Thomas is 11!

Thomas had his eleventh birthday a few weeks ago.  The years just fly by don't they?

We are so grateful to have Thomas in our family.  He is very smart and hardworking.  He is also a great big brother.  There have been many evenings that I have gone into his room to say goodnight and he is reading a story to Tad.  The other morning Tad came in and told me that he had a bad dream the night before, but Thomas helped him.  When I asked Thomas about it, he told me that Tad woke him up with his crying.  When Thomas asked him what was wrong, Tad told him that he had a bad dream.  Thomas said a prayer with him and asked that Tad would only have good dreams.  Tad told me "It worked."  Now every night when I put Tad to bed and listen to his prayers, he always prays that he will have good dreams.  What a great lesson he taught his little brother and what a great example he is setting for him.  We love you  Thomas!!

Jack's Birthday

Jack just had a birthday and is now nine years old.  I don't know why I am always so shocked when my child turns another year older, but it gets me every time.  I can't believe how fast they are all growing up.  I mean just look at that picture.  Who is that big kid?

Jack had a great birthday with his choice of cupcakes, dinner, presents, and a family bowling trip.

Jack is such a great kid.  I have yet to meet anyone that does not like Jack.  He is kind to everyone and always looks for the positive in every situation.  We are so lucky that he is in our family!

Utah Trip

Our kids went to school clear through December 23rd, so we don't go back to school until January 9th.  With all of that time, we decided to make the drive up to Utah to see my family during the first week of our break.

There was a lot of snow on this trip, but the roads were really good, so we decided to take a little longer route and drive past the Manti temple, to show our boys where we were married.  I just love this temple.  It is always so beautiful, but I found it especially beautiful in all of this snow.

This is the other side.  Love, love, love this temple!!!

While we were up there we decided to take Frontrunner up to Salt Lake with my dad, my sister, and her family.  We visited City Creek.  It was fun to see it all decked out for the holidays.

We took time to admire the candy ornament windows. They really are amazing!

When the lights came on we visited Temple Square.

 
I always love Temple Square, but it is especially fun at Christmas.

We finished the trip with the ride home on FrontRunner.

We also visited BYU campus and went to a BYU basketball game.  It was so fun to be there again.  I can't believe it has been so long since I was a student there.

Most of all, we just enjoyed visiting with family.  It was great to be in a Utah for a little while again.

Christmastime!

We had such a great Christmas season here at our house.  We were able to continue a lot of old traditions, and started a few new ones (thanks to the Light the World campaign).  I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I should have, but I will share a few that I snapped here and there.

First up, I am sharing some of my Christmas decor.  Boring, I know, but no one in my family ever gets to see my house at Christmas, so here are a few pictures for you.

 Sparkly Christmas pillows in my living room.

And a sparkly "Let it Snow" sign that I thought went perfectly with my pillows.  Normally, I am not much of a glitter girl, but I make an exception during the holidays.

More of my favorite Christmas decor on top of the piano.

 And of course I have to share my hook shelf with all of our stockings.  Finally, some traditional Christmas colors.

I didn't take any pictures of our family room decor or our tree this year, because that room has been a bit of a mess lately with Jeremy trying to finish up the fireplace.  It is worth it though.  It is looking good and almost finished. I can't wait to share it with you.

I did, however, take a picture of our newest Christmas addition.  This is an advent calendar from Pottery Barn.  I love Pottery Barn's advent calendars, but not the prices.  This one is not current, but I found it new on ebay for a fraction of the price.  My boys had a lot of fun adding an ornament every day.

Here is Tad standing in front of it with the gingerbread house he made in preschool.

Jack, just after the Elementary school's Christmas program. He did a great job singing with his grade, and he was also selected to be part of the special group that sang the opening number.

Here is Drake after the program.  His class sang "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" and he did great as well.  They wanted their picture taken by this tree because it is our old Christmas tree.  I bought it 11 years ago for $15.00, the day after Christmas.  It has served our family well, but this year we finally got a new one and gave this one to the elementary school to decorate with.  They creatively turned it into a Christmas tree from"How the Grinch stole Christmas".  Love it!!

For one of our Christmas activities that we pull out of our favorite pocket advent calendar that I made several years ago, we made these puffy snowmen that have been all over Pinterest for years.    The boys like them, but we found the medium kind of hard to work with.  Jack had a great time playing with his, but them couldn't get it back into the shape of anything resembling a snowman.  So, we just made his a melted snowman.

We hung them in the windows of our dining area and they were a happy addition all season.  Since we are not keeping them, they are still up in the windows as part of our winter decor.

Don't you love our un-landscaped backyard?  It is our big project for this Summer.

Another one of our traditional pocket calendar activities is making sugar cone Christmas trees.

 The boys look forward to this activity all year, and it is sooo easy.

Here is a look at their finished masterpieces.  Jack was sick that day, so he made his later.

Finally, I am sharing a non-Christmas related project, but it took up some of my December and I am happy with how they turned out so I can't help myself.  I made these little Choose the Right blocks for my cute Primary kids.  We handed these out to them when we introduced the theme for the year.  I want them to have a daily reminder of what we are focusing on in Primary. Hopefully, at least some of them will look at them often and think about it.  I know my boys already love theirs.

It was a great Christmas season.

Drake's Birthday

 Drake turned seven in October.  He was so excited about his birthday.  As soon as the calendar turned over to October he was counting down the days and making plans.  Unfortunately, on his birthday I was super sick and could hardly get out of bed.  Luckily, I had already made most of the preparations, so Jeremy could swoop in and take care of making sure that Drake had a great day!!

After lunch (Happy Meals from McDonalds), we sang happy birthday and he blew out his candle.

Then the boys each got to decorate their own cupcakes.  This was one of the things that Drake planned and I had prepared for ahead of time.  The boys all had a great time with this.

After lunch and cupcakes he had a soccer game to win!

Then he came home and opened his presents with great enthusiasm.  Drake's excitement over stuff like this never disappoints.

Drake is a great kid.  He makes life so much more fun around here.  Sorry I mostly missed your birthday Drakers, but I am super glad you came into our family seven years ago!

Soccer

Life has been so busy lately, and I am super behind on updating the blog.  So - - I will be adding a bunch of posts in rapid succession to try to catch up.  First subject = Soccer.

This Fall all of my boys played soccer.  It was a busy season with five boys on four different teams.  It is a good thing that I enjoy watching them play so much.

Tad and Drake were on the same team this year.  Jeremy was their coach and they had a winning season.  Drake is turning out to be a great defender.  Tad finally started catching the vision about mid-season and was becoming a good forward.

Unfortunately this is about the best picture I got of Jack this year.  He took the year off from soccer last year, but decided that he missed it.  He made a lot of progress this year, and was part of a winning team.

Thomas had a good season, playing all positions except goalkeeper.  His team also had a winning season.

Dallin was drafted by a good team again this year.  They only lost one game until the playoffs.  The playoffs were rough since several of their good players were out with injuries.  But, Dallin being Dallin said he still had a great season and a lot of fun.

He spent the season playing forward and scored so many goals we lost count.

Soccer is always one of our favorite things about Fall in Taylor.  It was another good season for sure!

Our Halloween

Just popping in to share a few pictures from Halloween this year.

A shot of my boys' favorite Halloween decor.  They just love looking at all of these old pictures from past Halloweens.

This was Jack at the Elementary school Halloween parade. He was Batman again this year.

Drake was a wizard.

Tad is only in preschool, but since his dad is the principal, he got to walk in the parade with the big kids.  He was Thor this year.

Thomas was the oh so cool  Hawkeye (from the Avengers).

I didn't get an individual picture of Dallin, since he is getting to the point where he is a little bit over dressing up for Halloween.

All of my boys in their Halloween finery.

And one last picture so you can see Dallin's full costume.  Not many 12-year-old boys would be willing to dress up in a coconut bra and grass skirt, but Dallin is about the most confident kid I know - so he pulled it off and enjoyed all the laughs.