Christmas Eve

We had Christmas Eve dinner at our house this year. Bryce's parents and brother Matt came from Boise. Bryce's other two brothers and their families came too. We had a yummy dinner of ham, cheesy potatoes, salad, jello, rolls and a yummy oreo dessert that I made. We enjoyed each other's company and exchanged gifts and then everyone went home to get ready for Santa to come.

Our kids were in bed by about 10:00. Ellie was actually the hardest one to get to sleep, but that is a nightly occurence in our house. I think Bryce and I got to sleep by about midnight.

Seth and Brayden

Broc, Grandpa and Ellie

Grandma, Jessica and Matt

Aunt Darcy stealing a kiss (Tyler had no idea!!)

He got a swan!

My oldest son, Tyler, who is ten years old, has fallen in love with water fowl hunting. His dad introduced him to the sport and this year he got a swan permit. They have went out west of our house, about 5 times, to hunt for swan. Well, today was his lucky day!! His dad decided to take him this morning, a school day, to try and get his swan. They left around 5:30 am and returned about 9:00am.

The swan he hit was a young one, notice the grey on its head, but Tyler was pretty excited about it. I guess after Tyler shot it, it took off and they couldn't find it for about an hour. Bryce wanted Tyler to go with him to the Wildlife Dept. to get it measured and so Tyler didn't get to school until after lunch time. As a school teacher I don't condone skipping school, but Tyler and his dad were able to spend some quality time together.

Notice Tyler's face, this was a pretty heavy bird!!

Family Picture Adventure

I have wanted to get family pictures done for a while now. I really wanted to get some good outdoor shots of the beautiful fall leaves. Bryce has a nice camera so we decided to try to be the 'professional photographer'. I went shopping for coordinating clothes a few weeks ago and finally last Saturday we decided to give it a go. We went to the Ogden Parkway for the pictures. The weather turned out great!! Bryce's brother Jim came and took the family shots and overall I think we got some good ones. No, we are definitely not professionals, but I think we did okay. We took over 300 shots and these were some of the best. Ellie did pretty well. She only got mad and started crying once. She was a trooper! The boys just wanted to play around in the trees and bushes, which drove me nuts. But, boys will be boys! It was a bit tricky to get Tyler and Brayden to smile naturally and not a forced smile, but they did pretty good. Overall, I think we will definitely be able to get some cute Christmas cards this year.

A few shadows on these ones, but overall I liked them.

They were dying to make silly faces.

Isn't she cute?

Halloween '09

Halloween is not my favorite holiday. I hate trying to figure out what my kids should be. So I left it up to them this year. Tyler had a friend in his class that was being a mime and so he decided to be one also. We found white gloves and a black hat for about $2. We got a white shirt and black vest at Target and then he wore some black pants he already had. We did buy some white and black make-up for his face but it ended up itching too bad so we took it off. Everyone thought he was Michael Jackson! LOL I don't have a picture of him because he actually got sick Halloween day and couldn't go trick-or-treating. :(

Brayden wanted to be a cowboy. He already had a hat and boots. We found a cheap plaid shirt at the DI and a gun and holster at the Dollar store. His costume was very inexpensive. For Ellie I had a Tigger costume and a froggy costume that the boys used. Several weeks before Halloween I pulled these costumes out and asked her which one she wanted to be. Well, she hates costumes. They scare her for some reason. She wanted nothing to do with either of them. So I thought maybe if I bought her a pretty princess dress she would wear that. I found one at Target and got it home and she wanted nothing to do with it either. What is the deal with my little girl? Well, I returned the princess costume and decided she wasn't going to go trick or treating this year. The day of our ward trunk-or-treat rolled around and I told her that she would have to dress up in the froggy or Tigger in order to go get treats. She finally decided to try on the froggy one and loved it.

Ellie and Brayden had fun trick-or-treating on Halloween. They got plenty of candy to share with Tyler too. And yes, the majority of it is already gone.

These are the huge pumpkins from the garden that Bryce carved for Halloween.

It's a beautiful thing!!

You are probably wondering why I have a picture of what is in my freezer. Well, I am very proud of my hard work and yes, I am going to boast about it. Last Saturday I spent from 6am until about 2pm cooking and preparing about 20 different meals for my family. I am a part of a freezer meal group, but we only meet once a month and get 3-4 meals each time to put in our freezer. The Weber School District had a wellness seminar and had the lady who wrote the recipe book we use for our freezer group. She told us how we can make 30 meals in one day. I bought her book and computer software and went to work.

First, I decided what recipes to make, went grocery shopping, did some prep work-like chopping onions and cooking all the chicken I needed, and then cooked, cooked and cooked some more. Yes, it was a lot of work, but actually it was kind of fun. My plan is to do this every month and have meals in my freezer to use on the days I work, or just on the days I am not in the mood to cook.

I made lasagna, manicotti, chicken enchiladas, taco soup, beef stew, chicken and rice, meatballs, pork chops, and several others. I am very proud of my hard work, and my family enjoyed one of the freezer meals tonight. It's a beautiful thing!!

Pumpkin Carving Fun

Sunday evening we invited Bryce's two brothers and their families over for a pumpkin party. We had yummy pumpkin stew and carved pumpkins. We had grown some big pumpkins this year in our garden and didn't need them all for ourselves. We thought it would be fun to have the cousins over to help carve them. The weather was good enough to carve outside on the deck, which was nice because then my house didn't have pumpkin guts and seeds all over. The kids had fun. All of the pumkins turned out great!! The kids had fun decorating a brownie to look like a jack-o-lantern too.

Ellie enjoying her pumpkin stew

Fun Fall Weekend

This last weekend we took the kids to Black Island Farms in Syracuse. It is a huge farm with two corn mazes, several hay bale slides, farm animals, pig races, a kiddie train, and hay rides. The weather was perfect! It was even a bit too warm. The kids seemed to have fun and I think Bryce did too. He wasn't very excited to go in the first place, but I told him you do these kinds of things for your kids. :)

Watchin' the pig races!! Tyler got picked to guess which pig would win the race and the blue one did so he got a pig nose!!

Ellie loved the big slide.

Train ride

Ellie going on the little slide with Brayden

Corn Maze Fun!! Yes, we got lost.

The shadows in the maze makes it hard to see us