Skiing

How can we pass up $15 lift tickets two weeks in a row? We can't. And Hailey's free anyway because she's 6. This was Hailey's first time skiing (and Tyler's second--although he was quite the expert when discussing skiing technique with Hailey). She loved it, too. YAY! I was a little nervous there at the beginning because she looked much more nervous than Tyler was, but she quickly got the hang of it and can even turn and stop a lot more effectively than Tyler. Shhh, don't tell Tyler.



Don't they look cute?

Featuring: Tyler

We were finally able to take Tyler skiing for the first time. Trevor and I love to ski, and we really want our kids to like it too. So it was a relief when we took him and he loved it. On the way home he asked if we could go again the next day. Yay! He did great. Half the time we went skiing altogether, and the other half Trevor and I switched off helping Tyler. Here are some pictures:


Tyler getting ready. He couldn't wait to get on the snow after walking around our house in his skis for a few days. We got his skis, boots and poles on Craigslist for $20 bucks! (Although we ditched the poles until the last couple runs so they wouldn't get in his way.) We figured it was a good investment seeing as how we'll make all four kids wear them when they grow into them :)

It should also be mentioned that once he got the hang of the ski lift and getting off, he wanted to go by himself each time. A lot of the time we just hung out at the bottom of the bunny hill watching him get on and off the lift and coming down by himself...

They had a little obstacle course for the ski school kids. When they abandoned it, Tyler wanted to try it out.


And for some basketball:

Tyler loves basketball this year. I love watching these kids play. Even though the picture is really blurry, I had to put in the one above because it's funny to watch them guard their own team sometimes. These kids learn to keep their arms up, and they take it very seriously.

Christmas Time

I do bake cakes. I promise. But it was such a busy time and Jason wanted a Thomas cake, so I called WalMart. He's such a sweet little guy. His favorite toy right now is Thomas the Train, he talks non-stop, and he loves playing with his brother and sisters and gets mad when they leave him out.

Ashley had a preschool Christmas Program. She had so much fun. Here are a couple pictures in her reindeer hat and witch hat (for a skit). I didn't get any pictures of her in her Santa hat because I videoed the whole thing, but in one little skit she played Santa and did GREAT.


We wrote a letter to Santa and asked if he would come to our house early. You see, we didn't have enough room in our van to take all the presents with us to Idaho, then bring them all (and more) back. So we had an early Christmas. The kids loved it! It was a lot of fun seeing them open presents. They were so excited. This time of year is so great for so many reasons!

Christmas Time Continued

We took a trip to my brothers house that he has been building (and doing an AMAZING job). His English Bulldog just had puppies six weeks ago. Apparently I thought this was the only thing picture worthy. Forget that all of my four brothers and their families were there, my little sister and her family, my mom and stepdad, my dad and stepmom. Oh we BROUGHT the camera, it just didn't make it out of the bag much...you only get the pictures taken from my phone (and I'm not so good at holding really still to take a good picture)So HOPEFULLY my stepdad will share with me all the pictures he's taken of everyone else...

Hailey wants this puppy more than anything in the world. It's a little sad. And it's the only one left for sale. She wanted to hold this puppy the whole 3 days we were there. She cried when she didn't get to help take them out, and she didn't even want to go to bed because the puppies would cry (and she KNOWS it's because they needed her to hold them. :) )


This is Ashley and my little niece, Emily. My nieces live so far away, so it was nice to see them and finally have some girl cousins for Ashley and Hailey to play with.

Featuring:

HAILEY. Hailey had a birthday not too long ago. I can't believe how fast time flies. Here's picture before we sang Happy Birthday.



That night when I put Hailey to bed, I was telling her about the day she was born and when I went into labor, etc. She looked REALLY worried when I got to the part about how she had aspirated a lot of fluid and one of her lungs didn't inflate, so they rushed her off to the newborn intensive care unit . I told her it all turned out fine because she's healthy now and just fine, but she still looked terrified. I guess it's still a little early to include ALL the details. Poor girl.





This is Hailey's Thanksgiving Program that her kindergarten class performed. It was REALLY cute and fun to see her and all her class sing and say their lines. I didn't even know she had any lines until I got there. Her line was even the longest and she said it by herself when all the other kids said their lines with two or three of them together. Had I known, I would've helped her practice at home. She never told me, though and I never got any papers telling me about speaking parts. She did great and spoke so loudly and clearly.

Halloween

And only a week late. We had a lot of fun Halloween festivities. The ward trunk or treat was excellent. A lot of fun carnival games for the kids, and then a lot of candy gathering of course.

We also went trick or treating around the neighborhood. Around here there is one street that closes to traffic that's like a "Halloween Lane" or something...all the houses on this street decorate and ALL the kids in town go there. I've heard that there are big lines and the kids get one piece of candy per house, etc. So we just trick or treat around our neighborhood. Our kids are LOADED with candy. We had one trick or treater at our house, and I think our kids were probably the only visitors at other houses. Needless to say, they were quite a hit at every house and got all sorts of attention...and candy...

Tyler was Mario, Hailey was a Barbie Mermaid, Ashley was a giraffe and Jason was a shark.




We also had this skeleton that was motion sensored and would talk when you walked up to it. At first,Jason wouldn't get close to it (like in this picture). But by the end of the night he wasn't as scared. That's all he talks about still--he says, "the scary guy fell over" (the wind blew it over one morning) and, "the scary guy....ha ha ha" and he mimics the way the skeleton laughs. It's really cute, I hope he doesn't have nightmares.

Three Down, One to Go

Nope, not potty training (although that too, I guess...but that happened long ago.)


RIDING BIKES!! Ok, so it's old news by now. She's actually been riding for two months. I'm just that good at blogging. Ashley did great, though. It took a lot of prodding for the other two (...one...) but Ashley begged me to take off her training wheels one Saturday while Trevor was gone. So I did and we practiced and by the time he came home, she was showing off her mad bike riding skills. She could even kick off on her own. I guess she was ready. Now if Jason could just learn to ride a bike in the next two months, that will be all four kids learning in 2010. I won't hold my breath.


Not much of an action shot, but I couldn't take any while I was running alongside her, making sure I caught her if she fell over :)