Skiing

Thanks to the cousins equipment and free ski passes we spent the day skiing and sledding yesterday. The snow was really sticky which made it perfect for Jack's first time. He went down a few runs but those little 3 yr old legs get tired so fast. He'd be content if we just let him drink hot chocolate and play on the arcade games in the lodge all day. And what a difference a year makes, Kate was quite the skier. She wasn't nervous at all and even went on the "big" chair lift. She didn't want to take the skis off at the end of the day. I'd be happy to ski on the bunny slope all day with them it's so nice to see them enjoy it. We even got our niece Chey to try skiing, she did great.

Go Panthers!

Kate did a cheer camp with the high school a few weeks ago. This is with Rachel who just happens to also be their primary teacher at church. It's hard to really see Kate since the video is so small but you'll get the idea, those girls were dang cute.

She's on the move...

We just loved her expression near the end where she sits up. She keeps us smilin'.

Catch up

Here are some of the highlights from our holidays. The kids had a good time opening a door each day of Dec. One of the days we made mallow-men...

We got to decorate gingerbread houses this year with one of our favorite families! These weren't just any ordinary houses, they withstood lots of moving and playing around with for weeks after. They even had little garages with cars and every fun candy you can think of.

And we were lucky enough to have x-mas eve at our house. Everyone did something for our program and it was so fun. Time will tell if we jumpstarted a tradition. I didn't get pictures of everyone but here is Trisch playing the flute, G&G singing to us - this was a major highlight for the kids, and we even had rudolph visit and sing to us. Ray put together a fun game of guessing what x-mas movie different audio clips were from. I attempted to play the guitar while the kids shook bells and everyone sang Joy to the world, it's just a good thing for me we're all family and there was no judges panel!

Santa's note, he got eggnog this year - yum!

The traditional Christmas morning picture on the stairs.
I think they all had a good Christmas morning...

And lucky for us we got to see Grandma Great the next week. She's an amazing woman who always brings the best spirit with her. We have fabulous memories of Grandma and it's so heart warming to see Kate love and adore her as much as I do. She is 92 and loved carrying Lily around, always gets down on the floor to play games with the kids and never misses out on the card games, it was a great way to spend New Years Eve.

And with all this snow we had we did manage to get in some sledding, I should say "they" managed to get in sledding, Lily and I snuggled on the couch for 2 hours while I finished a book for the first time in months!

Makenna and Jack waiting to be pulled behind the 4-wheeler

Reindeer delivered John Deer

You be the judge...a gift from Santa or a ploy to get some help in the yard?

6 months

How did they get this big? It happened much too fast.

Lily's 6 month photo shoot. This little lady just doesn't stop smiling, it's the best!

Halloween

I love the holidays but time sure does fly by. We had a great Halloween. Kate decided to be Tinkerbell so I went against my rule of not sewing Halloween costumes and headed out the day before our ward party and found Tinkerbell material, drew our pattern and made this outfit. Kate was all excited for it for the first day. I did convince her to put it back on for Halloween for a picture hoping she'd still go for it but she instead decided to be a cheerleader. It works out that OSU is the same color as High school Musical. I should've thought of that before and for sure could've settled on cheerleader much earlier.
Jack was more than happy to be Batman. Lilybug was going to be a lady bug but ended up wearing this pumpkin that has been used every year since Kate wore it at 8 months. It's become tradition to walk the parade with cousins collecting candy. Of course we have way too much but luckily as usual they forgot all about it after a week and over half of it is still sitting in their buckets.

Money maker

Kate always comes right down in the morning when she wakes up but a few days ago I saw her light was on for quite a while so I went up to check on her. She was sitting on the floor surrounded by her little "treasures". She said she was sorting into a "keep" pile and "giveaway" pile. She says pointing to the giveaway pile "I'm going to give all these away ......(pause).....for $5". After giving excuses all summer for not wanting to do a lemonade stand I gave in on this warm day for her to set up a table in the driveway with her treasures. Thanks to a few friends who graciously bought her stuff she made $5. Jack didn't care so much about selling but didn't want to miss out on the action and brought his favorite toys out. Kate is always thinking of ways to make money. Here's an example of a conversation we had while putting her to bed a few weeks ago.

Kate: We need someone who makes cars to build one like the ice cream truck but has a shelf for Hot Chocolate.
Mom: What would you do with that?
Kate: I'd drive around and sell it to everyone
Mom: Did you know Jane's Dad sells cars?
She then thinks about this for a minute and then says in a tone telling me she doesn't think this is much help to her "well yeah but do you think he could build us one?"

This is just one of many entrepreneurial ideas from her. I think I see part of her future right here and now.

First Annual Benefit Tot Trot

I have to say thanks to my friend Shannon for inviting us to our first Tot Trot 4 years ago. It was so fun and since Shannon moved away 2 years later I've wanted to host our own Tot Trot. One idea led to another and we were able to make it a benefit for a little boy named Hatcher. He's just 10 months old and has had 3 open heart surgeries and will have one more in a year or so. In just 3 weeks we were able to get about 100 kids registered and we ended up raising over $1000 for Hatcher's family. The support and offers for help was incredible and it just makes us want to go bigger and better next year. The kids all got t-shirts, race numbers, finishers medals, and goody bags filled with stuff from our sponsors. Here are a few of the pics from the event.




And since I'm in such a nostalgic mood lately here is a picture from that first Tot Trot 2004.. (Kandace if you see this post - do you remember this pic when our girls posed as rappers?)

Then the next year - TOT TROT 2005 Starting Line

And they're off..................

What I'll miss....

I think as the kids grow I'm going to miss homework assignments requiring them to cut open a pumpkin to count and sort the seeds. I'm going to miss them snuggling into me during basketball practice because in his words "I just wanna take a break". Life really is good with kids isn't it?