Texas!

We had such a wonderful time visiting friends and family in Texas. We flew out to attend the wedding of a close family friend and also enjoyed visiting with my cousin Jann and her family. Texas is one hot (and humid) place in August. Despite that, we had such a great time!

We flew out of SLC at 6:30 am. That meant a very early morning for all of us.

The kids did pretty well on the plane. Landon spent a lot of time watching movies and Allie pretty much read during the whole flight.


When we got to Dallas, Jann's husband Jared picked us up. We hadn't made it too far before we had a tire blow out on the freeway. Eric and Jared were troopers changing a tire in the middle of the hot Texas heat.

The kids and I remained in the air conditioned van.

Friday night was a Texas BBQ for Jon & Lori. Lori arranged for birthday cake to be the dessert in honor of Allie & Alex who share a birthday on August 9th.


Landon loved the cake and he still says "cupcake" every time we mention Lori's name. She was kind enough to give him a large second helping which really won him over!

Saturday was the wedding. Landon would not cooperate very well for pictures. This is the "best" one we got. (Lori, you'll have to share one of yours...I'm hoping someone got a better one!)

Exploring the Dallas Temple grounds...






Landon LOVED Katie Bell (my cousin's 10-year-old). He still asks for her!

We did a lot of driving while in Texas. All of the heat and the action had a sedating effect on the kiddos. They usually passed out while driving between events and Jann & Jared's home. It made for an extremely quiet car ride. Unfortunately Eric and I were so focused on not getting lost that we didn't fully enjoy it :)

On Sunday we slept in (yay! for 1 pm church). It was Allie's 9th Birthday so Jared made her favorite breakfast, french toast and she opened her present.


After church the party continued with a yummy dinner, cake, and time to play!




On Monday before we flew back to SLC we (well, Eric and the kids) took a dip in the pool.

It was a special experience for us to be able at Jon & Lori's wedding. We are excited for them and wish them nothing but the best! Thanks again to Jann, Jared, and the kids for having us in their home. They were great hosts and a lot of fun to spend the weekend with!

Christmas Traditions

December is such a busy time of the year! We have had a lot of fun spending time with our family and friends celebrating the holiday season. Allie suggested that recording some of our family's Christmas traditions would be a great idea for a blog post. She has been little disappointed by the number of posts recently.

One of our family's favorite traditions to kick off the Christmas season is new Christmas pajamas and a Christmas book for the children on Thanksgiving night.

We decorated our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. We were a little worried about how we would keep Landon from pulling the tree on top of himself, however, he has been a very good boy. As of this morning we have only had one ornament casualty this year. That's pretty much a record for this house.

Allie has been begging me all year long to buy an advent calendar that has candy in it. We bought both of the kids their own and it has become a fun morning tradition. It was a great $2 investment because I have learned a very important lesson about my daughter. For some time now I have been thinking that she had a serious issue with remembering things that should be a part of her every day routine (you know...homework, making her bed, brushing her teeth, etc). Would you like to guess how many days she has forgotten to eat her piece of candy before she heads out the door for school? That's right. None. I'm on to her now. "I forgot" is not going to fly around here any more.

Another tradition our family enjoys doing during the holiday season is giving service. Over the years we have participated in a wide variety of service opportunities. This year we made blankets for the Linus Project and Allie and I also made toy cars for the Humanitarian Services of the LDS church with the Activity Day girls.

A Christmas tradition that Eric and I both love is the adults only Christmas party that both of our extended families have. We have been abundantly blessed with many, many children in our extended families (our kids have 35 cousins and counting!). The opportunity to spend time with only the adults is something we treasure because it only happens once each year. It's amazing what you can find out about your siblings and parents without the distraction of small, demanding children present.

Every holiday season we go to see at least one family friendly movie. This year Allie is really looking forward to seeing "The Tale of Despereaux". She was a big fan of the book and can't wait to see the movie!

Here are a few more of our favorite things for the holiday...

• Driving around and looking at Christmas lights. This year we went to the Festival of Lights in Spanish Fork and we hope to make it to Thanksgiving Point before the season is over.
• Aebelskivers for Christmas breakfast.
• Attending the Ward Christmas Party.
• Each member of the family gets to choose a new ornament from the store for the Christmas tree. We have quite an eclectic mix!
• Watching the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.
• Baking and delivering sugar cookies to friends and family.
• Breakfast on Christmas Eve morning with friends.
• Playing Bingo!

A Van Full of Fun

Today was Grandma Day. I was lucky enough to take a bunch of cousins to American Fork in Scott & Leann's big green van. There were a lot of little bodies packed into that big van...and they were intent on having some serious fun. (Trust me, every seat was full...you just can't see all 11 of them.)

My co-pilot Katie who just got her practice permit.

Grandma Swain got super ambitious and decided to let the kids each bake their own loaf of bread...a project that the kids totally loved.

Landon loved eating his dough. There wasn't a whole lot left to put in the oven.

Thanks for a fun time Grandma!

Happy Birthday Angie!

Last night we had a fun birthday party at my parent's house for my sister Angie who is now 29 years old. We had a potluck feast where we got to sample each other's favorite recipes. Eric and I came home feeling like we do after Thanksgiving dinner. The food was good and plentiful!

The best part of the night was playing games with everyone. We played bocce, wii, and dominoes. Because I would hate to gloat, I won't dwell on the fact that I totally owned Paul when I challenged him to a round of boxing. It was pretty awesome.

We also had the chance to meet Mom & Dad's new pets. They sure are cute. Watching Paul and Eric work together to capture a picture of these little guys was also pretty entertaining.

Happy Birthday Angie! Thanks for the fun!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I celebrated my 30th Birthday yesterday on the 4th of July. I really hated having my birthday on a holiday when I was younger. Now that I have matured I realize what an incredible thing it is to have my husband and my children (and sometimes extended family, too) with me all day long. Here's a little recap of the celebration:

Eric woke up extra early to run the Freedom Festival 5k. He had a good time and is looking forward to doing it again next year. Maybe I'll join him? At 6:10 Landon decided he just couldn't wait any longer to wish me a happy birthday and beckoned me to his room. I tried to trick him into going back to sleep without any luck. Oh well.

A couple of hours later I was sitting in my living room reading when I heard someone outside whistling. I thought it was Eric but soon discovered it was my Dad's unique way of announcing his presence. Kind of strange, but that's Dad for you. (LOL, Dad) Angie, Mom, and Dad stayed and visited for a little while and we made plans to go to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. Lunch was so yummy. We will definitely go back. Next time we'll leave the kids. They're cute, but it's just not the same relaxing experience with them along.

After lunch I had the bright idea to take a quick family picture. That's another thing that would be a lot easier to do without the kids along but that would kind of defeat the purpose. Here's a small sampling of how it went. (Check out Landon's face in the last one. Priceless.)

We had planned to go bowling but opted instead for a trip to the Living Planet Aquarium. It was pretty fun, but very small. The children both loved checking out all of the animals and it got all of us very excited for our trip to San Diego in a couple of months.

After the aquarium it was home for nap time. Yay! It's a good thing I took a short nap because the next item on the itinerary was picking up all of the Scout flags from the neighborhood. I volunteered to help Eric because he was a little short on leaders and boys and I figured that I would be less annoyed than if I sat home stewing about how long it was taking him to do it himself. (90% of the time I am fine with the amount of time it takes Eric to serve as Scoutmaster but there is that 10%...)

After the flags we spent a quiet evening at home. Allie was annoyed that we didn't do anything to "celebrate the 4th of July". We got to use our new toy from Ang, a Sno-Cone maker. It was fun and delicious. When we got the kids in bed we watched Vantage Point. It was a great day!

Thank you to my wonderful family and friends for all of the phone calls, visits, and text messages. It was so nice of you to think of me when I know that you were all busy celebrating with your own families!

Summer Field Trip Week 2--BYU Duck Pond

Disclaimer: I know that I tend to post a lot and that when I do post, I often include a lot of pictures. I thought that I might mention why. This blog is intended to serve multiple purposes, one of the most important being a place where we can keep a record of events and activities. So with that in mind, here it goes...

Last week for our first Summer field trip, we were supposed to go and feed the ducks at the BYU Duck Pond. It rained really hard that day and we were in our winter gear to keep warm inside the house so we decided an outdoor activity was not a good idea. We opted instead to visit some local pet stores and try the Duck Pond this week. Thankfully the weather seems to finally be turning around! We had a fun time at the Duck Pond with the Hakes and the Monte & Shannon Swain family.

LANDON HAD AN OBSESSION WITH THIS YOUNG LITTLE DUCK. HE CHASED IT ALL OVER.

ALLIE FOUND A TURTLE.

AND THEN WE FOUND A BUNCH OF TURTLES.

LANDON LOVED TAKING ISAAC & JOSEPH'S HATS. THEY WERE KIND ENOUGH TO SHARE!



AUNT SHAN WATCHED LANDON SO I COULD WATCH ALLIE & LARKIN'S DANCE MOVES.


ISAAC LOVES TO HOLD LANDON. LANDON LOVES BEING HELD LESS AND LESS ALL THE TIME.