Christmas past

One of my favorite Christmas's of all time was Christmas 2007. It was our first Christmas with Luke. We brought him home on March 25 2007. At Christmas time we was two, he would turn three in a few weeks. He was still so small but at the same time learning everything so fast.

I love this picture when he first saw that Santa had visited.

He was so inquisitive and serious about everything. (that part has not really changed)

A simply wonderful Christmas day.

The day after Christmas Dewey and I flew to Guatemala to meet Kolby for the first time. He was 10 months old. Such an amazing happy boy.

This is one of my favorite photos. Dewey took it about five minutes after we got up to our room for the first time with Kolby.

He was so close to walking on his own. We feel so blessed to be able to catch his first steps. (by the time we were able to bring him home in April he was walking all over the place)

I truly wondrous Christmas that I will forever hold close to my heart.

Happy to you!!

Make sure and pause the blog tunes on the right hand side before you play. Sorry about the lighting and quality Dewey took it with his Blackberry. But I thought to cute not to share. The boys and I sing Christmas carols while we are driving, this is Kolby's favorite to sing. His very own version of a classic :)

Santa visit

We made our annual Christmas trip to St George last weekend. Because we live in a small town our shopping opportunities are VERY limited. So we head to St. George a slightly larger town with actual stores. (Target, Costco and the like) Our favorite part is going to the mall. For me because they have a Barnes and Noble, for the boys because SANTA is there.

They were so excited and practiced what they were going to tell Santa on the drive down. After five minutes of sitting on his lap Dewey had to rescue Santa :) I'm pretty sure they both figured while they had the chance they were going to ask for everything in the world they might want.

We had a great day and I think I can confidently say we are almost done with shopping. I mean no need to hurry we have a whole 10 days left right.

Trying to get Christmas pics.....

Just a small example of the craziness that is my life :) A full week before Thanksgiving, before the cold weather and snow we had some rare free time. Perfect time to try and get some Christmas pics done. So I grabbed two nice shirts and jeans without holes in the knees and off we went. I "found" this really cool old barn that is a great place to take pics. As it happens other people have found it too. The car right in front of us pulled in first. (what are the chances of that happening?) So we drove around while I watched the sun sink lower in the sky. We finally had our turn but it meant lots of shadows. But and really the most important part the boys were in great moods and smiled through all the shots.

They did so good I got a lot of really great pics. I was so happy with myself thinking I was way ahead of schedule and it was so much less stressful then last year. Once we got home I started to upload the shots and look at them closer. Hum....... I thought something looks familiar about these pics...... I went into my files and pulled up last years Christmas card pics. The boys are wearing the exact same shirts in both sets! Same shirt on same kid. They both wear the same size and wear each others shirts so I had a 50/50 chance of that happening. Its not like they don't have a closet fun of clothes I just happened to grab these two.....again.

So back out to try again, this time there was snow and it was cold and the boys were in no mood for pics. Thought I would share some of the better ones I got.

So here it is a week after Thanksgiving and no Christmas card pics. We will try again this weekend....... wish us luck :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know I'm a little late, that seems to happen around the holidays. So much going on and only so many hours in the day.

We had a wonderful holiday. G.G (great Grandma to the boys, my grandma) flew up from Texas. She spent almost a week with us helping to get ready for Thanksgiving. We hosted Thanksgiving dinner this year at our house. All my Salt Lake City family came down to make for a festive day. The boys had a blast spending time with everyone. Big thank you to everyone for braving the weather and driving down and for bringing some yummy food!!

Unfortunately our camera did not make it through the day. (we are trying to keep up with the Wilcox's :) In the midst of everything Kolby brought it to me to say it didn't work. Funny how that happens when you drop in on a tile floor. (exact same thing happened to the last camera) On the bright side you have heard me complain about it before it wasn't that nice of a camera. And because I had recently found a photo app for my phone I did not have a complete meltdown.

We have had STORMY COLD weather lately, it was -14 this morning. To the delight of the boys lots of snow. I took these pics on Sunday.

Kolby showing off his skiing goggles.
I did say to the boys delight that includes Dewey and skip .

I myself was inside the house warm and cozy by the fire. I would open the door a crack and hurry to snap some pics.

They did make it look like fun though.

You can't play in the snow without a snow ball fight.

Dewey and I laughed, "snow blower we don't need any snow blower" country folk do it this way.

Thanks again to everyone who shared our Thanksgiving day with us. What a special time of year to remember that we are blessed beyond measure.

Luke

We are lucky that Luke LOVES school. He loves everything about it, riding the bus, his teacher, his friends, learning new things. Every weekend all we here about is "is it Monday yet?"

He is starting to write and loves to learn new words. He likes to see a word and then copy it.

But by far is favorite thing to write is his very own name. Very sweet to see........until you see it written in pen on say the KITCHEN TABLE.

Also written in pen on his headboard.
He does like to write Kolbys name and show it to him.

I had not quite realized just how much he "practiced" writing his name. We now know which books are his.

This is the cardboard picture that came with his Halloween costume.

As I was cleaning the house and kept running into Lukes name I thought this is something I want to document. A wonderful time in his life when everything is new and learning is magical and fun. I pray that he holds on to his love of learning for as long as possible.

And luckily we need new furniture anyway there is not much that he can ruin. Or that can' be cleaned with a little bleach :)

Snow

We didn't make it long without snow and cold weather. Last night it dropped into the teens.....burrrr. Project this weekend is to buy wood for the fireplace.

The boys of course are overjoyed with the weather. Nothing like being dead to the world asleep and wake up to a child in your face yelling to wake up because there is snow on the ground :)

I LOVE photography, everything about it taking pictures looking at pictures everything. The problem is I don't have a good camera. I have never taken a class but I know enough to be frustrated with my pictures. So I was excited when I found a new vintage camera app for my phone. And then THRILLED when some of the pics actually turned out pretty cool. Like this one of Dews tractor.

And this one of a frozen puddle in our driveway.

Most of these were taken in the last couple of morning while we wait for the bus to pick Luke up.

Honestly we didn't get that much snow but it was enough for Kolby to try and make snow angels.

I love kolbys natural happy smile in this one.

Good thing we live in the country probably a funny sight to see me crawling around the frozen ground trying to catch the boys just being them selves.

So our first snow of the year, I should be happy that we made it to November. And expect a lot more of my trial and error pics playing with my new toy.

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Sunday Walk

We woke up on Sunday to an unexpected nice day. We decided we better take advantage of it and go for a walk. There is a really nice paved walking trail in town that follows a creek for a few miles, The perfect place for us to explore.

Watching the boys reminded me of simple pleasures. They can have the best time with....rocks.

One of their favorites things to do is throw rocks in water. Creek, stream, lake, puddle doesn't matter if its water they LOVE to throw rocks in it. Notice Dewey..... hum I wonder where they learned this??

If there is anything better then throwing rocks its climbing on them.

These rocks happened to be the perfect height for climbing and jumping.

For those of you that have met me you know I'm rather high strung. (my siblings have other terms not quite as nice) Its a wonderful thing to have the boys teach me that its OK to slow down and enjoy the little things. The simple joy they get from rocks is a good lesson for me.


On last slide in the fall leaves.

Sure enough we woke up to snow today, with more predicted to be on the way.

So glad we got on last fall walk in.

Western Festival

Last weekend in between all the Halloween parties we also went to one of our favorite festivals of the year, the Western Festival. Or sheep parade as we like to call it. The morning starts with a parade down Main street with tractors, horses and sheep. All of my boys (all three of them) favorite things. I mean sheep running right in front of you down Main street, how cool is that?

For those of you that have met Dewey you know he LOVES tractors. A tractor has now moved up his wish list past a gasp Harley. That in itself should tell you something :) When His dad (grandpa) bought a new tractor Dew got his old one. (I probably should know some details but I don't other then its way older then me) The plan is for both of them to fix them up for the parade next year. With this much tractor lovin going on you can imagine that the boys have caught on to the craze.

After the sheep parade was the tractor pulls. Once we got there we saw they were also holding tractor pulls for kids. Luke and Kolby jumped right in. They were both in the same weight class Kolby was the youngest participant.
He went first, so cute to watch. Dew was the coach

It was quite the little setup, the trailer they pulled was just like the big tractor pulls in mini version. The farther they pulled the heavy it got. The object was to pull it (peddle) as far as they could. Then the officials measured the distance.

Like everything he does Luke was very serious about it.

Drum roll please....... Luke took first place in his weight class!

Kolby came in second so they both got a ribbon. We were lucky to have Grandpa there to share the day with us.

The boys showing off their ribbons at home.

Such a fun day. Its amazing to me to watch the boys follow so closely to their dads footsteps. When I first heard this song "Watching you" I cried because it reminded me so much of Dew and the boys. I thought it was perfect for this occasion.
Luke was his class's "Happy camper" this week at school. We filled out a questionnaire and sent treats and pictures of him to show at school. Two of the questions on the questionnaire were "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Luke's answer was "A cowboy" (like dad) and "what do you like to do for fun?" Luke said "work outside with dad". It just warms my heart to hear this.

Halloween

The boys were pretty much partying it up from Friday morning thru Sunday. I have never seen anything like it. We started Fri with a Halloween party at Luke's kindergarten which I volunteered to help with. (helpful hint, if its anybody else's first time helping at such a party your supposed to dress up, I was the only mom not dressed up) Cutest little party ever, 24 5 year old's dressed up and so excited to tell you about it. Then it was off to Luke and Kolby's daycare/preschool party. Kolby was beyond thrilled to be able to dress up for school.

Friday night was a Halloween party at Luke's Elementary school. They had a dance with lights and a deejay. (Dew and I are both pretty sure we didn't see such things until high school) It was dark when I took these pics but check out Luke being a mummy (monster mash)

This one cracked me up, its so hard to get a pic with Kolby not sticking out his tongue. Apparently he dances with it out too :)
On Saturday one of the local churches puts on a huge Halloween festival for the whole town. The boys had a blast playing the games. Check out this doughnut its almost as big as Luke.

Since we live in the country there is not a lot of trick or treating. But the neighbors we do have plan for the boys and all have something waiting for them (they get spoiled). Their idea of trick or treating is 4 houses equals a bucket full of candy.

The boys both picked out their costumes this year, Luke was Bumblebee (from Transformers) and Kolby was Ironman (the new one he will tell you). I had all sorts of clever costume ideas that they wanted no part of so this was it.

See the tongue, just can't get away from it :)

Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween!!