She's half a year old, folks!!!

With 3 kids to keep track of...Gracie turned 6 months without much fan fare! poor thing...! I didn't even get some specific 6 month photos of her! :( what a terrible mother I am. But I do have some random cute shots of her just being herself! She is really such a happy baby! She often gets compliments on how big and beautiful her smile is and how readily she gives it!! She has really gotten quite vocal...loving to hear her own voice and it has gotten so bad that it is rare that I get to stay in Sacrament meeting for the whole time. I usually end up taking her out because she can't quiet herself down. She loves all the attention on her and heaven forbid everyone leaves the room and she's left behind...oh, you'll hear it from her. She's not afraid to make herself known! :) We are loving every minute of you, Graciecakes!!!

Christmas, Christmas and even MORE Christmas!!

Christmas just gets better each year! The girls were into the season so much more than last year. Right after Thanksgiving, Santa sent one of his elves to our house to keep an eye on the kiddos and then fly back to the North Pole every night and report back to Santa on the things that went on in our house that day. The girls named him Jingles and every morning, we had a great time trying the find the new spot that Jingles was in after his rendevouz with Santa. Brooklyn had her party at school as well as her Christmas performance. She did a great job and was so cute to watch all animated singing her songs. It's still so hard to believe how big she is getting. Sometimes when she's dressed up, I swear I can see what she'll look like as a teenager...how scary that is!!! Kendall also had her preschool party and wanted to get all dressed up like Brooklyn and look like a princess. I was lucky to be able to volunteer at both of their Christmas parties this year...along with Gracie's help, ofcourse! We had our "new" ward's Christmas party and that's where the girls got to sit on Santa's lap. Boy, Brookie was pretending to be all brave beforehand, and I must say, she did pretty well this year. You can tell in the pics how awkward she is but I was proud of her. Kendall on the other hand, wanted nothing to do him. Oh well, there's always next year! Gracie was fine with him as she doesn't know any better and I think she was even trying to get a hold of his beard to chew on!

I love the spirit of the Christmas season! Brooklyn had to do a service project for school this year and decided to go through all of her toys and donate them to the toy exchange. I can't tell you how proud I was of her. She was so thoughtful of the children she was donating her toys to and she gave up several of her favorite toys. In the end, she was getting so into the spirit of her project that she was giving away even Kendall's toys (to which Kendall threw a monster fit!)...no worries, we saved Kendall's toys, she's not quite ready for this lesson in charity yet! I love to see her growing into a wonderful and thoughtful child. I remember us trying to do this with her last year and she was a blubbering mess and we literally had to do it ourselves because she didn't want to give a single toy away!

Christmas day was the miracle that it always is and should be! Santa was a hero having pulled through with the coveted and extremely sought after pillow pets! Brookie wanted the purple unicorn and Kendall, (can you guess?) wanted the green frog! They have adored those pillow pets and we have experienced a few melt downs if anything gets on them! They spent all day playing with the toys they got and we had a great time watching them play together and share their toys with each other. We had a delicious Christmas dinner as a family and it was such an enjoyable day! The only thing we missed, was you, our family! We are so grateful for all the Christmas cards from you all and the Christmas gifts from the grandparents! I will post a ton of pics from each of these occassions so you can see how our wonderful season was! We love you all and hope you all had a wonderful holiday as well!

Giving Thanks 2010

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at home this year! First year for me without any of my family. It was sad but at the same time it was very peaceful and relaxing. Rick was able to play football with the guys in 4 degree weather!! I tell ya, they don't let anything stand in their way of playing football ONCE a year! :) The girls and I made cinnamon rolls for breakfast which ended up burning to nothing but ash! Yikes...I was hoping that wasn't an omen for my Thanksgiving Dinner! It was okay, though...we drove on down to Walmart and picked out some donuts for breakfast and snagged Santa Buddies the movie for the girls. We watched Santa welcome in the Christmas Season on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and the girls watched their movie while I leisurely started dinner. I will say that this was one of the yummiest Thanksgiving dinners ever! My noodles were the best I've had! After the kiddos went to bed, Rick and I watched a Christmas movie to herald in the season. Then I waited into the unGodly hours and went out with some friends of mine to hit the screamin deals! It was quite the holiday! We did miss you, our family and friends, dearly though!

Bath Time Gracie

Seriously...this kid is adorable!! She is so much fun...and boy is she a talker already! I was giving her a bath the other day...she loooooves baths, kicks her feet wildly and smiles up a storm, definitely shows off!...and I was lotioning her up and drying her hair and this is what I saw! Had to grab the camera!!!...enjoy!

Pumpkin Time

Brooklyn and her friend, Kaleb making Halloween Pizza!

Our little artist...she didn't want to carve it, she wanted to
paint it and she was very serious about it!

Brooklyn's GINORMOUS pumpkin...no going small with this one!

Gracie with the "family" pumpkin! She had no idea what we were up to!

Halloween this year was so chaotic! I was so over the month of October by the time Halloween hit that I'm afraid we literally carved pumpkins Halloween night before going to a friends house for dinner and trick-or-treating. But the kids had fun and are both so different when it came time to carving their pumpkins. Brooklyn picked the biggest one and wanted to all but shove dad out of the way and carve it all herself (the only thing she insisted she needed help on, was getting the guts out cuz you know she doesn't like to get her hands dirty!). Kendall, on the other hand, picked the tiniest pumpkin (I swear that it is in part due to the book we've been reading "The Littlest Pumpkin" in which no one picks the littlest pumpkin and it's greatest wish is to become a jack-o-lantern on Halloween...Kendall always feels so sad for the littlest pumpkin when the patch closes Halloween night and no one has picked the littlest pumpkin...even though she knows the happy ending...(oh, I know you're wondering...the little mice in the patch carve it up and it becomes the center piece jack-o-lantern at their Halloween party!) And she didn't want to carve it. She wanted to paint it which was just fine by me. True to Halloween in Utah, it was raining the whole day and got pretty cold. But by the time we finished our pizza's the rain had stopped and dad took the kiddos trick-or-treating. As if they didn't already have enough candy from the Ward Halloween Party and their school parties...but it's all part of the experience.