Chocolate Houses!

Our family has a fun tradition of decorating gingerbread houses every year with their cousins and grandparents. A few years ago my friend gave me the idea of doing chocolate houses instead. The kids loved it so much that we have changed to decorating chocolate houses. After decorating we love eating the candy and all of the chocolate! Here is this year's houses the kids decorated!

Baptism Day!

Kaitlyn's baptism was yesterday, Saturday, November 7th. She was baptized and confirmed by her dad. It was a good, spiritual day for our family. We enjoyed having family and friends there to share this special day with us! And the luncheon afterwards was yummy! It was fun to chat with everyone! What a great day for Kaitlyn!

Happy Birthday Kaitlyn!

Kaitlyn had a fun birthday yesterday! It's hard to believe she is 8 years old and getting baptized this week.

Last week Kaitlyn had a birthday party with some of her friends. Since she loves arts and crafts we had all of the girls paint some ceramic pumpkins, paint stain glass art, and make some cute necklaces. We also ate pizza for lunch and then decorated cupcakes and sugar cookies! It was a lot of fun! Kaitlyn was definitely spoiled with gifts this year! She can't wait to start working on all of the arts and crafts gifts she got from everyone!

Happy Halloween!

For Halloween this year Kaitlyn was a witch, Jackson was Tigger, Mckay was a pit crew person, and Caden was Luke Skywalker. The kids had fun trick or treating and brought home tons of candy! We hope everyone had a fun Halloween!

Pinewood Derby!

We had a fun time at Caden's Pinewood Derby tonight! He won first place! That means his car was the fastest out of 16 boys! He won each round and ended up with a total score for four races of 10.457 seconds. Way to go Caden and Scott! And thanks to both grandpas for giving us some great advice and help on the car. As you can see in the picture, Caden got a trophy to stick his car on. This Pinewood Derby involved five different wards in our stake. The other picture I posted shows only the boys in our ward. As you can see, our ward did quite well. We ended up with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners! This is probably Caden's last Pinewood Derby before he turns 11 next year, so we were so happy that he won first place!

Happy Birthday Caden!

Caden turned 10 years old yesterday! He invited some of his friends to a bowling party at the local bowling alley. The kids had fun bowling, eating pizza, eating a bowling pin shaped cake with doughnut hole bowling balls, and playing the arcade games. Caden was excited to receive some Lego Star Wars toys from some of his friends. He has read the whole series and has really gotten into the whole Star Wars thing. We gave Caden a new bike since his old one is too small for him now. Scott and I can't believe we have a ten year old. It went by so fast! It's definitely been a fun and challenging experience!

Our Boston Trip!

Our family had a fun family vacation in Boston and other New England areas last week. We were able to visit my sister and her family who live in Boston and see some fun things in the area. Since I can't figure out how to put a caption for each picture, you'll just have to figure out what they are.

In Maine we saw the Portland Head Light lighthouse, went to the L.L. Bean stores in Freeport (recognize the giant shoe?), played in the ocean, and of course enjoyed some Ben and Jerry's Icecream that is famous in New England. Scott served his mission in New England so it was fun for him to drive through some of the towns he lived and served in. We got to see some of the apartments he used to live in and some other sites he remembered from his mission. We also enjoyed trying chocolate covered blueberries. Yummy!

In Vermont we went to the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial which was fun for Scott since he had his district meetings there while on his mission. The kids enjoyed riding in a golf cart to some sites around the area. The missionaries there were so kind to our family!

Here are some of the things we enjoyed in Boston!
- The New England Aquarium and touching all kinds of sea animals. The kids especially loved touching the star fish.
- The Duck Tours where we went on a tour of the city on land and then going into the water. Our tour guide was great and we learned a lot of fun facts about Boston!
- Touring the USS Constitution, walking the Freedom Trail, and seeing the Minuteman Visitors Center
- The JFK Presidential Library and Museum
- The kids especially enjoyed riding the subway and trains around the city.


Warning! There are lots of pictures! Enjoy!

First Day of School!

This post is a week late, but the kids started school last Monday on the 24th. Caden is in 4th grade, Kaitlyn is in Second grade, and Mckay is in Preschool. They all love their teachers! As much as I enjoyed doing fun things with my kids over the summer, it will be nice to have them at school. In our family it is a tradition to take a picture of the kids on our front porch on their first day of school. It's fun to compare each yearly picture and see how the kids have grown!

Happy Birthday Jackson!

Jackson had a fun birthday on Sunday! We can't believe he is two years old! We had his favorite food -- pizza-- for dinner. It was so cute to watch Jackson when we set his cake in front of him. He started singing "Happy Birthday", clapping his hands, and then blowing out his candles. One of his favorite gifts was a toy vacuum. He loves to vacuum the whole house now!

Today the kids thought it would be fun to have a lemonade stand as a last activity before school starts. We chose a hot day, but it got us some customers who also thought it was hot enough to need some cold treats. The kids made $13 in two hours! Now they want to do a lemonade stand everyday!

Family Reunion!

Our family had a fun family reunion with Scott's family last week! It was a stay-cation so we stayed with family members in Midway and Heber and then did things around the area and in Salt Lake. The first day we spent at Jordanelle boating and playing in the water. Unfortunately our minivan ended up getting a flat tire, so we had to put on the spare tire. The kids had fun helping Scott change it. The second day we went to Hogle Zoo and the third day we went to Raging Waters! The kids had a blast playing with their cousins and Scott and I enjoyed being with our siblings! Of the seven siblings, six of them were there with their families that included 14 grandkids. So we all had a fun time together!

Here are some pictures from our reunion!

The County Fair is Over!

For his 1st year as a 4-H member, Caden did great at the county fair. For those who don't know, Caden was involved in 4-H this summer raising a lamb with a group of kids. They took turns feeding their lambs 2 to 3 times a week and then learning how to walk them, jump them, and present them for the fair. Caden won second place in his lamb's weight category for marketing (which means the lamb looked great to the judge in terms of someone buying it). Caden also won first place in the portfolio competition and received $25 for his prize. All of the kids submitted a portfolio as part of their 4-H project. We were surprised that Caden won first place since this was his first year and we didn't know what we were doing. But we are so proud of Caden! Here are some pictures from the fair!

4th of July!

Our family had a fun 4th of July! We stayed at the Heber Valley camp Friday night with my parents and my sister's kids. We enjoyed going out on the lake in the boats and and doing the challenge course. The giant swing was fun but scary! And of course we enjoyed having smores and a delicious pancake breakfast. It always tastes better on a camping stove or over the fire!

We spent Friday evening with Scott's family in Midway having a delicious barbecue and doing some fireworks in the street. The kids enjoyed playing in their cousins huge sandbox. The highlight of the night was watching the fireworks on Memorial Hill from Scott's brother's driveway. We loved being with family for the holiday!

Here are some pictures:

School's Out!

Our family had a fun weekend! Friday was the kids' last day of school so we celebrated by going to the Children's Museum. The kids had a blast! Jackson especially loved the section that had plastic balls that you could put into plastic tubes. He could have spent hours there watching the tubes suck up the balls he put in. Scott and the kids enjoyed playing the giant marimba! What talented musicians!

Every year our family has a tradition of making graduation caps treats for the last day of school. This year we made them with Ghirardelli Chocolate squares instead of chocolate covered graham cookies. Here is the result. They were yummy!

Saturday we went to the Air Show at the air base with Scott's brother and daughter! Scott's brother is a pilot so it was fun to share his love of flying with him, especially since Mckay seems to love airplanes and anything that flies. He kept asking us when we could fly in the airplanes! We had a great time watching all of the planes fly in the sky and especially seeing the air stunts! It was amazing to see what these talented pilots can do! I wish that I had better pictures, but it was hard since the planes were flying so fast. You just had to be there to experience it! We can't wait to go to the next air show in a few years!

Thomas the Train!

Yesterday I took Mckay and Jackson to the "Day Out With Thomas." The boys had fun getting their picture taken with Thomas the Train and then riding the train for a short trip. They also enjoyed the different stations you could visit before riding the train like building with Legos or playing with toy trains or meeting Sir Topham Hatt! Because of the price of the tickets I would recommend doing this only if your child loves Thomas and trains. It's definitely worth it, especially if you have 3 to 5 year olds! I thought Jackson was a little too young to enjoy the whole trip, but he liked the train ride. Thank goodness I didn't have to pay for Jackson's ticket since he isn't two yet! Yay!











































By the way, I wanted to add that we had a weird thing happen to us this past week. A few days ago the bathroom mirror in our master bathroom fell off the wall all by itself. This is a 7 foot wide and 4 foot tall mirror so it's pretty big! The first time it fell it just came forward and ended up leaning against a towel rack on the wall. The other end hit a decoration on the wall and broke completely off. We made some phone calls to have a glass company come and measure for a new one. Unfortunately when I was preparing for the glass people to come measure I didn't realize that the mirror was resting on the container that was holding my jewelry. The entire mirror ended up falling down the rest of the way on top of me. I was lucky I wasn't hurt worse. The mirror scraped up my arm and I got a few cuts, but nothing too serious to require stitches. I'll have a bruised arm for awhile, but I feel blessed that I wasn't hurt worse when the rest of the mirror came tumbling down in pieces all around me or that my kids weren't there when it happened. So now I'm paranoid about the rest of the mirrors in our home. I'm going to make sure the new mirror is secure this time around!

Mckay's Preschool Program!

Mckay had his last preschool program for the year last week! They are always fun to go to because the kids are fun to watch. Some kids really get into the singing (or yelling the songs) and start dancing and some are just like Mckay that would rather not even be there and just sit there and mouth the words. At home Mckay loves singing the songs he learns but as soon as he is in front of a group of people, he gets a little shy. Hopefully he'll out grow this soon. But we had fun anyway watching the kids sing patriotic songs and spring time songs.

Tulips!

I love springtime because of the tulips! I was able to go to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point a few weeks ago and enjoyed seeing all of the beautiful, colorful tulips. I planted some tulips last fall in my own flower garden at my home and was so excited to see what they would look like this spring. And guess what? I found what I call a "twin tulip". You can see in the picture that this is one tulip plant but it has two tulips on it. Isn't that cool! I think this is a perfect tulip for me since I am a twin! I'll be sad when my tulips are gone in a few months, but I am enjoying them now!

Mckay's 4th Birthday!

Mckay had a fun 4th birthday yesterday! We had pizza for dinner and then an airplane cake for his birthday cake! Making an airplane cake was harder than I thought, so it didn't turn out as cute as the picture I saw online. But Mckay seemed to like it, especially because I used chocolate chips to decorate the plane. He also loved opening presents, especially his Cars shoes! He loves anything to do with Cars! Mckay also enjoyed his birthday donut tower. Our family has a tradition of making a tower out of donuts for the birthday kid. Because he turned four, Mckay got four donuts! He was nice enough to share them with his family!

I can't believe Mckay is four years old! That means it has been four years since I had all of the weird health problems. I definitely don't miss the time I spent in the hospital getting blood transfusions. I'm so glad I finally got better! It has been so fun to see Mckay grow into a fun, sweet little boy.