Winter Ball

Oh yes, the BIG dance was finally here and I had a couple of 16 yr olds just itching to go! Winter Ball is a girl ask guy kind of dance...and you can better believe that my twins understood that concept VERY well. Once the date of Winter Ball was set, they were ready to ask out their dates. Here they are all ready to go.

Shelley and Star ended up accompanying one another because Star's date got stranded in Salt Lake and Shelley's just up and ditched her! (bad boy...it'll come back to him!)

Sky and her date Harrison

the protector

the other day I found Kirk "lounging" in the sun with his protector watching over him

and then the protector decided he wanted to play...he'd pull on his arm and bite his hair
good thing the protector doesn't like me!

Happy Valentine's Day!

This is the beautiful sunrise I was treated to this Valentine's morning.

EVERY year we have a very special Valentine's dinner complete with a small gift for everyone. On the menu this year was teriyaki filet mignon, garlic shrimp and sticky rice, hot crashed potatoes, broccoli, zucchini and onion saute and a special valentine jello for Lea. Dessert was russian cream with strawberries.

Can I open it?????

Star and Lea checking out their gifts.

Ohhhhh...check out what I got!!!!

Me and my eternal valentine....love you baby always and forever.

the "brown" invasion

Mari and her friends came up for a visit this weekend. Naturally, it was a "brown" invasion. So fun, tho! No visit is ever complete until you have your photo taken in front of the elk arch on town square. Notice the bruddah wearing his "slippers"...does he think he's still in Hawaii?

Playing aggravation with Lea is a must!!

I cooked up a storm this weekend...we made all the favorites for Mari and her gang. We also HAD to get into the Valentine's Day spirit and try these DELICIOUS cupcakes. There's a special treat in each cupcake...a Lindor Milk Chocolate Truffle!

We decorated sugar cookies for Valentine's Day....don't think this one Eric made was for me!

Andrew gave the girls guitar lessons...Maya's been dying to do this.

The brown invasion after church...guess Andrew couldn't wait for dinner and was trying to down a banana in the middle of the picture taking!

Happy Birthday to...

sweet Weldon! We spent last night at the nursing home giving this "youngster" a surprise birthday party. It was pretty fun and entertaining. Guess how old Weldon is? 95 years! He is amazing...sharp as a tack I tell you...he's just got an OLD body.

He especially likes girls, so we brought him a bundle of them...along with the young man in the back of the photo!
You can thank the blue icing on his cake for his cute little blue smile!

For reals

yep, check out the temperature in my car this morning as I gave Sage a ride to the bus stop!
One would wonder why they don't close the schools when it is this cold...well, this is the rule...if the busses start up in the morning, then we go to school! I've lived here for almost 14 yrs and in all that time, a bus has never failed to start. I wish every other thing in life could be so dependable! Stay warm everybody!!

I suck at this...

Yes, I suck at giving blood. I had to have a blood draw this morning. I knew in advance that I was going to have to do this and so I made sure that I was PLENTY hydrated. You know plump, juicy veins. I do have a problem which is that I have those horrible veins that don't want to stay put. Yep, got those rolly veins. After two attempts at two different veins in my arm, I finally said, "go for the hand". For some reason this always shocks the person trying to draw my blood. They hem and haw and finally they concede. And yes, it works..everytime.

Only Sage could pull this off...

Here she is at @ age 5 being a flower girl in my niece Britnee's wedding...(isn't she adorable?)

And now at 13 yrs old wearing the SAME dress! This dress is a size 4...yes, really.
I found it during the "new year" clean up and Sage just had to try it on. Yes, it even buttoned up the back with minimal pulling. It has now found a home with a true 5 yr old!

One year ago....

we packed up our bags and left the world behind...

to enjoy 3 months of incredible family time by beautiful, blue, warm water

and absolutely delicious sunsets!

Life in our house this week

This is what we saw a lot of this week....grey skies...ugh! It gets old after a while...you know what I mean!

I spent 5 days going through every nook and cranny in my office trying to get rid of clutter and stuff. We've lived in this home for 10 years and after a while, you don't know what you have! I decided to pass along to others things that I no longer needed/wanted in hopes of it finding a good home. My family took bags of "goodies" to church on Sunday to distribute to people that I thought would give these items a good home. What you see in this picture has a future date with D.I.!

And this little gal got a new hairstyle! Well, basically all her hair got cut off! We are still messing around with different ways to style it. Lea is pretty easy going about her hair, so that's nice!

Request Granted

Ty and Sloane

Happy New Year!

We didn't make any plans for New Year's Eve, rather we stayed at home and created our own fun. First off, we watched the torchlight parade (from inside my house...it was rather cold to be outside!) at the Jacksonhole Moutain Resort. People carry torches with flares on both sides and meander down the mountain. It's a cool thing to watch.

Then the ski resort lit some fireworks--I managed about a minute outside to get a few pictures.

Earlier in the day, I was de-cluttering my office and found a whole canister of glow necklaces. These provided several hours of entertainment. From the decorating one's body to all the cool things they could do with them. There are 5 girls in this shot...can you figure out which one is Lea?

We ended up in the theater in the pitch dark to get these cool pictures.

Then it was back upstairs to do more Just Dance 2...Lea really loves to do this...who would have thought?

The ideas kept getting crazier the later the night became...

Happy New Year from our home to yours!
Hope 2011 brings good things to you all!

Dance 2

We got Dance 2 for the Wii for Christmas and it was a BIG hit. We all got in on the action....even Kirk!

Christmas Day 2010

Christmas Day dawned a beautiful day....brilliant blue skies and clear...no snow!

Santa came to these "nice" children.

Ty gave all us girls these pretty silk robes!

the festivities of Christmas time

Christmas is all about family and I am thrilled to have ALL my kids home for 2 whole weeks! Since we've had a butt load of snow, we've had some fun ski days.

Another activity that we indulged in for the holidays was making and decorating gingerbread houses. OK, so I made all the houses, but the kids had a great time decorating them. Some worked individually, and others worked in teams.

Like this team of Ty and his girlfriend Sloane. The kids were REALLY getting into the decorating this year and a lot of thought and detail were being demonstrated. So, we decided to have a contest and Kirk was the judge....I was disqualified as judging because I kept giving people ideas and items to put on the houses!

Three houses made the semi-finals. Interesting enough these were all the houses produced by a team of people. This was Maya and her friend Morgan's log cabin. This won the popular vote....meaning more people voted for this house.

This is Ty and Sloane's house on some major acreage. This house won the best landscaping of them all.

Kara and Sage were the winners picked by Kirk. It's a cute, little skiing chalet!

Christmas Card 2010

Producing a Christmas card every year is not as easy as it looks. Kirk and I have taken a family Christmas picture every year since we've been married...that's 25 years...except one. (and that's the year, we almost lost our Lea...1988) Anyone with a large family knows that first off, it's hard to gather everyone together ( Ty is graduated from college and lives in Provo full-time). Then comes the question..."what will we wear?"...this gets tougher every year too since most of the girls wear the same size...and there's usually only ONE of a certain top or outfit. Thankfully, Kara has taken on this job the past few years and I basically leave it up to her color wise and style....then when the arguments come, I just let Kara take the flack! And the last thing that factors into producing a viable Christmas card is everyone's ATTITUDE. It can be awful trying to get a good photo when someone has been crying or there are hard feelings floating around. It used to be such a production when the kids were little to get them dressed and keep them clean and keep them in the spot where I want them to be....and to look at the camera and SMILE! What used to take a seemingly LONG time to get a good shot now takes us literally minutes. It is true...my kids now know the rules and that if everyone cooperates it only takes a few minutes! Practice makes perfect...well, you know what I mean! Hope your Christmas has been merry and bright and full of the the Savior's light.

Traffic stoppers

This is what we ran into (not literally) the other day as I was taking Lea to work. There was a whole "line" of elk and the car in front of me stopped for them to cross the road. There were about 15 of them and there were several males with antlers a growing.

Around here, these guys have the right of way. There are several places that are considered "wildlife corridors" on my way to town. So, you gotta pay attention!

He's REAL !!!

Yep, I still have a believer!! I love it...keeps Christmas in our home so much fun. And her innocence is so sweet. We just had our ward Christmas party and when Santa walked into the room, I thought she was going to levitate, cuz her arms were flapping so fast and furious cuz she was EXCITED that Santa was there. Maya quickly got her 1st in line to see Santa and she was the happiest camper all night. Looks like this Santa could stand to eat a few more cookies....he's SO skinny!

She visited with this Santa after Kara had a Christmas dance recital.

This looks like a Santa from another ward Christmas party.

Santa even came to Nuskin this year!

But our favorite Santa of all time....had to be this guy...Dave Braithwaite. He was Lea's physical therapist when she was a tiny one and he would come every year to our house to see Lea and bring her what...naturally, a book.