No way is this kid 2!!!

My little guy, who still seems like such a little guy, turned two? When did this happen? I remember his birth! That is saying something as Gavin's is slowly fading.
Jamison is super easy to please. He got a pair of new shoes, a little basketball with a hoop acquired from Matthew's childhood, and some backyardigans' movies. We like the backyardigans. He also got lot of good stuff from his grandparents. Trucks, coloring pages, and games. Good times for a little boy. We kept telling him it was his birthday and he would point back and say "No, you birthday, Mommy!". We aren't super big party people, so it was small and simple. We let him do what he wanted.
Gavin and Jamison are currently obsessed with playing the old school Mario Bros. game online with Matthew. We decided that a mushroom would be a fairly easy cake to make. So, here it is!


I don't even know if he ate any of his cake. None of my kids are big cake eaters. I'm not a big cake eater. Matthew ate some. The rest went to his family. Glad they took care of it.
I realized as I looked at posting Jamison's birthday, that I never posted anything about Gavin's birthday. Poor kid. Middle child syndrome. So, here you have a small tribute to Gavin turning 4. Mostly I just wanted to post a picture of his cake. Obviously I need better food coloring. Who's ever heard of pastel legos? Oh well, he liked it. I try to keep my kids' cakes simple. I'm not super good at decorating. In fact, I think this is the first year that all 3 of them got home made cakes!! (okay, so McKinley's was fruit pizza, but home made none the less. Way better than cake anyway!)


Hope everyone is finding time to Christmas shop! What? Shop for Christmas? My poor husband may not have any presents under the tree. That doesn't mean I don't love him.

Wow!! Time does fly!

So, I realized this weekend why I feel so big and so pregnant.........Because I am!! Fancy that. I was doing the math and asked Matthew, "Did you know I'm 6 months pregnant?". Holy crow!! Six months! Where did the time go? People always ask me how far along I am and I give them a week approximation based on my last Dr. appointment. I get all confused with the weeks and don't really know what month I'm in. Alas, 6 months!! Only 3 months left. That's just crazy.
The real reason I'm posting is to post a picture of our awesome christmas tree we picked up this weekend. We went to Salt Lake Thursday morning to spend Thanksgiving with my family. What a fun time we enjoy when we get together. There are 11 grandkids now and all but Hanna are under the age of 8. They are very noisy and energetic. Best game ever- Just Dance on the Wii.

We left Saturday afternoon in hopes of hitting up a "cut your own Christmas tree farm" in Farr West. We made it before the sun went down and found this beauty!! Not bad for $35.


(obviously, I'm not the family photographer. Matthew was asleep on the couch. I'll have him take a better lighted one when its fully decorated.)
Its called a Scotch Pine. Matthew joked that its called that because you need to drink a few glasses of scotch to be able to enjoy it! I thought it was a very witty comment and laughed very loudly.
For some reason, they all sport the stylin' top you see here.

It reminds me of Hooville trees. The kids think its awesome! That's all that matters. I like it. Its a lot fuller than the Kelly canyon trees that we normally get. Not to say they are bad, they just need their own drinks of scotch. Just kidding!! I really just think that its the going and getting the tree that is the most important part. We weren't able to make it up to Kelly canyon this year due to snow fall. We don't have snow machines. The kids seemed to like looking for the tree at the tree farm despite the cold. And they loved these silly tops.
I'll put a kelly canyon tree here for comparison.



Like I said, both nice, just different. (And I had to go back to Christmas of '05 to find a whole tree shot! How sad is that!)
I'm somewhat excited this year for Christmas. That's saying a lot seeing as how I'm somewhat of a scrooge. (long story) We even went Christmas shopping while in Salt Lake. Outside of a few essential church clothes, we are done! We tried to tone down the toys as my kids are spoiled. Jamison's birthday is on the 11th, so it makes it somewhat difficult to buy Christmas and birthday for the little guy. Anyhoo.....Hope you all have good luck getting your trees. Remember, the true meaning of Christmas is Christ. That's the whole reason we celebrate. I try to remind my kids of that constantly. Alas, they still love the toys!!
Happy holiday season!!

I'm a little late with Halloween!

So, Halloween was pretty run of the mill. Just did the trunk or treat at the church and they had a soup dinner. McKinley dressed as a Rainbow Princess, Gavin as Rafael (ninja turtle), and Jamison was a monkey. They all had a grand time.
I'm mostly posting to show off our awesome pumpkin carving skills. Matthew's dad plants half his garden in pumpkins and then sells them. Matthew brought a load down here and we sold most of them. We had about 20 left. So, we carved them all. Matthew did most of them on a Sunday afternoon while I slept. But, I'm super proud of my Quasimoto pumpkin!! See for yourself. My husband is pretty awesome at carving pumpkins. He's had a lot of practice over the years. I especially like the slashed out eye one in the middle of the bottom picture. Pretty gruesome.






The day after halloween, Gavin really wanted me to go and buy a Mario brothers Mario costume. After much deliberation, I found these blue overalls and red shirt. Matthew came home, drew mustaches on the boys, put his hats on them, and WALLA, two Marios!! Gavin was content. Cute little boys!
I sure do love my kids!! Can they get any cuter?

Hand me a 5/8" deep socket

I have a confession to make. I am 29 years old and like to play with Legos. Do I need to give them up? I think not. They are so much fun! All three of the kids like to play with them so I get to do a little bonding with my kiddos. It's so interesting to see what they come up with. McKinley likes to make patterns with them and her latest creations are making food (bananas, watermelon, strawberries, cupcakes, etc.). Gavin loves to build flying things right now and to play prisoner (which consists of building a prison cell, saying "Get in there criminal!", letting the prisoner escape, and then capturing him and starting over). Jamison likes Legos too. I'm not exactly sure what he does but if the Legos get dumped out he will come running to sit on my lap and play too.

So during General Conference in October, we were playing Legos and trying to listen to the speakers. This is what we built.


Kind of fun, huh! Can you see the potential for a whole book made from scenes from Lego creations?

Two words.....stugeon fishing!

If it's been a while since you've done anything very exciting, I would suggest trying sturgeon fishing. There's nothing quite like hooking into a fish that feels big enough to yank the pole out of your hand and pull you over the side of the boat. That and the fact that they are an old enough species to be dinosaurs.

Anyways, my brother Devin came down on Wednesday night and we went down below American Falls Reservoir to try our luck. I had never been before and Devin went last weekend for the first time. We didn't get there until about 9 pm and stayed until 12:30. It was a lot of fun to sit in the dark with a huge pole in your hand with a glow in the dark light taped to the tip to watch. We hooked three and landed two of them. They were both 4-5 ft long. They look like sharks kind of when they first come up, but they are so calm when you land them. They just roll over and wait for you to unhook them and take their picture.

We had a blast and can't wait to go again. Enjoy some pictures!

The great white sturgeon! Kind of sharky looking, right?!


Here's Devin trying to measure one. He's holding the tail by his shoulder and reaching as far as he could with the other arm. This one is about 5 ft long.


They are pretty big around too.


This is what they do when you finally get them up to the boat. They just roll over and are really calm while you unhook them.

Say it with me, "Yellow!"

Jamison is learning his colors. He does pretty darn good for being less than two. Check out this video of our cute little boy.



Yellow. Got it!

I love my kids!

So Gavin said something that made me laugh today. Okay, he always makes me laugh, but I thought this one was worth sharing. When we cook on the grill, Matthew is always the grill master and the kids, usually Gavin, get to be his junior grill masters. Well, today Matthew was busy doing something else, so I went out to start the grill. Gavin came with me. This is what followed.

Gavin: No, we need daddy!
Me: I'm going to be the grill master today.
Gavin: You can't! You're too young!

Ha ha ha ha ha!! Made me giggle. I kindly informed him that I'm older than his daddy and we proceeded to light the grill. Actually we didn't. The tank wasn't out there as Matthew just went and filled it. Oh well, it made for a funny conversation.

Oh, I suppose I should let everyone know now that the secret is out to all my family. We are expecting again. Baby number 4 is due late February. It is suppose to be a little girl. I'm sure it is, but you never know. There you go, my big secret!!