February Happenings

February flew by!  For the superbowl we were more than a little excited that the Broncos won!  Here is our family all ready for the game to start!  Tommy's first name is Payton after Peyton Manning so he was pretty happy with the win too!

 The sun finally came out and it warmed up to melt off the sidewalk so we jumped at the first chance to ride bikes!  I normally LOVE the snow, but we had so much of it for so long this winter that I was very done with it.  Now it is mostly all melted.

 I planned Tommy's Valentine party.  We tried doing full class activities instead of little stations because I felt like that gave it much more of a party feel.  Here the kids are doing musical dance hearts.  It was a fun day.

 It also happened to be spirit week and it was "dress up with your friends" day so Tommy and Addalyn were minions together. 

(She lives in our neighborhood and both Tommy & Whitney adore her.)

 My mom took the kids up to the cabin on Saturday and Vic and I were supposed to go on a hot Valentine date.... instead Vic bought a house and wanted to get a jump start on painting so we painted for 8 hours straight and were too tired to move at night!  The next morning on Valentine's Day we drove up to the cabin and made pink pancakes for breakfast.

 Aunt Pam spoiled the kids with lots of fun treats.

 She also brought chocolate molds for them to make some Valentine candies.

 They were a bit sloppy, but the kids were pretty proud of them!

 We had heart shaped pizza for lunch.

 We had spaghetti, pink cake, and red valentine jell-o for dinner.  I drew hearts on the rolls too.  It was pretty festive :)

 During the day Uncle Danny pulled the kids around and around the island on sleds.  Their faces were frozen, but they didn't care one bit.  They could do this all day!

 ... and who needs a sledding hill when we have the snow bank?!

January Happenings

I love Christmas, but it is a breath of fresh air to get our life back in January!  Vic worked a million hours all November and December trying to make his job work out.  It didn't work so he started a new job working for one of our friends.  He made a huge change and switched over into property management.  He is loving it so far and we are loving having our weekends back!

At the first of January I started another ballet class.  Look at all those cuties!  My girls this year are 10 times better behaved than last year's bunch. It is fun to see how the girls that returned from last year are so much better than the girls just starting out.

 Tommy was feeling quite left out that he didn't get to be part of dance so we signed him up for his 1st swimming lessons.  After just one lesson his skilled took off.  He is a natural swimmer!

Vic loves skiing so we went for his birthday.  

My mom brought the kids up later to try them out on the bunny hill.  I wanted to see if they were ready for lessons and lets just say we'll be waiting another year or two before we start into that!  I think Tucker did the best of all of them and had the most fun!

After skiing, Vic wanted to spend the weekend at the cabin.  Here he is with his "Twinkie" cake.  I have never heard of this cake and after 10 years of being married, he insisted that it was his favorite birthday cake as a kid so I attempted to whip it up.  I didn't think it tasted much like a twinkie.

 The boys surprised my mom with pouring their own bubbles!

 Tommy had his first crazy clothes and hair day.  He was a bit skeptical of me dressing him like this, but once he got to school he loved it and can't wait for the next one.

 I love frosty trees and I haven't taken the kids' pictures for over a year so I raced out to our backyard one morning and grabbed some pictures of them. All 3 of them are struggling with a normal smile right now!

Tucker, age 2 1/2 

 Whitney, age 4 1/2

 Tommy, age 6

 The heater cord on our roof went out and we are having major icicles grow over our sidewalk so I broke a few off and made Whitney an Elsa castle.  She is quite proud of it! 

 Vic's niece came home from a mission so we went to Twin Falls for a weekend. Trish's family came and joined us for swimming at our hotel. 

 Vic's brother Josh just built a new house in Boise so we went to visit them the next weekend and see their new house.  They have NO snow on the ground.  I usually love snow, but I was so happy to be able to get out and walk outside without freezing.  Here we are at the Boise zoo.

 The lions were roaring and pacing like crazy. We got the best show I've seen from lions at the zoo!

 This one was going nuts over this wagon. The guy with the wagon would bounce his wagon up and down and the lion would paw and follow it just like a baby kitten.

December Happenings

In December I was really busy with Christmas and Vic was working 6 days a week so things got a little crazy around here with the kids having some free time without supervision.

Tucker started frequently dressing up in Whitney's outfits, dresses and all!

 Found this picture on my iphone.... the tutu will let you know who that was.

 I was laying in bed one morning and I could hear the kids talking, but when I heard the front door open I leaped out of bed to see why and found these two dressed like this.  There was a snow storm in the night and they were ready to go play in it! ....they may have been a bit cold seeing how they had nothing but underwear under their snow pants!

 My rascals trying to make a sledding hill out of the driveway.  (They were very bored while I shoveled).

 I took this picture through a dirty windshield to show the amazing view we had while driving up to the cabin for New Year's Eve.

 Evan hauled the kids a long way and when he got tired he made them pull him.  I was impressed that the kids could do it!!

 Evan also decided to improve on our snow sled down the stairs and dug a bobsled trail down to the lake.  It made it a lot more fun! ....and yes, that is Vic in the back wearing my mom's purple snow suit.  He had his own pants there so I have no idea why he decided hers would be better!

 Beautiful view!

 Our Party Family!

 ...and our party group: my mom, Evan, Amber's kids, and the Draper family.  We celebrated the kid's New Year's Eve around 10pm and Evan made them a dance party in the basement. Then, after we put the kids to bed we all stayed up until 3am playing games!  That is the latest I've stayed up in a LONG time!!

Christmas

Here are my little cuties on Christmas Eve!  Vic was excited for his first Christmas Eve off in years and he was a bit disappointed.  During the day we wrapped presents, cleaned, and cooked.  I think he much prefers coming home at 5 and magically everything is done!

 We had my Dad & Lana over for dinner.  This year I went with a Carribean theme and did Carribean Pork Roast w/ yam & potatoes bakes around it, coconut rolls, mango cider, and a pineapple Christmas cake.  It was yummy!

 We opened Dad's presents and then we went to see some lights.  Tucker fell asleep in the car so he didn't get to walk around.

 We had a really late night on Christmas Eve so the kids slept in a bit.  My mom didn't want to miss the action so she came over at 6:45am and ended up waking us all up!  I was exhausted!  Here is Whitney with her singing Elsa. (She asked for Elsa barbie last year so not much different!)

 Tucker wanted cars so he got a big Little People track for his room.  He sees how cool Tommy thinks Hot Wheels is so he uses it more for Hot Wheels than his cute little cars.

 Tommy got a 6 land race track for Hot Wheels and a bunch of Hot Wheel cars.

 After Santa gifts we had breakfast.  

 The kids made their own pancake faces this year.  Here is Tommy's reindeer.

 ..and Whitney's reindeer.

 I made Tucker a Santa and then the other kids needed one too!

 Our family on Christmas morning. LOVE love this bunch!

 Mom and Mark were pretty exciting while we opened gifts.  (It takes us awhile because we let the kids play as they go.)  Aunt Katie was on the iPad watching us too.  The kids really liked that and talked about her for a few days afterwards.

 Tucker and all of his presents.

 Whitney and her presents.

 I REALLY wanted to nap in the afternoon, but the kids were way too excited to have us help them with all of their new toys and especially building legos.  We spent a couple of hours building these.

At dinner time we headed over to my mom's house to play games and snack on food.  We were all tired and about to leave at 8pm when Amber decided to show up.  We had so much fun playing games that everyone, even Ivy and Tucker stayed up until midnight!  The second we backed out of the driveway, Whitney and Tucker were already sound asleep!

Here is a picture of the kids playing their new frog game.

 We had really wanted to go sledding on Christmas day and didn't have time so we went first thing the next morning before Vic had to go to work.  It was great snow because we had another snow storm on Christmas day!

 Vic and I kept trying to run faster and harder to see who could get the furthest.  Vic of course would not stop until he could pass my line!

I think this Christmas was perfect!  The only thing missing was my siblings!!! Sure missed them.