{Sweet Caroline}

It's Caroline's sixth birthday! She's growing up so fast! My favorite thing is to do on my kiddie's b-days is to take a look back...

My little blue-eyed beauty at 7 months (when we got our fist digital camera!)

She was always such a mommy's girl when she was tiny.

Sweetest little thing at almost two... (she won cutest piggy tails at the baby contest that day!)

Still always smiling at three...

...and four...

Then she was five...

...and today she turned six. We love her so much! Six years of her sweet giggles, happy smiles, hilarious games, and super imagination. I don't know what our family would do without her in it. We love you Caroline! Happy Birthday!

Now it's time to party! More on that coming soon...

{Gobble, Gobble!}

Happy Turkey day! We went down to Utah to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving this year...



My rocker baby really enjoyed the ride! Here he is jammin' to the Police... I wonder where he gets it from? I guess it's all part of his new phase. He's been calling me "dude" all day.

Thanksgiving day was great. Todd makes an amazing turkey! I'm so glad that he loves to cook -- just another thing on my long list of things to be grateful for! My gravy could kill people, honestly. So I made pie instead and did unimportant things like chopping and staying out of the way.


The day after Thanksgiving was the longest and funnest day ever. Todd and I decided to do something we've never dared before, the 5:00 a.m. shopping! We actually had a lot of fun together and saved a lot of money on things were looking for! Then off to the temple for an appointment with Todd's mom that she set up, a quick lunch, then we met Todd's sisters at the train station for a ride down to Salt Lake!

The kiddos and Grandpa on a giant shovel at the train station.




They love to ride the train!


We all went to see The Christmas Carol movie (it's a little scary, but very true to the book!), did a little shopping at the Gateway Mall, then another quick train ride to Temple Square to see the lights!


We didn't get home until 9:30.
We. Were. Exhausted!!!
But it was fun, fun, fun and I'm hoping it will become a tradition. I came home and immediately dug into the Christmas decorations!


While we were there we also did an early birthday party for Caroline... who will be six this week. SIX!

Conner's our resident party animal!

Grandpa and Caroline also treated us to some great Christmas duets. Caroline does a mean bell accompaniment!

And now it's offically Christmas! I guess the snow can stay a little bit longer... Merry Christmas!

{The Snow is Here!}

The three smallish people living in this house cannot possibly be mine.
How can I be so sure?
They LOVE the snow!

Louis is taking his role as a brother very seriously these days. His first successful white washing!

But the girls adore him anyway and will still do just about anything he wants!

Who could be angry at this face?!? Oh, my. I could just eat him!

I'm pretty sure Caroline consumed her weight in snow today.

...and she made sure that Louis didn't miss out on the tasty frozen treat -- whether he wanted to or not!

Elizabeth and her friend Karly are always hauling huge chunks of snow around. Only they're not just chunks of snow. They're "snow babies." (Oh, to have the imagination of an eight-year-old again!)

I only stayed outside long enough to take a few good pictures, then I headed inside in a very self-sacrificing way to make sure the hot chocolate would be ready when the kiddies were. So I'm done with snow now, is it spring yet?!?

{FREE Chrismas Joy!}

I have to spread a little early Christmas joy... I just ordered 50 FREE Christmas cards... and I'm so excited about it! What a deal!

I found out about it from Pinching Your Pennies (which I follow on FaceBook), or go to SeeHere photo sharing and enter the promo code "freebies4mom-1109" when you check out! You can get 50 free 4x8 or 5x7 cards. No fees, no shipping costs! It really was FREE! You can design your own cards, and they had tons of cute backgrounds and designs to choose from! Hurry -- I think the offer is only good until Nov 30th!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

{Halloween Par-tay Part 3: Trick-or-Treat!}

The costumes! Thank goodness for my mom and her all-famous costume box. She's the go to gal for Halloween! I think she's kept every Halloween costume we ever used, and it sure is coming in handy for the next generation... and makes it super easy for me!



Elizabeth was a gypsy. Her costume is a true antique. My great-grandmother (she was called Nana too, and lived in the same house as my parents do!) made this for my great-aunt Gwen. I love it when Elizabeth gets all dressed up because she really gets into character! She just loves it!

Caroline was a witch (again) this year. She told me, "Only it's really not the same thing because last year I was a scary witch, and this year I'm a nice purple sparkly witch!" ...as long as she's happy!

Louis was our little devil. He looked so adorable with that little mustache! You had to watch out for this little devil while he was trick-or-treating because while I was talking to the friends in our old ward, Louis was standing under the radar taking handful after handful of candy out of their bowls!

Todd was "Manwich" and I decided not to dress up this year...

Happy Halloween 2009!

{Halloween Par-tay Part 2: ...ahem... Par-tay!

We have a lot of celebrating to do in October! Todd's dad likes to say he"began his 70th year." Which really just means he turned 69!

So we had a big family get together, and Melodie had all kinds of games to play -- it made it so fun!

Donuts on a string... not so easy!

Melodie won for the adults... here's the proof! The donut is gone!

This one you had to suck marshmallows out of your bowl with a straw... too funny!

Her prizes were the best!

Conner is looking pretty cool!

And since we had everybody together we thought some nice family photos were in order:

The parties don't stop there! It's also my mom and daddy's birthdays (born on the same day, but my dad is one year older -- how cool is that?) But I must have been taking pictures of them on someone else's camera because I've got zip. It doesn't mean I don't love you's guys!

Then my big sis Laura's birthday is on Halloween itself (she's a little wibbitch)! This is how pirates cut their birthday cake:

And a little B-Day spankin' from her hubby just to make sure her birthday didn't get lost in all the Halloween festivities!

Happy Birthday to one and all!

{Halloween Par-tay Part 1: Punkins!}

We had so much fun this Halloween, I decided to post the par-tay in sections! Welcome to part-o uno: the annual pumpkin butchering! Laura really gets into it...

This was the first year I let Elizabeth wield the knife all by herself. I about had a (or several) heart attack(s), but she did a super job and her pumpkin turned out adorable (even if it did end up with a few less teeth than originally planned)!

Caroline loves the guts! She just giggled and scooped and giggled and scooped!

Louis even worked on his own little pumpkin... for awhile. His demands were simple. It needed teeth, and it had to be "scare-wy".

As Elyse was doing a little of this...

I got a little of this! Watch out for flying seeds! I think my life flashed before my eyes....

It was almost a scary as this little monster Maren!

"Who me?!? I'm just adorable!" Somehow I get the feeling Laura knows what she' up to!

...and the final product! TA-DA! Elizabeth's classic happy (almost) toothless punkin, Louis's "scare-wy" little vampire, and Caroline's Spongebob toothed / "Day of the dead" morphed work of wonder. Doesn't every pumpkin require eyelashes?

Stay tuned for Halloween Par-tay Parts 2 & 3 coming to a blog near you!