Growing up

My kids are growing up, which is a good and a bad thing.  Ben is already having problems with kids at school showing him bad things.  So, we talked and I introduced him to my church bookshelf.  He's already halfway through the first one. He's an amazing reader and is great at recognizing right and wrong!
Kira is almost too grown up already.  She's only ten, almost eleven.  She knows what to do and does a fantastic job of it.  She feels everything so keenly and is very emotional.  Poor kiddo!  I think she's amazing though!  She suggested Gonoodle and we've been having a blast exercising almost every night for 30 minutes (at least)!
Emma is learning!  She is super smart, but sometimes she lets her pride get in the way of good relationships.  She is doing great at school and has some awesome friends!
Leah is learning her sight words amazingly well.  I can tell, because she's picking up more words as we read the scriptures everyday.  It's fantastic!
Cecilia is already in size 5's!  She will gladly take over anything and knows exactly what she wants!  Green plate?  Not a chance!  Boy cup, not for her.
Joshua is in the constantly-wants-mommy-to-do-everything-for-him stage.  Ahhh, that blessed time when he wants to "snuggle me."  He LOVES blueberries and is super cute about eating them and asking for more and more.  Yesterday he was shaking as he was asking for more frozen blueberries!  Cute kiddo!
Samuel is growing in leaps and bounds!  He pulls himself up to standing anywhere, crawls right, eats a ton, and has started waving a couple days ago!  Absolutely adorable!  He's so happy!  He just smiles and laughs!  His top front tooth is starting to come in, so he's waking up a lot at night.  A. LOT.  Sleep, who needs it?  I've got a sweet baby to snuggle.
We've really enjoyed the nice weather out!  The girls have biked when we got home from school most days this week.  We've started doing at least a scripture verse in the morning after family prayer and then we do our motto.  I don't think I've ever put on our motto here.  It gets additions probably once a year or so.
"We are Westhoffs!  We're a family!  We love each other! We help each other!  We don't fight!  We do our best! We're thankful for what we have!  We clean up after ourselves!  We keep our promises!  We are kind, considerate and helpful!"

Beautiful weather

I love it when for a few days we have warm weather!  It gives the kids a chance to play outside.  They love it!  I love updating the individual kiddo pics!  They have tomorrow off of school, so they'll get to play outside tomorrow too!  Hurray!
It's been a great week!  We got groceries and gas, plus my school kiddos had a second Christmas!  The school paid for sumdog subscriptions, so now I can check reports and make tests on sumdog!  Plus my Donorschoose stuff came in!  Now my students have tons of games and manipulatives!  They're pretty excited!  It's awesome!
The sad news is that my Dad isn't doing very well.  It seems his ALS is progressing very rapidly!  We're still hopeful though!  We're praying he gets onto the clinicals that he just was tested for!  And that he doesn't get the placebo.  He's having a hard time talking, so I felt prompted to ask my mom if it could be an allergy.  She asked Mandy and it could, so he went off of the herbs that he didn't like anyway.  I'm desperately hoping that it will at least help his talking!
Yesterday we were visiting and Mom had told my brother to call, just in case Dad couldn't talk again.  By the end of the call Dad was sobbing, so most of us were crying.  Mom told me that it could be my last chance to get a blessing from my Dad, and I started crying more.  We were getting ready to leave already, and I really couldn't handle the thought, so we left.  We had a good visit though!  It was my new brother-in-law's birthday, so we got to celebrate it!  Good times!

 Josh still loves his Cheeto (the balloon we brought home for him from Noon Year's Eve).

Samuel loves his mama!

Back to real life

It was sad to give up time off, but I was super glad to see my students again!  I've done a pretty good job being excited almost all week!  I may miss my kids at home, but I miss my kids at school too!  Especially when they tell me that they hope I'll move up to 4th grade, so they can have me again.  Or hug me and tell me that I'm their favorite teacher.  So sweet!  Then my donors choose project got funded this week!  I am so enthused!  We're talking $800 in supplies that my class is getting for free thanks to generous donors (Staples gave us $500 with their #morejoy campaign)!  I'm very grateful!  I just got another email with the tracking info and it should be here on Wednesday!  Hurray!  I went to an awesome meeting on Thursday night and learned more about Hope in Christ.  Then I got to hang out with my family and talk for a couple hours before coming home.
Yesterday my baby sister and I went shopping for baby clothes.  It was great having another adult with me at the Baby Buck Sale.  She only spent $20 and I spent $31 and got a trash bag full of clothes, including Cars pjs for Josh, 8 pairs of jeans, a snow cover up, pjs, shirts, sweaters, a suit coat and pants for Samuel.
We didn't get much done (we packed a few boxes), but the kids go to play with their cousins while their parents went on their anniversary date.  So a good day!

Cecilia's Birthday

Then it was Cecilia's birthday!  She was super spoiled to be at her mamaw's house on her birthday (she stayed the night, because my mom and sister came and picked up 3 of the girls).  I brought her presents and cake and ice cream.  I was a goofball and got a marble cake, so we had to get another non-chocolate cake.  She had yummy food and lots of presents, so she was a pretty happy four-year-old!

Everything was "just what she's always wanted!"  What a great attitude!  She loved her birthday!

New Year's

I decided to live a little and bring everyone but Josh and the baby to Noon Year's Eve. We wanted to go back to Science City anyway (due to the hour and a half run through that we did after the Train Tour)!  We went over about one and got there a little after my sister-in-law who also brought her three kids alone.  So, there were two of us and eight kids.  My kids are older, so they usually take at least one of their cousins under their wing and go.  Cecilia picked Tony and it was adorable listening to my little girl trying to boss around her 2-year-old cousin!  Bwahaha!  Kira and Emma took care of Lexi and Leah.  We made stuff, took pictures, played, enjoyed a lot of Twinkies and fruit snacks (they provided those free).  We loved the Celebration in our Mouth snack!  It gave us a break from the other stuff!  We really liked the science experiments!  We were super excited about the balloon drop, so we danced on the crazy busy dance floor until we made our way to where the balloons would drop.  We were in a little tiny space and I was scared about losing my kiddos, but we made it through and they each got at least one balloon.  We even got a couple of extras to bring home!  I love that we got to celebrate New Year's Eve together, even if it was six hours early!  We went home and I stayed up with Scott watching something on Netflix.  We didn't know it was close to midnight when we heard fireworks go off.  Oh!  It's New Year's!  We finished our show and went to bed.
Two days later, I had to go to work.  We had a work day.  I got a new bulletin board made and printed stuff.

 The girls and their locks of love

 Her twinkie

 Miss Kansas City

 3-d printing

 They loved trying to catch the cloud!

 Making fun glasses

 Digging for Dinosaurs

 Making clay time capsules with a resolution in it.

 Waiting for the science experiment.  It was pretty cool!

 They all got horns.  Thankfully most of them didn't make it home.

 The white chocolate cover strawberry with pop rocks on it.  Yum!

 In the midst of the huge crowd

 This was part of the huge crowd

 The balloons slowly coming down.

 Lots of balloons!