I DO so like green eggs and ham...

... I DO, I like them Sam I Am...

Especially on Saint Patrick's Day!!

As appropriate for the holiday, Ben picked one of his favorite books, Green Eggs and Ham...
and following gramma missions tradition for as long as I can remember,
The kids came to a breakfast of, yes, green eggs and ham :)

... and this is about the only way you will see me drink a green smoothy...

which is really our latest passion (dream cycle smoothy)...

with a bit of green food coloring :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Our Version...

Of the answers to the Christmas letter :)
** if you didn't get the original you-fill-in-the-blanks-card, that means we don't have your address, or I am just plain brainless :)  (If you do want one, shoot me your address and I can still pop it in the mail!)

Merry Christmas 2010!!

It has been quite an eventful year in the Brewer household.  We moved to a new house and put down roots in Rochester.  We've done much working, playing, and general frolicking.

We didn't add any new members to the family, but our children keep growing faster and faster every day!

Seth, our oldest by a whopping 3 minutes, turned 8, got Baptized, and is in 3rd grade.  He loves spies, ninjas, and anything to do with light sabers, especially those from Star Wars.

Sarah, also 8, like Seth got baptized at our family reunion in Wyoming.  She is a very talented artist and loves to play with her friends.  She and Seth play the violin, although they don't like to practice.

Ben, age 5, just started kindergarten and has discovered a whole new world now that he can read.  He recently started playing the cello.

Joshua age 3, is extremely active, and keeps mom on her toes with his various antics.

Elizabeth just turned 1, started walking, can scream like a pterodactyl, and loves to snuggle with her blanket in mom or dads arms.

Jerry has been working at Mayo Clinic for over a year, and is loving it!  He cuts out skin cancer, and has been known to slice off a mole or two on the side.

Jen is still teaching aerobics, writing a book, and most of all tending to her kiddos.

As this Holiday Season approaches, we are most importantly grateful for the Gift of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and hope that this Christmas Season finds you all healthy and happy!

Happy Holidays!

The Brewer Bunch

Let the festiviting begin!!

... or not...

On the way to the first trunk or treat, Josh and Liz both zonked out...

... but the others didn't let any afternoon tiredness overtake their candy-gathering efforts.

... and Josh was not too happy to learn that he had missed all of the action

 ... but never fear!  The beauty of having lived in 2 different wards in the same town is that we claim the right to double dip anytime fun activities come about...
like another trunk or treat that just happened to be scheduled a few hours later

(after the twins violin recital... how crazy is that?!  ... At least they got to dress up for the recital!)
...

... and liz discovered pretty quickly that it was much easier to just stay in our trunk and go for the goods there than make the trek to the other cars...

... and Josh got his trick or treating fix in...

... and even met up with his preschool buddy/batman twin for some fun treat tasting...

... and his sweet tooth lived happily ever after :)

My ensign moment...

All through my mission, when I would read the things that ubber creative moms did with their families, I would pull out the pages of their stories and began painting this utopia picture of my future husband and myself surrounded by our little perfectly-dressed-not-a-hair-out-of-place children as the Heavenly Angels sang in the background and we participated in all of the cutesy little enriching family activities.

... Fast forward 5 kids and 8 years of still trying to get my footing in the whole family/home/church/social/work/cooking/cleaning/teaching/crying/laughing/and just plain surviving...

... and, well, those 'ensign' moments kinds of flew by the wayside. 

This year, I finally decided to take a little step and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we had a Family Home Evening Lesson on being thankful, and started a thankful jar:

... along with 100 strips of paper that we get to write what we are thankful for each day, with a goal to fill in all 100 strips before thanksgiving.  (with a reward of a family outing once all 100 are filled...c'mon you know that I'm not above a little bribery :)  ).

... and I did have to laugh at the way that the kiddos dove right in... thankful for everything from family, to Santa, to  the TV...  

  I realize that for most of you, this is old news and you probably have huge elaborate activities that you do with your kiddos, but just this once, give me my ensign moment... a little late in the making, but here nonetheless :).

Humpty Pumpky...

Sat on a wall

Humpty Pumky

Had a great fall...

All the moms toothpicks, and all the mom's hands...

tried to put pumpky together again...

The Active days of Activity Days...

What a fun night of Activity Days.  We had a Daddy Daughter Date night, which we dubbed:  Father's Fall Foose Ball Festival.  Oh yea.. you can never get enough F's in one sentence! (or enough of blatantly stealing great ideas from ubber-creative cousins!  Thanks, Sarah, for the inspiration from your own Activity Day's activity!)


We had the girls carve pumpkins with their dads and then bring them to the activity for part of the decorations, then did a hay-stack dinner, took daddy-daughter pictures by a little fall backdrop, played some human foose ball (hilarious!), and decorated pumpkin sugar cookies.  All of this in (just a teensy bit over) an hour... whew!


This slide show is for you mom's out there who couldn't open the link that I sent - it also has pictures of some of our other activities - a flair for hair night, and water kick ball (... so sad to see the summer-running-through-the-sprinkler days are now a thing of the past!)...











I love my activity days girls!!

The pumpkin patch...

The nice days are getting to be fewer and father between...

... and the blue skies are about to give way to the gray days of winter...

... and beautiful, warm sunshine

... is about to become a faint memory...

... we have to suck the marrow out of each fleeting day of fall...

... so today we made our way to the fun pumpkin patch at Sekaaps orchard for our annual pumpkin outing of the season...

... and took our annual still shots in the middle of all of the pumpkins...

... and this was about as still as I could get Joshy to be at any given point in time...

... and this about the only way I could get Liz to stay in one place for more than .2 seconds...

... I love Fall!!

More on the 4th...

We had an inaugural bbq to kick off the summer season.  I think 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays to do fun food creations.   It's right up there with Christmas.  And Halloween.  And Valentine's Day... and Easter... okay so pretty much every holiday is my favorite to have fun with food... :)

Seriously, I think it's against the law to hold a July BBQ without the traditional "flag cake"...

Daddy and Elizabeth at the 2nd ward 4th of July Breakfast


What, we aren't in 2nd ward, you say??

Well, they did say we could come back anytime we wanted...

and they were serving yummy breakfast in the morning...

How could we refuse??!

In all reality, this was one of Sarah's concerns about moving out of the ward... that we wouldn't be able to go to the 'parade'.  After breakfast, there is always a parade by the primary, and she made sure that attendance in the parade was part of the 'moving clause,' so we did make the trek back to let her shine :)

Here is Elizabeth doing her "I will not actually snuggle to let you know I'm sleepy... I'm merely 'resting my eyes' "  stance...

and this was how excited Seth was to be in the 'parade'... refusing to decorate a bike, or even bring one for that matter, and as I was snapping this picture, he is in the process of turning away... truly they are twins by birth only... :)

Happy...

Fourth of July...???

Yep - in typical Minnesota Fashion, we went from sweltering humid heat yesterday,

To Freezing cold rain today.

Go figure

At Least we got some of our fireworks lit last night

Yes, It was July 3rd.

If you know my hubby,

and you know me,

the following SAT-type sentence will make perfect sense:

Jerry is to July 4th Fireworks As Jen is to Christmas Music

As in...

I have been known to break out the Christmas music as early as September

(okay, there was one year that it has been heard around our general vicinity in July... but I'll stick to the 5th on that one...)

And Jerry, 

Well, fireworks have been heard around our general vicinity as early as January.

So last night was more like a '4th of July Eve' for Jerry...

ya know... like getting to open a present (or two) on Christmas Eve

He got to light off a firework (or two... or twenty...) on 4th of July Eve.

And for my benefit, He did start out pretty tame

But pretty soon, it was onto the "Wyoming Specials"

the kids loved it

Including Elizabeth, who made her firework watching debut...

and me?  Well, I only screamed a few times...

... except for the one shriek...

when the launcher tipped over and shot a launching firework directly at our neighbors house, 

then turned and launched one right at our mailbox

then turned and would have launched one right into the garage, but it ran out of ammunition

(it was a pretty long shriek)

Yep, 4th of July 

Never a dull moment around these parts.

HAPPY 4TH of JULY!!!

Happy Halloween!!

Trick-or-Treating, Minnesota style... you have to learn how to either layer under the costume, or accept the fact that you will be wearing a coat over the costume...

... Yes, Joshy was dressed up - just under all of the layers. It didn't take him long to figure out that he got CANDY from EVERY house we approached -

he was soon sprinting right along after the other kiddos :).

Seth as the Ninja... posing on our neighbors HUGE pumpkin yard (he grows them every year, and then puts them out every October - Our own neighborhood pumpkin patch - love it!!)

Sarah practicing her 'wizarding' spells

Ben also did the wizard theme this year,

though his wand was quickly given up to make room for the trick-or-treat bag.

At one of the houses - with four family units, we were quite the 'trick-or-treating' force!

Some of the gang in front of the big pumpkins

The kids always have a blast trick-or-treating with their good friends,

the Jacksons, Reeds, and Childs

Two out of the three preggo-amigos.

Since this is the first (and most likely ONLY) Halloween that the three of us would be pregnant on the big day, we did some last minute preggo-costume making... and then not even 24 hours after the big idea, Jolene went and foiled the plan by actually DELIVERING her baby (right ON Halloween!... 2 weeks early for her... all the while our little one is still nice and cozy... but I'm NOT bitter in the LEAST!! Really, I'm HAPPY for you Jolene... not...the...least...bit...JEALOUS!! - okay, maybe a wee bit jealous...)

(and yes, cute Marissa really IS, pregnant, she just never shows at all- just stays as cute as ever! Again... not... jealous... in...the...least!!)

Easiest Halloween treats EVER!!

Thanks to yet another friend's creative talents (that's YOU, Val!!), I learned yet another fun and SUPER easy craft that is perfect for any age... so if your kids have an attention span like mine (anywhere from .5-3.0 seconds...), this treat is for you :)

This one was making spiders out of oreos, and ghosts out of nutter butters...

fun, easy, fast. My kind of craft!

To do the ghosties.... melt white chocolate chips, and dip nutter butter cookies in it, then put on some cinnamon dots for eyes. Seriously, that's IT!!

For spider-o's: open the oreo cookie, break apart some pull apart twizzlers (I couldn't find any brown or black twizzlers, so our legs are a little 'bloody'), place in the middle. Replace top of oreo. Again, that's IT. Done in 2 minutes flat!!

Halloween Happiness!!

I love this time of year - the holiday spirit starts kicking in, and the fun times roll!!

I especially love doing it with kids...

I finally learned to let go of my 'slightly-over-controlling-make-it-picture-perfect-at-all-costs'

crafting self, and now have more fun seeing what the kids come up with in their own great creations. This week's picks were cookie baking/decorating and spider making.

I forgot how all-encompassing sugar cookie baking can be, especially when you add 4 oh-so-helpful kiddos to the mix :). Needless to say, our kitchen ended up very 'flour-full' ;)... and dinner ended up being cereal and toast :), but it was well worth it!!

Sarah's creation (she seriously placed each individual piece of decoration... including cutting each of the color sections of the candy corn to increase the artistic content...)

Sarah takes her creating VERY seriously (yes, tears were shed when Joshy got a hold of one of the 'prized' cookies...)

My little helping hands in the baking process...

Joshy getting in on the action... he couldn't quite figure out how everyone was getting their candy corns to stick to the cookies, and rather than use the 'frosting glue', he instead tried to just dig the candy corns right into the cookie :)

Another of Sarah's creations

Seth thinking 'outside' the shape, and turning his ghost into a pumpkin smile...

Ben's whole goal was pretty much to stack as much frosting and candy as possible right in the middle of his cookie :)