Merry Christmas!

Actually, I should change that to Happy Holidays since Christmas is now over. *Sigh* Always so sad to let that fun/craziness go. I STILL haven't mailed any Christmas cards. I feel guilty every time we get one. It's just that getting around to making them is something that just hasn't happened and probably won't this year. Some things just have to fall by the wayside when I can't get to them all and I try not to beat myself up about too many of them. Hopefully no one else will beat me up about it either.

I really do love and think about all of you and am grateful this holiday season for good friends and loving family who shower our family with love and inspiration. I appreciate you all and hope you had a fun/happy Christmas with lots of free time to spend with loved ones--that's my favorite part about Christmas!

Here's the family picture I made my poor kids/husband dress up for. I figured it should at least be seen since it didn't grace any cards or letters this year. Enjoy!! If you look closely you can see kid number five filling me out. The jolly belly isn't just fudge and cookies this year!! He's due to arrive April 28--which means he won't make an appearance 'til May (I've accepted the inevitable this time around).

Happy Birthday to Erin

Erin's birthday was on the 9th so I figured it was about time to let you all see the cute little two-year-old celebrating.

She, of course, loves all things girly so she was thrilled with the Cinderella playset her sisters picked out for her and the "pom-pom" boots Grandma Tina got her. She was pretty spoiled and loved every minute of it.
Here she is showing off her boots. She is such a sweetie. She's probably a better example to her sisters than they are to her more often than not! Needless to say, we all love her a lot.

Dress Up Fun

So, the girls had a few reasons to dress up this month so they dove into our dollar store costume box and decided on their costumes. This is just a sampling of their many disguises. Erin acquired antennas for her fairy costume after some persuasion from me (see sucker in her hand) but somehow we didn't end up with a picture of those *sigh*. Oh well, they had fun and that's what counts right?

Unrelatedly, (is that a word?) I took this picture of Erin "helping" dad clean our tiller. I just thought it was so sweet. She actually got up and helped him with a stick of her own after snuggling for a bit so she wasn't content to just observe for long.

Road Trip

So we took a little drive down to southern Utah where my sister Mandy and her family recently moved and then we decided to take another bit of a drive across Nevada to see Kevin's sister, Heather, get married in Reno. These are a few things we did while we were at it.

That's Canyon Lands National Park behind us. We didn't actually go there but this is an overlook that's just up the road past my sister's home. It's a rough life she leads. . . living with all that beauty at her fingertips.

We stopped at Great Basin National Park in Nevada to go through Lehman Cave. It was seriously cool--I always have been into all that geology nonsense, Kevin's a trooper to put up with me and my "I wonder how that was formed" ramblings. . .

The girls loved it, and best of all--it was nice and cool in there!! Hard to find cool spots in the middle of the Nevada desert.

This is "sand mountain". It's near Kevin's parents' home. I climbed to the top--yes I did. I was so proud of myself and let me tell you, it was NOT cool weather that day. The girls didn't quite make it to the top but I was impressed at how well they did; it wasn't an easy climb for little legs in the hot, hot sun. Their favorite part was when we were dumping all the sand out of their shoes and Kevin accused them of trying to take the mountain home. They thought that was hilarious and kept saying it over and over and over agian. "We were trying to take the mountain home" followed by forced giggling. . . "We were trying to take. . . okay, you get it.

Last picture I promise. This is the girls getting creative with some grocery bag fashions. Erin wouldn't let us take hers off. It was pretty funny to watch/hear them strut around.

Little Girls, Little Girls. . .

I had to post these pictures so I could brag on Kevin a little bit. Trooper that he is, he voluteered to watch ALL these girls for several hours while some friends of mine and I could go

have a night out. Silly me, I was worried about him the whole time and I came home to a clean house, several planted trees and a house full of girls playing ring around the rosies!! What a guy. He actually said it was fun! I didn't hear him volunteer to do it again next month though ;0) He took these pictures and I loved the funny face one--what a bunch of silly girls.

We Love Washington

We went to Gig Harbor, WA last week to see my Aunt Tammy and Uncle Jim sealed in the Seattle temple. We love it there and were so excited to be able to be there for such a special reason. Here are a few pictures of us at the beach and

at a park near Tammy and Jim's home in Gig Harbor.

Erin was scared of the water so she wouldn't let Kevin put her down anywhere near it. She didn't, however, have any problems scouring the forest for giant slugs. . .

Kaylee came up with this pose. You can tell they just hate it when we take pictures of them. :0)

Mindy's Awesome Book Review Site

I'm posting this link to my friend Mindy's book review site because this is an awesome site!! I love books and this site gives me all sorts of ideas about good things to read. Thier contest is pretty cool too but mainly I should just not be selfish with my good finds and spread the news so more people can enjoy this site. Happy reading!!
http://readingforsanity.blogspot.com/2009/06/reading-for-sanity-contest.html