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!!! 

November '11

November brought tons of snow!  (we haven't had much since).  We got two major snow storms and the kids loved playing in it. 

 They got really creative!

We had Thanksgiving at my Mom and Dad's house again this year.  It was a quiet weekend, cause we were the only ones there!

While we were there, we went to see Santa. 

Erin and Devin had very specific things they were asking for.

Sean wanted nothing to do with Santa.

Colin wanted to ask Santa for things, but would not sit on his lap.  John happened to be sick the day we went to see Santa, so I had to hold Sean while helping Colin stand next to Santa and tell him what he wanted. It was comedy!  Sean was screaming, because he didn't like Santa, and Colin was whispering his requests.  This was a very good Santa!  He didn't seem to mind at all. 

  Grandma helped the big kids decorate a Gingerbread house too!  We had a great time there at Thanksgiving.

November 29th was Sean's 1st Birthday! 

 I can't believe my baby's 1!  He had a great day and was very pleased with his presents.

He grabbed the dinosaurs off his cake right away, and wondered why we were all singing.

At first, he didn't know what to do with this colorful thing in front of him.  When he touched it it made his hands sticky and he didn't like it. 

But when I gave him a taste of the frosting, he dug in!!!  He has a major sweet tooth now!

October '11

In October, John and I went away for a weekend.  We left the kids with Grandma and Grandpa, and went to Park city.  We stayed at a very nice hotel called the Zermatt.

It was a nice relaxing weekend of going out to eat, a little exploring, massages, and swimming in the Hot springs!  What a nice break from our normal chaos!

Later on in October, John's Mom came over from Ireland for a visit.  We decided that it would be fun to take the kids to the Zoo with her.

Sean loved the animals!  He wanted to get right in there with them.

 This is the only picture that I got Colin to stand in willingly!

 John's favorite animal is the Eagle!

It was a cold trip, but it was fun for all of us.  The kids have been begging to go to the zoo for a long time!

 Halloween was fun with Nana there!  And the kids looked great in their costumes.  Erin was a Wolf (which I made), Devin was Darth Vader, Colin was Bat man, and Sean was Tigger.

 Now without masks!

 Sean was this Tigger by default.  I had a cute lion costume that I had tried on him maybe a month earlier, and when I went to put it on him for Halloween, it was too small!!!!  Thank goodness I had this Tigger costume!!!!!  It just goes to show how fast they grow.  He was 11 months old.

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).