Post Christmas

As I said before we had a lot of family around for the Christmas season, so Christmas day was not the end of our fun. On Sunday we got together for dinner and games at Laura's house. Monday was shopping at Old Navy, then watching Jane Eyre at my house Monday night. Tuesday was the "sewing party" at Rachel's', and Tuesday night was "pizza potluck" at Laura's.

This kids received a lot of puzzles for Christmas, so we've had fun putting them together. The kids are lucky enough to have some great grandparents to help them!

Here's Will and Grandpa Bill working on the "Cars" puzzle.

And here was Grandma K helping with another. I was able to sneak a few pictures without them knowing. :)

Christmas!

Our first Christmas in Arizona was warm, and a lot of fun! :) We continued the family tradition of doing a progressive dinner on Christmas Eve. We started out at Rachel's house with appetizers, then to my house for a pallet cleansing course of sorbet and fruit salad. Laura and David were in charge of main course and we ate at David's brother Mark's house. To finish the night we went to Mary's house for desert. We were busy having so much fun that I didn't take any pictures.

Adrienne came down from Utah, and my Mom and Bill came over as well, so we had lots of family, and lots of fun!

Christmas morning was great, as always. The kids got a lot of fun presents, and Joel outdid himself with gifts for me this year. With an iPod touch, and the full set of Friends DVDs, I had a great morning!


(Brenda, I would like to point out that Joel is eating pistachios in this picture. I thought you might like that.)

Jenna got a desk this year, and this is the best picture I got of them opening it. It's the old kind where the chair is attached to the desk. It's already seen a lot of use!

This is a popcorn bowl filled with goodies and Toy Story 3 from Grandma R to the kiddos. They popped corn, ate candy, and watched their movie that very morning!

In the afternoon we went over to Laura's house to hang out, see everyone's gifts, play games, eat food, and generally be merry. I feel very blessed to be able to spend time with my family and make these wonderful memories.

I will mention that two of my favorite presents this year came from my Mom and Joel's Mom. My Mom gave all of her girls a book about herself. It was one of those books that has one question for each day of the year; things like "Did you have a nickname when you were little?" and other fun things. It is great to have a book filled with her memories, and get to know things about her that I didn't know before.

From Joel's Mom we got a DVD with the Robertson Family home videos. We are so excited to have these videos for ourselves, and in a format that will hopefully last a little better than the VHS. We've already watched the videos, some more than once, and I know we will treasure them for the rest of our lives.

Thank you to our families for making Christmas wonderful. We love you all!

Cookies

On the Thursday before Christmas my sister, Laura, invited us over to her house so all the cousins could decorate some sugar cookies. We had many cameras clicking to document the occasion, and here are a few from my camera.

I never could get all three of them to look at me at the same time.

There actually is a cookie under all of those sprinkles.

We had a great time! After the kids did their cookies, the adults sat down and decorated a few of our own. I think we all had a sugar rush that day.

Holidays

I had to take a picture of the kids before church a few weeks ago because they all looked so great! Such a beautiful girl, and handsome boys.

We had our ward Christmas party a few weeks ago as well. Jenna didn't want a picture on Santa's lap, but the boys were good sports. :)

Adam's Birthday

On Monday, November 29th, my baby turned three! Because his birthday was the day after we got home from our long trip we kept things pretty low key. We opened presents, sang happy birthday, Adam blew out candles, and then we watched "How to Train Your Dragon" which Adam got for his birthday. While we watched we snacked on Adam's "cake", which was actually scotcheroos.

Adam knows that he's three now, and he loves to hold up his fingers and say "Three!!!" when you ask how old he is. He's a wonderful, mischievous boy and we absolutely love him to pieces! He keeps us guessing and he keeps us laughing. It's hard to believe he's already a big three year old. We love you, Adam!!!!!!

Thanksgiving

This post is a little late, but better late than never, right?

Joel had an entire week off for Thanksgiving vacation, so we took advantage, took the kids out of school, and headed to Wyoming! I think it will be easiest to break this trip down day by day, so here goes...

Friday, Nov. 19- Joel took his last final Friday morning, and as soon as he got home we finished packing the car and took off! We stopped in Payson to buy some drugs for Jenna- she was feeling car sick. We ended up getting an antihistamine that would just put her to sleep. She was fine after that. The driving that day went off without a hitch. We spent 12 hours in the car and made it to Pueblo, CO where we stayed in a Comfort Inn for the night.

Saturday- We got up early and headed to Laramie! The roads were good, even between Cheyenne and Laramie, and we made it into town around 12:30. It was great finally coming back to Laramie! We stayed with the Bade's, so we were assured a good time! :)

Saturday evening Sarah and I went out to dinner at Sweet Melissa's while the men took the kids to a basketball game. We sure did enjoy our artichoke dip appetizer, falafel pitas, and even dessert. We talked and ate until they started to close! When they were putting chairs upside down on tables, we thought it might be time to get the check. :) Four hour dinners are the best!

We asked our waitress to take our picture. She warned us that she was "camera phone challenged" or something like that. She wasn't kidding...

So outside we tried to take our own picture. That didn't work out so well...

Sunday- We went to church with the Bades, which was also our old ward. It was great seeing so many people we knew! It was almost like we had never left. That afternoon we hung out, worked on dinner, made some snacks, kids napped, watched some football, etc. That night after the kids went to bed we played some Super Mario Brothers, about gave Chad a few heart attacks, and after the boys went to bed Sarah and I stayed up chatting until 2.

Monday- Joel and I ran a few errands around town and did some more hanging out. Sarah and I did some shopping at Maurice's. I got a pair of jeans and a dress, which was a small miracle. Thank you, Sarah, for talking me into it! (This is us being cute right before we went shopping.)

We were hanging out drinking pumpkin pie shakes (yum!), and Sarah kept snapping pictures when I wasn't ready. This is my "I wasn't ready!" face...

I was prepared for this one. :)

Monday night we went to Corona Village and stuffed ourselves! We missed you, Corona! Oh, it was so tasty. (I didn't eat all of that in one sitting! But I did get through about half of it!)

Tuesday- We were so, so sad to have to leave Laramie. It was hard saying goodbye again. After that we headed up to the Lovell area. The roads between Laramie and Casper were pretty snow/ice covered, but after Casper it got better. Once we hit the Basin the temp started dropping and didn't stop! Man was it cold! We stayed with Brenda and Roland in Cowley, and we unpacked as quickly as we could and did our best to stay inside!

Wednesday- It was -16 degrees when we woke up, so we spent the day inside. We all played some Wii Fit, but the kids especially had a great time with it. I helped Brenda with pies, and we generally had a nice time laying low and relaxing.

Thursday- Thanksgiving! Yay! We had a full day ahead of us, literally. First we headed to Joel's Aunt Marianne's house for dinner with the Robertson clan. The food was great, and the company was great. We enjoyed seeing and talking with everyone.

Marianne's house- we are obviously engrossed in something. :) Not the best picture of Joel and I. ;) (I'm holding our nephew, Kelvin)

At 4 we headed up to Joel's Grandma Asay's house for dinner with Brenda and Roland, two of Roland's kids and their families, as well as Devin and his family. Of course, the food was great again, and we were getting quite stuffed! I took a little power nap on the couch and I think that helped quite a bit!

At 6 we went to my Uncle Brian's house and had pie with the Dicksons. Again, it was great to see family that I haven't seen in awhile. We had some delicious pie and some great conversation.

Friday- Joel's Grandma Flash reserved the church gym, so we got together to play basketball and games. I lost at Boggle, and Joel had a good time playing ball. (I had a good time losing at Boggle, too.) I even shot around with Joel for awhile, and that was fun. That night I wrapped the first Christmas presents of the season, which is always fun. :)

Saturday- We were up bright and early to hit the road. We made it to Orem, UT with no problems. The roads weren't bad at all and we made good time. We stayed with my sister, Adrienne, which is always a party. She fed us some delicious dinner, which was much needed after the day in the car. We stayed up chatting, as always, but not too late.

Sunday- We woke up to a few inches of snow on the ground, and the white stuff was still falling. Yuck. We were in the car by 8, and the roads were treacherous. All of Utah was pretty bad (along our route). We decided to stay on the interstate and go to Vegas. After St. George the roads got better. We got slowed down before the Hoover Dam- there was a lot of traffic! We also got stopped about an hour or so from Phoenix because of a car accident. We had to wait for about an hour, but after that we were on our way. We made it home around 10:15. It was a long day in the car!

The kids did amazing with all of the driving. We are blessed to have good travelers. The entire trip was really a whole lot of fun, but went entirely too fast. We are so blessed to have good friends and good family. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving week! Thank you to everyone who made it so great!

p.s. I didn't take as many pictures as I intended. There are some pictures from Sarah and Brenda that I still want to add, but I'll have to do wait until I get them. :)

*update- got the pictures from Sarah. Now I need to ask Brenda for hers!

Happy Birthday, Joel

We didn't see a whole lot of Joel today because he was at school studying and taking tests for most of the day. But when he did get home we promptly opened presents and cards and sang Happy Birthday!

Here he is with his "cake". Joel doesn't like cake all that much, and when I asked him what kind of cake (or brownies, or cheesecake, or pie) he wanted this year he replied something like, "Nothing." Well, we weren't going to stand for that, so we made rice crispy treats.

He needed help with his candles...

Happy Birthday, Joel! We love you!

Halloween!

We started out our Halloween festivities by carving pumpkins on Monday for Family Home Evening. Joel and I bought pumpkins for ourselves, but we didn't end up carving them because it was getting late. We did help the kids do theirs, though.

Will decided to do a small pumpkin, and we learned that it's a little trickier to clean them out, especially when I don't cut the hole in the top big enough to get my hand inside it. :) Thankfully my husband is pretty much an expert pumpkin cleaner outer, so no worries! Will drew the picture he wanted right on his pumpkin and I helped him carve it.
Adam just colored on his pumpkin. Then he had a good time carrying it around with him for the rest of the night.

Joel helped Jenna carve hers and it looked pretty cool all lit up; not that you can tell in this picture.

And I just included this one because I think Adam is super cute.

Saturday was full of Halloween fun. Jenna and Will got to go to a birthday party for our neighbor and friend. They wore their costumes and had a spooky good time!

Saturday evening we went to our ward trunk-or-treat party. They served dinner, had games (Joel was a champ helping out with the cake walk), a haunted house, and then the trunk-or-treat. Here are the kiddos before we headed out...

Jenna was a monster, Adam was Superboy, and Will was a doctor.

Jenna looks unenthused on purpose: it wouldn't do for a monster to look happy.

With some help from my sister, Mary, I made Will's scrubs. With no pattern, may I add. I am far from an expert seamstress, and I'm extremely pleased with how they turned out. I don't know about you, but I would definitely take medical advise from such a handsome doctor!

Here you can see Jenna's scary monster spines.

We had a lovely time at the ward party. Joel walked around with the kids while I handed out candy. After they were gone for a little while, Will suddenly appeared back at the van and said, "I think I have enough candy. Dad said I could come sit with you." So he chilled with me in the back of the van and helped me hand out candy. It was great!

The kids got a lot of compliments on their costumes. We saw some pretty cool and crazy costumes! The most impressive was probably the guy dressed up as the Mad Hatter (from the new Alice in Wonderland). His wife was the rabbit, and their daughter was Alice. There was also a guy who was a youtube video, entitled "This is was awesome is..." or something like that. There were at least 5 pairs of Mario and Luigi, and two other little supermen that were about the same size as Adam. Thankfully we brought home the right superhero.

We had a very Happy Halloween!

Happy Happy Birthday, William, Dear

Yesterday our little (or not so little) William turned six years old! I definitely can't believe how fast he's growing up! He got a pretty cool crown at school.


Will was lucky enough to have a lot of family come over to celebrate his birthday with him! Not only our family here in the valley, but Grandma and Grandpa K as well as Aunt Cindy. Our house was full and we loved it!

Will was excited to finally get to rip into his presents. Here he is reading his card from Grandma R...


Joel and I decided to get Will his own atlas. Joel's is getting a little beat up. Will takes pretty good care of it, but then he'll leave it down on the floor and Adam will mess with it. So we are hoping that if Will has his own, Joel's atlas will last a little longer. I think Will likes it...

He also got a new (to him) bike! He's going to have to learn to ride with no training wheels (it's a little late, I know, but we haven't had a working bike that was his size for a few years, so he just rode his scooter).

He got a lot of other super cool presents! He hasn't even had a chance to really play with a lot of them, so I'm sure that's what he'll do as soon as he gets home from school today. :)

After presents we did cake and ice cream. Unfortunately I got a little ahead of myself and started cutting the cake before we did candles and sang happy birthday! Oops! But I will say that out family does one heck of a rendition of the Birthday Song! William has probably not had such a wonderful, boisterous, harmonized, energetic version of Happy Birthday sung to him in his life. I love my family!

After the food (a chocolate bundt cake, a pumpkin cheesecake, caramel turtle cheesecake Blue Bell ice cream, and regular chocolate and vanilla Blue Bell ice cream) Joel and Will got right down to business. :)

Enjoying one another's company...

Aunt Cindy and the birthday boy

There are a lot of wonderful things about William! He is definitely smart, and he continually amazes us with the things he knows. He likes to joke around and tease, and he's always making us laugh. He is one of the best cuddlers I know; I love his hugs and kisses. He loves to play with Jenna AND Adam, and even though he tortures him sometimes (and a lot of the time Adam deserves it) they still have a lot of fun together. We are so blessed to have William in our family!