Random Weekend Pics

I don't remember which reason we were here on this particular day. This is just outside the hospital that we are very lucky to live so close to. Our pediatrician is located here and I often pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy. It seems between the girls, there is always something we are heading in for, I am grateful to have such a nice hospital so convenient to us. The girls always have to climb through the bike rack when we are walking in or out.

Sarah got a fun surprise early one Saturday morning. One of her best friends, Kassee, had a breakfast birthday party at IHOP. She came and kidnapped Sarah at 7:30 - a time you will never see Sarah awake on a Saturday morning! She was so surprised to see Kassee standing in her room when we went to wake her up. She had a blast at the party once she woke up! This picture makes me laugh because she probably blinked, but it kind of looks like she just doesn't want to open her eyes.

Nat and Ang wanted to do their own IHOP breakfast since they were stuck at home!

A lunch time creation by Natalie. She is always making herself these funny faces. She hides in the pantry - her workstation - sometimes with a flashlight so she can close the door, and she works on her creations. I love it! (Except for when she leaves things a mess in the pantry.)

Volleyball

When I heard Sarah's friend Kaitlyn was doing a volleyball "camp" with Riverton High, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce Sarah to one of my favorite sports. She was excited and enjoyed going every Tuesday night for a month. The girls had a great time learning new skills. Their team came in dead last, but hey, they had fun!

More Fooling Around

Once again, a favorite resource, my Family Fun magazines, inspired this one. I always wanted to do it. I think it turned out pretty cute! Chocoloate Rice Krispie meatloaf and candy peas and carrots. (Those flavored Tootsie rolls did the trick.)

Angela was my little accomplist and helped make the veggies. She was so excited to trick the girls when it was time for snack!

Funny random story. Kassee - Sarah's friend on the left - ate the green peas and they actually pulled out one of her mollars that had been loose! It was so funny. The darn mollar had been bugging Kassee for days, so she was very grateful that she ate her peas that afternoon!

Jacqueline and natalie liked their tricky food!

I "Heart" my Oregon friends!

Since we moved here almost six months ago (wow!), we have been so lucky to have visits from wonderful friends. The good thing about moving to Utah is that a lot of people come here to visit family or to pass through. I can't wait to see more of you! And hope to get some repeat visits as well. (Lots of hint dropping here!) Our first Oregon friend came just before Christmas. I was so thrilled to hear from Kelly and find a time that she could come. (Though, I missed Tylin )o: her daughter, who was one of my YW.) We love Kelly - the girls were almost as excited as I was that she was stopping by. It was fun to take her on the official new house tour, but we got side-tracked a lot just talking. I loved hearing about the ward and how everyone was doing. It was weird saying goodbye and not seeing her just walk home. (We lived just around the corner from each other.) It was a quick visit, but it was so great to hang out for a little bit and catch up. It felt so comfortable and easy having an old friend to talk to. Thanks so much for coming Kelly! Love ya lots! Shortly after Christmas, we got to see the Halls! Natalie was so excited to see Lydia. These were our wonderful "backyard" neighbors and good friends. Natalie and Lydia were best buds and all our kids got along so well. It is such a weird feeling not having them right behind us. I miss Shannan's incredible pies she used to pass over the fence to us. How my stomach aches for those pies! (o: It was so fun to hang out and show the house and try to talk them into buying the house behind us here. (o: We got to go out to lunch all together and had such a fun time. We laughed a lot and talked about getting together again in the summer. It was so nice to have Shannan and Matt and the kids visit. We miss them lots! Cute Shannan - It felt just like "old times" hanging out again! These two made plans for a sleepover in the summer! In February I got a text from Kaitlyn that she was going to be in our neck of the woods over President's Day weekend. Yahoo! Monday night she and Alan (her dad) came over after a day of exploring the BYU campus. Again, the girls were so excited (they loved my young women) - we had a fantastical time talking, eating homemade ice cream. Love ya Katie!! I love hanging out with you! (Man, this post is making me homesick . . . ) And just last week we were so excited to see Tina and Tori! Angela has had a picture of Tori on her dresser in a cute "Friends" frame that Tori gave her before we left. Whenever my girls have a "sleepover" on the weekends, Angela brings her pillow, her blanket, a doll and the picture of her and Tori. (o: They had fun playing just like old times, while Tina and I talked. A tradition that Tina and I had through every one of our kids. I still remember hanging out while Sarah and Taylor crawled around on our living room floors. Tina always had the best advice, listening ear and fun ideas. I can't believe how fast time goes by. Look how color coordinated we are! I miss you tons Tina! Thanks soooo much for coming! You're the best!

And just recently, I finally got to visit Kirstin, who happens to be a fellow Utahn (for now). I never would have guessed that when she and Jeff came to get an MBA at BYU that we would be following them here a year later. I'm so glad our paths crossed before they graduate and head to California. The girls and I headed down to Provo on one of their days off at school and we spent an afternoon with Kirstin and Lia, who has grown up so much!

I loved getting to see Kirstin's home and talk about her new adventures coming up. We always have the best talks and Kirstin always makes me want to be a better person. (o: She is awesome. It was a wonderful Friday afternoon together!

My amazing Oregon friends will always be near and dear to my heart. They taught me so much and took such good care of my little family during the decade we spent far away from our extended family. They were our surrogate extended family and mean the world to us - and ALWAYS will. Hugs and Kisses to all you Oregonians reading this post. Love you all - and I'm working on catching up on the blog from January so you can see what we've been up to!

Family Pics!

I wanted to post this one for Kaylynn. I finally got our beautiful pictures up in a frame. I should have taken a shot of the 2 8x10's I have framed on the wall too. I wanted family pictures of us in Oregon before we left and my very talented friend Kaylynn Matteson (a little plug for her!) took these for us. It was weird being on the other side of the camera. I am sooo not a natural on that side of the lens. It was fun to hang out and is one of my last memories with a good friend before we left. So these pictures are a little bittersweet to me. She did a fabulous job of making us look good! Thanks Kaylynn. (o:

Here Comes the Bride!

Natalie has an adorable teacher at school this year. We have loved Miss Duncan. The kids were so excited after Christmas break to see what she got for Christmas - an engagement ring! She is so cute and sent each one of her students their own wedding invitation in the mail which meant the world to all of the kids. Natalie loved looking at the picture of her teacher with her fiance. I think all the little girls in that class had a crush on her fiance! They could not wait for the reception.

Since the reception was out in Midvale, we decided to carpool with Nat's best friend Janie and her mom. Janie is adorable and I have loved getting to know her mom, she's so fun. We had a great time watching the girls anticipation of seeing their teacher and congratulating her. They were so hilarious and got more and more nervous as the line got closer and closer to her. It was like Miss Duncan was a celebrity all of a sudden. Natalie even asked if there would be news cameras there. (o:

The new Mrs. Tingey was very gracious and so cute with the girls. She and her cute husband were so grateful we came out and waited in the long line. I love how Janie has one of the orchids on top of her head in the picture above. (O: She is such a silly - which is why she and Nat get along so well.

We had a great night and I was glad to have a chance to get to visit with Lisa (Janie's mom).

The girls found plenty of other friends at the reception too! It was quite the party!

Hibernation

These shots were taken during a very cold end of January/beginning of February week. We did a lot of hibernating this winter. Above, Angela working on her 100 days of school homework. My girls got in their jammies early many a evening because jammies are just cozy.

Sarah taking a sick day. Just a fever for a couple days, nothing too exciting. I actually like these kind of days. I love having the kids home and hanging out with them. I slow down and enjoy the break from a busy schedule too. I am so grateful to have this luxury - to not have to stress about getting work off when the kids are sick.

Dress ups are always entertaining when one is stuck indoors. This was actually when Natalie was heading over to JT's house for a princess/knight party two houses down. She "rode" her horse there. And she even wore those ridiculous shoes walking over in the cold. No snow, luckily.

Thank Goodness it's Friday!

We love Fridays around here! One of the nice things about the schools out in Utah is that the kids get out early on Friday, an hour and a half early. It works out perfect because the rest of the week we are busy with homework, dance, violin and piano. Friday is the day we have playdates and 4H (every other week). They are fun days and we live for them! Above, Sarah and her buddy Sophia are making sun catchers. Sophia lives just down the street - we love having friends that are close enough to walk over!

Angela got invited to her friend Abbi's house for a cookie party that same Friday and brought home a cute new apron and these darling cookies. It wasn't even a birthday party - just for fun. And I believe, this same day, Natalie was playing up in her room with Janie. Did I mention we love Fridays? (o:

Activity Day Girls

My new calling in our ward is to be the 10 year old Activity Day leader. We have lots of girls in our ward so there is a group of girls for every age between 8 and 11. I was excited to get to be with Sarah's age group. This picture was taken at my first activity with the girls. They are spunky and definitely not boring! Natalie is our honorary member until she turns 8 this spring and gets to go with her own group. (She is soooo excited - you get to start going when you turn 8.) As it turns out, Angela's dance class is at the exact same time as activity days, which works out good, although sometimes she wishes she could come too. My girls are from left to right, top to bottom: Nicole, Sarah, Sunshine, Kaitlyn, Natalie, McKayla, Sierra and Mandy. Great girls. They are always excited and happy to participate in all the activities. In fact, they are VERY enthusiastic about everything. I love it! (o: We have a good time, though sometimes I have a little bit of a headache by the time we're done!

December 27

From NovDecFavorites

December is a very special day. It's the anniversary of the day I married my best friend, Clyde*. It's always a little crazy celebrating so quickly after Christmas, but it will be so much easier to celebrate living in Utah. Almost every year we lived in Oregon, we spent our anniversary traveling or hosting visitors for a Christmas visit. (Which was just fine with us!

Before we did our anniversary celebrating, I had a chance to meet up with two wonderful friends that I have known ever since I can remember. Stephanie and Emily. We've known each other since Kindergarten, I think. We went through high school together and have kept in touch all these years. The last time I saw Stephanie was when Sarah was a baby and she visited us in Portland. I think it's been longer since I've seen Emily, but we've e-mailed and kept in touch. We decided to get together while Steph was visiting from Washington. It's funny how good friends are so easy to just hang out with no matter how long it has been. Emily and Steph look so great! Exactly the same as I remember, and it doesn't feel to any of us that we are so much older. It still felt like we were high school friends out for a girls night. Only we talked about different things like kids, travel, and careers rather than tests and boys. I am so grateful for such good friends. I was always blessed with good friends growing up and think I turned out pretty good, in part, because of them. When I look back on my growing up years, my memories are so good and fun, with very few regrets, because I had wonderful friends surrounding me. I hope that my girls will be blessed with the same kind of friends. There's nothing better than a friend you can just be yourself around and who makes you a better person. Emily and Stephanie are those kind of friends.

From NovDecFavorites

What a fun day I had! After a fabulous afternoon with girlfriends, I had a hot date to look forward to with my man. (o: The girls were excited to have a night with grandma and grandpa and we were thrilled to have our first date where the babysitting would be free!

I was so excited when I found out Utah has a Ruth's Chris downtown, just like Portland. So of course, we planned to head there. It's been our traditional anniversary date for years. I am so happy we could continue this tradition. Clyde* made reservations a little later, so we had time to just do what we wanted. We ended up at Emergency Essentials! Now is that romantic or what? We had a great time and spent a good hour there! We looked at all the emergency preparedness stuff, talked about what we'd like to work on getting, bought a few things and sampled some of the flavored milks. It was fun, believe it or not. (o: We must be old. Then we headed downtown and enjoyed a fantastic meal at good old Ruth's Chris. We must have been there for two hours - we got lots of good food and just talked and talked and reminisced. It was a wonderful night. I can't believe it's been 14 years! I am so lucky - it has been a wonderful 14 years and I can't wait for more.

School Christmas Parties

From Dec-Feb

Through the month of December, Angela's teacher invited parents to come share a tradition that our families did for Christmas. I came on the day of their Christmas party and told the kids about our Christmas craft party. Then I helped the kids all make a Santa handprint card like the ones we made our our Christmas craft party last year.

From Dec-Feb

Abbi, Angela's cute friend.

From Dec-Feb

I love Kindergarteners. So cute.

From Dec-Feb

This kid's got personality, can you tell? (o: There is never a dull moment when Ashley is around! What a hoot!

From Dec-Feb

Playing a freeze dance game. The two boys are cuties - Ashton and Jake. Jake, the one on the right, is my boyfriend. (o: He is always giving me hugs and making little things for me when I come help in the class.

From Dec-Feb

Musical Peppermint candies.

From Dec-Feb

Natalie and Ruby at their party. Poor Sarah - by the time I got to her class I was too tired and busy to take any pictures. We did an around the world theme for her Christmas party and I led the Dreidel game. It was pretty fun. The kids put in Starburst candies or took them out depending on what they rolled.

Christmas Craft Party

From NovDecFavorites

I believe this is our fourth annual Christmas craft party (maybe the fifth?). I started this back in Oregon because we missed out on a lot of the family parties and events that people who have family close get to take part in. Although, we had plenty of family parties to keep us busy this year, I thought it was important for the girls to have some new friend bonding to start making memories with their Utah friends. So, the tradition continues. This year I let each of the girls invite 2 friends.

From NovDecFavorites

Angela invited Sunny and Abbi. Aren't kindergarteners so adorable? Abbi lives two houses down and Sunny is a friend from school.

From NovDecFavorites

Amalie and Kassee are two good friends of Sarah's. She had a hard time just picking two friends. She has been blessed with so many cute and good friends.

From NovDecFavorites

Natalie invited Sydney, who lives across the street and was one of Nat's very first friends. And Janie is Natalie's sidekick at school. They are becoming inseparable.

From NovDecFavorites

We had a lovely time with Christmas music, crafting, making treats and enjoying being together! I love this tradition!

Gingerbread House Party

From Dec-Feb

Natalie's teacher holds reading parties about every 6 weeks to reward the kids who complete a reading challenge and project. In December the kids had to make an ornament that related to one of the holiday books they read at home. (Nat made a cute Christmas fairy using a Polly Pocket and gluing on wings and decorations to make her look like a fairy in one of her books.) They brought their decorations and decorated a class Christmas tree. The reward was a sugar and candy filled Gingerbread making party. They actually just decorated small milk cartons, which I thought was pretty clever since graham crackers often topple and can be frustrating for little hands. It was fun and the kids had a blast. The picture above is Natalie with her friend, Ruby.

From Dec-Feb

I had to include a picture of this piece of work. It was a girl named Isabella, I think. I am pretty sure this little girl left a trail of candy behind her the whole way home. All I can say is ... Wow.

Settling In

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

It was soooo nice to have all our stuff back. We hadn't seen our things for about a month, I couldn't wait to get it all unpacked and get settled. We still lived out of our suitcases for a few more days, but gradually we got more and more organized. The girls were so excited to have their own rooms.

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

I got a kick out of the packing job the movers did. I would pull out a big huge bundle like this . . .

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

and find teeny tiny things inside, like this. I found individually wrapped dress up shoes in tones of paper, seashells, plastic toys. They really made sure to do a good job. We must have had a ton of paper by the time we were finished unpacking, though.

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

A very carefully wrapped seashell. (o:

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

The boxes made great forts and the kids had fun with them in the yard one day while I got some cleaning done. We still have some box "houses" in our basement. One fun memory for the girls, that I don't have a picture of because I was gone - was the day they were playing in the front yard with tons of boxes like these. Daddy was working on organizing and cleaning out the garage while they played in and on several boxes. Soon, neighborhood kids started to flock over and join in the fun. Hal* said he counted 13 little girls running around on and in those boxes in the front yard. It was a fun first memory for the girls in their new neighborhood!

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

Another funny thing that happened - could have turned out not so funny if the weather hadn't been so good the week we moved in. On our day of the move in - one of the guys had the brilliant idea to open one of the basement room windows to pass boxes through. We opened a window and took out a screen. I never really remembered seeing them use that window, now that I look back on it. We got busy doing other things and directing furniture placement, we forgot about it. Two days later, we were walking around the side of the house and found several boxes stacked by a window on the opposite side of the house behind our garage! Someone must have gotten mixed up as to which side of the house to take the boxes to and since the boxes could not be seen from the front or the backyard, they were forgotten. I'm so glad the weather held up or we would have lost a lot of books! Another down side to opening that window was that we were so busy that day we forgot it was open. We didn't notice until we came home late that night from getting dinner and realized the downstairs was freezing. Yikes! So much for that brilliant idea.

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

We love the sidewalk that wraps around to our big back patio - perfect for riding bikes!

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

One of the first matters of business after our move was finding violin and piano teachers for the girls and myself. We found a great violin teacher for Natalie at the high school right down the street, just a mile away. She is the orchestra teacher at Riverton. After Nat's first lesson, we came out and heard the marching band playing so we went to go watch them. They were preparing for state competition, I believe. It was fun to get to know the high school the girls will go to someday. It seems like a really nice school!

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

This was a big project we had to get to before winter set in. You can't really tell from this picture just how many tomato bushes are in here. I think I pulled out about 10 huge bushes (toward the middle and back). We also pulled out several weeds, old potato plants, corn stalks and picked some delicious carrots. We are excited to plant in this great big garden next summer!

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

Now that looks like a "home sweet home" sort of picture!

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

A house really feels like a home when friends and family come to visit! This is Angela's new friend, Abbi who lives two houses down!

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

Hosting our first football party with mom and dad! Hal* made his famous ribs. It was a stressful and exciting game vs. San Diego State. A nail biter for sure, but the Utes ended on an exciting note - 38 to 34, we were whooping and hollering and jumping up and down!! That was one of the craziest games I've ever seen with guys tipping the ball to the other team, blocking kicks, interceptions - all the stuff that makes college football so fun!

From Blog Favorites Sept.Oct.

A fun night with grandma and grandpa ended with a fun surprise - when we opened the door to say goodbye - 5 fresh inches of snow that fell during the game! Our first snow since moving into the house.