Another Birthday! and Thanksgiving

Alright, going back nearly a week... We went sledding with the Bades last Wednesday. It was great to have a day that no kids had school and no husbands had work. We bundled everyone up and went up to Happy Jack for some cold fun.

Adam wasn't too in love with the whole thing. At the beginning Joel tried to let him go down the hill on a sled, just at the very bottom, but Adam really wasn't excited about that. He mostly just stood at the bottom after that.
I was brave and went down on a little saucer. It was scary when it would turn around and you'd be going down backwards. But Jenna inspired me with her braveness, I didn't want her to think that her mom is too big of a sissy.

Jenna and Maggie on the tube...

Like I said, Adam wasn't very excited.

After we got done sledding we left to go back home, but at the top of the snow-covered road we waited to make sure the Bade's got up the hill okay in their van. Well, after a minute or two we didn't see them so we turned around to see if they needed help. They weren't at the bottom of the hill, so we assumed they went the other way down the road to check out some smoke we'd seen. We almost turned around once on the road because we didn't want to get stuck, but there wasn't a good place to turn around. We kept going, and guess who we ran into? The Bades of course, stuck in the snow! We are so glad we decided to go find them! Joel and Chad were able to push their van out, after much work and some sticks piled in front of tires. The unfortunate part was that then we had to turn around, so of course we got stuck as well. It's a good thing that Joel and Chad are strong, because we could have been there for awhile! But in the end we all made it out alright and we had some fun memories! For the other Sarah's version, head over to her blog to read about it. :)

On Thursday we were lucky enough to be able to go to Joel's Aunt Gwen's house and spend Thanksgiving with her family. My kids always love going to Gwen's, as do Joel and I. Dinner was great, and we got to play some fun games. We really love hanging out with family. We are blessed to have such great family around!

Then yesterday we had another birthday to celebrate! Our little Adam turned TWO years old! Oh how time flies. He really wasn't too interested in all the birthday hoopla. When asked about his birthday his usual response was, "No." But after church we had dinner, opened presents, and had cake. Adam did a good job of opening his presents, even with all of the "help" his siblings gave him.

He got this big furry ball from his Grandma R. and he's just not sure what to think about it. Joel was trying to get him to touch it but he wasn't too excited about that prospect. He's doing better with it today, and I'm sure before long he'll be throwing it at all of us.

All the kids (minus Gannon) getting ready for cake. I'm not sure why we didn't have Adam in the middle?

The cake says "Happy Birthday Adam" but you can't really tell in the picture. It's probably better that way, it really didn't look very good!

And Adam did enjoy eating his cake. He ate quite a bit, then left to play. But he kept coming back to take a few bites, then run off and play some more. I like his style!

Adam had his two year wellness check at the doctor today, and his weight is back on the charts! After his 12 month appointment his weight dropped off the bottom of the chart, so you could say he was about in the -5%. But he had a little growth spurt and he's now up to the 3% line. Way to go, Adam! (I think it may have something to do with the fact that they don't have to take their clothes off to weigh them at this age) His height is around the 25% line. He's a little guy, but very healthy! Although the doctor noticed that he has an ear infection in his left ear! Weird! He's the first of my kids to even have an ear infection (that we know of). But since he really isn't showing any symptoms and doesn't seem to be in any pain we aren't going to treat it, it will probably just go away on it's own. If not, we can go back in to get it treated. He did have to get one shot today, but he didn't cry at all. I think he was still angry about the fluoride treatment on his teeth so he didn't care about the shot.

Well, that will conclude the birthdays from our family for quite a few months. We have had three in the last 6 weeks! Now it's on to Christmas! I can't wait!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to Joel! He is 26 today! He is sleeping right now because he worked last night and works tonight. Hopefully we can squeeze some fun in there sometime. The kids enjoyed watching him open his presents this morning, and I'm sure we'll all have fun eating the cherry cheesecake tonight! Joel, I love you! I am so glad that you are my husband!

Happy Birthday!

Whirlwind Week

We've had a bit of a crazy week/weekend. Last Monday we got on e-mail from the University of Utah offering Joel an interview on the 13-14. He said yes, and we quickly planned a trip to Utah! I've got a sister that lives in Orem that we stayed with. We always love visiting Adrienne, and we are only sad that we don't see her more often!

We left Laramie Wednesday after the kids were done with school. On Thursday we went up to Salt Lake to make sure we knew where Joel needed to go the next day. While we were up there we went to Temple Square.

Here's Will, Adrienne, and Jenna in the tabernacle...

(Please don't comment on my lovely hair, it was very windy!)

On Friday Joel headed to Salt Lake and Adrienne had to work. I took the kids to a park nearby so they could run off some energy! They needed it! Adrienne and I were able to head to the mall when she got home from work. I found a store that I need to visit online because they had a lot of cute stuff! On Friday night we tried to go to Texas Roadhouse because Adrienne's never been there, but there was an hour and a half wait! No thank you! Not with three kids! So we ended up going somewhere called Paradise Bakery (I think) and had sandwiches and soup. It was really delicious.

Saturday started out much the same as Friday. Joel went to Salt Lake and Adrienne had to work. Shortly after Joel got home we went to Texas Roadhouse, figuring that if we went around 4 it wouldn't be too busy. Silly us, we should have known better. Luckily we only had about a 15-20 minute wait, but we got there just in the nick of time. I couldn't believe how busy it was! But is was of course wondering food, so it was worth it.

Saturday evening we just hung out. Here are some pics we snapped that night...

Joel was "flying" the kids"

Adam thought it was hilarious to sit on Joel's chest/neck and bounce up and down. Joel had all of the kids bouncing on him at one point, and I don't know how he didn't lose his delicious dinner! We got a good ab workout that night with all the laughing!

You may be wondering how Joel's interview went. Well, we don't know yet. :) He said that he felt like it went well. They interviewed around 100 people (out of about 950 applicants) and they accept 40 people into the program. If he does get accepted it will be a major honor; if he doesn't, it will be disappointing but we know how incredibly qualified all the other applicants were. We will probably have to wait a week or so to find out. They said we should know by Thanksgiving.

We came home Sunday and prayed that the roads wouldn't be too bad. Thankfully they really weren't bad at all so we made it home safely and without incident. It's always good to be home, but we miss Adrienne! We wish we could just pack her up and bring her home with us, but she always claims that she needs to stay there to work and make money and all that crazy stuff. :)

I'll keep you all posted on how things turn out!

School Pictures

William, Preschool, age 4 (in picture) I love that it shows his goofy smile. I promise he doesn't smile like that all the time. ;)

Jenna, 2nd Grade, age 7

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween to everyone! Our Halloween is pretty much over already because we did all of the Halloween activities yesterday and don't have anything planned for today! :) The kids both wore their costumes to school for parades and parties. Here's Will before school yesterday. (We didn't have time to snap a pic of Jen) Can you tell who he was? ...
Well, of course he was Albert Einstein! He was the cutest Albert I've ever seen, for sure. He didn't love the mustache and he wouldn't wear it at school. Oh well.

In the evening we headed to the church for the trunk-or-treat. It was pretty chilly, but we all survived. :) There weren't as many people there as I've seen in years past, but the kids still got a nice load of candy.

Getting ready

And here are the final products! A tiger, a Mummy, and Albert Einstein! Jenna's costume had some issues with staying in place. If we ever do a mummy again we will use a different technique. She was falling apart much sooner than expected. But she looked cute/scary while it lasted. :)

Twins?

We were in Lovell for a quick trip over part of the weekend (more about that later), and I found a few pictures of Joel as a little boy. Now, I always knew that Adam looked like Joel. It's pretty obvious to everyone. But I found a few pictures of Joel at Adam's age, and I thought the resemblance was just crazy! I wish I could find pictures of Adam that would really show the similarities. I think anyone that knows Adam can look at those pictures of Joel and really see what I'm talking about! Here's Adam...

And here's Joel...

Adam again...

So can you tell who's who? I'm sure you can, but I just had to share!!!

Now about our trip to Lovell:

Joel had an interview at Rocky Mountain College in Billings for the Physician's Assistant Program on Friday the 23rd. The plan was for Joel to take the boys up to Lovell and they would stay with his Mom while he went to Billings for the interview. I was going to stay in Laramie with Jenna because there were things that needed to be done here. Well, Joel kept asking me to come with him and I kept telling him that I needed to stay home. On Wednesday night when Joel was at work and I was, of course, missing him, I decided that it would be more important for me to go with Joel and support him than to do the things at home. Thursday morning I packed up the rest of the family and we all went to Lovell together.

All of the kids stayed with Joel's Mom on Friday and I went to Billings with him. He was really nervous about the interview; it's his first grad school interview. Even though I wasn't able to really help him at all, I think he liked knowing that I was nearby.

The interview seemed to go well. From what Joel told me they seemed to really like him and they were impressed with his application. They told him that they would try to let people know if it was a "yes" or "no" by Tuesday. They must have really been on the ball because last night we got the official letter of acceptance into the PA Program! We are so excited, and I am so proud of Joel! It is definitely a relief to have an acceptance, but the road is definitely still long!

Because he was accepted to Rocky Mnt, Joel decided to turn down his interviews in Maine and Connecticut. For one, we don't need the added expense of getting out there. Two, we don't plan to go out there for school anymore, so we think it's unfair for Joel to take up an interview spot when that would be taking away someone else's opportunity. We are pretty bummed because we really wanted to go to Maine just for fun. But we can do that another time. :)

Right now Joel is waitlisted to interview at the University of Utah PA program (they are ranked #4 in the country, so we were SUPER excited to even have the possibility to interview!), and he has an interview scheduled at AT Still University in Mesa, AZ in December. It is all a bit overwhelming, but we are really happy with how things are turning out. We aren't 100% sure where we are going to end up at this point, but we are excited about what the future will bring!

Birthday Time

It's birthday time again. We have a lot of birthdays late in the year, so there will be more birthday posts to come!

Will is FIVE years old! I was just looking back to the post when he turned four, and it really doesn't seem like that was a year ago. But time marches on, and our little boy is not so little anymore. (Joel measured him this morning and he was a good two inches taller than he was just a few months ago!)

After having cinnamon rolls for breakfast we opened presents when Joel got home from work in the morning...

I think he's deciding what kind of fun stuff to buy with his money!

Showing off his tooth pillow from Grandma K.

He was excited to get Peggle, one of his favorite computer games.

He got a couch of his own, and it even has roads to drive his cars on.

We didn't to anything too out of the ordinary because it was a Sunday. After church we had the Bades over for dinner and ice cream cake. Here are the kids anxiously waiting for the candles to be lit...

We are so happy to have Will in our family. He's a great boy, and he makes our home more fun and entertaining. I am continually amazed by how smart he is. We love you, William!