The Year in Review

I saw this on my cousins blog and I thought it was such a cute idea I am copying it. Our year in review.

January:

Found us playing with cousins lots, as I babysat both my sisters kiddos. Here are the little three musketeers and the big three musketeers. How fun it is to have cousins your same age to play with.

We also moved Abbie out of her crib and into a shared bed with Lexie. (this was solely for my sanity as Abbie has always felt the need to sleep with someone and I couldn't take any more of getting up in the middle of the night with her.) This did solve the middle of the night wakings!! And the girls loved sleeping together.

February:

Sweets for our sweets. The day after valentines day, Jake took the kids to the store to pick out treats at a discounted price. They had a great time and each came home with their favorite.

March:

Brought a case of spring fever to our house. We played outside in the cool spring weather,

made a trip to Vernal to see Trisha's headstone which had finally been placed.

While in Vernal we got to see spring on the farm which included feeding a calf with a bottle.

And a small ride....

or two...

oh, and I did celebrate another birthday too.  

April:

 Lexie celebrated her 10th birthday this month.  She had a friend party and then a cousins party where we celebrated Lexie, Abbie and Natalee's birthdays.  I can't believe how old she is getting, and she is the sweetest girl around.  And a huge help to me too.

May:
Abbie turned 2 on the 1st.  What a cutie she is getting to be.  She definitely has her own opinions on how things should be.

Ashton graduated from the co-op preschool that we had been doing

May also brought big changes for our family, Jake took a new job in Idaho Falls, so we (mainly he) said goodbye to this place 

and hello to this (what a drastic change in surroundings)

June:
 We got a membership to the zoo this month, and had a great time seeing all the animals with our cousins.

and played outside as much as we could.

July:
We found lots to do in and around our own backyard during the summer.  We played in splash parks, on our slip and slide, visited Kennecott and the zoo and went to a family reunion or two.

Lexie also started 5th grade.

August:

Ashton started preschool this month, much to his dismay he didn't get to go to school with some of his friends.  (he missed the cutoff for kindergarten by 7 days) 

We also made what has become our annual trip to Yellowstone.

September:

Ashton turned 5 this month and had 5 parties to celebrate.  It wasn't planned, it just worked out that way. He always tries to do what is right and is very anxious to learn how to read.       

October:

We returned once again to Yellowstone at our children's request, it would seen that they can't get enough of that place.  And it doesn't hurt that it is only two hours from Idaho Falls, so it makes for a fun all day trip when we are up there.  

We also celebrated Jake's birthday while we were at Yellowstone.  And yes we did go trick-or-treating on Halloween, got rained on and soaked to the bone.  It's really not my favorite holiday so that didn't help much.  

Lexie went trick-or-treating with her friends and I didn't even get a picture of all three kids together in their costumes.

November:

 I won some free tickets to Disney on Ice from a blog that I frequent and we had a great time. We went downtown, had a fun dinner and then hit the show. All the kids we entertained for the entire show.

December:
Wow! We were so busy.  Jake's brother came from Texas for about 10 days and we had fun getting so spend some time with them.  We were greatly blessed this year and our family had a great Christmas.  Ashton got glasses to help him see better, and last but not least, Abbie fell getting out of the bathtub and cut her chin and had to get stitches.  

Overall we had a great year and are looking forward to 2011 as an even better one.  

So Much To Blog About So Little Time...

Our December was crazy, especially the week before Christmas and las week.  I am going to try and get caught up this week but here are the highlights...

• Jake was home from the 23rd til the 2nd.  That was a great 10 days!
• Ashton went to see an ophthalmologist after failing his kindergarten eye test and now (finally) has glasses.
• We had a great and busy Christmas visiting with both of our families on Christmas Day.
• Abbie fell getting out of the bathtub and had to get stitches in her chin.  
• Ashton was determined to stay up til midnight on New Years Eve and made it!!  He almost fell asleep on the couch at 11:45 but we managed to keep him awake.
• Lexie was off track for all of December and we managed to have a fun time going lots of fun places.

I am planning on doing a year in review soon and have lots of pictures to share, hopefully I will get more time this week to upload everything.

Visiting Santa

On Monday we braved the crowds at the mall for a visit with Santa.  Nobody was scared and we didn't have to wait too terribly long it was good.  And nobody surprised me with their request from Santa.  Here is the cute picture we got.

Decorating for Christmas

On Sunday Jake brought out tree up from downstairs.  The kids have been dyeing to decorate for Christmas and finally on Sunday we found the time.  It was fun to watch them decorate the tree, even if they put all the decorations on the same side of the tree.  We eventually got it all evenly decorated.  (but I am thinking that I am in need of some new ornaments)

         

Sleeping Angel

Abbie has been trying to give up her nap for a while now.  Most days she is not successful.  We struggle and struggle to get that nap in, sometimes it happens easily and some days not so much.  Today was one of those days that she just wasn't going to go to sleep.  Her cousins were here for the first time in a long time and she was much too interested in playing to sleeping.  Well here is how I found her when I turned around while making dinner.  She had sat up to the table hoping that dinner would be ready soon and all the playing caught up with her.

Disney On Ice

Thanks to this great website... SMMART IDEAS I won four FREE tickets to Disney on Ice.  I ended up buying one extra ticket so that we could all go.  We went last night and had a wonderful time.  It had Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Lilo and Stitch, and Abbie's favorite Peter Pan (because she LOVES tinkerbell).    This is literally how my kids were through out the entire show.    No one said they were bored, or asked to leave at all.  They were glued to what was going on on the ice, for two hours.

We let the kids each pick out a souvenir... Lexie said that she really didn't want anything (which just shows that she is getting too big!) But we did get a WAY too expensive lemonade.

 Ashton picked out a light up spinny thing 

and Abbie picked out tinker bell wings. (imagine that) They were pretty cute and I am thinking that she will be tinker bell for Halloween next year if this love of hers continues.  

Here's a few action shots of the show.  They are little blurry it was the best I could get.

More Pictures

Got the kids all ready and went to take some more pictures of the kiddos yesterday.  My plan was to take them up the canyon by our house and hope that there was still enough good color left to get some really good pictures....  when we got to the mouth of the canyon it was closed.  Plan B drive around and look for a good place to take their pictures.  We ended up at Gardner Village and got GREAT pictures.  Lexie needed some that better matched the other kid's pictures. We just got back her school pictures and they were cute, for school pictures but they definitely weren't the greatest pictures ever.  And I wanted some of all three kids together to maybe do Christmas cards with.  Well here is what we got.  

Fun stuff

Photo Tinks by WiddlyTinks.com

Photo Tinks by WiddlyTinks.com

Picture a day...

I have decided to start a picture a day blog.  The link is over on the side of this blog.  Hopefully it will get me taking more pictures of every day life instead of only the big stuff.  Take a look, hope you like it.

FINALLY- GOOD PICTURES

It has taken me 6 MONTHS to find the time to take Abbie's two-year-old pictures.  I have been busy but not that busy, I just haven't made the time to take them.  I have taken other peoples pictures just not my own kids. (Thats sad, really sad.) Well they turned out so cute, I'm so happy and it was really easy.  I also took some of Ashton and he is a little harder to get a good picture out of, he loves to pull this funny smile where he really isn't smiling just gritting his teeth.  His preschool pictures were terrible, and that is being kind.  He wasn't even looking into the camera on most of them.  Oh well these are super cute.  Now to get some of Lexie, she was as school while we were taking these but it couldn't be helped.....