Holiday parties

This was the Christmas Party at Melissa and Kelly's house. It was so much fun. We had a TON of food there. To wet your appetite, we had pork, a turkey, a ham, several salads, casseroles, desserts, home-made rolls, etc... All was very good and yummy. After dinner, we then moved on to playing some games. We played a get to know you game, then we played another game. I am not sure the name of the game but music plays and then when it stops, you have to reach your hand in a brown grocery bag. While not looking, you have to take out the first article of clothing that you touch and then put it on. Well, as you can see from the pictures below, it was absolutely hilarious. We haven't laughed that hard in a very long time. When this game was over, we did a white elephant exchange. After that there was a lot of visiting and more laughing.

This next party was our New Year's Eve Party at Mark and Cass' house. Again, this party was a lot of fun also. We had most of the adults upstairs playing games and the children downstairs. Our kids were so thrilled that they were able to stay up until midnight.

After playing games, we decided to celebrate with playing Rock Band. You can see who is thoroughly enjoying this. He thought he was a pretty cool kid.

Nathan playing the guitar on Rock Band!

We all took our turn playing and singing. Needless to say, I am not sure I ever made it through a song without failing at least once. This was our first time ever playing Rock Band.

THANKS AGAIN to you both for opening up your houses and allowing all of us crazy family and friends to join you for the holidays. It truly made our holiday better.

Snow Much FUN!!

So we went up Ephraim canyon when we were visiting for the holidays. We went up two days in a row 'cause all the kids and "big" kids were having a blast. We all really had a great time, Bryan not so much the 2nd day, which you will see why later.


Here are some pictures of our family sledding down the hill. As you can see despite the cold, Joshy really loved just putting his head in the snow and eating it.

Pix of all the families that were there. Grandma and Grandpa joined us but just watched the whole time. Uncle Nate was able to join us the 2nd day.

Below are a bunch of pictures of all the aunts, uncles, and cousins enjoying the sledding.

This is Uncle Kelly and Jenessa walking up the hill, I thought it was quite a memorable pix. Then we had one of all the little ones who at times were really enjoying the cold!!

I'm loving it....Oops maybe a little too much...

I thought I would save the best til last... So, it was only Bryan's 2nd run down the hill. He offered to take Joshua, with my last words being "Please be careful". Well, needless to say you can see from the pix what happened. I guess Bryan realized he was going too fast and tried to stop himself with his foot but in turn it ended up making it worse. Amazingly through it all, he managed to keep Joshua on top of him and not roll on him. We were all laughing so hard at the whole situation because it was quite hilarious, but I was also very concerned for Josh. Once I found out he was ok...it actually became funnier, even though Bryan was hurt (Sorry honey). He was a trooper and was able to get up, but unfortunately for him, he was obviously done for the day. Thanks for a great time everyone.

Christmas 2008

Everyone taking their turn in helping put decorations on our tree. We always do two trees at our house. A fake one and a real one. I Love the cleanliness of the fake one, but I just can't replace the smell of the real one. This year I made life simple on us all and I just went and got the real tree by myself, brought it home, and then the kids decorated it. That seemed to work out the best. We love this time of season.

These two pictures were too precious to not include them on our blog. All of my kiddo's love Grandma Gertie, especially Jenessa. She is always asking when we go down to the "long Grandmas" house, if and when we get to go visit Grandma Gertie. We love you Grandma. Then the next picture, doesn't always happen. Often times you will find Grandma reading to the grandkids but when you find grandpa with them, well, it's just picture PERFECT!!

Well, needless to say at our house around Christmas time, we have more decorations than we know what to do it (so Bryan would say). I kindof got that trend from my mom. We have a lot of santas, reindeers, snowmen, etc...that sing songs. The kids loved opening up all the backs of them and putting batteries in and playing as many of them as they could at one time.

The first pic is the kids coming down the stairs first thing Christmas morning. You can see by Nate clapping they are pretty excited. The middle pic of the kids, if you look at the boys face, is PRICELESS!! This is one of the many joys of Christmas morning. The last pic is of the children looking at thier "Disneyland" books figuring out that that was our main Christmas gift. They were all so excited when they realized that is where we were going. We spent the 3rd week of January in Disneyland. Perfect time to go...Blog to follow with that trip.

Jenessa and Ashlee in thier cute nightgowns that Grandma made. We spent Christmas here at our house in Centerville and then spent some time at Grandma and pa Soelbergs house. We then headed down to Ephraim on the 29th of Decemeber and had Christmas all over again there. We brought in the new year there, and as tradition would have it, I being the blonde, went through the door first!!