Our Christmas Card to you

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You never knew our dancing skills right?

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Family Pictures

So I'm pretty sure if I was on the ball I would use this picture as our Christmas card. But since I'm so ADD and can't seem to stop and focus on one thing for more than two seconds, this may be as good as it gets :) I sure am blessed to have such an amazing family! I love them soooo much!

Salli was able to get these shots of our family during Thanksgiving. That was the last time I braved family pictures. One year is too long! My kids are pretty darn cute huh!

This one was too dark in color but I made it black and white and I really like it!

My biggest baby of them all :)

Oh how fun it was to help burn my dad at his work party! He deserved it, and he knows it :) All of us went and "crashed" his party. I think he was pretty excited to see us, but he had NO IDEA the trouble we were about to give him! The worst part was that the material we burned him the best with was his own choosing...... Yea he went and saw NEW MOON and he's seen Twilight. What a geek! I haven't even seen New Moon yet. His wife talked him into going and I've NEVER made so much fun of him in my life! I told him my image of him was totally ruined. That he needed to hurry and go watch some MANLY movies quick!!! His work asked Jason to give a little speech to embarrass my dad. Jas wasn't going to do it until the idea of burning him with New Moon came along. Even his brother Todd got in on the action! He got some manly movies for him (Rocky, Clint Eastwood, etc.). Then Todd said he'd also bought my dad's all time favorite show.....Brokeback Mountain. Yea we got him good! We were also able to provide some less than appealing pictures of him. AHHHH so much fun. He told us to all watch out though. He was going to be paying us all back. Don't know if he could top that one!

Jr. Mustang B-ball

Three cousins playing together on the same team. Good times!

Breakfast at Angie's

This past Saturday was "the boys" basketball game in Hyrum. Ethan, Kaidin and Jayden are all on the same team. Afterwards we decided to go eat at Angie's. I bet they about died when we said "table for 15, 9 kids". I was really impressed with all of our kids though. They were sooo good! The only real problem was when Hallee chugged a glass of apple juice, then proceeded to "lose it" all over Heidi. Let's just say Heidi, Cory and Jason all have serious gaging/gross out easy problems. It happened right as they were bringing the food. :) Good job kiddies for being so good!

School

I was pretty surprised to walk in the kitchen last night to see Ethan writing sentences over and over again. I about wet my pants when I saw what Brett was making him write. Homework and learning is obviously serious business at our house!! I looked at Brett like "honey really?" and he just told Eth to keep writing. I don't think Ethan will forget these statements though??!! :)

Future Gymnast??

What??? Your kids don't climb up doors and walls. Your weird!!

Stitches and such....

Ok I'm having a little bit of a withdrawal problem. My laptop got some crazy virus/trojan (nice word!) and freaked out on me. So it is in getting fixed up! When I took it in, my first comment was PLEASE SAVE MY PICTURES!!! I am bad and haven't backed them up to my computer downstairs because my memory card is too big to use down here (complicated). So I was really worried about that and then added oh yea I guess I hope they don't hack into my banking and stuff either, but please save my pictures!! The computer guy didn't think I had anything to worry about, but I won't feel better until my laptop is back and running. Oh the things we rely on!

So needless to say I have a lot of pictures I took over the Thanksgiving break but they will have to wait. The news though is that my poor baby Maec fell down my mom's horrible stairs at her rental house and had to go the hospital and get 3 stitches. They are old stairs that are wood covered with linoleum and then reinforced with a metal strip! We knew someone would eventually get hurt on them. I cannot believe how brave she was! She didn't even cry at the Instacare! She just sucked on her gum like a binky and cuddled up to her daddy and her blankie! The Dr. was amazed at how well she did! We found out yesterday that a friend of ours that used to live at that same house fell on those steps and broke their nose. BAD STAIRS!

All in all we had an amazing break and the kiddies DID NOT want to go to school today. They both tried to play the sick card....but it didn't work! So I'll be here cleaning up for the next week, phew what a mess! Back to the real world.

Stay tuned for new family pics that Salli took. They are soooo stinking cute! I wish I knew how to use Photoshop so I could make them look even fancier but I still need to learn how to use it! Until then.....

Veteran's Day Singing

McKenna's Choir sang at USU on Veteran's Day. There was actually an article in the paper about it last Sunday, but I think I accidently threw it away. It complimented their singing and said there was hardly a dry eye after listening to them. They did a really good job! Then got Aggie ice cream afterwards. Good Job Girls :)

Karilee put together a surprise party for Kevin for his 40th Birthday. It was like a funeral----a farewell to his youth. She went all out! I couldn't believe how many people were there (Who doesn't love Kevin though?). The whole gym was filled with people wearing black. Then when Kevin walked in he was walking into his funeral. Eerie! In these pictures it shows his cake...although I didn't get a picture before it was cut....but I love the headstone. We gave him a gift bag that said old fart on it and was filled with brochures from the Senior Center. Also a pair of reading glasses (that strangely look like Rogers :)), a sudoko book, a paddle ball that is for excercise. I didn't get a lot of good pictures but Vaea never put the camera down :) Thanks for the fun night you guys :)

Halloween

Halloween 2009

The holidays came and just so we wouldn't break tradition, someone was sick! I went to wake up Ethan on Saturday morning for his wrestling meet. He was tired and said he didn't feel very good. Well being the stellar parent I am, I told him to get his buns out of bed and get ready (he says he doesn't feel good in the morning a lot). So I left him to go jump in the shower. I think I even yelled at him from the shower a couple of times to get his butt going, just cuz I'm an awesome parent like that :) Just as I'm getting out of the shower he staggers in and gets the thermometer out of the drawer and takes his own tempature (cuz I'm awesome). He croaks, mom is 101 a bad tempature. OH CRAP! Give me the mother of the year award! Scratch the wrestling meet buddy, your going back to bed! So he rested most of the day and then felt a little better that night.

We started our Halloween festivities with soup in a bread bowl at my dad's house. It was delicious! From there we headed to my moms for some fabulous sugar cookies...yummy. Then Heidi and I decided to be either stupid or brave {you decide} and take 7 YOUNG kids onto the streets of Providence for some trick or treating. Nothing like a swarm of overexcited, competitive children trying to see who can get to the door first and YELL trick or treat! I tried to tell them "what do you guys say?" They yelled TRICK OR TREAT!!!! No "what do you tell them" THANKS and on to the next house. We then met my brother and one of his friends back at my mom's and decided to have all the kids pile into the back of Brett's truck and drive down to our neighborhood to go crazy. The kids had a lot of fun running from house to house and seeing all their friends. McKenna's friend Erin came with us and she wanted to go do some trick or treating in her neighborhood on the bench. So I took the girls up there and Brett took Eth and Maec to Salli's house to see their cousins. All in all I think it was a good night and I've hidden all of Maecee's candy and I haven't even seen McKenna and Ethan eat much of theirs. The first thing they wanted to see from their "bucket" was the playdough they got from one of the neighbors. Bring on next year....with no sickness that is :)

Gym awards and such

Maecee working the hula hoop at Kenna's gym party
EB doing the hula with his head

Kenna's award for not falling 0ff the beam ALL SEASON (level 6)! That is amazing! I don't think anyone else got this award.

What a great award for her to get. It fits her--exceptional attitude, hard work, emotional toughness and dedication. That is McKenna! She got it for all Level 5 and 6's.

Also a very big award that all the kids try to get is "Top Dawg". They test to see who can do the most sit ups, push ups, pull ups, etc. Supposedly there are a lot of tears and sweat that go into this award. Well McKenna competed against the optionals which is levels 7-9 (she's a level 7). Well I didn't think she really had a chance because most of the girls are LEVEL 9's and soooo strong! Well she did it. She took 3rd place! The 1st and 2nd place winners were level 9's. I was so proud of her! Way to go Kenna!

And I just had to add a picture of this cutie!

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Officially losing it...

Yes that is my fridge. Which thing doesn't belong This is when you know you've officially lost it, brain cells gone!!!! Wow I'm at a loss for words---and that doesn't happen very often!

Ethan the Great :)

Ethan and Kaidin posing for me. I just got done cutting their hair. It was momentus (sp?) because Kaidin never lets anyone use the clippers on him....except for me :) Hopefully it turns out ok, I'm not a professional by any means, just trying to save a buck or two. It's expensive to get boys hair cuts, especially when their hair grows as fast as a weed.
Silly boys, but darn cute

Okay on to the explanation of the title of this post. Yesterday we went to McKennas PT conference and I ran into Ethans class aide (I've talked to her a few times about "issues" :). I asked her how Eth was doing in class and she said "well I have to tell you about something that happened today". I'm thinking OH GREAT! She said out on the playground she saw three boys surrounding one little girl that was on the ground (my heart literally dropped!!). My face must have shown my anguish because she said "no, just listen". She walked over and started trying to figure out what was going on. Eth was trying to tell her what happened. He blurted out that he was trying to get the boys off of "this girl". It must not have looked like that, so the teacher looked at this girl and asked her if that was true. She said "yes, it's true, HE SAVED MY LIFE!" :) I guess these were BIG boys and Ethan is not big! He was so upset that they were picking on her and was trying to get them off. My heart just melted! What a sweet boy. I have been hammering into him that we should be nice to EVERYONE! No matter if they are boy, girl, big, little, black, white, purple, whatever. Then in church his teacher told him the story of the Good Samaritan and he soaked every last detail up. He came home and literally explained the whole story and more. So I asked him how he could be a good samaritan. I guess he just showed me ;)

Sneak Preview of Halloween costumes----except for Ethan's.

Chaol Canyon (I think). This was my next favorite spot. We anchored the boat and hiked up a little creek. There was quicksand, little waterfalls, frogs, sand, creek, and beautiful scenery!!! I also had to add the picture of Maecee and I "bathing". SHE DID NOT LIKE THIS AT ALL!!!!! Ok it wasn't my favorite either (the other boat we were with had a fish finder, they informed me that right where I was bathing was full of big fish, NICE!) but a girls gotta get cleaned up a little. You may also notice an "adopted" daughter in almost all our pictures. Cute Kiley wanted to be Maecee's mom----it was awesome! I knew if I didn't have my eye on Maecee her little mom did. Maecee misses her :( I told Kiley we would adopt her but would have to take one of her brothers too. Ethan would not appreciate another girl.

Relaxing

Hole in the Rock

This is the cliff that the pioneers traveled down WITH people, animals and WAGONS!!! Unbelievable! I just finished the book The Undaunted by Gerald Lund that chronicles their trip. Absolutely unbelievable what they did to get to their destination. Next time we go I would love to hike it, because you can actually see holes and marks that they made.

Brett waterskiing

Cliff Jumping

Whew! How much fun was this? It reminded me of the good ole days at Big Toe. I guess McKenna will not share my passion for extreme adrenaline rushes. She came out of the water mad! She was scowling at me (cuz everything is MY fault) and told me "I DID NOT LIKE THAT!" I don't know why I thought it was so funny, but I did :) Oh and was I sore from this!

Beautiful

Pic 1: Our mobile "car" to go from boat to boat or boat to land Pic 2: Brett and "the boys" on the tube getting the beat up Pic 3: McKenna posing for me Pic 4: The View from the front of the boat with some cute kiddies Pic 5: Moon above the red mountains Pic 6: Brett studying the map

It's kind of neat when your kids learn about something at school and then get to see unknowingly in real life. McKenna has learned about the Anasazi people and then we learned where they lived. She's also learned about the kiva. I actually don't think she really cared that she learned about it, and then saw it in person, but Brett and I did :)

Fishing in Lake Powell

More Lake Powell

I can't remember the name of this place, but it was my favorite spot (I think it's called Crystal Springs). We ate lunch there, fished, and I waterskiied out of the canyon.

McKenna kneeboarding

McKenna Kneeboarding