Maui

Gotta love the beautiful Maui. Click here for more photos.

Hawaii Day One

Long Day, Awesome Fun.

(Click link to see photos uploaded today)

Snow Day

We finally got snow! And it was good playing and packing snow, so we went out and played, all of us! So for a quick run down of our outside adventure. Hannah and I built snowmen, 6 of them. Our whole family is represented out there. From left to right you have Sam, Dad, Mom (Hannah even found hair to put on the head of my snowman), Hannah (there is a ponytail of hair under the hat), Michelle and Ben. Later I told Justin it was his turn to go build with the kids because Sam wanted to do a snow fort. They started by using milk jugs, that was working as you can see in one of the pictures but they discovered that just rolling a big snowball worked faster and was quite effective. Ben loves to "sample" the snow. And you can see Sam's ninja skills in chopping the snowball in the air so it can't hit him. Enjoy!

Two of the cutest girls ever!

AJ took this shot of the girls today, and I just had to post it up for everyone to see. WAY TOO CUTE! I feel sorry for my future self as I'm going to have to beat off the boys trying to date these two cuties with a very large stick.

New Years Eve party

Here are a couple of pictures from our New Years Party. Lots of food, fun people and lots of cupcakes! We had a ton of fun, enjoy the pictures. I don't have a lot of commentary for them. The clock cupcakes were made by Megan, Liz did the insect and spider ones, and the picture of the remains of a dragon was from the Shirts family. Thanks everyone for coming and we wish everyone a very happy New Year!

Holidays 2011

Good morning all - I decided to do a quick review of the holidays for the family and friends who were not around with us this time.
First, we discovered that despite major complaining, Sam, Hannah, and Michelle have a lot of fun when playing in the sand dune at Snow Canyon.

AJ and Ben also had fun, but ultimately AJ had to pick up Ben to keep him from eating the interesting bits of sand that he found. Needless to say we found some sand in his diaper later on.

Jared was there as well and he took this picture of myself and Sam jumping off the top of the dune

Finally, we climbed to the top of one of the sand turtles and got he three kids together for a shot. It was a beautiful day and a really happy holiday spent in Southern Utah. We also had a bunch of fun in the north during New Years - more on that later.

"Best Mom Ever"

I just have to document this day in history. I was told four times, yes four separate times, today that I am the best mom ever!! This was from Sam. The moments are not super spectacular. First I served Sam hot fruit drink in his bedroom after breakfast. This was because he was staying home from school sick (should have gone to school, he was definitely not that sick--side note, he may think twice about that next time, he had to do 3 pages of math). Second, ramen for lunch. Well, what else do you serve a kid who is fairly picky and home from school that everyone else wants to eat. (Ben however has declared himself a non ramen fan by dumping his all over the table.) Third, chicken nuggets for dinner. Yes, there does seem to be a pattern here. And the final one actually has nothing to do with food. If everyone was ready for bed and we had had family home evening they could watch a Charlie Brown show on TV (this was on at 7pm, I was aiming for early bedtime). Best mom ever he exclaimed while throwing his arms around me. Ahh, melt a moms heart, for a least a moment.

There you have it, to get rave reviews from Sam, other than making him do "more math than we do at school", serve him easy, fairly non-nutritious meals and let him watch TV.

Although now we have set through "I want a dog for Christmas" with Charlie Brown and my kids all want a dog. I do too, but not if I have to train a dog in the middle of winter. Thank you sisters for helping teach me that. :)