New Years Eve

 This Christmas break we had strep go through my family!  So much fun!  Blake was diagnosed a few days after Christmas, and he was nice enough to share it with me.  So in this picture I had been on antibiotics for 24 hours, but still wasn't feeling well.  We went to a teppanyaki grill  restaurant with my family early in the evening. 

The kids loved the fire and the flying shrimp! Which I have to say I was one of the only ones to catch one in my mouth!  What a talent!  After dinner the kids went to Nana's and Doug and I went home to rest.  Not the most exciting New Years ever. Oh well 2011 was coming anyway even if we didn't celebrate.

Christmas 2010

So life has been crazy and I can't believe that I haven't caught up on my blog.  One more New Years resolution that's been instantly broken!  Oh well I will try harder to do better.

 Here are Alyssa and Blake Christmas morning, we have them go open stockings and presents from Santa first.  Look at the great fire Doug got up at 7:30 to start.  Look how spoiled my children are!

 Blake and Alyssa each got a Lego Harry Potter set from Santa.  Each of them including Katelyn got a web-kin from Santa in their stockings!

After opeining presents and getting dress we were ready to go to my parents house for breakfast.  My mom sets a beautiful Christmas table and my dad makes his famous Christmas hash.  We had a wonderful breakfast and then it is time to exchange gifts.  In the above picture all the grandkids are showing off the blankets Nana made them. 

All the cousins exchange gifts from each other and then we give gifts to my parents and then they spoil everyone.  This year my parents got us a new t.v. for our bedroom and we love it.  In the above picture Katelyn is hanging out with Nana and her new cousin Trey.  She loves baby Trey!  Later that night we go to Doug's house for dinner with the Larsen side of the family.  There are no pictures because I stayed home with Katelyn and Doug forgot the camera.  The kids had fun playing with all their Larsen cousins.  Another great Christmas has come and gone.

Cookies!

                         Every December my mom and sister and I get together to make Christmas sugar cookies.  It has become a family tradition that we sort of look forward to.  We spent an entire Saturday baking and frosting cookies.  This year Blake was a really good helper, he had a lot of fun rolling out the dough and using the cookie cutters.  After wards he was filthy but at least he had fun!                 

 Here is Papa with baby Trey, my sisters new baby!

When not helping with the cookies lounging on the couch and watching a movie was a fun thing the kids got to do.  They all look like they worked hard, especially Uncle Brett!

Blue belts!

Doug and Blake have been working nonstop trying to get ready for their blue belt test.  I can't believe how hard it is and all of the things they have to know.  Once they move up to the next belt level they still have to practice and pass the lower level belt movements before they pass off the requirements for the blue belt.  I don't know how they keep all those moves in their brains!  Blake and Doug did great, and I am very proud of my boys!  After Nana and Papa took us to lunch at Five Guys to celebrate!  That was Blake's choice of course!  

 

Katelyn's red cast!

Stairs stairs how I hate the stairs!   On December 7th Katelyn was happily playing and then suddenly she was gone.  I founder her all the way in the basement, her new game is to slide down the stairs on her tummy as fast as she can.  So I went down to get her and she started climbing up to meet me, and as I bent down to pick her up she laughed and slid back down to the bottom.  She was playing a little game, catch me if you can.  On her next time up the stairs she stopped two or three stairs up and balanced on her knees.  As I went to grab her, her large head caused her to topple over backwards down the stairs.  What a fun thing to see play out in slow motion as I tried to get to her, but failed! She cried and cried and would not stop!  Of course Doug was not at home and it was about 7 pm.  Both he and Blake were at Karate.  Doug finally came home and we decided to see how she was in the morning.  We gave her a dose of ibuprofen and put her to bed.  I knew she was still hurting when she woke up at midnight crying, so I gave her some Tylenol and put her back to bed.
The next morning she seemed fine and back to normal until she tried to stand up and she collapsed and started to cry.  So off to the Dr. office we went.  The x-ray showed that she had a small fracture in her tibia just below the knee.  My doctor put on a splint and told us to make an apt. with an orthopedist to see if she should have a cast or not.
The next day Doug and I took her in to see the orthopedist and she said because of her age it would be best to put a cast on it.  Normally a splint would be fine, but because she was just learning to walk a cast would be safer for her.  Since it is December and I had already bought her a cute red Christmas dress, we chose to make her cast red.  She only has to have the cast on for four week!  Longest four weeks of my life! 
The first week of the cast I had to sit on the floor and play with her all the time.  If a toy got too far way from her she would cry, because she was scared to move and get it herself.  After the first week things got better and she learned to crawl quite well with the cast on. I am so thankful kids are resilient and heal fast!  Lets hope this ends broken legs in our family.

Thanksgiving 2010

 So this year the kids had a whole week off for Thanksgiving so we decided to spend it in St. George.  We had a nice simple Thanksgiving dinner all by ourselves.  We cooked a small turkey and had mashed potatoes and beans with some yummy rolls.  All and all a great Thanksgiving dinner.  For dessert Alyssa helped me make a chocolate mousse pie.  She was really proud to have helped make such a good pie.

Halloween weekend

I can't believe how far behind I have gotten with our blog.  Life got crazy or I got lazy! I think it was a little of both.
Here is a quick snapshot of all the fun crazy events of Halloween weekend.  We start with the parade at their elementary school.  Blake was a mad scientist this year, which was a good fit for him.  When he grows up he wants to be an inventor or a scientist. He has promised to create a robot that will clean the house for me!  I can't wait!!
Alyssa this year dressed up as a corpse bride, I think she looks the part.  For Katelyn's first Halloween costume I choose something cute and warm.  I think she makes a great little panda bear!  She didn't really like having it on her head and the costume was a bit too warm.  So she only lasted about an hour in it!  Money well spent!  At least I have a few pictures.

Alyssa and Blake decided that they wanted to have a Halloween party with all of their friends.  I thought it would be fun for them each to invite a few friends and have one big party.  I think next time they will have them at different times.  It was loud and crazy!  Seven year old boys vs. nine year old girls are a little different.  One is much louder than the other! We played a few games had lots of fun treats and watched the movie Corpse Bride.  It was fun to see them all in their costumes in the end I was glad we did it.  I was also glad when they all went home!

Here we all are before going out trick or treating.  We had a fun Halloween weekend and look forward to next year.

St. George over UEA

 We decided to go to St. George with my parents over UEA weekend.  What a great weekend we had!  It was beautiful weather and we found lots to do.  In the above picture we are at this cute little cafe in Santa Clara having lunch. 

We found a fun October festival at a farm.  It had lots of activities for the kids as well as a corn maze.  The kids had fun riding horses and playing games.  As you can see from the above picture Katelyn enjoyed meeting her first cow. After we were done hanging out at the farm we went to  Smash Burger for dinner, it was a great evening.

While we were in St. George we were able to go swimming almost every day and the kids rode their bikes around the neighborhood.  It was hard to leave and go back to home to real life.

Family Pictures

So I am a blog slacker!  It has been so long since I have posted anything, so here are some of our family pictures.  Our friend Sarah did them for us and they turned out very cute.

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