planes, shoveling, friends, & basketball

 Calder's most recent obsession, in addition to his obsession with hats and his backpack, is airplanes.  he loves them.  we always have to find a new book about airplanes everytime we go to the library.

 this is his jack skellington smile.

 this boy loves to shovel.  he sure doesn't seem to mind the cold.

we love having friends over.  one of the boys' favorite things to do is to watch a movie and put a blanket down and eat popcorn. 

 elliot lost his other front tooth a little while back and he still doesn't have any new teeth yet.  he doesn't seem to mind much though.

 elliot made it through basketball.  he had a great team and a great coach.  they really made it a positive experience for him.  he's glad it's done though. ;)

 keeping sam preoccupied through the games was a bit of a challenge, so we gave in to technology.

 his team and coaches.

new beginnings 2013

within my young women's presidency we switch off who is in charge of the big activities throughout the year.  The person in charge plans it out and then delegates as needed.
this year i took responsibility to plan out our new beginnings night.  i was really excited that the girls were interested in being involved.  each of them took a value or topic out of the personal progress book and then shared their thoughts or testimony about it.  it was wonderful to see each of the girls get up and share their feelings and testimonies.  i am always amazed by their strength.  every young woman has trials and some of these girls seem to have it really tough.  it is wonderful to see them find strength through the knowledge of their Savior and His love for them.  i love being a part of young women's program.
the theme this year is "stand ye in holy places and be not moved." i wanted to give them something and jeffrey kindly agreed to help me out.  we got 2x4s from home depot, jeffrey cut them down, we found images online and printed them off, and with a bunch of mod podge we glued them on.  we were really happy with how they turned out and the girls really seemed to like them.
thanks jeffrey for all your help!

our bishop's wife and their daughter made the decorations hanging from the ceiling.  they did one in each color of the values.

 don't we have such an amazing group of girls!!

these are some of my leaders in my presidency.  i love the women that i get to work with.  they are so amazing and have such incredible talents.  i love how i know they've got my back and i can turn to them for any help.  they are my family away from home.  

some of my fav's from our christmas vacation

 beef and jeffrey rocking out....you should've heard the song....it did indeed rock.

 it's beef and jeff....do you really need to ask?

 karie and her cute girl's getting snuggle time with calder.

 fuzz taking me for a ride on his bike.  too bad it was so COLD!

 cute boy in a towel :)

 breakfast with my girlfriends.  love you girls (including those not in this picture)!!

 eric and sarah hosted the christmas eve morning breakfast with the homers! 

i love those kids!

 bananagrams.

my brother, brian, and his wife, amy, are expecting in march.

becky is expecting in a couple weeks.  

so sad i will not be there, but so happy for them. 

 ella and calder building, i mean eating their gingerbread train.

this is what calder does when you ask him to smile, so steve joined in.

 calder decided that jen's lap was the place to be :)

christmas eve with the allens! 

it was so nice of the allens to host us while we were in town. 

thanks mom and dad allen!

 we got some sledding in.

thanks jen for letting us borrow all that snow stuff!

we also went downtown to see the lights at temple square.  

 ice skating (thanks smiths!)

we finished out our vacation at my parent's cabin they bought in eden, utah.  it is so beautiful up there! we got in the hot tub too!  that was a lot of fun. 

  it was great to spend the weekend up there with all the homers.

                        we had a small family talent show.  each family took a turn.

last but definitly not least, we got to meet brynn's new little baby girl!  

she was gorgeous and brynn and ej looked great too. 

thanks for having her while we were in town!

the bean

we finally saw "the bean".

i have to say, it was pretty awesome.  the kids had such a blast laying under it and looking at their distorted images.  it was pretty funny to watch them.  we took a bunch of pictures of the kids, but they didn't turn out because we didn't realize the camera was on the wrong setting :(  oh well, it was still fun.  cold though!

here's one that kind of turned out.  notice sam is not in the picture...yeah, he didn't want to be in it.  it was one of those days....

the reason for the trip was to see our good friends the wicks.  they invited us up for johnny's work day at the field museum.  it was really neat.  we did have one episode with sam, claiming that we are not in charge and we cannot tell him what to do, but we got through it and were still able to smile.  good thing i love that kid so much.

we really did have a good time though.  we didn't take many pictures at the museum and we never did get a shot of us with virginia and johnny, or of their darling ian and nora.

i do love this picture though. the kids had a table of their own for lunch.  it was pretty cool to see them just hanging out, eating, and talking - looking like mini adults.

we headed back to their home and had some yummy homemade pizza's, jeffrey took a trip to the local food store to purchase a supply of sodas (which we all enjoyed thoroughly), put the kids to bed, played a few rounds of pinochle, and stayed up late to watch Contagion (scary).  we had such a great time.

thanks wicks.  we can't wait to come again.

the santa visit

we lucked out and were able to have the boys take a ride in the sleigh with santa and mrs. claus.  they had a great time at the north pole, but were happy to come home.  they said the north pole is a great place, just a little too much snow.  :)

merry christmas from me and the boys.

the hat.

calder gets so many compliments for this hat.  my favorite thing about it is that it reminds me of my grandfather.  i miss him.  i hope whenever calder wears this hat my grandfather smiles in heaven.  that would make me happy.

old pics

i love these pictures.......