Thanksgiving 2012

For Thanksgiving we headed south to Santa Fe to spend the holiday with my sister and her awesome family. The kids always love playing with the Wilson's and are sad when we have to go! (Ok, they are sad whenever we have to leave any cousins house...they just have too much fun!)

My sister is in charge of their Elementary school's Turkey Trot (she does an awesome job and it was fun to help out a bit!) that has a 5 k and a 1mile fun run. Jack and Tyler did the 5k, this was Tyler's first 5 k...and as you can tell from the picture above it was quite challenging. They are above 7000 ft and even Jack said it was super challenging for him because of the cold and elevation. I was so proud of Tyler for finishing it!! I did the 1 mile fun run with Katy and Jacob...lets just say I ended up being LAST, and had to carry Jacob the majority of the mile. It was fun. The kids made play dough with Aunt Valeriane (she's a superstar...it was even scented!). Of course we also enjoyed delicious food and made gingerbread houses with all the kids. It is so fun being close to them again and being able to see them a few times each year!

November 2012

 Jack took the boys to a Denver Nuggets game- they had a blast!

Let's see...the top two left pictures were from Jacob's Fall Soccer league party, his first trophy! The top right- I took the kids bowling along with one of their friends, Kendall. The rest of the pictures are just cute pictures I had to share!

Halloween 2012

Okay, here are a couple more picture collages from the end of October, including Halloween.

 The main picture is when we went to a local pumpkin farm with Jacob's preschool class. It was SO.COLD.AND.WINDY!!! But despite the ridiculous wind, we did our best to enjoy ourselves! Some of the other pictures are part of my typical day as a mom. Jacob and Katy sure enjoy each other's company when they are in a good mood, they can be pretty goofy and cute. I love the bottom left picture because I know time is quickly slipping away from me of me being able to hold my sweet sleeping little ones in my arms when the fall asleep while reading books.

Good ol' Halloween. I decided Jack and I should join in on the costume festivities and we were Waldo and Wenda from Where's Waldo....it was mostly adults who actually got it....since when did Where's Waldo stop being an essential childhood book??
The middle left picture is Katy with one of her best bud's Nicky- his mom and I would swap childcare each week so we could volunteer at the elementary school.
Bottom left- I volunteered to help hand out the Republican party Presidential vote flyer's, it felt good doing a little part in my community's political scene...small as it was.
The bottom middle- it snowed and the boys and our neighbor came in for a little hot chocolate!
Bottom right- when the kids get along they sure have fun together, and show how much they love each other.

10 years later....

When I arrived at BYU I had no clue what the future held for me.....

I will always love visiting Bridal Vail Falls in Provo Canyon, UT...not only is it absolutely beautiful...especially in the fall...its a place we went to often when we were dating, and where he proposed to me. The first picture is in early Fall of 2002 when we first met and first began dating.....10 years later a picture of us, and the family we have become.

Here are some other pictures I have taken of Bridal Vail Falls....

October 2012

Ok, I'm not really going to try very hard to WRITE a whole lot about the last 9 months...I'll do recaps to go along with a bunch of pictures...Here goes the photo dump....

OCTOBER 2012:

I actually got my Mormon mommy act together and put stuff together for General Conference so the kids would actually sit and pay attention, it was a success too!

The elementary school had a Fall Festival Chili Cook off. Jack made his delicious Sweet Chili and I made some AMAZING Cinnamon Chip Cranberry bars. We heard a lot of people talking about the dishes we entered, but we didn't win:( Oh well, hearing people talk about how good they both were was good enough for me....but we'll win next year for sure. haha! They had some fun activities, like Angry Birds, and stacking cups.

The boys participated in Fall Soccer League...and it was cold. The end.

We went on our Annual Fall Break trip to Utah and saw some AMAZING views....The top two are from our drive...on our way home as we were approaching the main part of the Rockies we were greeted with a looming snowstorm...always exciting when you are heading in to the Rockies......not. Utah was pretty chilly and gloomy almost the whole time. The bottom left picture was an amazing view of the Oquirrh Mountain LDS Temple while were at a pumpkin patch with some friends. The bottom right is at Bridal Veil Falls park, my favorite place when we were at BYU...the fall colors are stunning.

 We went down to Provo and took one of our favorite people, Catie out to eat to The Brick Oven. Yum.

 We met up with my sister and her family and all took the train down to Salt Lake City and spent the day exploring Temple Square and the new City Creek Mall area.

We also met up with our good friends from Omaha, the Fillmore's. We took all the kids to a pumpkin patch that was nearby their house and had a little fun exploring cornfields, climbing hay bail mountains, and taking pictures. Love this family and miss my best friend Sherrie!

One more big collage from our Utah trip (on this post at least). A couple more from our train trip to SLC, and some fun pictures just hanging out with the cousins....my favorite being the dog pile on Anakha-Marie! The bottom left picture is our kids with a couple of our good friends kids, the Messervy's. We were good friends (used to play games with them all the time!) in Tucson, then we parted ways...they now live in Provo and were gracious enough to let us stay with them for a few days. Our kids had a grand ol' time with their two younger kids.