counter and gouged the cake with their claws!! I repaired it as best I could, but...
Yep, I think she likes it. Add cake to the list of bananas, cheese, and milk that Larkin will eat!
After a bit, she really dug in and made a tremendous mess!! Way to go, baby girl. We love you sooooo much!!

I FINALLY finished my Christmas stockings that I started two years ago...Larkin and I finally have one! I love them!!! (thanks to all this snow...I've gotten a lot of projects done!!)

The order: Larkin, me, Joshua, Arwen, Aaron, and Noah.

Merry Early Christmas!! We celebrated a little early and opened all of the Christmas presents from Grandma Carrot (Karen) and Grandpa Dana since there was A LOT and we didn't want to lug them to Cali and back! Thanks so much Grandma and Grandpa!! We loved EVERYTHING!!
Joshua got a really cool, big train and LOVED it!! It has already run out of batteries, he has played with it so much! He about flipped when he opened it and FREAKS out if anyone gets near it!!

Here's Noe in his Spiderman jammies with his gum...his two favorite presents! He also really likes his bug vacuum and has already caught a spider in it...that Josh secretly let free up in their room! Naughty!!
Larkily loved her bath toys...obviously...they went straight to her mouth!!
Here's Arnie and her loot! She LOVES her jewelry box and all the goods that go in it! She got a really soft, pretty, pink sweatshirt that is soooo cute!
Thanks Grandma and Grandpa...you did great!! You guys are the best and we love you lots!!

Yippee hooray for snow days!! Here are the kids before we headed off to church bright and early this morning. They were soooo excited to see that it was snowing when they got out of the bath this morning!!
What sweet, CLEAN kids! I love it!

Hmmmm....says Josh. What is this stuff??
This was seriously the face that Noah made when I whispered to him the middle of Sacrament meeting that he didn't have to go to Primary today and that he got to go home and play in the snow instead! Actually, I think it was the face ALL the kids made!!
Yummy...
Joshua's probably tasted like chocolate!! Not chocolate rain...chocolate snow!!
The kids and Aaron lasted outside for a goodly amount of time while I tried to whip up a warm meal for them. I'm pretty sure Noah's eyes were frozen shut by the time I took this picture!!
After the boys got cold, Arwen stayed outside with Aaron for a while longer. What a sweet little girl!!

We celebrated Arwen's 6th birthday yesterday! She turns 6 on December 20th, but had her friend party yesterday since we will be in Cali for her actual birthday. We decided to do a "Pinkalicous" party. "Pinkalicious" is a book about a little girl whose Mom makes pink cupcakes and the little girl eats too many and turns pink. It's such a cute story! So, we decided to get tons of pink decorations, have the girls wear their pink clothes and decorate pink cupcakes. Then we played "Pin the Pinktail on Pinkalicous." It was so fun!!
Arwen has such cute, sweet little girlfriends!

Here they are decorating their cup cakes. We even had pink strawberry milk. And I found pink M&m's, pink wrapped Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and pink wrapped Dove chocolates. So fun!!
Happy Birthday Arwen!! She had so much fun and got tons of really cute things from her friends!
This picture is mostly for Scott, my brother...who I am pretty sure doesn't check my blog...but just in case...I gave each kid a goodie bag full of pink things. I had bubble tape in it...you know...6 feet of bubble gum. Anyways, me and Scott used to chew it when we were little. Once we had some and my dad was video recording us and Scott put all 6 feet of gum in his mouth at once. It is was soooo funny! Must be a boy thing, because both of my boys did the same thing. Joshua was drooling all over the place and Noah just kept saying, "I love gum."

What better to do on a "snow day" than get caught up with my blogging! Speaking of "snow days..." I remember the first year we were in Oregon and everyone told us that it NEVER snows in Oregon and yet, every year, when it has snowed, everyone gets all surprised like, like they've never seen it before! It cracks me up!! We only got to go to Sacrament meeting today because there was like, 2 inches of snow on the ground! The snow is fine...it's the crazy ice storms Oregon has that scare me!



A few weeks ago, we got to go up to Mount Hood and ride the Polar Express. Joshua was in heaven!! He adores trains!!

Really, it wasn't as scary as Noah's face says it was!
Pretty much, Larkin was a squirmy little worm the WHOLE time!
Here's Noah claiming his BENCH on the train. Our train car, by the way, was ghetto! I peeked into the car behind ours and it was NICE. It looked like the one on the Polar Express movie...there was an island in the middle for the workers to make hot chocolate and it had Christmas lights and was light and cheery. We couldn't even see out our windows....they had lots of condensation on them and were scummy! It was fun, though.
Here are the kids with their cousins, showing us their punched tickets. It's hard to tell, but the conductor punched ,"Naughty," into every single one of them ;)

Yeah, so Joshua has so many nick names...most of them he has given himself...Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Factory...well he earned a new one this night from Uncle Matthew. He is now...Pedro. Pretty funny, because ever since he was born I have had people tell me that he looks Mexican...I once even had a friend tell me that he looks black. And people are always confused as to where he gets his dark eyes, hair and skin. I guess maybe they are just comparing him to his fair skinned, pale eyed siblings, but come on! He is just more Hudson than Nielsen.


Daddy always has the special touch and can tame the beasties!! The train ride was fun. It went back and forth on the track a few times while we had hot chocolate and cookies. Then we stopped at the North Pole and let a bunch of "Elves" on. While they sang songs with us, Santa made his way from one car to the next and gave all the kids a bell. Then they read us, "The Polar Express." It was really great...and next year, I'll request the un-ghetto car!!

Yippee!! Here are the family pictures one of my very best friends, Jen took of my cute little family! I am sooooo excited!!
There is this really cool old white washed looking barn that I thought would be really neat in the back ground of our pictures. It's down by Aaron's work. We tried to ask the people who own it if we could use it in our pictures, but they were never home! Hopefully they wouldn't have minded!

This one is so cute! I love how Larkin and Joshua are goofing off together. They do this ALL the time and it is great...until Josh get too rough and hurts Larkin. And I liked it because Noah is smiling :)
This is my favorite of Aaron and I...it's like an ad for Abercrombie...except we have on way too many clothes for that!!
Close-up!! I love close-ups of other people, but it 's always a little weird to see them of myself. But, I really like this picture. Isn't Aaron sooo cute??
Ahhh!! This is my absolute most favorite picture ever!! I love cute little Larkin! She is such a doll! Check out the boys' sweet kicks...they're pretty stylish!!
And here's me and my girls! I love it! The stinky boys would not smile or cooperate for their picture...the naughties!! Anyways, I love them! Thanks Jen!!

Merry Christmas!! I love this time of year. We have lots of little family traditions that we do every year that are so fun!! We started off the festivities this year by taking the kids to pick out a Christmas tree. (We actually gave it to the missionaries since we won't be here for the holidays, but the kids had lots of fun picking one out!)


Santa is at the tree farm every year. He told the kids that they all looked about a year older than last year...go figure. Noah and Joshua want Silly Putty and Arwen wants bubbles. Noah was concerned that maybe Santa didn't know what Silly Putty was, but Santa assured him that he did!!
Here are me and Larkin standing in front of the cute tree we picked out for the Elders!
Here's Noah doing one of his super cool poses!! Pretty much, he's a super hero!
Joshua was just running around like a chicken trying to keep up with the other two!Here's a picture of Arwen looking out onto a little lake with geese on it. The kids had a ton of fun feeding their hot dog buns to the geese...always money well spent around here!!

Here's a "fairy ring" the kids found. There were tons of mushrooms all over the place. Gotta love Arwen's face here...!!

Friday, instead of braving the "Black Friday" crowds, we decided to head down to the coast to go to the Tillamook Cheese Factory and play at the beach. (Well...we got a late start because we had to get Josh into his Doctor to figure out why it looks like he has leprosy and why his ears were rotting from the inside out...seriously, they were so stinky!! He had a double ear infection and a sinus infection...poor kid and I had no idea. He never even got a fever. As for the leprous skin...once again...they have no idea what is causing that. I just got a bunch more prescriptions for him. Poor kid!!)

Me and Aaron got to take a few pictures together because the kids opted to be lazy and watch a movie in the van! Fine with me...it's rare that we get to be alone :)

The weather was perfect...I didn't freeze for the first time ever...It's even cold in the summer on the coast!

Here were the kids after they had drank all their hot chocolate...except Noah...he was way too busy playing in the sand to pose for ANY pictures!!

Here we are drinking our homemade hot chocolate...courtesy of Aaron. Thanks Aaron:)

Oh...there's Noah!! See, we really did bring him with us! Such a fun day. The cheese factory was fun as ever and everyone enjoyed their ice cream cones! I had a lady come up to me and tell me how delightful my children were...and trust me...they were being their usual naughty selves...Noah spilled FOUR cups of water, on purpose! That was so nice...that sure does not happen enough for me!! I need to make sure that I do that more...cause it makes all the difference in the world to a crazy mom!

Yippy!! The kids finally filled up their marble jar and earned their Christmas present up to The Great Wolf Lodge, in Washington. How did they do it, you ask?? Well...by being good and helping mom clean up around the house. It took quite a while, but they did it!!

I know, I know Arwen told me this was a naughty picture because Larkin is showing her midriff...and I agree...only I love it!! In my defense, this is the swim suit I bought for Larkin the first time we went to the Lodge and is size 3 months. She turns 1 in a couple of weeks!!

Here's Ar shooting down the water slide...she is fearless! It was really fun to let her and Noah kind of do their own thing. I didn't feel like I had to watch their every move...which was great since Larkin was always trying to get into mischief...crawling off into deeper and deeper water!!

Noah really impressed me. He's usually a little timid with things and he just jumped in the water and "swam" like a fish. He had the greatest time ever!!

Silly Josh!! He looked like he had been in a fight when we took his goggles off. He had red circles around his eyes to go with his rashy, ouchy skin.

I LOVE this picture of Larkin. After about 5 minutes of crawling around, her knees were raw and so she discovered the "Mowgli" crawl. That brings back such fond memories of sweet baby Joshua!! I also love her little bum!!

Noah talked the family into braving the hot tub outside. It was really fun.

This picture is the greatest. Larkin nearly NEVER will get comfy enough to go to sleep in our arms. We wore her out enough that she did!! I was so happy!! (Notice that I am still dripping wet...well Noah wanted to go on some of the big kid slides that are under the giant bucket that drops 1000 gallons of water down on the park every 10 minutes or so. Noah chickened out about going on the slide at the last minute and as I was trying to talk him into it, the bucket dropped RIGHT on top of us!! Noah screamed and I just laughed!!)

The lodge added a new attraction that was so fun when you had gotten your chlorine intake for the day. It's called MagiQuest. The kids had wands and got to play an interactive wizard game throughout the HUGE lodge. We had to travel up and down 5 flights of stairs over and over...great work out!! It was tons of fun!! Arwen and Noah completed their quests and the 3 adventures and got certificates.