Random

This month has been full of a bunch of

random funny stuff.

Here is a re-cap:

We took the kids snowshoeing, and before long, Taylor convinced me to carry him...sucker!

The beauty of the mountains is unsurpassed! We just sat and took it all in!


Ashlyn and I decided to snowshoe a little farther. We ran into an ice fisherman up ahead, very cool.

I'm not sure of the story behind this, but Alyssa was in the same position moments before this pic was taken...random...

One of the 6th grade teachers brought in a cardboard castle into Parker's class, showing off his cool creation. Parker took that as a challenge! He came home and spent the next couple of hours collecting every empty TP roll he could find and created this, then ran it back to the school on his unicycle...REALLY RANDOM! (but awesome!)

The castle up close.

I put together a Luau for Connor's 5th grade class. We had the kids do the limbo...and wouldn't you know it, Connor tied for first with a girl in his class! (I did NOT even judge it!)

Bowling for family home evening.

Karl creamed us all, his only retort was that he loved his bowling class at BYU and got good at it...hmmm.

"Holy Cow! That bubble is bigger than my bowling ball!"

Holding up the wall. Nice matching shoes guys!

Now the following clip of Taylor bowling, happened over and over. The kid got several strikes with this technique! Gotta love the twirl at the end! :)

HOWEVER....

The winner of this months random contest goes to Mr. Spidey, seen climbing up our garbage can...

Family Christmas Card

Christmas 2009!!

Since we were going sledding on Christmas Eve, we decided to let Connor open the "first gift of Christmas!" A NEW SNOWBOARD! It's one he can just use in the mountains when sledding. He was excited!

Ashlyn wrote a note to Santa and said the only thing she really wanted was a doll that you can feed and change her diaper (which she got...) and a bell from his sleigh. Santa put it in a great little box with a special note just for Ashlyn. And guess what? We could ALL hear it ring!

Do you believe?

Parker gave Taylor a REAL tool box to put in his REAL drill, and his REAL other tool stuff! He was way excited!
Karl got lots of little things like new bits for his drill, new work gloves etc. He is always so appreciative, despite my lack of cool gift giving creativity.

Parker received a...can you tell what it is? Yup! A gumball machine, which currently has a bunch of jelly bellies! Don't think they're for free...'cause their not! In fact a sign on Parker's bedroom door, says, "you come in...you buy a gumball!" (he's making a fortune off of all the 5 yr. olds in the neighborhood).

I was spoiled (as usual), oh the guilt! Every year Karl gets me some awesome present that I haven't thought of, but end up loving! This year he bought me an iTouch.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!
(And so does Alyssa! Hands off girlfriend!)

Alyssa got this stylin' new hat (Santa has such fine taste!) and a bunch of other fun things. But her big gift was her first cell phone, with lots of minutes and texting. Of course there are some stipulations, which she is adhering to nicely.

Christmas dinner. We decided to have the tradition of not going ANYWHERE on Christmas day. All of our family celebrations are held prior to Christmas, since we simply love our jammies too much to get out of them! Oh, not to mention the yummy stocking candy we eat all day and the great presents we just want to play with UNINTERRUPTED!

Fun holiday, that went WAY TOO FAST!

Turning a new leaf

So today at lunch, I was kindly reprimended by my dear friend...you know who you are... that I was neglecting my blog. Really?! Someone reads it? Cool!

Truthfully my intent in keeping up with a blog was to count my family history in a fun way, and try to let my kids know how awesome they are by posting fun times with them. HOWEVER, I love to share our lives with people I love, so YEAY, someone is reading the blog!! The next few entries are an attempt to capture our fun adventures in the past month and 1/2, and catch up.

Parties and Programs

I volunteered to host both the Jensen and Baxter Christmas parties this year. They ended up back to back (23rd and 24th) but I figure if my house is already clean...why not?

This is the Jensen Christmas Brunch!

We had delicious quiche, fruit, and cinnamon rolls! MMmm!

We swapped white elephant gifts. Check out Karl's face in the background as his mom opens up a gift from me...it wasn't that bad...just an old metal sign I'll never use. Reilly said he'd make it into a weather vane???

Alyssa and Grandpa :)

I was on the ward party committee, and helped put together a Christmas breakfast with Santa. It was really fun. Here are the kids waiting in line to see Santa.

Taylor was an inn keeper in his preschool version of the Nativity. He was a good sport (you can't tell though by the look on his face...:)

The kids all participated in a school Christmas sing. Ashlyn was set on wearing her pinkest outfit instead of the traditional red or green...such an Ashlyn thing to do. I suppose wearing tan and navy every day with their uniforms gets old...when given the chance

WEAR PINK!

Parker's class sang "The Grinch" song. He took the liberty to add actions, and facial expressions, (he was the only one), and was the funniest one there, I had tears in my eyes from laughing.
Connor was sweet to look for us and immediately pulled Taylor in to sit by him with his class. Taylor felt really cool as all the 5th grade girls ooed and awed at how cute he is...

not a bad ploy Connor...

The Baxter Christmas Eve Party kicked off with some sledding up AF Canyon. However, we had just had a storm, and the snow wasn't packed down. Really hard to sled in, plus it was REALLY cold, so we ended a little early.

At my house we let the kids put together some gingerbread houses, which had a hard time staying up. Stephanie was VERY patient repairing everyones house 5 times!

The adults joined in some board games and just ate snacks and vegged.

Of course what's a Baxter party without the Nativity? The kids were great this year (you never know who is going to boycott...) and all participated.

We then opened our cousin presents and gifts from Grandma and Grandpa. Everything was a hit, no tears thankgoodness! I've pretty much threatened my kids if they are ungrateful in the least, they are doomed.. with Christmas morning only hours away, they took me seriously. :)

Now...you may wonder how dinner went? Well, would you believe my luck: I put 2 pre-cooked hams in the oven to warm for 2 hours, then about an hour 1/2 into it, I thought, "I'm not smelling anything..." My top oven had broken!! It wasn't heating at all! AAAGH! The rolls were ready to be cooked and so we just cooked them up in the bottom oven, cut the ham off the bone, put it in a turkey bag and stuck it in the oven for an hour to heat. We also hand heated slices in a skillet. Switched the Nativity and presents with dinner, then ate around 7:00pm. We were starving by then needless to say! Whew! It all worked out, but was stressful and frustrating. I had to pay $200.00 to have the oven fixed!

Overall, our Christmas Parties were really fun, and I'm glad we've created such fun family traditions!

Happy Birthday Avery!

Our "not so little" niece Avery, turns 7 today! We don't get to see her very often because she lives in Washington, but when she does come to visit, we love it!

We hope you have the best day ever Avery!!

I Love Primary!

Big news...for me anyway! :) I was called to serve as the Primary President of our ward the week before Thanksgiving. I can't say I was surprised, I started getting Primary ideas about 3 months earlier that didn't have to do with my music calling. I'm somewhat of an idea person anyway (need to work on the organization part...) so I put them out of my mind, but started to wonder if I was being prepared. I've been blessed with the most amazing presidency, hand picked for me for sure!

Yesterday was our first day in Primary together as a presidency. It went really well! I kind of wore 2 hats since my new music leader was in charge of sharing time with her little class, but it all worked out, and I was on cloud 9! I'm going to LOVE this calling! Music stressed me out. (I actually felt relief when I was called as the President..;-) I loved being with the kids, and playing song review games, but truthfully, I wasn't very good at teaching them songs. I learned some valuable lessons through that experience however, and am grateful that I had the opportunity to serve as the music leader.

I don't know a whole lot about Primary, since the majority of my service in the church has been with the YW, but I'm learning, and I couldn't love those kids more! Went to bed with a big smile on my face, and didn't even know it. Karl just started smiling at me, and I looked at him like.."what?" he said, "you're smiling!"

I guess I'm just happy!!

FALL FUN!

I love Fall, and wish it could last 2 more months! We had about 3 weeks of gorgeous, cute jacket wearing weather, then it dropped to the teens! What was that all about? We did have some fun adventures however, here is a recap...

I took the kids on a photo shoot...man they're a good lookin' bunch!!

Alyssa celebrated her 15th, (did I just say 15th??) birthday on Oct. 14th. We went out to dinner, and to a movie. She's awesome. Oh yeah, and I picked up the Drivers Test Manual....aaah!

Little man turned 5!! Having a birthday the day after Halloween is a bit tricky. He didn't go for the veggie tray suggestion instead of chocolate cake and ice cream...

The week before Halloween we always go to Pumpkinland at the Vinyard Nursery. They have a fun corn maze, and blow up stuff for the kids to play on. We all like to dress up, even though sometimes we're the only ones...who cares right?
The fam-
Following Vinyard, we go to my parents house and Allyson and Adrienne put on a Halloween treasure hunt. We ate some yummy chili and hotdogs.

Parker and Ashlyn, dressed up for Halloween....the wig was itchy, in case you were wondering...Parker is his own person, and wore that awesome getup to school doin' the strut thing and everything. Hilarious!

On Thanksgiving day we went hiking up Provo Canyon. There was a little snow, but the trail was packed down, and we had a great time!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Karl's brother got married the day before, so he was in San Diego, and joined us for pie later that night. Funny side note, Taylor was a little wet from the snow after hiking, so he changed into his PJ's (we slept at my parents house the night before), and wore them the rest of the day...it truly was relaxing!

Yoya!

We recently had the opportunity to host a Japanese exchange student by the name of Yoya. We really enjoyed his stay, and learned a lot! He was with us for 1 week, and it was our job to keep him fed and show him some sites around the area. During the day he attended various activities with his group, with BYU being the host site. He was not LDS, and didn't share our Christian beliefs, but boy was he a good, kind soul. After he left, I asked the fam what they learned from Yoya's visit with us. Here were some of their replys:

1. We are very blessed! To live where we do, and especially to have the gospel.

2. Japan isn't so far away when you have Google Earth at your fingertips.

3. There are many good people all around the world, and they're not all LDS...:)

4. It's hard to communicate when you speak different languages.

5. We pray a lot!

6. Japanese teens are a lot like American Teens. We had fun seeing what music and movies we all knew.

On Sunday we took him to Temple Square. There was a sister missionary who was from Japan, and spoke his native language..I could have kissed her!

We took Yoya to Cabela's, and the one thing he wanted to do was hold a gun. Later I remembered the one and only rule...the boys are not to touch weapons of any kind...OOOOPS!

Yoya loved sports and wanted to see an "American" football game. BYU played TCU that weekend so we took him to a game...rotten game, but we had fun!

For family night, we made smores in our fire pit, then jumped in a huge pile of leaves that Parker had raked earlier that day. Way fun!