January

Sean started walking at the very beginning of the year.  Here he is, after only one week of walking.  He was really wobbly for the whole first month or so, but now he's a pro!  I can't get a video to upload, so I'll try again later.

For the last 9 months or so, we've been involved in a babysitting co-op.  It is the best thing ever!!!!  Every Friday we take our kids to one of 5 family's houses.  They spend the evening there playing, having snacks, and watching movies while John and I get to go on a date.  Then every 5 weeks it's our turn to babysit.  There can be up to 18 kids including our own, but it is so worth it every other Friday when we can go out and spend quality time together! 

This is John and some of the kids on our babysitting night.

Erin loves to take pictures, especially of Sean!  They had a great time taking these ones together. 

Also in January, Devin's Chinese class put on a program for the Chinese New Year.  It was really fun to see the kids sing and recite in Chinese! 

They made these Dragons for the occasion.

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!!! 

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!

July

It's already August, and I haven't even blogged about our 4th of July or Devin's birthday! Here it is: We went to a really fun Family reunion on the 4th of July weekend. It was in Richfield and there was a ton people, a ton of good food, and an awesome water slide! The kids loved the water slide, but got cold really quick. We had a great time!

Then Erin went off with her cousin to Fish lake for the weekend. That was really weird, to celebrate the 4th without her, but she had a great time. They went down to Richfield for their 4th of July celebration. There she caught a fish with her hands! And won a gold fish in a game. What a fun weekend for her! Thanks to Mindy and Lafe for hosting her and taking care of her while she was with them!

As for us, we went home and had our own fireworks celebration. The boys loved the sparklers.

I love fireworks and as you can tell, so does Colin!

We also had the kids in swim lessons for the first 2 weeks of July. Devin passed off his level 1 with flying colors.

He even went off the diving board without any help from his teacher!

Erin is in level 4 and is swimming like a fish.

She went off the High dive! She was a little nervous at first, but once she did it once she decided to do it a few more times.

We found this cool splash park near our house, and one morning while John and Erin were out skiing, I decided to take the boys out for a little fun of our own.

There was also a a dry play ground there where the boys could warm up and dry off. That was Colin's favorite part.

As for Devin's birthday. It was a lot of fun.

He was so excited to get a star wars Nerf gun and a new Lego set, among other things.

We had a birthday party for him at the end of June before all the kids got out of school and went on family vacations. I had the party planned for outside, but we had to improvise when the wind became torrential and interrupted all our games. All in all, though it was a really fun Pirate party, and Devin tells me now that the Treasure hunt was his favorite part. Happy 5th birthday Devin! I'm so proud to be your Mom!