Pinewood Derby

This is Camren with his last Pinewood Derby car. He and Chad had a good time working on it together. It didn't go very fast, but it looked really cool! He did a really good job on it. He had a lot of positive comments on it. He will be out of Cub Scouts in December and we won't have to do this again for three years! Yeah!

Brahnson and Sydnee

I have to say, at times, Brahnson can be very hard. I truly believe that Sydnee was sent to us to soften him. It doesn't matter how bad of a mood he is in, if Sydnee is around he is instantly happier. Sydnee is the same way. Brahnson can always make her day brighter. She prefers him over her mom sometimes. The first thing that he asks when he gets home from anywhere is "Is Sydnee awake?" If she is, he goes and finds her and if she isn't, he wakes her up and plays with her. She is always happy to see him. She stops whatever she is doing, stands by his feet, puts her arms up towards him, and says "Up!". He picks her up and she gives him big hugs that she rarely gives anyone else. They have a very sweet relationship. We love them both dearly!

Tino

This is our dog Tino. We have had him for a little over a year now. He is a pretty good dog, if you have to have a dog. He comes when he is told and does tricks. He is really good with Sydnee. She will pull on his ears and and grab at his skin and hair and he will just sit there. He hardly ever barks. He hates the cold though! We will take him out right now and he does his business in a matter of seconds and comes right back in. It is in the thirties now for the highs!

Nobody wants to really take him out and take care of him except for Camren. So, we told Camren that Tino is his dog and he is responsible for him. He has done a pretty good job in taking care of him. I think Tino understands that he is Camren's because he never leves Camren's side when Camren is home. I tolerate him when Camren is gone. If we have to have a dog I can't complain about this one.

Christmas Decorating Early

Chad wants to take away my "traditional" Thanksgiving. He wants to go to a restaurant for Thanksgiving. He even got the kids on his side too. So, I couldn't wait to get on to the next holiday and start putting up Christmas decorations. Tori and I wen to a super Saturday for Relief Society and made these Christmas ball ornaments to put on our tree. It was way fun to spend time with her that way! Jorden just wanted his picture taken.

We can't really put nails into our fireplace mantel, so I found these cute things at Menards!(that's like a Home Depot) I was so excited that I had to put them up! Don't they just make you feel happy? I love them. And yes, you can count eight stockings up, even though we only have seven people in our family. We thought we should buy an extra just in case we add another person to our family in the future. There are no announcements that are being made by that statement. (:

Sydnee loves to see all the decorations. I'm only doing a little at a time. I also got my chocolate and that made me a little excited for Christmas too. Chad found a food distributor that is only an hour away. Instead of getting my usual 10lbs. He got me 50lbs. I will be dipping a lot of chocolate this year and the next!

Purple Velvet Girls

Tori is turning into such a beautiful girl. She is just as beautiful inside as she on the outside. Her teacher tells me that she is nice to everyone and makes sure that everyone is being included in whatever game she is playing.

Sydnee keeps us on our toes. She did her first trial run of nursery today. I had to stay with her, but she did great! She will be 18 months next week. I am so excited to be able to go to both Sunday school and Relief Society by myself and not be distracted or be the distraction when I have Sydnee in their with me.

I found Sydnee's purple velvet dress at Saver's and knew that Tori had a purple velvet dress as well and had to get it. People at church said she looked like a little "snow princess". This is them together in their purple velvet! It was very fun to dress them similar for church.

Our Handsome Boys

These are our handsome boys after a very much needed haircut. I was too embarrassed to take before pictures. I can't believe how much older they look when they get a clean cut haircut. Brahnson is almost as tall as I am. Camren and Tori are pretty much about the same height now. Jorden loves getting his picture taken!

Our Backyard

This is what we see when we look out our back yard. In the distance, you can see a pole sticking out. That is a tornado siren. Every Wednesday around noon it goes off as a test. I have never heard one before I moved here. We see a lot of birds here. We get a lot of them in our backyard. I have seen a few wild turkeys, but not in our backyard yet.

This is the pond that we have in our backyard. My neighbor's daughter said that it froze completely solid last winter and she liked to ice skate on it. The other picture has all the ducks and Canada geese we get on the pond. They are pretty wild. I gave my kids some bread to go feed the ducks and they swam away from them and hid in the bushes. The ducks that I grew up with always would come near you when you had bread.

I'm glad we have some small sledding hills in the back. Jorden is just waiting for it to snow so he can go sledding. We have had snow, but nothing that has stuck around. My friend told me that last year it really started snowing around the first part of December and didn't stop until mid April! They had over 100 inches of snow. The farmer's almanac, that is pretty accurate, is predicting even more snow this winter!

This is Tori going to her second official Activity days! They did a way cute thing that I thought was great. They went to Old Navy and had a modesty fashion show. They brought out an immodest outfit and talked about why it was immodest. The girls were then able to choose a modest outfit and model it for their "fashion show". This is Tori's outfit. The other picture is all of the girls that went! They are a great bunch of girls!

The Best French Toast

I really like cooking. When I come across a really good and easy recipe, I like to share it. So here is a recipe that you can have for breakfast or dinner.
The Best French Toast
6 eggs
1 1/2c. milk
1/4c. sugar
3T Prepared Orange Juice
1 t. vanilla
1/2 t. salt
2-3 dashes of cinnamon
sliced bread
Beat all ingredients together except for the bread. Dip bread on both sides and place on greased skillet. Cook on both sides.
I like to put strawberries, sweetened whipped cream (the real stuff not cool whip) , butter syrup, and a sprinkle of powdered sugar on top. I also serve it with sausage or bacon.
Butter Syrup
1 stick of butter (no substitutes!)
3/4c. sugar
1/2 c. buttermilk or sour milk
1 t. vanilla
1 t. baking soda
Melt butter and sugar together. Add buttermilk or sour milk. Cook until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and add vanilla and baking soda. Stir until foamy. Serve immediately. YUMMY!!!!
I hope you enjoy this. It is a quick, easy, and yummy dinner or breakfast. Look for other recipes on future blogs.

This is in response to my sister Stephanie's TAG!
She tagged everyone that read her blog and now that you are reading my blog, you are tagged also! TAG!!! YOU ARE IT!! (for those who don't know about tags if you are reading this you HAVE to do this same tag on your blog.)
Five favorite family memories.
Here are five of my many favorite memories.
1.Thanksgiving and Christmas at Aunt Margaret's house with her yummy punch and raspberry candies
2. Grandpa always giving a kiss on each cheek anytime I saw him. The kisses were always wet!
3. Going to Richfield and the Ideal Dairy's punch bags! I think they still have them!
4. Clothes shopping with mom. She always made it very fun and always took me out to lunch! If you went shopping with dad, he would get you the same thing just in different colors. Then, you would have to clean out his shoe closet.
5. Going to Cedar City with my mom and sisters. I always had to visit the Indian store to buy bottles of painted sand and polished rocks. Looking back, it was a waste of money. At the time, I thought I had the best treasures! It will be even more fun this next year when Tori goes with me!

Henry Villas Zoo

The first picture you see of Sydnee was taken before we went to the zoo. I had gotten her all ready to go and then she got into Jorden's candy and she thought it was pretty funny. When I was ready this is what I found when I came downstairs.

This zoo is totally free. It has all the animals you could want, except elephants. It is not as big as Hogle, but they spread their animals out so you can see more of them when you go. It was such a wonderful day we thought we would take advantage of the opportunity and go to the zoo. It is supposed to snow majorly on Friday and Saturday! I don't think that I am ready for that yet.

This zoo has a wonderful play area! Sydnee loved it. For most of the pictures that you see of her, we had to take two or three. She would look at the person that was taking them, and then they would say "1, 2, 3!" Sydnee would turn her head as soon as they said "3!" every time!

Even though this zoo is free, you would think that it didn't have a lot of animals or good animals. Wrong! They have 2 huge polar bears and I think 3 or 4 other kinds of bears. I was shocked the first time I went.

They have cute photo opportunities too!

Jorden at the play ground! We went with our friends Karin Johnson and her little boy, Walker. Jorden and Walker get along very well!

Behind me is all the flamingos that they have and you can see the big playground area a little bit better.

They have three giraffes. A daddy, mommy and a baby. You can see the baby behind the boys. This is a very likely place that we will go if we have any visitors in the Spring, Summer, or Fall. I can't guarantee that in the Winter.

Tori's Baptism

At Tori's Baptism, Camren gave the opening prayer. Brahnson gave a talk on baptism. Our friend, Kristina Walker gave the talk on the Holy Ghost. We have a girl in our ward that plays the viola and she and I played "I Know My Redeemer Lives". We had testimonies and Chad performed the ordinances.

Chad's dad, Dennis, was the only outside family that was able to attend her baptism. We were grateful that he was there. Her uncle Cole tried, but had to take a load to California.

This is Tori after she was baptized. We are so proud of Tori for making the choice to be baptized. I have to remember in the future to go from last to first when blogging! Sorry if this is a little confusing!

Tori was baptized on October 26, 2008. They do baptisms here more on Sundays. We had over 50 people attend. I was amazed! The ward here really supports the baptisms. We had homemade brownie sundaes afterward. A member of our bishopric works at the University Dairy and gave us a three gallon tub of vanilla ice cream. We literally went to the last scoop of that. I made my homemade hot fudge and people volunteered to bring Brownies. It was a nice time.

Halloween costumes

On Halloween, I forgot to take pictures of my kids in their costumes. I had them get all dressed up again as part of our FHE.

It was very nice during trick-or treating. It wasn't cold at all. Sydnee loved it! I tried to carry her basket for her and every time I did she screamed. She was very protective with her candy. She is the first one to blame if we someone has their candy stolen. There is usually a bunch of half eaten candy with their wrappers still on them at the crime scene.

Jorden and Tori went hunting into my friend, Tanya's Halloween costume stash. Jorden loved the idea of being able to be a GREEN dinosaur. Jorden likes everything green. Tori found a very cool wizard costume.

Camren loved the idea of being an "undead warrior", what ever that means. I think it has something to do with Lord of the Rings.

This was the third year that Brahnson wanted to be the Sumo wrestler. They were out of school for Halloween. They had a wacky dress day at his school and he wore this. I don't think he lasted all day though.

They have certain hours that kids can trick-or-treat here. In Middleton, it was from 6-8 p.m. After 8 p.m., nobody had their lights on. In another town by us, the hours were 5-7 p.m. Apparently, they past a law or some kind of ordinance about the whole thing. My kids weren't able to get as much candy as they hoped to get. I didn't think that was a bad thing.

Jorden's Halloween Cookie

Our kids love decorating the Halloween cookies. It's great! We start an assembly line and each one gets to add to the face of the cookie. When we are done they get to decorate one cookie any way they want. The rest have to be decorated the way mom wants them done.

These are our girls!

Tori loves having a sister.

She is a great help when I need to get something done. Sydnee loves to held all the time!

This is Camren in the wave pool. Every five minutes an Alarm would sound and the waves would go for the next five minutes. There were also 16 different slides plus a big tree house with a 1000 gallon bucket that would dump every fiv minutes. If you were under it, you got swept off your feet! Brahnson liked the Tornado the best. Camren and Tori needed some convincing to go on some of the slides. In the end, they went on all the slides except for the Tornado and had a fun time. I don't blame them for not going on the Tornado. Brahnson convinced me that I just HAD to go and I hated every minute of it. Thankfully, I won't ever have to do that again! Even though we are going again during the Christmas Break!

We went to a very fun place. It's called Great Wolf Lodge in Wisconsin Dells. Wisconsin Dells has a bunch of resorts that have huge indoor water parks. We all had a great time. Chad and I forgot our camera, so these are pictures that our friends took and sent to us. This is Brahnson underwater.

My first post

This is my first post. I am hopefully going to get the hang of this. Here are some pictures from the kids first day of school and also from Brahnson's 12 year old birthday party.