President's Weekend Fun

It's hard to want to go anywhere for President's Day Weekend when it's so nice here at home.  We had family in town and our kids love playing with their cousins. So, on Saturday, we took off to Snow Canyon to play in the sand dunes.  We had a picnic at the parking lot, then the kids went and played while we chatted and soaked in the sun.

I just love this picture of Terek!  It was so funny to see him come up over the hill all decked out in his light sabers.

The kids love digging holes (we only let them dig little holes because someone in Rose's ward died at the sand dunes a few months ago getting buried in the sand)

After the sand dunes, we went to Sand Hollow swimming pool.  We figured we'd rather have the sand in their pool, than our house:)

Brenner and Joren had a blast jumping off the diving board.

On Monday we went out to Gunlock to the Camel back (or toilet bowl) hike.  I went hiking with Brenner and Chad and Melissa and their kids, while Ryan stayed at the parking area with everyone else to eat and ride 4-wheelers.

Here's Brenner down in the toilet bowl.

We got a little sunburned, but it was sooo nice to be outside!

Tuff Kids Bike Race

A few weekends ago, my friend Haley talked us into putting our kids in a bike race.  Our kids like to ride their bikes and they like to do things with their friends, so they had a lot of fun!

Here is Brenner, Joren, Treyson and Cru excited to start the race.

Joren at the starting line.

 He took his time and just rode mostly at normal speed... he was just in it for the ride!

Brenner at the starting line.

 Brenner peddled his heart out!  It was interesting because obviously people had done this before... there were kids on HUGE bikes because they could go faster.  But, the kids had fun.

They loved that they got prizes and metals for finishing!

January

I figure I'm doing good if I blog once a month.  We started out our month at Instacare on New Year's day with this...

Terek's toe got infected (probably from biting his toenails... gross!)

For Joren's birthday, we went to Pizza Factory with the Scholes' family.  Even though his party was coming up, I still had to make him a cake!

We had an Angry Birds party for Joren's birthday.  For details, visit Larcie Bird.

The beginning of January was super cold.  When it warmed up, we enjoyed as much time outside as we could!

Anyone that knows and loves Terek has been doing a little bit of this lately... the kid is obsessed with Star Wars right now.

That was about it for January.  We are looking forward to more warm weather and fun in February!

Joren turns 7

Joren turned 7!  My boys are all growing up so fast!  Joren has grown up so much in the last year.  He is such a good kid.  He always does his chores and homework.  He is learning to read and doing so well in school.  He loves to play with his friends... he loves to play Skylanders and minecraft.  He loves to play outside... having nerf wars, riding bikes or scooters, etc.  He's either best friends with Brenner or best friends with Terek.  And he has his days when he loves to pick on them too.  We love Joren so much!!!

Elf on the Shelf

Just thought I'd post a calendar pic of what our little elf was doing during the month of December:)

The 24 Days of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas we decorated our trees.  The kids did an awesome job with their trees... I was having stress about mine.  I wanted ornaments to match my new living room and all the Christmassy stuff clashed...  I kind of had a melt down.... I ended up doing silver and white which matched absolutely nothing... I just gave up!

The 2nd day of Christmas...We made the journey dinner our actual dinner, so we tried to have a lot of food.  The kids loved eating jerky and nuts... they had never had pistachios, and we watched mormon messages on the ipad.  

The 3rd day of Christ mas...The kids wrote their letters to Santa.  My favorite part was that Terek said he was naughty and nice... so true.  If you look closely, you will notice he put that he "needed" pull-ups... I will have to post the video of him opening them on Christmas morning.

The 4th Day of Christmas, we went to town square.  The trees had awesome lights in them and the kids got to jump around on the rocks in the fountain.  They also got to see Santa and ride the carousel.

On the 5th day of Christmas, we went shopping for new ornaments for the boys.  Note for next year... TARGET:)  We went to both Walmart and Kmart and this was the best we could come up with.

The 6th day of Christmas, we mailed our Christmas cards.  The kids helped put on the stamps and stuff and seal the envelopes.

 On the 7th day of Christmas, Brenner had the first of one of his many choir concerts.  He sang at Lin's grocery store.

 On the 8th day of Christmas we had our ward Christmas breakfast.   Food with friends and Santa:)

 On the 9th day of Christmas I started a new tradition that I need to continue.  We had a grinch dinner.  We read the book, ate "grinch" food and watched the movie.... the short cartoon.  Next year I think I will add some fun grinch cupcakes or something cute and fun like that.

On the 10th day of Christmas, we went to Staheli family farm for the live nativity.  IT.WAS.COLD!  We bundled up in  a blanket, but still froze.  I would highly recommend it.  The music was beautiful and you could really feel the spirit of the true meaning of Christmas.

On the 11th day of Christmas, we made gift for the kids to give all of their classmates.  (These are not the ones we made... I forgot to take pictures).  We made reindeer noses... the brown ones were whoppers and the red ones were cherry sours.  We made 70 of these little things!

On the 12th day of Christmas, we had another choir performance at a care center in St. George.

On the 13th day of Christmas, we went to Target so the boys could buy presents for each other.... they get to open these presents on Christmas Eve.

On the 14th day of Christmas, we drove around to look at lights... there were some awesome ones out there!

On the 15th day of Christmas, we headed to Kanarraville to go sledding!  The boys had a blast!

On the 16th day of Christmas, we acted out the nativity.  It was fun to have a real baby (although baby Jennika was a little girly for baby Jesus)

On the 17th day of Christmas... I had planned to go to Tuacahn... my little party poopers just wanted to watch a Christmas Story... so I went shopping and they watched a movie with their dad.

On the 18th day of Christmas, we made a little sand ornament Christmas craft.

On the 19th day of Christmas, we had a choir performance at the school.

On the 10th day of Christmas, we had a birthday party for Ryan and our friend (Matt Hammons).  We had an adult party... and the kids partied at our house with a few babysitters.  We had a hot cocoa bar and played some awesome minute-to-win-it games.

On the 21st day of Christmas, we had our CHRISTMAS dinner with the Blake family.  We had some awesome yummy food:)

On the 22nd day of Christmas, we went to a light show put on by Kuhn heat and air.  They had free hot chocolate, hot dogs and Santa!

On the 23rd day of Christas... well, we went to church.  Then it was West's birthday, so we went to my parent's house (where Lucas and Shellie were staying) for dinner, cake and presents... I didn't take any pictures.

 On the 24th day of Christmas, we went to dinner with the Blake family at Buca di Beppo.

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!!!

Fall turns to winter...

... and that's about how much I blog.

November is always a busy month... Ryan's mom is one of the directors of the Jubilee of Trees.  She spends 18 hours a day working on the Jubilee for the month of Oct. and Nov. (I really don't think that's an exaggeration).   We help her as much as we can... this year our names were even in the paper:)

Of course, we also attended the Jubilee...

The kids had some fun stuff going on at school.  Brenner participated in a story-telling festival.  He also is in his school choir.  Joren's class put on a fun Thanksgiving program.

We got to see a lot of our family for Thanksgiving.  We had Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday with Ryan's family.  We had Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday with my family.   And the only pictures I took were of my cute craft... nice:)  We also went to a temple session with a few of my Williams family to do the temple work for my cousin, Jeremy, who passed away last June.

 The week after Thanksgiving, I had surgery.  I had a benign goiter removed from my thyroid.  Luckily it was benign and luckily I only had to have one lobe removed.  I recovered quickly.  This picture is right after the surgery... the scar looks much better now.

 Stay tuned for December... I actually took lots of pictures of December!