Christmas 2008

Wow! Christmas was great at our house.  We are truly blessed.  Christmas lasted nearly a full week for us.  

Scott, Cassie, and Riley were headed to California for the holidays.  So we had a mini-Christmas with them on Sunday evening.  Mostly we exchanged gifts and watched Riley play with the paper from her gifts.  It was cool!

Christmas eve was just Me, Vern, Chelsea, Katie and Taylor.  But it was nice.  We opened our traditional Christmas Eve gift (yeah, the jammy thing).  Only this year we didn't do jammies, we did sweats for everyone.  After opening the traditional gift, we reread the Christmas story and celebrated the real reason for this season.  

The next morning we got up (9:00 am and we still had to wake everyone up!).  Alex and Jon joined us and we opened our gifts.  It was such fun.  Santa must have thought we were all pretty good this year.  Especially Taylor (she got an iPod Shuffle and a sled from Santa.)  

After opening the gifts, we had breakfast.  Vern and Alex worked together to feed the crowd.  It was awesome.

I am so grateful for my family.  I have been truly blessed!  I thank my Heavenly Father for my many blessings.  (Especially for my family and home).  

After breakfast, we went to the care center to say Merry Christmas to Grandma and Grandpa Lloyd and Uncle Michael.  We watched as they opened their gifts.  Michael was a lot of fun, teasing us all.  We would say Merry Christmas and he would reply "Bah Hum Bug!".  Of course we know he was teasing because of the gigantic smile on his face.  It's such a blessing to watch as Michael continues to improve. 

It truly was a wonderful Christmas!!!  I pray that each of you had the same experience and pray for your happiness.

Gone Private

So, I have privatized my blog. I love posting pictures of my family. Unfortunately, the world today is not a safe place. I tried to send an invite to all my family and friends. But I may of forgotten someone. Please let me know if there is someone you hear about that is feeling left out. I'll send them an invite. :) Thanks for all your suport. I love you all!!!!

Thanksgiving 2008

So Thanksgiving was awesome! We had our whole family here. Vern and I are truly grateful for every opportunity we have to have them all together. Now they are all growing up and having families of their own, it is harder and harder to get them all together. So the fact that we were able to spend all of Thanksgiving day and the day after together was truly amazing. I love my family!!! And I thank my Father in Heaven for sending them to me.

We also had Grandma and Grandpa Lloyd for dinner. It is so fun having Grandma and Grandpa join us. I know its been hard on them leaving Boise and moving to Bountiful. But we are all grateful they are close.

And Michael was able to leave the rehab center for a couple of hours and come and watch a movie with us. He sat for a long time and listened to the girls sing. Yeah, that is one of my very most favorite things when all my kids get together. They love to sit at the piano and sing. (Alex plays the piano while they all sing!!!!). Another thing I am truly grateful for. I love music and I love my family!!!! When I get them both at once, my heart is truly full.

Scott's brother, Kevin, came from Rexburg to have dinner with us. He's just like one of the kids. We really enjoy having him here.

Riley was all smiles on Thanksgiving. She was so excited about all that was going on, she wouldn't take a nap. But, she was a dream child. She did some dancing and singing and laughing.

The most contagious smile. :-)

The Day After Thanksgiving:

Taylor made a ginger bread house. She loves to be creative. And she loves the frosting and candy that go on it. :-) Thanks so much to Karen for all her hard work. She's a wonderful aunt to do this. And Taylor really had a lot of fun.

And, we went and took some family pictures. Great stuff....
Thanks Bridget for helping out!!!!






What a beautiful, amazing family. I have so much to be thankful for!!!

The Karate Kid

Taylor had a belt promotion this last week. She is now a green belt. If your wondering if she has learned anything, just ask Scott. He was testing her and wanted to know what she would do if he grabbed her "like this". Scott now knows how great the floor looks!

Halloween Night 2008

Another Halloween has come and gone this one was great
we spent it with Riley and her Mom and Dad. Riley brought her mom
and had her make Mummy Dogs


she also brought her dad and she is learning to play the Piano



she spent some time Grandma

She way too cute

We had a visit from Hannah Montana

What a beautiful girl she sang she danced and she trick or treated

the night was really fun and we look forward to many more

Hannah Montana

So with 5 daughters, Hannah Montana is pretty popular at our House. So popular in fact that she came to visit us for Halloween. hahaha
Taylor makes a pretty cute Hannah if I do say so myself.





Her class halloween party was yesterday. There were some pretty awesome ghouls there. We even had some potty humor. See the kid dressed up like a toilet!

I stole some pictures of my grand baby off of Cassie's blog. Riley is the cutest baby ever. Well I think so anyway. She definitely ranks right up there with all of mine.

Flower Child

Gangsta

HALLOWEEN DANCE

Hot Stuff!! Super Heros!!!!

So it has been a really busy week. Sunday we had Standard Nights where Katie sang a short solo. She was awesome! Tuesday Katie had a concert. Wednesday Mom did visiting teaching and Katie and Dad worked. Thursday Chelsea had a recital and boy was she great! Katie and Taylor started rehearsal for "Annie". And topping it all off was the Halloween dance on Saturday. Katie was to be "Wonder Woman" or "Super Girl". But we waited till the last minute to buy a costume and they were all gone. After spending most the evening on Friday on the hunt for the perfect costume, we decided to make our own. Well, Mom did the making and Katie did the deciding. hahaha....

Anyway, we ended buying material but could not find a pattern. Knowing me, that is not good news. But we did it!!!! And if I do say so myself it looks pretty darn good (at least from a distance).

In the midst of all that, we were providing dinner as well. Saturday is cleaning day! And it needed to be done..

Amazingly enough, we manage to finish it all and do some cute decorating as well. Dad made a fantastic dinner for the kids. They carved pumpkins and all in all it was a great success.

Les Miserable

See if you can see Katie in this picture. Hint she has a brown wig on.....

So we just finished Les Miserable production at our house. Katie was a "lovely lady". This is the same role Cassie played five years ago. We joke at our house that our girls make good "lovely ladies". There are other words we could use, but I prefer "lovely ladies". :-)

Anyway, Katie did a great job and we really had fun watching her. She had to wear a wig because she went and cut her hair. The wig she got was a beautiful brown wig. She looked great in it, so we decided to dye her hair brown. It is actually really cute. It's been fun watching my girls on stage all these years. We didn't have anyone in a big production last year and we missed it. The next production starts next week. Both Katie and Taylor are going to be in the cast for "Annie". Taylor is really excited. She will play one of the orphans. This will be her first time in a play. Katie got casted as one of the Bolyn girls. She will have to wear a blonde wig for that one. :) It's fun getting to see all of these different looks.

Conference

Cassie is finally showing me how to do this blog thing. We looked for a picture of just Vern and I ... we don't have any. Well we have old ones, but they are from years ago. So, we decided on a picture of all our beautiful girls in the header.

Today was conference Sunday. The whole family was all here today listening to conference together. I love it when we're all together. Conference was awesome. I made muffins and we just ate all morning long while we listened. And of course Riley was here too. She is my other beautiful girl. She usually smiles at Grandma. But today, she kept putting her bottom lip out at me. I think she thought I was going to take her from her Mom. I just spent the last week and a half watching her while Mom and Dad went to school. She figured today was not a day for her to be away from them. But, after awhile she was happy to see Grandma. And I got some great smiles.

Welcome to our blog!!!!