Christmas Eve

We were lucky enough to spend almost 3 weeks in colorado over christmas! HOORAY! We haven't been to Denver much at all for so long- it was nice to be back on the right side of the mountains!

Anyway, we spent a couple days with my sister and her family and then headed down to Kent's house on christmas eve. Grandpa Kirt and Grandma Anna had a great evening waiting for us! After a FABULOUS dinner (we LOVE french dip- even the boys inhale it!), we were treated to chocolate fondue! We don't fondue nearly enough... so it was a great treat!

We also started a couple new traditions this year, thanks to Kindergarten. Tyse was given some magic reindeer dust at school that you sprinkle on the snow outside and the reindeer find their way to you by seeing it. So after careful instruction, out the boys went to sprinkle. We also sprinkled some reindeer food on the sidewalk outside for extra lure.

Ollie sprinkling reindeer dust

Tyse and Emitt covering the walk with reindeer food

While we were outside, Emitt kept thinking he saw reindeer in the sky... of course. At one point, he even convinced Ollie and they were on a mission to convince us all... here is ollie pointing it out.After the yard was properly prepared, we came in and opened the traditional elf gifts and had the christmas eve picture taken. Notice that not all of our family was feeling all that jolly...

Then we read the christmas story, teamed up with some carols and it was off to bed for the little ones! We once again had an extrememly easy time getting them to go to bed! I thought they would be up for hours and coming in a lot- but they went right to bed- not to be heard from again until we WOKE THEM UP at 8:30 Christmas Morning!

Kent and I started a new tradition for ourselves- a late night trip to 7-11 for whatever was previously forgotten and for a great cup of convenience store hot chocolate with flavored creamer- one of my favorite things! Hopefully we will always have company on christmas eve so we can indulge in this little post bedtime tradition!

Our Christmas Tree

Just a quickie to document the tree we had this year. Of course we wanted to cut our tree again this year, but didn't get to the office early enough to gt a permit in our usual location. Dang those 8 minutes! So after a month long debate about what we were going to do- were we going to (heaven for bid) drive to a tree lot and BUY a tree? Well, that was what I thought we would succumb to, but Kent had other ideas in mind. He had a guy from work have his parents who live down by Nephi go and buy us permits so we could go cut way out by Delta. So we started out trying to leave early on Tyse's birthday- which just happened to be the coldest day of the year- on our adventure to find a new place to cut. We decided to follow a friend's recommendation as to what canyon to try out and by the time we got there the kids were ready for naps. But there is no time to nap when there is a christmas tree to be hunted on the coldest day of the year! So we bundled everyone up and headed out (this only took 45 minutes!). We should have known that we were doomed when Ollie was crying before we even left the car! Anyway, I hope to have suppressed the memory of this tree hunt by the time next year rolls around, so I am not going to go into the gory details- let's just say that we found a tree in record time, Tyse and I cut it down, Kent left half of it on the mountainside and wasn't willing to go back up to find the rest; Ollie, Emitt and I started down earlier than Tyse and Kent and we got totally lost to the point that all 3 of us were crying, and luckily Tyse kept telling dad to follow the crying, so they found us and got us safely back to the car! Here are the boys in the car after finally warming up...and here we are with the tree loaded by the sign documenting the place we will never cut again!I should have known this wasn't going to be a quickie!

Anyway, we did get the lights on and decorate and I think it was one of Kent's favorites- minus the issue with the lights. Half the time the top of the tree wouldn't light up at all! It would just blink on and off at will so we decided to just embrace the personality of the tree for another year! I will have to post a finished pic later- I think it is on Kent's camera.

We were really happy that it was still in good shape by the time we returned from CO and we were able to light it up a few more times before my mom took pity on and came to take it down.

Tyse turns 6!

Tyse has turned 6! we are so excited for him. He thinks things are great at 6, and who can blame him? I would LOVE to spend a while as a 6 year old again!

Anyway, about 2 weeks early he was sitting in church and I leaned over to see what he was doing and saw this...

His birthday wish list AND invite list for his party. The best thing about this list is on his wish side (written in red). The 7th item down says "RUG". I think it is a funny story. We are sitting in church and he leans over and says to me, "Mom, for my birthday, can I ask for something for you?" Of course I say yes, but I am really curious as to what he wants to get for HIS birthday for me. ANyway, he writes rug. I aks him about it and he says, "Mom, you really need new kitchen rugs." Apparently the wear on my rugs is enough to entice a completely self centered six year old (as all are) to aks for kitchen rugs for his birthday.

This was also the first year he wanted a boy only party. So for my friends with girls, don't feel slighted. Your daughters would have gone nuts at the bowling alley with 9 six-year-old boys!

Anyway, for the day we actually went to cut our christmas tree. That deserves its own post, so I will share that later, but after we got back we went to Red Robin for dinner, where we actually let him order dessert, and then opened presents.The highlights were...a bronco bobble head from my sister's family- which lasted all of 3 days before his leg was broken off, and...The bright blue cowboy boots! He had been asking for seriously over a year for some and so I took him boot shopping and he couldn't live without the bright blues. He calls them his BYU boots. Apparently all things in our house are byu. On a sidenote, when we asked Emitt tonight at family prayer what he was thankful for, he said, "The BYU guys." Boy, we have been effective in our brainwashing! Anyway, he wants to wear the boots every day, even with warm up pants and one leg tucked in. I am learning just to cringe and get over it!

A couple days later, we had his friend party. We took 9 boys bowling! I wasn't sure they would all really get it, but they had a great time and left some great divits in the lanes of the bowling alley!

I know this pic is really blurry, but I think it is hysterical and it sums up the entire bowling experience- 9 young boys trying their hardest to throw balls bigger than their heads down a lane- in the fastest way possible!

Here's our crew after the bowling- next stop home for pizza and cake!

Tyse was very specific about what cake he wanted- he has been asking for it since the day after his birthday last year!

Yes, that is a bag of cheetos with a candle taped to the top! That is exactly what he has been asking for for months! But he did think maybe someone else would want cake, so as a boy after his mother's heart, he wanted chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I did my best, but cake decoration is usually Kent's domain!

We all survived and had a great time! Can't wait for #7!

Emitt's 3rd birthday

We had such a great time celebrating our little comedian! We let him open his presents in the morning. This is all you need to know about that... He LOVES his new cowboy hat and his bike! He asked for french toast for breakfast, so I obliged
We spent the day at Tyse's school fun run and then took the Englands with us to Kangaroo Zoo- a place Emitt had never been but asked for almost daily
Yup- I know this isn't Emitt, but for some reason I took pictures of everyone EXCEPT Emitt while we were there! Oops!

A few days later we had the big cowboy party with 21 little buckeroos! We made cowboy vests and bandanasWe practiced our sharp shootingWe had a horse race

And a gunny sack raceAnd of course, presents and a HUGE COWPIE CAKE

We had a great time!

November 2009

I love preparing for the holidays! I also love finishing a long stint on steroids, so NOV was great! We were very lucky to have all my siblings and their families get together for thanksgiving, starting about a week early and finishing early in December. We spent a LOT of time watching cougar football!When my family all gets together and we get to watch the BYU-UTAH game together, it is especially fabulous! My sisters in law, mom, and I made our christmas cards and we went to the first BYU basketball game of the season. Clearly I didn't carry my camera around often enough.

But I do have pictures of our post turkey dinner activity: Turkey bowling!

I know this pic is grainy, but kent's throuth the legs bowl was hysterical! Even my mom got in on the action!

John and Madalyn put together a turkey hunt the next day for the kids. It was such a neat thing! The kids dressed up like pilgrims and went hunting turkey (a pinata at the end), but on the way, were attacked by indians (the grown up male children of the family). It was so awesome I think it needs to become a tradition! I also wish I had pictures!

October 09

This month was very busy! Kent spent a lot of the month in CO again, while the boys and I had a great time enjoying the nice weather and the fun holidays!

WE went up into the canyon one saturday to enjoy the fall colors.

WE also really enjoyed the first snow:

The pumpkin patch was a hit for all. Ollie loved the mini wheelbarrows (anyone know where we could buy one of those?) and all the boys climbed on the tractors and ran through the corn maze. We love the pumpkin patch!

Carving pumpkins was a ball for all. Tyse and Emitt liked cleaning out the pumpkins, and Ollie preferred putting the guts back in!We tried out kids and witch night at gardner village! The kids had a ball

We also hosted a neighborhood halloween carnival, like the old ones we used to have at church when I was little! It ended up being so much fun having the kids do a fishing booth, a cupcake walk, decorate cookies, experience the mad scientist lab, eat doughnuts off a string, and bowl with pumpkins!

And that night, the boys dressed up and headed out on a BEAUTIFUL night! We had a dementor, a lion, and an everchanging Emitt. He started the day as Buzz Lightyear and ended the night as a dalmation.October was great!

September 09

September was full with sick mom once again. We didn't do much, but there were a few highlights:

Emitt turned 3. I will dedicate a separate post to the big day.

WE went camping with Kent's siblings to Palisade state park. We didn't take nearly enough pics, but ONE highlight of the trip was the paddle boat race. Despite how intimidating this team looks, they sadly didn't pull out the big win.

We spent more time in the water with the opening of the splash pad in our neighborhood. This picture left tyse wondering why he attempted this...

Kent and I went on a morning date to try to find some furniture for our house. By this point in my illness I was on a HEAVY amount of steroids and it turned me into "Fat Monica", as Kent named me.(Those of you that know my love for "Friends" understand) Basically I blew up like a balloon and made me crave to overhaul our entire house in one weekend. My best friend during this long 3 month period was my label maker!

Anyway, we went to look at some old secondhand stores in the sugarhouse area of salt lake. Kent has never been known to do things in a direct manner, and he made us meander through countless residential streets between stores. One street in particular was having a neighborhood cleanup and each house had piles of things they were getting rid of. They had tons of barnwood for free, as well as old screens, windows, and shutters. So we rang some bells and begged their old trash off of them and loaded up the Durango as seen below:

We haven't finished all our projects yet, but we are on our way!

We hosted a neighborhood smores party!

My dad came to visit for a few days and we went to the farm at thanksgiving point:

THis was the end of September!

August 2009

August Roundup:

I actually managed a couple august posts about the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Dedication and having my sister in town. Here is what else was going on:

Tyse had a huge month! He lost a tooth on monday and started school on Tuesday! He loves school and really excels in his class. He can't wait to get on to first grade!

We were also able to spend quite a bit of time just hanging with friends with me not feeling quite so great. We were lucky enough to see the Johnsons when they came to visit from Virginia and get together on Katie's birthday for a fun evening!

Here's the adults:

And here are the kids:seriously, what did we do?

In august, Kent spent most of the month in CO dealing with issues on his building there, so we don't have a ton more to share. Pretty much every day we did this:

July 2009

July in a nutshell...






We got to go with our friends, the Chambers, to their cabin in Idaho for a few days and had a great time in Yellowstone and playing on their lake.


We went to the cowpolk festival at thanksgiving point. They boys had a great time practicing their sharp shooting, taking care of the animals, branding themselves, making kercheifs, and of course, being thrown in jail!

Tyse started baseball. He thinks coach pitch is pretty boring, but you can't do anything else for a 5 year old, or a 6 year old either. He will have to endure it another year. He does now cheer for the Phillies. I am not sure if he thinks because that's the team he was on it will be a predictor of future ambition or if he is just a bandwagon jumper.

And of course, we celebrated the 4th of july, my favorite holiday. We went to the provo parade and spent the day with my mom and brother's family. We ended the night with fireworks at pleasant grove- they put on quite the show!

Lastly, we finally found out why I had been feeling so lousy for the previous couple months. I have Ulcerative colitis and it continues to cause us grief, but we will get it figured out... eventually!