Halloween 2011

Halloween has ALWAYS been my favorite holiday!  Jay thinks I am weird, he says "My favorite holiday is the devil worshiper holiday".   What other day can you dress up and be somebody else?  Plus, it's when I have an excuse to listen to "Thriller"!  This year was awesome!  No wearing coats, hats and gloves, the best part NO SNOW!  It was 78 degrees at 8:00 pm!

My day started out getting Brighton dressed up for his Halloween party at preschool.  He was so stinkin' excited to be "Batman that lights up"!

Next was on to the Halloween parade at Autumn's school.

 Autumn and her BFF Camille is behind her.

After that I went to Autumn's class to help out with her Halloween party.

Autumn and her teacher Mrs. Trujillio.

Our family all dressed up for the Annual Neighborhood Halloween Party (our first of course).  We ate hot dogs and chili.  I was impressed at how many people showed up, not to mention how many adults dressed up.  A great place to meet all our neighbors!

Brighton as "Batman that lights up".

Autumn as "Butterfly Princess".

Aspen as "The devil".  She is now too cool to be any fluffy princesses now! :(  All she wanted to be was a devil, witch or vampire.  Aspen is too old to dress up for school anymore too.  But her teacher ordered pizza and they went to a park for the afternoon.

 Brighton with his best buddy in our ward, Bryce.  Don't they look alike?  Not to mention I have never met any kid as hyperactive as Brighton until Bryce!  Although Brighton is still louder!

The butterflies, Autumn and Aggie.  Believe it or not Aggie is Brighton's age.  Autumn is just our little midget!

What a great night!  Brighton now calls me "The Princess Super Hero".  The kids are all hopped up on candy now!  We passed out around candy to 200-225 trick or treaters.  I love our new neighborhood!  Everyone is soooo nice!

Labor Day 2011

For Labor Day this year we had our good friends the Matson Family come and stay Sunday night at our house.  The kids had a blast!  This is all of us eating dinner together (except Jay who was taking the picture). 

After dinner we went to the Mesa Temple to walk around the visitors center.  It was a beautiful Arizona night!  We were cracking up because Brighton and Codan went through the entire visitor's center pointing out the pictures of Jesus.  If there happened to be someone looking at one of the pictures with Jesus, they would make sure they knew who it was.  

We came back to our house after and the kids crashed on the couches while watching "Hoodwinked Too".

Monday morning we made a crepes for breakfast, which were sooo good!  Afterwards we went over to Aunt Lynda and Uncle Paul's house to swim.  They are so nice to let us come over anytime to swim.  The kids swam for 4 hours straight!  

Here are all the kids sitting on the edge of the pool.  It took forever for them all to sit next to each other. We would get some of them up there and they couldn't wait for the others and they would jump in.

After we got them all together for the picture they decided to all hold hands and jump in the pool on the count of 3.  Half of them jumped on 3 and the other half after 3.

Aspen and Carlee putting on their goggles.

The boys wanted to be thrown up in the air over and over again!  Luckily Danny didn't get worn out too quickly.

Brighton doing a flip in the air.

Brody doing a cannon ball.

Codan jumping off the edge.

Jadyn, Aspen, Carlee, and Autumn.  These girls had a blast together!

Jadyn, Aspen and Carlee jumping off the waterfall (even though they knew they weren't supposed to climb up on top).

Jessica, Danny, Jay and I were cleaning up, when we were done, we came out to the driveway to find the girls laying down resting their heads on the tube.  You have to realize it was 109 degrees outside, they must of been worn out!

 After swimming we went back to our house and cooked out on the grill while the kids ran through the sprinklers.  The kids had so much fun together they didn't want the day to end.  They even asked if they could skip school and hang out together another day.

Christmas in Cabo

This year for Christmas we met my entire family in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico! What a great way to get away from the freezing cold weather! We were there for an entire week!
Thanks Scott & Dad!!!!!! 
We appreciate all you did for us!

This is the beach in front of our hotel.  The one good picture our retarded camera took.

This is the kids pool at the resort we stayed at.  Our kids were in heaven!  The only problem was they did NOT heat the pool.

Sina, Autumn, Aspen and Kira getting ready to go down the slide.

The cousins on the splash pad at the kids pool.

Autumn and Aspen on the waterslides at the kids pool!

All the grandkids in front of the resort right before we went on a walk into town.

Sarah, Kira, Aspen, Alex, Sina, Luke, Lauren, Autumn, and Brighton

All the grandkids posing for pictures.  With six different cameras taking pictures of them all the time they were confused on where to look.  Brighton had fallen asleep (thank goodness)  we couldn't get his head proped up.

All the kids taking a break eating an ice cream popsicle that grandpa bought them.

The kids in Santa's sleigh.

Aspen and Kira looking at a nativity scene in front of the Catholic church downtown.

In Cabo the waves are big plus the have high tides so it wasn't safe for the kids to go out into the ocean.  So this is them waiting for the waves to come to them.

Lauren, Luke and Autumn burried waist high in the sand.

 

Autumn and Luke talking about running down into the water and trying to get back up before a wave catches them.

One of the only ways to get Brighton to shut up and hold still is to give him a sucker, unfortunatly this is what he looks like afterwards.

We read Luke in the bible and the kids acted out the nativity scene.  To be fair the kids drew to find out what role they would play.  We needed a baby Jesus and we didn't have a doll so my Mom made a baby Jesus out of toilet paper.  The head was a roll of toilet paper with a face drawn on it with makeup and then a bunch of toilet paper was wrapped around it to look like a blanket.  I wish I would have gotten a close up of that one.

Here is Lauren who is the Angel and Autumn who is Mary.  Autumn was so excited to play the role of Mary!

Alex and Aspen were wise men and all of us women decided that they needed camels to ride on so they got to ride on their dads backs.  Aspen thought this was so funny.  She couldn't stop laughing.

After the kids acted out the Nativity scene Grandma and Grandpa gave all the kids $20 dollars.  The kids drew names and then the next day we went into Cabo San Lucas and the kids went shopping for the person whose name they drew.

Jay and Brighton at the mall in Cabo.

Autumn and Aspen at the mall in Cabo.

Aspen, Sina and Alex waiting to go on a glass bottom boat ride into the Sea of Cortez.

Jay and Brighton getting into the boat.

Aspen on the boat ride right in front of the arch that divides the Sea of Cortez with the Pacific Ocean.

Autumn looking through the glass at all the fish.  You could always tell where there would be lots of fish becasue there would also be lots of pelicans flying around.

Lauren and Autumn waiting at a safe distance for Alex to finish vomiting after the boat ride.  Poor kid!

After we went on our boat ride we stopped at Hard Rock Cafe to get American Food!

Jay and I holding up our guitar coke glasses.

View from the top of the mall in Cabo.

Grandma and Grandpa gave all the kids matching pajamas.  Here are my kids with my parents.

The kids waiting to exchange gifts.

Brighton decorating his gingerbread man.

When we put away all the candy from making gingerbread men Brighton was not happy.  He wanted to continue eating candy!  This is him with the gingerbread man he decorated.

Autumn's gingerbread man

Aspen's gingerbread man.

Autumn, Kira, Sina, and Aspen in their matching pj's.

There was a time change of two hours so Brighton always woke up at 6am or earlier.  Jay would take him out almost every morning to go and watch the sun rise.  What a nice husband - to let his wife sleep in.  This is Brighton cuddled up waiting for the sun to rise.

The sunrise.

Jay and Brighton on a walk on the beach.

Aspen and Autumn running from the waves.

Brighton was so tired he fell asleep eating his sucker.

There was this couple at the resort that were selling these pottery crafts.  You could paint them and then they would glaze them and you could pick them up the next day.  Autumn painted a frog, Brighton painted a turtle and Aspen painted a jewlery case.  This was on of the funnest things the kids did.  They talk about this all the time and ask when they can do it agian.

I think Brighton was so glad to have another boy to play with that he wouldn't let go of Luke.

It was time to go home and the kids were not happy.  Autumn is sitting on my moms lap at breakfast.  She always gets mad at anyone who leaves her.  As you can tell she is mad right now.

Aspen lounging on the bed while I pack up to go.

Brighton watching Mickey Mouse club in spanish while I pack.

Right now we are having a snow storm and it is REALLY cold outside.  You have no idea how much I wish I was back in Cabo lounging next to the pool in the hot sun!!!!