Happy December Birthdays!!!

WOW! Do we have a busy month!!! (Which is why these are all getting posted now!) This year we had a party for each of the kids (seperately!)

HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY TO JULIA!!!

December 11, 2008

We had her Dora party on the morning of her birthday. She had a couple of the neighborhood kids and her cousins come. We played pin the tail on swiper, went on a Dora scavenger hunt, and played a backpack and map game. It was really fun!!! We ate Diego cupcakes too YUM!!! Baby cousin Ty was a BIG fan of the frosting!!!!

The party was so much fun that it totally wore Julia out! She fell asleep that afternoon and, when Daddy got home, we tried to wake her up. I don't think it would have happened for any other reason except to open presents!!! We had dinner and then had a little family party with a Dora Cake. YUM!!!

HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY TO AJ!!!

December 20, 2008

The morning of AJ's Birthday, we gave him the presents from us. He got a hotwheels "Trick tracks", a football with a tee, and the Kung Fu Panda movie. Hurray for Presents!!

We had AJ's Puppy party the afternoon of his birthday. We didn't have as many guests as we had hoped or expected, but we still had a lot of fun! I think a highlight was playing "Doggy trainer says". Daddy was the doggy trainer and had the "puppies" beg, sit, roll over, and chase their tails HAHAHA!!! We also played pin the bone in the Doggy's mouth, hunted for paw prints, and ate cupcakes with Bones on them! FUN!!!

That night was the BYU bowl game. (no further comment!!!) We went to the Jenson's for that and at half time we had AJ's bone and Puppy cake! It was good, but i think we were pretty "caked out" at that point! :)

PHEW!!! We made it. They both had fun birthdays and that was the goal. Mommy was a bit EXHAUSTED, but will recover and it is ALL worth it for these faces!!!

Merry Christmas...FINALLY

So here are some pix from Christmas morning! We had a great day. The kids did pretty good as far as wake-up time...Julia woke up first (no surprise) around 8:00 and AJ soon followed. Santa leaves our stockings on our beds so we can check them out first. Santa was SO silly this year and put the wrong stockings on the wrong beds...HELLO SANTA!!! I think he was a little sleep deprived when he got to our house this year! :) But we got everything straightened out and we were good to go!

SO....Stockings first!!!


THEN...we get to go check out what Santa brought!!!
How 'bout these action photos of the kids' first look at the tree and ALL the gifts!!!





OPENING PRESENTS!!






Poor Murphy had to wait till all our presents were open before we remembered to let him check out his stocking...it was worth the wait! I love his WHOLE face in the stocking trying to get the goods!

I love this one of Julia with her baby...Note AJ in the background, that just cracks me up!

Our big gift from Santa to the WHOLE family was the Wii...we have all loved it and I love it because it is something that we can all do together!!!

To anyone needing a laugh who also LOVES BACON!!!!

I couldn't make it fit full size, so I had to shrink it down, which made the writing to small to read, so you'll have to click on it to see it full size...... that's what she said :)

A little laugh therapy to help us get over the loss to the Yewts!!!!!

Did you hear that Max Hall wasn't allowed to pass the sacrament in Church on Sunday. The bishop was afraid that he'd get intercepted.

The teacher tried to give me a Hall pass, but it was intercepted.

Did you hear that BYU has officially filed a protest with the NCAA regarding the Utes cheating during the BYU game. They were playing with 12 men on the field!!!

Anyway, I hope we can all get a little chuckle and move on with our lives, and begin counting down the REMATCH in less than 365 days when we can POUND THE YEWTS!!!!!!

Halloween Fun

Our halloween festivities started on Wednesday when we had a halloween party with Julia's preschool group. So, off i went with my little puppies..how cute are they! At the party we played a wrap the mummy game-Julia opted out so Aj was up-he did great!


They also had a pinata which was fun. AJ felt like quite the stud that he was the oldest boy there-he definately helped to finish it off! :)

Then Friday came...We had a blast at AJ's school-so much fun that i didn't really have a chance to take any pix! I organized and ran AJ's class party and thought i was tired when it was done...until the halloween parade around the school. They went in and out of the different classes and Aj's class was the last class and kept getting distracted and split up. I was at the end of the class trying to keep everyone in line and moving-THAT was a workout! So by the time we cleaned up the classroom and got home, i was ready to sit for a few minutes before we had to get ready to Trick or Treat...BUT, Julia decided that her costume was "too itchy" and she didn't want to put it on, so my "sit and do nothing time" turned into "Julia's costume plan B prep". WE tried on EVERY costume in her dress up box and decided on snow white because it was the least "itchy"

SO..... FINALLY we were ready to trick or treat! We went around our neighborhood and the kids got a TON of candy just in our little neighborhood!

After we hit all the townhomes, we headed out to Orem to to the Jenson Halloween event! How cute is "Ba-Pa's" face when he saw the kids at the door! :)

Here is our little family in our costumes!

So after eating chili and decorating some cookies, all the cousins headed out to trick or treat around the neighborhood...How cute are these kids! (Kyle was so proud of his "la-la" costume)


And Julia was killing me- she kept right up with Aj and the boys-she was running from one house to the next and yelling "happy halloween" or "i'm ready to go" while she ran! -she has a BLAST!

Here are the boys..Ryan wasn't there so the Mask made up the fourth spot in the usual "brother" picture! :)

Halloween was such a fun day.....

...and then on Saturday we had a party at church. They had a chili cook-off, a cake walk, decorating cookies, and OBVIOUSLY, face paiting. AJ was so patient and sat to get his face painted the way he requested-VENOM! Not to bad!



So What a week!! It was fun and tiring but all in all a GREAT week!!! and now we will be working on the candy for a while! :)

The Zoo with a Crew!!!

So on Thursday of the UEA break, My friend Heather and I decided to take our kids, with a few extra (her neice and nephew too), to the Zoo. Basically, we are crazy-as you can see with these pictures of 7 kids (ages 6, 5 1/2, 5, 3, 2 1/2, 2, and 2)! YEP-we had our hands full!!!

Even with our crew we rally had a good time. Animals are just so much fun to watch!! The Rhino was a favorite, as well as the Tiger which was totally pacing in front of the window, right in front of the kids. he also got in the water and swam around right in front of the kids. It was really cool.
(And why do i not have pictures of all this cool tiger stuff, you may ask...that would be because we were trying to locate the 2-year-old nephew who wandered off in the 2 seconds that we were gathering the kids...we went the wrong direction the first attempt to find him so when i went back from where we came from to get him, he was down the hill where someone saw me looking and probably my almost-frantic looked and pointed him out! PHEW!!!)

AJ and Julia were sportin their BYU gear because we were going to watch the game at "Ba-pa and Mah-Ma's" after the zoo. So i couldn't resist the BYU-gear-with-the-cougar picture!! (The cougar is above Julia's shoulder-kinda hard to see) And Aj took this great picture of the Cougar. He's pretty good huh?!?!



Another Higlight, of course, is the mural of the gorilla's arm span. All the kids wanted their turn to get a picture (except the youngest who didn't really know any differently!) Here's the gorilla-arm photo shoot!!!


And i just couldn't not put this one in-is that a happy kid or what!!! This was in the playground at the end of the day. -and let me tell you-Heather and i were not looking this chipper and energetic at this point! :)

Beside the trauma of the wondering child, it was a really fun time. The kids had a blast seeing the animals and just being together-it was a fun day!!!

Good thing for "K" cousins!!!

So, AJ sits down to do his homework-a K page-and then he had to think of 3 things (or people) who start with K.

Luckily, he had 3 cousins that fit the bill...here are their pictures-pretty good replicas-huh?!?! :)

CORNBELLY'S-finally a new post!

For Julia's preschool group field trip, we all took the kids to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving point! Everyone split up so we pretty much just explored the place-just me and the kids, it was fun!

How Fun is this chair?!?!


My little piglets (This is what AJ looks like when he sounds like a pig!)

After our little photo shoot, the kids spotted this cool climbing hay structure thing and off they went. Julia, of course, following right behind AJ like she had been climbing these rope things for years.

They were really cute coming down the slide together. I think Julia was a little nervous about it so AJ was there-The big brother to save the day!!! They can get along so good sometimes...I just LOVE it!!!




We did the corn maze and were pretty successful the first time, in "phase 1" (we went in the entrance and came out the exit fairly quickly) but AJ was ambitious and wanted to do "phase 2" and we weren't quite as successfull (it took us twice as long and we went in and out the entrance!) but we had fun!!!

Julia would run ahead to where there was a turn, whip her head in both directions, turn and say "which way should we go" and then just take off in whatever direction she wanted to! She was so excited-it was really cute! AJ would force his way through every once in a while so he could lead the way!


Here we are on the hayride-so fun! (Doesn't AJ look like he is having a BLAST!! So, not his greates picture ever :)!!)


AJ was the brave one (that's a swap :) huh?) and went on the Cow train. Julia was ok with it until she found out i wasn't going and she bailed!


Julia opted for the stationary cow while AJ was on the go!


Before we went home the kids got to go to the pumpkin patch and pick ANY pumpkin they wanted! They found some good ones!


...and home we went and, OF COURSE, those pumpkins were decorated before Daddy even got home! Pretty goofy HUH?!?!?!



(Do you love the rocks for eyebrows that AJ added this morning!?!?)

Ty and Jers, this ones for you!!!!!

I tried to upload this video, but I couldn't remember how to do it, so here is the link. ENJOY!!!!!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSAXLayoMKI