Valentine's Day

Love Day!!

Oh, how I love my family, and especially my PERFECT hubby! No, actually neither of us are perfect, but that's what makes us so great together, we love each other just the way we are. I am extremely blessed to have someone who adores me and who I can count on for anything!! My heart aches when he's away...

For our family Valentine's Day dinner, I put hearts on everyone's plate and wrote something I love about them. Karl filled mine in...see how wonderful he is?
Love Notes.

My boys like to write poems, and will leave little notes for me...here are their Valentine poems...

Our love dinner, complete with red dishes, a red drink, love notes, and candle light.

Emma and Skiing

I don't think there truly is anything better than welcoming a new little one into the world! My little niece Emma was born in Dec. and I had the privilege of going to AZ to see her blessed. She is absolutely the cutest thing ever, and Matt and Ally are stellar parents!

I went skiing for the first time in 20 years! I know, I know, I was super proud of myself! I actually didn't do so bad, like getting back on a bike right? I took my boys and their friends, and my parents came as well. Trying to keep up with my mom and dad was a feat, but I managed...when do we go again??? (sure wish it wasn't so expensive!)

Testimony Meeting

Yesterday Parker bore his testimony in Sacrament Meeting. He just got up, surprising us all, and went to the pulpit. Here is his testimony as I remember it. He began by saying,

"So, yesterday I had the great opportunity of cleaning out the chicken coop."

hmmm, we all anxiously wondered...where is he going with this?

"It is a really stinky job and not very fun. And I began thinking about how it can be compared to life. We start out in Heaven, all warm and happy, just like I was in my house, then we come to earth, where it can be cold and dirty. We have lot's of challenges, but we have a job to do on earth. We need to spread the gospel, just like I had to spread around new hay. It makes things less smelly, and we're happier and others are too."

He continued by bearing a sweet testimony of the things he knows to be true.

That's my little Aaronic Priesthood holder!

Happy Birthday Ashlyn!

7 yrs old!! Yipee!!

Call me crazy (wouldn't be the first time...) but I invited 16 kids to Ashlyn's birthday party. (15 girls, and 1 boy, who was a twin to one of the girls and plays with Ashlyn..:) Anyway, it was quite the event, and we had a great time making bakers' hats, creating individual pizzas, playing games, breaking a pinata and having cupcakes. The decibel level was quite high, and it was nice to send them home one at a time...very fun though, such cute kids!
Rollin' out the dough

Karl and I took Ashlyn to a restaurant for her birthday present. Having just had Christmas, and with 16 new presents, she didn't need anything, so we just suggested we have a fun date night for her birthday, and she was all for it!

Odds and Ends

Ashlyn's gymnastics class put together a darling program! Her class did a dance/gymnastics routine to "Doll on a Music Box".

Absolutely darling!

Rachael, Connor and Parker went skiing/snowboarding at Sundance and had a blast!
Up, up and away!!
We visited some ice castles in Midway, that were beautiful!
They were HUGE!

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!