Gingerbread House

We made a Gingerbread house for family night tonight. Boy was it a sticky mess! The kids had fun though. They wanted to take a picture so Rich could see it.

Day 1 in Peru

Brooklyn wants Rich to bring home this cute monkey

Weston likes the baby alligator

Amazon River

Weston thinks this snake is "awesome!"

Rich got accepted this spring to a medical internship to Iquitos, Peru. He is working under his professor Dr. Rollings. He will be working in a hospital in Iquitos for most of the time, and in a clinic in the Amazon Jungle for two days. Rich is excited to gain some medical experience and see what they will allow him to do over there. We are hoping this experience will help us get accepted into a P.A program. Rich emailed me today and said he felt quite at home here, it reminds him a lot of the Phillipenes. Tomorrow he will go to church and then meet with Dr. Rollings and the other students to talk about their schedules for the week. From what Rich has told me so far he will be working 20 hour days, so he'll be very busy!
He comes on on the 22nd, I hope the kids are good this week!

Riding bikes in December!!

Brooklyn just learned how to ride her bike without training wheels, it's crazy how proud you get of your kids when they learn something new. Weston is still learning how to ride his bike he got for his birthday. You'll notice in Brooklyn's video he is sitting in the street pouting because he got frustrated with his bike.
I would have never thought Brooklyn would have learned how to ride her bike in December!! It looks like Spring outside! I hope we wake up to snow in the morning, my kids are dying to play in it!

Happy Birthday Weston!

Weston had a fun birthday yesterday. He got lots of fun toys and books, the highlight of the party was his new bike he got from my parents and Rich's parents. It was nice of Rich's family to come over to celebrate Weston's birthday with us.

Family Pictures

My brother-in-law just finished editing our family pictures. Weston looks ticked off in the most of the pictures, but I kinda like it because it shows his true personality. Thanks Nate for taking our pictures!

Decorating the Tree..

Brooklyn has been begging me to put the tree up for the past few days. Well, we did and it's done! I always think that putting the tree up will be a fun family activity. And it is for the most part. I love to play Christmas music while we decorate the tree. But Weston usually ends up in time out for throwing the glass ornaments on the tile. Blake was banned to his highchair because all he wanted to do was pull the lights and ribbon off. Brooklyn was in heaven, she loved making the tree look pretty. When we were all done, she stood back and said"We did a good job mom!".

Happy Thanksgiving!

Rich doing the honors....

My nephew Joshua and Brooklyn

Parker, Brooklyn, Weston & Joshua

We had a great Thanksgiving yesterday. My sister Holly and her family came to spend Thanksgiving with us. Me and Holly baked dinner together, we had a good time in the kitchen. Before we ate we went to the new "hot spot" in Lehi to get our family pictures done. You probably know the place. My brother in law Nate is a photographer so we were lucky to have him do this for us. I'm excited to have a updated family picture with Blake in it. When Holly and Nate left, we went up to Rich's grandparents to visit with his family. Of course his grandma trys to get us to eat her dinner too. Even though we were stuffed from our dinner. But that means nothing to his grandma, she always thinks you can eat more!

I love this holiday, I love getting together with family. I have so much to be thankful for.

Blessing...

While Rich worked on his Bachelors degree, we had to take a small loan out one semester. We tried really hard to get though school with no loans, but fell short one semester. I was going through the mail last night, and opened a letter from Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority. This is what it said... We are pleased to inform you that the remaining balance of your student loan listed in the table below has been forgiven as a way of thanking you for taking care of your loan obligation in a diligent manner. Within 2 to 3 weeks UHEAA will send a document indicating the paid in full status of the loan.

Don't you love it when unexpected things happen like this?!! I was so grateful for this letter, it really made my night. Do they send letters out like this all the time to people? Did we win a drawing? Or do they do this to everyone who pays their loans on time each month? What a huge blessing it is for us in our lives right now. The amount that we had left to pay was $425.64. I know that's not a huge sum of money, but nevertheless it's a burden lifted. Now his bachelors degree is completed paid off!! I feel like I need to send UHEAA a thankyou card.

Twilight Movie!!

I went and saw Twilight today with some friends. I LOVED it!!! The audience was filled with die hard fans, it was mix between young moms and teenagers. I have to admit I was a huge Jacob fan, but when Edward made his first appearance in the movie I got goosebumps! Everyone was whistling and applauding! I really want to go see it again, the theater gave us free movie tickets and popcorn because our seats were suppose to be reserved but got double booked somehow. So I might just use that free ticket and see it again. I've never watched a movie before and known already what was going to happen. It was exciting to see the characters come to life in a movie after reading about them. I think most of the characters in the movie are exactly how I imagined them. I hope they are working on the 2nd movie now because I'm anxious to see it!

Preschool Field trip to Cabela's

Congratualtions Steven!

My little brother Steven got his Eagle Scout award this past weekend. Me and my two sisters drove down together to California to surprise Steven and our family. My sister's husband let us use his company car so we could get our gas for free. It was really nice of him to do that. It was really fun to surprise my mom, she was totally caught off guard. She really wanted us to come, but none of us thought we were going to be able to make it. My parents are really good at coming to all of our special events in our lives. I'll never forgot when they surprised me at my first half marathon in St. George, I saw them there on the sidelines cheering me on, and my entire family came and watched me run the Bear Lake marathon. So it was neat to be there for Steven's big day. Here are some pictures from last weekend...

Here's a picture of me with my Grandma Evans and my sister Holly. I grew up with my Grandparents right across the street. And my Aunt and Uncle just down the street. It was fun to see my Grandparents this weekend. My Aunt Kelly and Uncle Paul from Colorado also came for the weekend. It was good to see them.

All the girls!

My sisters, Holly, Kelly, Caroline, Lauren and my brother Steven. 5 girls and 1 boy! You can probably imagine how excited our family was after my mom had 5 girls then we finally got a boy. It's been a long time since we were all home together like this.

Lost Binky's FOUND

Rich will appreciate this post, because he gets so frustrated when the Binky's are always LOST! Rich follows our family blog because he's not home a lot. Well, I cleaned the boys room today and found 10 Binky's! It was like Christmas! There is nothing more frustrating when your baby is crying and you cant find a single pacifier! Well, we are set now! We'll never have to buy another pacifier again. I wish that were true, all these Binky's will be lost again in a few days. They just disappear!
Poor Blake has to use Brooklyn's pink pacifiers when we lose all the boy ones. Hopefully we haven't caused any permanent damage to him with giving him girl pacifiers.

My Ballerina...

Brooklyn's dance teacher lets the parents come watch the first class of each month. I hadn't been in a long time, so I went and watched for part of the class.

Good posture!

Ahh... Look at her cute pointed toe!

Visit to Idaho

I went to Idaho last weekend for my nephews baby blessing. When I got to my sister's house, my mom told me that just the adults were going out to dinner without the grand-kids. I was really excited after the 4 hour drive with my kids! (They were actually pretty good, Blake was the only one who had a hard time sitting for that long) As we were waiting to get our seats for dinner it felt awkward without my kids there! No chasing Weston around, or telling Brooklyn to stop picking her nose! We had a nice dinner, and my kids had a fun time playing with their cousins.

Happy Halloween!

This kids got lots of candy tonight. It rained a little bit while we were out. Brooklyn was excited for her cousin Kodi to come trick-or-treating with us!

Rich dressed up like his friend Sam who sells insurance. You gotta love his sweater, tie and briefcase. And Sam dressed up like Rich, wearing tight pants, tape measure on the belt loop, cowboy hat and boots.

Weston couldn't smile for this picture because he still had his dinner in his mouth that he refused to swallow.

Pretty in Pink!

Carving Pumpkins...

We carved our pumpkins tonight. I love everything about Halloween except the carving of the pumpkin! I usually do a very traditional pumpkin, whatever is quickest and easiest. I felt a little ambitious tonight so I went online and printed out a couple of patterns, ones that I thought didn't look too hard and complex. It was actually pretty fun, the kids enjoyed getting messy. My kids are in bed now and they can hardly wait for tomorrow night to come!

Stringtown Nightmare Express!!

On Wednesday night we went on a free Halloween train ride, "Stringtown Nightmare Express!". (Thanks Katie for telling us about this) While you wait for your ride on the train, they have a Halloween movie that they set up in this huge garage so your not having to wait in the cold. We waited 25 minutes, and off we went on our spooky ride! Brooklyn loved it, she was a little scared and Weston rode the train like he was a beauty queen! He was waving and saying hi to all the ghosts and goblins that would jump out to scare him. It was pretty cute! We are excited to go on the Polar Express train ride in December that this family puts together.