Christmas Highlights

We started the Holiday Season by making a Gingerbread house with some of our friends from church. They had the great ideas to make trees out of waffle cones and the cool train.

We had fun making and eating this house.

Then I got crafty for a Christmas gift for my nephew. I made a Mr. Potato Head out of felt. It was fun, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. :)

We spent Christmas Eve at my parent's house with my family. Good food and good company. It was great!

Erik got some cool construction trucks. This is his wheel loader but he also got a dump truck and he LOVES them!

This is my nephew Matthew opening his Mr. Potato head. He was happy with it for a few minutes-he is only 18months old. But his parents loved it!

Paul got a camping lantern! We can't wait to use it camping this summer. :)

My mom w/her gift from us. This was exactly what she wanted, I can't believe I guessed right, awesome!

Christmas morning at our house!!

We were really excited to give Erik a tricycle so we woke up before him and got him up. It took him a bit to wake up and get excited about presents-luckily the candy in his stocking helped :)

It's Woody! He's got Buzz too and loves playing with them.

There's Erik's Trike in the pic below.

The newest XBOX 360 with the Kinect system!!!!

Wow do we love playing this! I had some sore legs yesterday from playing an obstacle course game. It was full of squats and jumps-yeah my legs hurt, but it felt good to be active.

A mug! Paul's Favorite! From Yellowstone too, Thanks Papa!

Paul gave me this awesome sweater. I love it!

Erik got a Curious George book from Grandma JuLee about the library and the picture on the last page matches the George poster he has on his door, I HAD to get a pictures of that.

My parents came over later for Lunch.

Erik had the idea to sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blow out a candle. We liked that idea so we did it. I was a little slow to grab the camera so I missed him blowing the candle out.

Playing with all the new Christmas toys.

And taking the new tricycle our for a spin. Erik loves this! He was outside for bout a half hour on Christmas day on the trike. He's getting a lot better at steering. It's so fun to see him pedal around.

The Christmas excitement has kinda thrown Erik's sleeping patterns off. The other night he had a hard time staying in bed. We found him on the floor like this. I don't know why sleeping on the floor next to the door is better than his bed, but we couldn't open the door cuz he was in the way, so I had to snap a pic.

Merry Christmas to everyone. We sure had a wonderful time!

Happy Birthday Erik!!

So I'm a little late in getting this post up, oops and sorry. But hey guess what we've got a 3 year old in our home now! Here's Erik playing with a balloon before his party.

Then one night we decided to make a paper bag town. All the art and ideas came from Erik's cool Highlights magazine.
The birthday festivities!
We decided on a Curious George theme because Erik loves him.

I found the cupcake idea online, thank you to the internet, and Pawly and I made a pinata together. We tried to include Erik in the making but he didn't like getting his hands all sticky in the paper mache glue. So Pawly and I had all the messy fun!

The opening of the presents:

A Mickey Mouse puzzle!

New clothes!

Guns!! Oh boy was he excited about this one. Oh and so was his cousin, who's head is in the picture. Cousin Isaac showed Erik how to use his new guns and they played with them all night.

"Ooo a sleeping bag!" said Erik. Actually they are snow pants, but close enough bud.


And a cool hat to go with the snow gear.

The sheriff and his gun holsters.


Cake time!!

We had a great time celebrating Erik's birthday with our family. Thanks everyone for coming and bringing Erik great gifts!

Let it Snow!

It's been snowing a lot over the past few days, especially for our town-we normally don't get much snow. But on Wednesday it snowed so much that the kids got out of school. So before it all melted away Erik and I went out to enjoy it. This is what we saw when we walked out the door.

That's our car buried in the snow, and I don't know if you can see, but the snow was still coming down.

Erik got right into the snow! He started digging and quickly caught on to throwing snowballs.

Here is his first snowball attempt. Later he would come at us and say he was going to attack us with the snow-then our knees would get a snow ball. I love this kid, it was so fun to play in the snow with him :)

I know this pictures is kinda blurry but I wanted to show how deep the snow was on little Erik.

He loved stomping though the snow. He was even able to get himself back up when he fell down.

Erik and I worked on building a snowman together and hunted around for things to decorate the face with. Erik really wanted a banana smile, but I told him this snowman was too small for a banana smile, so we used berries from our 'back yard' bush.

Then we added a hat.

Isn't he so cute?!



Then Daddy got home early and we went out for a second round of fun. By this time the snow was much easier to pack so we built a BIG snowman.

This time Erik got his Banana smile.




Mommy and Erik saying "Banana!" for the camera. :)

Then Erik wanted to sit on top of this post so Paul hoisted him on up there. I think he enjoyed the view from way up there :)

I'm really glad we took pictures of our snowmen because they really didn't last through the end of the day. The small one fell over backwards and the big one lost his banana mouth. Then the next day we saw the big snow man leaning forwards as if he was looking for his lost banana smile. We love the snow, keep it coming, or at least let us have a white Christmas too.

A Happy Thanksgiving!

We spent Thanksgiving with Paul's family in UT this weekend. Thanks to my parents who were willing to brave the snowy and icy roads we got there and back safely! Thanks for carpooling with us mom and dad! We had Thanksgiving dinner at Paul's grandparents house, so fun, so much wonderful food and tons of pie, yum yum!

We got home yesterday afternoon and as we started unloading our car it began snowing, we're so thankful we missed the snowy weather on the way home.

We are already in the Christmas spirit and decided to deck out our house, so up the tree went last night.

I love our tree, it pretty much takes up the whole front room, but it's beautiful! Paul has the great skill of 'fluffing' up the branches on our tree to make it look awesome!

See how nice and full it looks, yeah Paul's taught me a few things in tree decorating, and I'm grateful!
Yes it's a tall one. It almost touches our ceiling, it's great!

And the finished project, well almost, I need to get more lights for the top of the tree and put on the ribbon garland before it's absolutely complete, but I think it looks great!
And Paul loves it, as you can see :)


In UT we celebrated my be-lated B-day and Erik's early B-day.
We just put 3 candles on for Erik, that's enough for me too :)

Erik and I sang along with every one as we all sang Happy Birthday.

I LOVE hearing Erik sing, it's great!
Out go the candles. So do you like the cake, I decorated it!!!!

Yes, my wonderful sister-in-law taught me how to make and use fondant! We had so much fun! It was a LOT easier to make than I thought and it tasted great!

I plan to make another fondant cake solo this time and see how it turns out.
Thanks again Jamie for showing me how it's done with fondant!

Can't mention Jamie w/o bringing up Alia and Nick. We had a ton of fun with them too!

We got to talk Star Trek and play Nerts with Nick and make his cute little girl laugh.

Paul got a great grin out of her here. She loves her Uncle Paul.


Oh and she got him!

Way to go Alia, ya gotta defend yourself sometimes when your uncle is attacking your tummy :)

Paul says playing with his niece just made him more excited and prepared to have a girl. I'm happy to hear that, she'll definitely be loved.

Along with the B-day celebrating Erik got a new train set from his Grandma and Papa!

GeoTrax!


Of course they had to set it up and play with it and of course Paul had to show Erik how it's done.

I don't think Erik minded Paul doing the set up as long as he had the controls :)

Here it is racing up the track. He really loves this track, he's played with it a bunch already, which is great! Thanks Grandma and Papa!


We also conned Jamie into taking some family pictures of us. This is Erik all dressed up for the pics and getting ready to pull out the train again.

He's got this remote control thing down!

Happy Birthday Sandy!

I love my wife. Casandra is such a wonderful mother and companion. She is always so happy to serve and quick to love. Her ability to empathize with others boggles my mind. I am constantly amazed at how many people she loves and serves just with her amazing desire to get to know others and show her love for them. I'm so glad I get to spend my life with her and am happy that she will be my friend forever.
On Sandy's Birthday (November 16) we went to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. I got there early and ordered a cheesecake for Sandy, personalized just for her.

While we were eating luch Sandy asked me if I knew if they did anything for birthdays. I told her I had no idea. After we finished, the waiters/waitresses sang happy birthday and brought Sandy her treat. Sandy was very surprised and we had a good laugh after everyone had gone.

I'm so glad Sandy had fun on her birthday and that others got to see her on her day as well. She is such a great friend to so many and wouldn't want it any other way. We love you Sandy.