New....

Gabriella's first day of primary was "awesome". She has a great and creative teacher. Gabriella hasn't even once asked "where's the toys".

For Christmas we gave the older 3 kids desks. Megan loves hers a lot. Even during Christmas vacation she'd spent hours at her desk drawing pictures.

For Christmas I asked Trevor for a way to display the family's accomplishments. He gave me the words "Family Glory Wall" and together we came up with this layout. The smaller pictures are the photos of each of us doing something notable like.... Michelle's is one of her leading music at her Christmas program, Caleb is running a 5k with his grandpa, Megan won 2nd place at the County Fair Art Show, Gabriella started primary, Trevor is running a personal best in a half marathon and I won 3rd place in my age group in a 5k.

Christmas

Santa did bring me a new camera and I'm sure all of you will appreciate the clearer pictures. Santa also brought our family a Wii and Caleb and Michelle wasted no time in playing.


Gabriella loved all the new clothes she got. In fact instead of carrying around her new toys she carried her clothes around all day, or at least the 2 shirts, 1 skirt and 1 pair of pants that she was already wearing.

Megan loves the new home she got for her stuffed animals. Can you believe that ALL of these animals were previously on her bed all the time - even when she slept. I'm sure she's sleeping more soundly now that she has the majority of her bed back (she still has 3 large teddy bears on her bed).

Here's the family the Sunday after Christmas. If you look close enough you can see the necklaces that Michelle made for each of us from her new kit.

Merry Christmas to all........

Kids' Programs

On Wednesday, Caleb's 3rd grade class had an afternoon Christmas program (last 15 minutes of school) and we were all amazed that Trevor was able to squeeze away from work long enough to come see Caleb sing a few songs.

Later on Wednesday night, Michelle's 2nd grade class had a sing-a-long. Her teacher played the accordion and the kids took turns leading the audience in singing Christmas carols.

Caleb and Michelle practiced their songs so frequently around the house that now even Megan and Gabriella have the lyrics memorized.

On Thursday night Michelle's clogging group had their Christmas performance. It was Michelle's first large performance and she enjoyed the limelight.

Gabriella's 3rd Birthday

I was pretty proud of my first attempt at using actual cake decorating tools...then I realized I left off the "e". Oh well, she loved the chocolate cake with pink frosting and everyone scarfed it down so fast it must've tasted pretty good too.

She looks so grown up. I can't believe my youngest is already 3!

Gabriella's own picture of Megan putting together Gabriella's new puzzle set.

It was a long exciting day. This is how we found Gabriella shortly after dinnertime...all bundled up in the bean bag chair with a good book. I hope she keeps that love of books alive for years to come.

I love you my precious Gabriella!

Gabriella

Yesterday we had a combined family birthday/Christmas party at my sister's house. We were only able to take these couple of photos due to a full memory card (Oh I so hope Santa brings a new camera with a huge memory card). Gabriella's favorite pie is pumpkin so that was her birthday "cake". She had a hard time with everyone's attention focused on her (hence the scene below) but she livened right back up as soon as the singing was done and the pie was served.

Substitute Pet

The kids woke me up this morning yelling something about a dog on our porch. We at first thought that it was Caleb's piano teacher's dog but it wasn't. It seemed content to just hang out on our porch out of the snow and wind-which was fine until I realized it shredded our welcome mat and the cushions on our porch swing. Caleb and Michelle spent a couple of hours playing with the dog in the snow and having it fetch a tennis ball. Eventually it just wondered off and we haven't seen it since-although it did leave someone's snow boot on our front lawn that it drug off of someone else's porch.

Meg: Our Budding Photographer

More often than not, I'll try to take a quick pic of something only to find there's no memory left. When I scan through the most recent photos I'll find several pictures of the couch, the fridge, or the kitchen. These are the subjects Megan most likes to photograph. I delete most of them because I need the memory space for things like birthdays, etc but here are a few of hers I've kept.

Me next to our gigantic Christmas tree.


A stolen kiss.

Megan spent lots of time posing her Bear in just the right position.

Megan was the only one that thought to take a picture of the shoes filled with goodies by Saint Nicholas.

St Nicholas

I took the kids up to The Dutch Store (owned by my Uncle Pete and Tante Mietsie) to see St Nicholas and his helper black Peter (blackened by the soot in all the chimneys he goes down seeing if kids have been naughty or nice). It brought back memories from when I was a kid and the Dutch community in Salt Lake was so strong they'd have a huge dinner celebration where St Nicholas actually rode his white horse into the dining hall. It was funny to see my kids have the same reaction I remember having as a kid: fear of these strange dressed people. Although nowadays things have softened a bit and black Peter doesn't carry around a big sack to fill up with naughty kids.

Good Times

Gabriella loves her new church shoes so much she even wore them over her footed pjs.

Gabriella and Megan had a great time playing with/in/around the box from our tv.

Scott's visit

Over Thanksgiving my brother and his kids came to visit. We had a good time catching up and the kids had a blast wrestling around.

Cinderella

Megan and Gabriella were watching tv while I was on the stationary bike this morning. Megan, in her usual self, got a pillow and blankie for Gabriella, but then I had to laugh to myself as Megan then said "Lay down Gabriella and I'll tell you a story."

"Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl named Cinderella. She wanted to go to a ball but no one letted her unless she had a beautiful dress. She was heartbroken. The End."

Road Trip

This past weekend Trevor and I along with 7 other members of his family drove to Sacramento for his nephew's wedding. We rented a 15 passenger van to accomodate everyone. It's the best road trip I've taken since having kids.

Trevor and I by the Sacramento temple.


The Reno temple. I was born in Reno so this had some sentimental value.

Halloween

Yes those are our homegrown pumpkins. The largest one weighed 35 pounds. There was no way Trevor and I wanted to scrape the guts out of those humdingers so we painted them which worked wonderfully (no knives, slime or worrying about lighting candles).

Painting

Caleb's room was so hard to paint it took us over a month to recuperate enough to even think about painting again. Michelle's room (or one wall) was MUCH easier. Each coat (one primer and 2 color) took 20 mintues to paint so that turned out to be the easy part. Washing bright blue out of paint brushes proved to be the more difficult task.

I think it looks fabulous and Michelle is ecstatic (especially the part that we decided to let her continue having her own room instead of moving Megan in with her).

This experience with painting was so easy we decided to paint one wall in Megan and Gabriella's room next. Any ideas on color choices?

Decor

It took awhile but I finally got up some Halloween decorations. Much to the kids' dismay I refuse to use scary nasty things as decorations; hence the reason no spiders, mummies, etc. We do have several cute skeletons on the windows and one even glows in the dark.