Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve cousin gift-exchange at Nana and Papa's house. Wow, what a gathering! The family keeps getting bigger and bigger and, since even Mike and Nikki's clan was here, the family has grown to 20! Next year: 21!

Build-A-Bear

Sydney has been begging for a Build-A-Bear lately. Grandma Jo was kind enough to give her one for Christmas and we were able to go build it with her while in Vegas. Collin had such a great time helping Sydney that he decided he would wish for one for Christmas, too. (Good thing Santa was able to pull that one off last minute.)

Las Vegas

Our annual trip to Las Vegas for Christmas. We always spend a couple of days in Vegas with Jay's parents, Bob and Joan, and his brother, Jeremy. We also got to meet Katie, Jeremy's girlfriend. We had a great time seeing everybody!

School Carnival

The kid's school carnival included face painting, a cake walk and, of course, a visit from a special visitor.

Family Rock Band

So we finally decided to buy Rock Band. We had been waiting for a long time and Jay found a deal the other day. Jay and I thought it would be a fun way to spend some winter evenings together. The thing is, Collin and Sydney love it too and are surprisingly good at it! We had a family jam session tonight (if you can call it that, ha, ha, ha). ROCK ON JIMMY BUFFETT!

More Halloween

Halloween night. We were so excited to trick-or-treat in the warm autumn evening - one that was almost a record-breaker temperature wise. It rained, of course. The whole night, too! We still had a fabulous night.

Halloween Carnival

Shannon, Dresden and Logan joined us at our school's Halloween carnival. Sydney and Collin, though in a bit of a grumpy mood in the picture, had a great time with their cousins. Collin wanted to be something very scary this year so we decided the grim reaper would be okay. Sydney also wanted to dress up as something scary so she was a vampire or the bride of Frankenstein or spider lady, or ... she couldn't really make up her mind.

Halloween

Shannon, Dresden and Logan joined us for the school Halloween carnival. Collin was in a bit of a grumpy mood (as you can tell) but ended up having a great time.

We celebrated Brandt's birthday and Halloween at Mom and Dad's.

The kids playing in the leaves and quickly undoing someone's hard work.

Mmmm...Spaghetti

Collin and Sydney LOVE spaghetti! They would eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day if they had a choice.

However, every time we have it, a noodle ends up in that hard-to-describe place somewhere between Sydney's nose and throat and we have to get her to blow it out or clear it out some other funny way all while she is panicking and crying.

No matter how much we encourage her to eat slowly, this happens every time we have spaghetti!

Silver Lake

Took a short trip up Big Cottonwood Canyon to Silver Lake this weekend with Nana, Shannon and the boys. We wanted to see some of the fall foliage before all the leaves had turned. We thought we'd enjoy a quiet, peaceful afternoon picnicking at the lake, feeding the ducks, fish, squirrels, etc. However, we weren't the only ones with this idea. The canyon was packed with people trying to do the same! We still had a great time. Maybe this weekend we'll venture up another canyon.

Lagoon

We were able to go to Lagoon this summer with Nana and Papa, Shannon and Larry and their family and Brandt, Soupie and Carlee. Aunt Gloria was kind enough to offer us tickets to go and since we hadn't been for years we gladly accepted. We had a great time!

Jay is having a great time loading the kids on the carousel.

Oh, come on Nana. Go on the ride with us! You'll only get a little wet!

Returning to Earth.

Flyers

One of the things we love about where we live is watching all of the paragliders and hangliders out our back windows. They haven't been out much this summer due to the construction at the glider park but they were out tonight! Mom, Dad, Shannon, Larry and the kids came over for a visit and suddenly the sky was full of them. We counted at least 38. Awesome!

Collin turns 7!

Collin shows off one of his presents.

Collin and Sydney are so excited to unwrap the presents. Sydney always seems just as excited as Collin to see what he gets.

Collin had a little early party with Grandma Jo and Grandpa Bob when they were visiting from Arizona.

COLLIN'S BIRTHDAY PARTY

We invited family and a couple of Collin's friends from school to a little pizza party at our neighborhood park. Jay set up some games and relays for the kids and we had cake and icecream there.