Do you ever get the desire to go out and do something just for yourself?  Logan and I make sure we have date night almost every week, and we also try to find things that we can do together so that our lives are not so completely different.  I am sure that most of you know what I mean with that idea.  Anyway. This week we started a new venture with each other.  Friday was our first martial arts class together, and we have a babysitter lined up and so that we can go to class together every Friday afternoon. 

 Logan has wanted to begin a martial arts class for as long as I have known him.  Not because he thinks someone is going to attack him at any time, but mostly for the self awareness and fitness factors.  The two main problems that held him back were money and he thought that his class would be comprised mostly of fourteen year old boys.  

Things came together for us and we were able to find ways around both of these obstacles. We had a great time on Friday and both of us are very excited to get into this new sport.  We have been practicing a lot together and we are in a race to see who can become flexible the quickest!  

Also, I have wondered what our neighbors think of our new hobby. During the class we learned how to get out of a choke hold, and today we were standing in front of our kitchen window trying to figure out how we could escape of someone had his or her whole arm wrapped around our necks.  It probably didn't look very good to any onlookers.  They would have known everything was okay if they could see me laughing.  I am very ticklish on my neck!

Logan and I are also planning on starting a free online BYU course titled "Developing Self Reliant People."  We will be registering as soon as we have the materials ready.  We are excited for this course as well!

Speaking of taking classes together I have implemented a new idea with the kids.  I try to have one-on-one time with each of the kids one or two times a week.  This week I decided to give the time a little bit more purpose.  At the beginning of the week I asked the kids a subject they were interested in (Horses for Evelyn and Adalie, and dinosaurs for Jack), and we picked up books from the library on their chosen topic.  Our 'momma time' has been spent making games, reading books, and playing computer games to learn about these animals.  I have been having a lot of fun, and I think they enjoy it as well.

Today (Sunday) Jackson woke up and threw up all over himself and his bed.  Definitely not the best way to start the day.  He was his normal happy hyper self pretty soon afterward, but we knew that church was out of the question.  Logan and I decided that if we couldn't go to church we would bring primary to our house.  We decided on a 'Service and Loving Others' theme and proceeded to prepare sharing time and separate lessons to meet the ages of our kids.  The kids were great and I think all of us had a fun time.

These first pictures are from a few weeks ago when we went sledding at the nearby golf course. 

Maren was a great sport.  She is actually wide awake in this picture, and obviously resigned to her fate.  

The kids announced that they were a cake and Jack was the candle

These pictures will be great for blackmail when Jack gets older.  He and Adalie decided to switch pajamas. Jack was practicing his stance and his kicking.

Logan and I couldn't help thinking about the Mr. T speed walker commercial! If you haven't seen it you should look it up on Youtube.

Goodbye for now.  I am going to go over and check out the speed walker commercial.

Adalie and Evelyn were just playing in the corner.  Adalie started crying and Evelyn stood up quickly and hurried away.  This is the conversation that took place afterwards.

Me- "Evelyn- why is Adalie so sad?"

E- I don't know. We were just playing a game.

Me- What game where you playing?

E- It's called 'the biting game.'

Me- Oh. How do you play that game?

E- Someone sits on the other player and bites them.  Then it is the other person's turn.

Me- Interesting. Did Adalie get a turn?

E- No

Me- You should go kiss Adalie where you bit her and say you are sorry (she kissed Adalie's ear), then you need to spend some time in your room thinking about the reasons why that is not a good game to play. 

Today I will tell the highlights of our week through pictures.  I have also searched through our cameras to find the good photos that never made it to our blog.  

 Logan created a great snow house with the kids.  This was under a tree in the back corner of our backyard. Notice the use of the word 'was.' The day after this masterpiece was created the temperatures rose to 48 degrees. I am not sure what the overnight temperature was, but this beautiful masterpiece was destroyed.

 I am not even surprised that Jack isn't wearing a coat.

 I am shocked and amazed to see our sweet Adalie enjoying this fun fort without a coat or hat.

 We used to have dates every week.  Something unexplainable happened last month and we didn't have even one!  Yesterday we had an amazing date!  We went out and rekindled the romance with bowling, and eating at a great local food joint. One of the topics of conversation was the gun control issue and how so many people are taking it way out of hand.  Most of the arguments are emotional attacks that don't hold water... Then we went and rented The Dark Knight and picked up movie snacks.  Anyway... We had a wonderful time... Minus the atrocious bowling score...

 I almost cried. Good thing I had fun bowling!

The good looking couple refreshed from our date.

On to the other photos...

 Jack's first day of preschool

 Adalie's first day of preschool

Maren-in-a-box

 Apple picking and a trip to the pumpkin patch!

Evelyn's prize pumpkin

I love this picture of Jack!

 Some more pictures of our new car!

Join us again next week for more of The Hazard Chronicles.

Happy Sunday everyone!  This week has been busy and fun at the Hazard home.  We are proud to say that the play room is finished!  I will let the pictures tell the story with that one.  Also, Jackson has been amazing this week.  He is very close to being fully potty trained, and we began the process last Monday.  Here is his story..

I honestly have been stressing about potty training twins for... hmmm... since I was five weeks pregnant and I found out that I was having twins.  I am going to put a little disclaimer here. I will be talking about potty training and things associated with this exciting phase.  If you would rather remain blissfully unware then you are free to stop reading.

Lets talk for a minute about my basic philosophy of potty training that I decided on when I potty trained Evelyn. I decided to give her all of the information that she needed and to let her do it completely on her own schedule.  This worked great for her. She went back and forth for a while, but finally was potty trained mostly on her own.  I decided to do the same thing with A and J.  Jack caught on pretty quickly.  When he was in the mood he could tell me when he had to go, and even go on command.  He was beginning to catch on.  Adalie, however, was not.  She is my amazing little 'tryer.' She will try when she feels like it, but up until this second in her little life she has only gone potty once on the toilet. I think it was a fluke.  There was another time that she went poop because I recognized she was going and in one fell swoop I had her on the potty.  I don't really count this, but I figured it would be good to give her that recognition as well.

I have been waiting for the time to begin the process with both of them.  As the holidays approached I made the wise decision to wait until they were over.  Traveling, family, craziness, messed up schedules, etc. are no good for potty training.  When we arrived home I made the wonderful decision to just take on the challenge of potty training Jack.  I thought that maybe Adalie would feel a little bit of competition and decide to jump on the band wagon (absolutely no luck with that one).  I still ask Adalie if she would like to try.  Every time I get the same sing-song 'no' answer.

On Monday Jack stayed perfectly dry in the morning and then had a few accidents in the middle of the day. That evening, however, he stayed dry until bedtime.  The next two days he only had a few accidents, and I am proud to say that he has had multiple days where he is completely accident free. We, however, are still working on getting to the potty on time when it is time to go.  Does anyone have any ideas for this one? Once or twice a day he will just be a tiny bit late getting there.

On Monday I asked him every 15-30 minutes if he needed to go.  I quickly realized that he knew exactly when it was time and my asking did no good.  I put it completely up to him and he is doing great!  At night time he still wears diapers (with underwear over the top because he LOVES them), but he has woken up dry two days this week.  Life is looking good!  Jack and I also went on a date to the present store (dollar store) and out for ice cream because he filled up his stamp potty chart.  We had a great time.  He informed me that he wanted to work at Paul Bunyan (a local fast food restaurant) and then become a lumberjack and load trees on big trucks when he grows up.  He did, however, tell me that he would rather be a dentist than work at McDonalds.  I guess that is progress, right?

Potty training stories are now over. You can resume reading if you were a little bit squeamish about the above topic.  You now know what has been on my mind a lot this week.

Some cute stories about the kids:
On Thursday I overheard Evelyn playing in the playhouse with Adalie and Jackson.  They were playing Scripture Scouts.  Evelyn is Sue, Jack is Skyler and Adalie is always the little dog named Boo.  Anyway, I overheard Evelyn asking Adalie and Jackson how we knew that Jesus loves us.  Then, she started listing a bunch of things that Jesus did for us.  After that she explained that there were many things WE could do to show Jesus that we love Him.  She listed a bunch of ideas and then asked Adalie and Jackson to brainstorm with her.  I could not be more proud of my kids!  Especially Evelyn.  She is SUCH a good example and a good big sister.

Tonight, after bedtime, Jack was completely pushing my buttons.  I heard his sweet singsongy voice calling me downstairs yet again.  I went down a little bit upset and I found him staring intently at his hand.  He was using his fingers on one hand to create the handshape for 'I love you' in sign language on his other hand. He held up his hand proudly and said, "This means airplane!"  Which is true, but not what I expected.  Then, he said sweetly, "It also means 'I love you.'" My heart just about melted!  He has been trying to get this handshape down for a few days.  He always asks me to make it for him.

I have been doing Signing Time with the kids and teaching them Sign Language.  I have been having a lot of fun with it, and they have too.  I should have began a long time ago, but secretly I was scared that I wouldn't know all of the answers when I felt like I should.  I finally got over that feeling and we are having a great time!

On to the playhouse pictures! It should be noted that Logan was amazing for this project.  He built this house in one day without any plans.  He did a wonderful job! We had all of the vinyl lettering done by a woman in our ward named Kerri Jackson.  She did a great job.


Welcome to our play room!

The dress up corner.  I love the fancy cowboy 'dress up' sign equipt with hooks to hang up hats.

We love this thrift store find!  We used it to create a toy box for brick block storage.
 

He wasn't smiling so we told him to at least make a face for the camera

Showing off the playhouse

The window sill is our 'truck center.'

Maren is posing to show the 'house' underneath the treehouse. Notice the stacking boxes with papa's wonderful home made blocks and the fun foamy 'wooden' bulding blocks with screws from Grandma and Grandpa Hazard

Proudly diplaying the bookshelf!  This is actually to demonstrate that this wonderful bookshelf is too high for some of our kids to reach!  Don't worry though, they all have access to plenty of books!  That is one thing they are not deprived of.

The closest we came to a smile! 

This is the view from the door.  The treehouse is obviously on the left, the toy box is on the far right wall, and the dress up station is in a cubby area behind the door.

Six years.  Our blog has been going strong for six years.  We have managed to publish on almost every Sunday since we set our minds to it.  These last few months we have dropped the ball.  I am here to tell you that we are back and ready to go strong. I am putting this specifically in the blog so that we can hold ourselves to it.  It is a wonderful feeling to hold a published and bound copy of our annual Hazard Chronicles.  These stories and updates are priceless to us.  Thanks for joining us on the journey.

Hey. This is Logan. I know I made the same promise a few weeks ago. Well, Rachel apparently has more zeal than I do because it was her that spurred this renewed effort at blogging. It is true that our lives are considerably different now than they were when we started this thing, which should give us even more reason to write. Unfortunately, this also gives us more reasons, distractions, and excuses not to chronicle our adventures in writing. But we are here, and we're not giving up. Now, back to Rachel.

Blah, Blah, Blah.  On to the holidays! But first I just need to put in there that Logan built a tree house. In one day. We decided to redecorate the play room and create a fun environment for imagination.  It just so happens that the kids love The Magic Tree House.  Also, it just so happens that the Scripture
Scouts (which the kids also love) happens in their tree house.  And is just so happens that tree houses are extremely cool!  Anyway. We are in the midst of creating a fun play land for our crazy kids. I will update with pictures and video next week when it is completed (yes, i put that in the blog to give us a deadline...).  Just as a side note- Logan is amazing when he decides to do something.  I blink and it is done!  He's great.

Now we are really going to talk about Christmas. Did I mention that I have great kids? We now have an awesome minivan with a DVD player, but if you know our family you probably know that the DVD player doesn't get used much.  Anyway. I asked the kids if they wanted to watch Tangled on the way to grandma's house.  They seemed disappointed until Evelyn mentioned watching Planet Earth instead.  Smiles all around and the vote was unanimous! We have really come to enjoy watching Planet Earth together.  Thanks Griffin for the great Christmas gift a long time ago!  The shows have given our kids a lot of knowledge about animals and the world around them.  They also have a great understanding of how the food chain works.

We began our adventure to Grandma Almond's house.  I must insert here that our kids are very good travelers.  I enjoy driving with them.. for the most part.

We stopped in Rexburg to visit for a few minutes and to enjoy a quick Christmas gift exchange before we finished our trip to Utah.  We gave some fun things and got some fun things.  G and G Hazard gave the kids the Scripture Scouts CD's of the Book of Mormon stories.  If you haven't heard of these you should look into them and you should get them for your kids!  It is a story you listen to about three kids and a dog who form a scripture club.  They tell the stories, act out the stories, sing fabulous songs about stories and important principles found in the scriptures, and they have really cool object lessons to teach about the ideas in the scriptures.  The kids love them and are already singing the songs and pretending to be the characters (they sat in their tree house this morning and listened while they acted out the stories).  My family must think we are crazy because of how excited we got about it.  Anyway. Logan and I ended up buying the New Testament version for the kids during out Utah stay.

We had a great time at Grandma Almond's house.  The kids enjoyed playing with all of the 'Grandma toys,' and we enjoyed talking, visiting, playing with kids, and playing games.  On Christmas Eve we headed to Shannon and Tyson's house in Layton. They were great hosts and we had a wonderful time.  We played games, talked, enjoyed the X-box Kinect challenges, and playing with Tirza.  Pictures below will help tell the story of our time with my family.

Christmas morning was great fun.  I love having kids!  It feels like I am getting a ton of presents even though they are actually for my kids!

I have to say that the tradition of making Christmas gifts lived on this year.  I love making Christmas gifts because it gets me into the spirit and I am able to focus and think about each person individually.  This year was especially exciting because I made repeats of some of the gifts for myself!  I also got the kids in on the action.  They made fun bubble magnets for their grandparents.  They had a fun time and I had fun seeing what ideas they came up with for artwork.  I hope to carry this tradition on with them.  Making gifts has become a big part of Christmas for me that I love.

I will leave you with two quick kids stories.

Maren has decided that she likes to stand on her own.  Last week I went to set her down and she decided to stand instead.  She just stood there for a long time.  I finally decided to start counting so that I could have some measure of how long she stood.  I got all the way to 30!

Maren is very independent   Starting at about 6  months old she decided that she was the only one who could put the pacifier in her mouth.  If I gave it to her she would take it out again and put it in by herself.  She is the same way with walking.  If I try to stand her up her legs will turn to jello and she will stick them strait out so that I have to sit her up.  I routinely look over at her and she is standing on her own.  I have even see her stand up in the middle of the room.  Anyway. Today she decided that she could climb the stairs.  I looked down the stairs and she was standing by herself on the second stair up.  Needless to say- the baby gate came out today!

The kids got little CTR rings for Christmas this year.  Evelyn gives me reports all the time for all of the situations during the day that her ring helped her to make a good decision.  Most of these involve helping the other kids or being kind.  She has always had such a kind heart!

I could go on for a really long time about the kids and what is going on with them, but I will save that for next week.  Stay tuned for a really cool tree house playroom, and for more kids stories.

What would the holidays be without cooking?

 Maren has two expressions: happy/smiley/talker, and deadpan.  Here she is demonstrating the latter

 Adalie- Snow White doll and dress, Evelyn Merida dress and doll, and Jack just loved that whale

 Wesley was very brave!  He spun on that chair with kids for about an hour! I think they all had great fun.

 Of course there was a lot of reading going on!  Here is Marissa and Adalie

 Jack's firetruck Christmas (he got a book, really cool fire truck, and a fireman hat)

 Shannon and Maren

Playing outside with glow sticks at Grandma's house

And the winner is...

First things first. Regarding the gingerbread house contest. The votes are in and the winner is...

Team B with the candy cottage! Go team!

Team A- don't worry. You got a lot of votes too. Really, the lighthouse idea was a good one. I liked it. But you still lost. Sorry.

Alright. Now, for our week. By the way, I apologize ahead of time if this blog post seems to ramble or become disjointed at times. I am writing it while watching "Curious George" with the kids.

Anyway, Evelyn and I have been having some good times lately. We have a new tradition. Saturday mornings we go and clean the church (it's our ward's turn), and then we go out to breakfast together at McDonald's  I've really been enjoying the tradition. She has too.

Also, on Friday we (her and I) went on a hike. I was very proud of her when I asked her what she wanted to do and she said she wanted to go exploring in the mountains. I pointed out to her that it was raining/snowing outside. She replied "Papa- that's why you put on boots and a coat!"

I was very proud of that answer.

So we headed out into the weather in our warm-weather gear to explore the mountains. And we found caves! Really- Evelyn is the one who found them- she was like "Hey papa, look! A cave!" And I was like "Hey Evelyn, that's just a pile of rocks." And she was like "Hey papa- no it isn't. Come and look- it's a cave."

And she was right...sort of. Really, it was just a pile of large boulders. But the way they had fallen on each other made a series of tunnels and passageways that was quite fascinating to explore. We found a different "room" for each person in our family. For those in my family who remember, it reminded me of exploring "the rocks" in Weldon at Donny and Ty's house. 

So there you go- at least we will never be homeless.

Also, I got my ACLS certification this week so that we can do sedation at work.

Oh- and work is going great! Rachel's advertising is amazing. To my family- remember those mailers you helped count. Well- they have brought in like thirty new patients! 30! Just so you know- that is pretty good for a single mailing. Rachel is awesome.

Um...Addy thinks she is a dog. She won't let us call her by her name. If we want her attention we must address her as "lost little puppy," at which point she comes over and whimpers and nuzzles into our leg. At first it was amusing. Now it's frustrating. Can I just get my Addy back?

This morning for breakfast Maren ate 2 whole pancakes, 2 pieces of ham, and about half a bag of pretzels- and that was after she nursed! That girl is growing!

Oh- I thought of something else that we did that was fun (I told you this would be a little disjointed). Heartwood Family Dental helped to sponsor the Post Falls Winter Festival (thanks to Rachel). It was a lot of fun. We were one of four sponsors and we got to do this thing where they announced us in front of the whole town and then we helped little kids to wave wands that magically turned on all the Christmas Lights around City Hall and started off the holidays for the community. I really enjoyed feeling like we were a real part of the community and I think that we have more things like this coming up. We also sponsored a big craft room that was at the same event, and really, it was just fun!

We finally got some snow at our house. Now it really is "beginning to feel a lot like Christmas." I love the holidays.

Oh- and on a more personal note. I have made it a goal to read through the 4 gospels in the New Testament between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am following the institute manual which brings you through them chronologically (so you are always skipping around within the 4 books), really giving you a sense for the life that our Savior lived. I have never read them this way before and I have to say that it is neat, especially around this time of year where all of the sights and sounds around town point to Him and his magnificent birth (at least in the small town of Post Falls). 

Now, I'm not real good at writing about spiritual things (I usually leave that to my mom or my sisters), but I have to say that it is downright AWESOME to think about the price he paid for all of us...and for me...and for you. And it is amazing to think that Jesus Christ, our Savior and our God, Creator of the universe and all that is in it, came to earth as an infant and was born in a stable. He had an amazing life, He gave himself up for a fallen world, and He lives!

Like I said- I love the holidays. Merry Christmas.