December '11

December brought Christmas programs, parties, and preparations.  Erin was in 2 programs at the school.  She was part of the Christmas choir, and she learned to play the recorder with the rest of the 4th grade. It's great to see kids involved!

John's work had a Christmas party at a fun bowling center this year!  They rented the whole place out for the evening and had bowling, unlimited laser tag and plenty of video arcading included!

The kids loved the bowling, but their favorite was the laser tag! (No pictures of that.)

There was also a very nice Christmas Dinner and lots of cash prizes!!!  John got to give out cash for a while too since he was on the party planning committee.

Christmas was very nice this year!  We had a quite Christmas eve at home with a turkey dinner. 

Then in the morning we opened part of our presents, went to church and then came back again for more presents! 

My favorite part of Christmas this year was the kids' gifts for each other.  I took them shopping at the dollar store and they bought presents for everyone with their own money.  They were more excited about those presents than they were for the ones from Santa!

Christmas afternoon we drove down to Mom and Dad's house. We saw all 3 of my brothers and their families.  And we found out that my youngest brother Richard and his wife Callie are expecting a baby!!! How exciting!!!  Congratulations guys!  We stayed the whole week there at Grandma and grandpa's house and had a great time. 

We spent New Years eve there too.  We celebrated New York style! We let the boys stay up until 10:00 when the ball dropped in NY, and the they went to bed.  Erin got to stay up later with the adults.  We played games, ate great food and had a great celebration!!! 

September '11

I can't believe that I still have Summer stuff on my blog, and it's the dead of Winter.  Time to catch up!  September means School, and I have 3 in school this year!  They all started on the same day:  the day after Labor day.  Everyone was excited.  Erin is in 4th grade this year.

Devin (going into 1st grade) bumped his head right before this picture!  Then we rushed him right out the door to school!  Oops!

Colin was excited, but nervous to start preschool.  When I left him he cried.  But once he discovered how fun it was, he never cried again.

We also went to the Utah State Fair.  After doing several things as a family, we let the kids each choose 1 ride to go on. 

Erin chose this bungee bouncer.  She loved it! 

They all loved the animals!

Also in September, Erin got her Brown Belt!  Only one more belt left!

September 15th was Colin's 4th Birthday!  He's getting so big!  I decided that this year it would be fun for him to have his first friend party!  He invited 4 friends, and they had a great time!

Then later on when John got home, we celebrated again with more cake and ice cream!

On September 17th, John ran the marathon that he had been training for all summer!  His goal was to do it in 4 hours.  He did pretty well!  He did it in 4 hours 15 minutes!  An excellent time for his very first marathon ever!

Devin has started losing his baby teeth!  He lost the first one in August and the second one in September.

And what did the tooth fairy do with his 2 teeth?  She passed them on to Sean!  (Sean really got his first 2 teeth in July, but it was kind of cute that he had the 2 teeth that Devin was missing)  :-)

Here's my cut Sean at 10 months old!  At this point he was doing an army crawl, pulling to stand, clapping, mimicking everything, and just being a cutie (when he wasn't teething).

April/May

Well, There's more for April. Erin entered a couple of art pieces in a contest (like reflections) at school. She won an Honorable mention on her tiger picture!

Erin and John had a Daddy Daughter date in April too. They dressed up fun and had a great time playing games and dancing.

In early May, I took the two little boys and went on Devin's field trip to the Hogle Zoo. There were so many parents there, that we got Devin to ourselves! It was a lot of fun. I just wished Erin and John could be there. Maybe another time.

Sean touching his toes! (May, 5 Months old)

Also in May, John took a weekend trip down to Bryce Canyon and Cedar City with a couple of his Mission Companions and College friends, Duane and Chad. They had a great trip reminiscing and visiting with friends.

May was the ending of the school year too, so Erin and Devin both had school programs. Erin's was all about patriotism.

Devin's was all about animals. I made his costume out of a black sweater and sweats he had, and some scrap materials. He did a great job learning about his animal and singing the songs with the group.

For Memorial weekend, we went up to Park City with Mom and Dad. We stayed at their condo and even though it was cool, they all went swimming. We also went to the Olympic park. Mom and I went on a tour while John, Dad and the kids went on the alpine slide and zip lines. It was an adventurous day!

And, Yes it snowed while we were there!

Happy Halloween

We had a great Halloween. Before the big day, we went to a pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins. The kids always enjoy this part. It was so muddy after all the rain we've had that we wore our boots. It's a good thing!
The next night we carved the pumpkins. Each of the kids picked out a pattern and helped pull out seeds and mark the pattern and then John and I carved. Erin pretty much did the whole thing on her own this year! She had a little help here and there to speed her along, but she did most of the work. That was awesome! Then John and I each carved our own. What a great tradition.

Friday was a big day, cause we had a Halloween parade at school, so we had to dress the kids up bright and early. John dressed up for work too. He came up with his own costume.
That night was the ward Halloween party. It was a lot of fun. We had a soup/chili cook-off, then a costume parade. The YM and YW did games for the Kids, and then there was a Trunk-or-Treat.

After the party John reminded me to take a picture of everybody together. I'm glad I did, cause the next night was crazy! We got ready quickly, cause it had been pouring rain, and was just letting up. I didn't know how long the lull would last, so I shoved them all out the door to trick-or-treat. Then we went to our neighbor's house for a hot dog roast that ended up indoors because of the rain. I thought for sure it would rain all evening, but after dinner it let up again, so the kids all went trick-or-treating together. By the time we got home, it was late, and they were all wet and tired. We took off the costumes and make-up before I even though of pictures. I did get pictures of the morning after though. I can't believe how much candy they got! I guess that's what I get for sending them out twice!