ABC's of 2007

So my friend Lori sent me a cute letter of their family’s ABC’s of 2007, I thought it was such a cute idea that I wrote my own and I am posting it. It is a good summary and in case you are just visiting for the first time, it will sum up our year and if you want more details, most have a entire post that you can read for more details. ENJOY!

Accounting work for both Teri and Ray.

Blog – Teri started a blog in March, she has fun with it.

Connie Mac World Series – we kept our tradition alive and went to Farmington, NM to watch the baseball games and visit with family and friends.

Dolls and other "girl toys" have joined our toy collection. Kara especially loves her baby doll and feeding her with a toy bottle.

Enoch – spent a week there while Ray was at scout camp. The kids always ask Teri "When can we go to your mom’s house?"

Fun Family get-togethers - we attended several family reunions.

Grand Canyon – We went with Ray's family to Flagstaff for a week and enjoyed a day at the Grand Canyon as a family. Ray, his dad and brother, Randy, also hiked down to the river and back.

Hydration – We got our sprinklers in so now our front grass will have automatic water! We also laid sod in the backyard, it has been so wonderful!

Ink no more – Teri got a sweet deal on a laser printer so we said bye-bye to our OLD inkjet printer. Teri LOVES her printer! She also loves sweet deals and couponing.

Joy – from the dictionary – "to rejoice; happiness ; delight." All in All 2007 has been filled with JOY around our house. We are so thankful for family and friends that bring joy to our lives as well.

Kindergarten – Trent is enjoying his first year of school. He rides the bus everyday and has made new friends.

Legos – Trent and Tyler’s new favorite toys – they spend HOURS building things, who would of thought?

Merry Christmas! We had a great Christmas and we hope you did too!

Nuts – Walnuts that is – We spent an evening at Ray’s grandpa’s picking up walnuts and visiting with Ray’s siblings. The kids had fun playing with cousins and helping too.

Owlz games – Once again we spent many nights during the summer going to the Owlz baseball
games – it was lots of fun!

Preschool – Tyler started preschool at Miss Angie’s in the fall and really enjoys it!

Quarters – The boys will pretty much do anything for a quarter. They like to go to dad’s work and buy a pop with their quarters.

Riding scooters – Trent and Tyler enjoy riding the ones they got for Christmas.
Summer camp with the Scouts for Ray, he is enjoying working in the Teacher’s Quorum in our ward.

Teeth – Kara is finally getting some! She also started walking about two weeks after she turned one.

Underwear ninja masks – the boys like to put their undies on their heads and pretend to be ninjas!

Volunteering in Trent’s class, something Ray has been doing once a month, Teri will take over when busy season hits us!

Working on the basement. Ray has a goal to finish the WHOLE thing in 2008 – good goal Ray!

X – the twenty-fourth letter of the English alphabet. Trent and Tyler are both trying to learn all the names and sounds of the letters in the alphabet.

Yes, we are almost done. We can’t believe how fast 2007 has gone by! It has been a great year filled with many blessings.

Zucchini – the only vegetable plant that we planted this summer, next year we are hoping to have more of a variety of plants.

So this is the only picture we took of our family on Christmas day. We just wanted to say . . .



We WANT YOU to have a good New Year! (I really meant to be pointing at the camera so I could say that, I wasn’t trying to get Kara to look at the camera by pointing - :)

Christmas

We had a good Christmas. On Christmas Eve we were planning on going down to Ray’s brothers house to play games after dinner. Well, as we were just sitting down to eat Kara was being extremely ornery and she was pulling on her ears. I looked at her and her eyes just looked like she did NOT feel good. I told Ray that I thought she had a ear infection. I called our pediatrician and the recording said that the after hours was open until six, it was 10 minutes to 6, so I called that number and the girl said they were technically closed but would wait if I could hurry. So I grabbed Kara and away we went. It was kind of snowing and it was cold and windy. I got there at 6:10 and I just prayed that they were still there. Luckily the receptionist, nurse and doctor waited and so they took Kara back, looked in her ears and sure enough she had ear infections in BOTH ears. I was glad that they waited so that we could get her an antibiotic and get her on her way to getting better. Also, lucky for us Walgreens was open and I was able to get the prescription it took a ½ hour, so I just walked around the store. By the time I got home it was almost 8 p.m. and we didn’t really do much.
The kids enjoyed Christmas I think. They would have been happy with pretty much anything. We had a little get together here at our house at 1 p.m. on Christmas day and we ate some dang good food! Then we played our version of Balderdash, I surprisingly won, I usually can’t come up with very good definitions.


















Hope you all had a good Christmas!

Cupcakes

I signed up to make cupcakes for our annual ward Christmas party. I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com for Self Filled Cupcakes. They turned out REALLY good, I substituted milk chocolate for the semi-sweet, but other than that I followed the recipe and they were super easy. I think I will be making them again - soon because none were left from the party.

We had a yummy dinner at the ward party and had fun visiting and letting the kids play. Ray and the ward choir sang as well. I can't believe that Christmas is in 4 days! I still have so much to do. OH WELL!

10 days later from my last post

It is taking me FOREVER to post these days. Today Tyler had his preschool Christmas program at a retirement community (AKA old folks home) They sang songs to the residents while they ate their lunch. It is always fun to go and watch. The residents seemed to enjoy them being there. The kids were really cute and they sang some cute songs.

This last Saturday we (my side of the family) went to the temple because John took out his endowments. He leaves in January to go to the MTC, and then he is off to the Czech Republic. My parents, Mitch, John and Tennille and Whit came to our house first, then they left and we watched Brett and Jack while Tennille and Whit did some Christmas shopping. I asked two girls in our ward (sisters) to come and tend all 5 kids, so when they got here we all left and met my parents, Mike and Ashlee and John and Mitch at the Mount Timp. Temple. It was SO cold and there were tons of weddings going on (Christmas Break). I felt bad for the brides, they all had on short sleeve dresses and looked cold. One girl did have a cloak thing on, that would have helped. I told Ray, that I would much rather get married in June/July in St. George than December in Utah! It was a neat day to have my whole family in the temple .I am so grateful that we have temples so close.

We spent some time together later that night when my parents got back from my uncle's wedding in Salt Lake. It was fun having everyone here. I should of taken pictures but didn't think to, dang! So I tried to "stage" a family Christmas photo, but we ran out of time on Sunday before church (we barely made it on time to church) and after church Ray had meetings then the sun went down and it was bad lighting, so it didn't work out. I might have to try again this week. It's a tradition!

I am trying to finish up everything for Christmas. It is craziness! I shop at Walmart A LOT but I do not like going there during December. I seriously don't know where all the people come from. I still need to find something to give Kara, so far she has a baby bottle that when you turn it over the milk looks like it is gone and a pair of pants - what else do you give a one year old girl? I am mostly done with getting stuff for the boys, I just hope they like what I got. When we were at the mall a couple of weeks ago, we went to see Santa and Trent didn't know what he wanted, so I told him he could just send a letter later. Which he never did. They both really haven't said what they want; I guess I can use that to my advantage and just get what ever. I did this with Trent's birthday gift. Tennille got it for me last year on clearance after Christmas (Star Wars Transformer Millennium Falcon) for like $10.00. I just hid it up in the closet all year long. So when the Toys R Us "wish book" came out they looked though it and I said to Trent, oh wouldn't this be neat and I really played it up. Then like a week later we were at Toys R Us and Trent saw it on the shelf and he said " mom this is want I really want", I told him I would write it down. (that is what I always tell them) Inside I was tickled to death (OK totally a phrase that my grandma would say) but I was excited that my little trick worked, that he actually WANTED IT and that it was normally at TRU $40.00 and I got it for 10 bucks! That just shows you what all the advertising does to little kids, it really makes them WANT it. It actually has turned out to be a cool toy and he and Tyler play with it a lot.

Well, I hope everyone gets all their Christmas stuff done and don't forget the true reason for the Season! Not only do we celebrate the birth of our Savior, we celebrate His life and what He has done for us. I am so thankful for all the blessings that I have.

Snowy weekends

We have had two weekends in a row of snowy weather. Last Saturday we got up early and drove to Cedar for me to go to a little "reunion" with some of my life long friends. Heather was in town visiting from New York so that is what brought us all together. I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it. When we woke up it had snowed and as we were leaving town it was still snowing pretty bad, and the roads were slushy - but once we got out of Utah County it wasn’t that bad. Luckily I had Ray to drive us all down. I got there just in time, right at noon, which was right when we were meeting at the Garden House for lunch. Ray dropped me off and took the kids out to my parents. We had a fun time at lunch catching up and reminiscing about old times. Thanks ladies for all coming! Here is one picture we took to commemorate the occasion.
Sundee, Kami, Heather, Talia , Jessica, Arynne, and me.

While I was at lunch Ray and my dad took the boys up to woods ranch to go sledding. I wish they would have taken a camera. They had fun. We had a good weekend and left on Sunday.

I have had a busy week as usual. I got the flu on Thursday, which is always no fun! I felt better by Saturday.

It was rainy Thursday, Friday and snowed on Saturday. We got a lot of snow in a short amount of time that day. The boys LOVED playing in it and Ray likes to shovel the walks, so he was busy. Ray helped Trent and Tyler build a snowman. They wanted to make two faces, one facing their window and one towards the road.
I took this picture before they were done.