November Wrap Up

Last pictures for November.

One day we brought out the beads and Sofie Loved it.  She was so careful and did a great job of beading a bracelet.

I try to work out 3-4 times a week.  I plan on interruptions and this helps me not to get frustrated.  I have four kids...I'm going to get interrupted at some point.  They will be right there by me or sometimes on top of me.  I can either be mad about it or just go with it and laugh sometimes.  I had just put the DVD in to work out when all four kids came to "help" me.  Haha.  At least they save me a spot to work out.  It's a group class.  😀

So stylish.  

Poor Isak got super sick with a fever for a couple of days.  He waved good bye to Kira when she got on the bus.  Then he curled up in his blanket and fell asleep by the window.  😟  Thankfully, he got better!

Kira and Sofie have matching unicorn pajamas and slippers.  Just love it!

I don't remember what happened.  Kira asked me to take a picture and when I came back with the camera her and Noah were both crying.  I think they bonked heads or something.

Kira tried to be happy, but Noah was so upset.

Fold your arms...

Sofie just loves her boots and mittens.

Just playing on the stairs.

We got some snow!

We took the kids out for ice cream one day.  Batavia Creamery.  They had some cool flavors.  Isak got Cookie Monster.  Kira - magical unicorn.  Sofie - Cookies and Cream.  Noah - Strawberry.  Nels - Apple Pie and Oatmeal cookie (he got two scoops). I got good ol' chocolate.

It was a good, short outing.

Isak's chin turned blue from his ice cream.  :)

I forgot to include this one on the Halloween post.  The kids enjoyed decorating these pumpkins and painting the little puzzles.

Sofie's cool outfits.  She loves to pick out her clothes and put new clothes on several times during the day.

Taking care of her baby for five minutes...She never plays with dolls.  But it's cute when she does.

"Ah! I'm stuck!!"   I had to take a pic before I rescued him.

I got out with just the babies while the kids were in school.

Suckers in Costco.  Great time.  Haha.

Just sitting in chairs "reading" books.  

This was a sweet little moment. Kira draws pictures for Sofie to color.  While she was drawing this one, Sofie rubbed her back.

Such sweet sisters most of the time.

Then we had lots of snow the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  It snowed so much that school was cancelled and the kids got an extra day home for Thanksgiving break.

I dressed up the kids so they could play.  Isak and Kira played for a while.  Sofie went out for two minutes or less and Noah was not interested.  It was pretty, but cold.

A little icy and the snow was not good for making snowballs.

Sofie watched from inside after she realized how cold it was outside.

Isak earned money for another lego set.  He also used the money he got for his birthday.  He bought this Ninja lego set.

One day Kira made toys for Sofie and Noah out of tinker toys.  She called them nursery toys and then she would have the babies come to nursery.  :)

Sofie enjoys looking at books.

Isak made a new friend at school.  His mom sent me this pic of them sitting together on the bus to the field trip.  I'm glad he has a friend.  

School pictures.  They looks so old!!!

And that's all for November.  Birthdays. Thanksgiving and Snow Days.

Other non-picture items.

• I read a book called "Simplified" by Emily Ley.  Quick read and I enjoyed it.  It got me in the mood to declutter...less stuff = less time cleaning.  So I decluttered a few areas in the house.
• When Isak says "cameras" it sounds like "grandmas"  So he says/we hear "on the bus grandmas are always watching us.  So we have to be good!"  haha... but it's cameras.  It makes me laugh!
• Noah calls Nels "mama"
• Sofie calls Nels "daddy" yay!
• Sofie and Noah see a pic of Jesus and say "Jesus." :)
• I made a super yummy dinner one Sunday but it took 2 hours!  An hour to prep and an hour to cook.  It was Sausage Spinach Shells.  
• Nels and I both voted on Nov. 6h. 
• Kira likes to make tea parties for Sofie and Noah to come to.  She also sets out a blanket and then has Sofie and Noah sit down on the blanket so she could read to them.
• Kira memorized Jolly Old St. Nicholas and Old McDonald on the piano.
• Sad news.  My Uncle Rol passed away.  He was my dad's brother.  So my dad's parents and brother all passed away in the past four months.  So sad.  
• Isak lost his first tooth on Nov. 14th.  Pretty Exciting.
• Kira went to a friend's house and we had Isak's friend come to our house.
• For FHE lately, we have been reading a story from the Friend, singing two songs, playing ring around the rosy and duck, duck goose.  Very simple but I love how we come together and connect with each other.
• Nels went to the temple this month.  Yay!
• I finished my Shutterfly book and ordered it.
• I also read Fantastic Beasts.

Fun, grateful month...oh at night this month we all said one thing we were grateful for.  I liked adding this to our bedtime routine.  That's all!!

Coding Projects

In September, I decided I wanted to learn how to code.  I began learning HTML and CSS for free at https://www.freecodecamp.org.  I really liked it and I did the five projects at the end of the course. 

These were challenging to me, but they are pretty basic... nothing too fancy!

The first one was a Tribute Page.  I learned how to do images, links, and basic positioning. 

The second project was a Survey Form.  I learned how to code different form functions like a dropdown menu, check boxes, radio buttons and other form elements.

The third project was a Product Landing Page.  I learned how to make a navigation bar, an embedded  video, included one media query and used CSS flexbox.

The fourth project was a Technical Page.  I learned how to do a navigation bar on the side that has links to the different sections of the webpage.  I also learned how to make lists inside the content. 

The last project was a Portfolio Page.  This had a navigation bar, showed the different projects I did with images and links to the project and a form to submit if you wanted to contact me.  

Here's what some of the code looks like.  HTML on the left and CSS on the right.

And if you want to see the projects "live", here's the link below.  

https://codepen.io/rebecca-swensen-nyborg/

I used codepen to work on the projects.

I really enjoyed working on these projects.  They were challenging.  I am still a beginner in the coding world.  But I like it. 😀

Now I'm tackling Javascript.  It's tough!  I only get to work on it a few minutes at a time.  My hope/goal is that when the kids are all in school this is a "hobby" I can enjoy.

That's all.  Just thought I'd share what my new hobby is right now.  😀

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was so nervous about the turkey!  So we ate Thanksgiving dinner a day early!  Nels's work gave us a 19 lb turkey.  We followed a recipe from Our Best Bites.  We used a turkey bag and injected flavor into the turkey and put herbs under the skin.  It took about 2.5 hours to cook.  

Nels rocked the turkey.  He even made it dance.  haha.  The kids kind of laughed.  

After all of our hard work, the turkey turned out pretty good!

We made mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans with bacon and mushrooms, rolls and fruit.

The kids helped me make a brownie mint ice cream dessert.  Nels and I ate alone around 3 pm because the babies were napping.  Then we fed the kids and ate dessert together.  Besides making an awesome dinner, we just relaxed and watched lots of TV--Star Wars and some other shows.  It was nice to take it easy.

We also made this gratitude tree with 104 leaves.

They made turkey hats in kindergarten.

Sofie and Noah loved taping the leaves onto the tree.

Kira and Isak wrote some of them by themselves.  No repeats!  Each one was different.  It was a lot of fun to do this together.

Here's Isak enjoying the dessert.

And here's Isak with his missing tooth! He lost it a few days after his birthday...Nov. 14th.  We noticed a tooth already growing behind his tooth.  Then his tooth was wiggly.  He was eating a corn dog at lunch and bit down on it weird.  It started to bleed and was super wiggle.  So I pulled it out!  Pretty exciting.  He was happy.  He went to school and showed everyone.  That night Astrid, the tooth fairy, put a note and $1 under his pillow.  He was pretty excited!!

Noah with the dessert.

The wish bone...They broke the wish bone and Kira got the bigger half.  Isak was sooooo sad that his wish wouldn't be coming true.  Oh dear...Obviously this picture is before the crying.

So on Thanksgiving day, Nels made pancakes.  Then we raked the leaves as a family.  It was great to work together as a family.  And the big kids were actually pretty helpful.

We made a big pile and let them play in it before we bagged it up.

The day after Thanksgiving, we took the kids to McDonalds for lunch.

Noah was pretty happy!

Us girls...

All together...

The kids played and played on the indoor playground.  Then after naps we went to the library.  It was fun to do things just for the kids.

And that was our Thanksgiving holiday!