My Hobbie!!

Photography is one of those things that relaxes me. I enjoy taking pictures and then I enjoy editing them once I am done. It is something that I could literally sit and do for hours. Could I make a living doing it? Probably not because I am not because I am not that good, so I will just continue to have fun with it. My three angels!

SISTERS

This is one of my favorites!

John at age 12

Jess age 10

Abbi age 7

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!!!

CHRISTMAS!!


Every year on Christmas Eve Matt sets up our train under the tree. It is always fun to see the kids faces on Christmas morning when they get up and realize the train is around the tree. The presents have always been rearranged and the train is on and playing its Christmas music. As you can see this year Matt made a tunnel with the presents for the train to go under.


Jess with her loot from Santa! She specifically asked for a blue sock monkey and she got it.

Abbi with her doll that Santa brought.

John loves the guitar Santa brought him!! He can't wait to have lessons and learn to play.

Abbi with her new boots! She had been asking from some for over two months and was so excited to finally have them.

Abbi with her beautiful porcelain doll. The girls get a new porcelain doll every year.

Jess opening her doll. Matt found a really cute set this year at an antique shop. Both girls love the dolls!

Here is Jess' doll!!

John wanted a mask that covers his entire face, I think he got it. When he goes out to play in the snow the only thing he complained about getting cold was his face.

John in his new hoodie.

Me with my new wallet, I needed on desperately.

Matt with is 1776 history book. He loves history!!

Jess in her new hat and shirt! She is so full of it, as you can see.

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve at mom's house. Myself and all of my brothers went in on a present for my mom and Ron. Mom and Ron opened the present Christmas Eve while we were there for the party. We got them a GPS system and they were very surprised. The thing that mom loved the most though was the card we gave them that was signed by all.

Christmas has always been my favorite time of the year. Everyone is more joyful and willing to spread the good cheer. I appreciate that my kids are getting older and we can focus more on the true meaning of Christmas, Christ! I enjoy that they are able to look outside of themselves and think of others. They get anxious to shop for each other and what they can do for others.

Christmas morning is so much fun because they all get excited to see the presents opened that came from them.

Concert and Recital Time!!

It is that wonderful time of year when we get to see our children display their talents in various concerts and recitals. I love the weeks leading up to these concerts especially at Christmas time. I have always loved Christmas music and with all three of my children playing the piano and John the violin, I get to hear a lot of Christmas music. These are not the best recordings, but I hope you enjoy them. Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!!

Thanksgiving

I know that I am late in posting but I want to catch up. For Thanksgiving we went to Newcastle and spent the day with Matt's family. We had about 24 family members for our dinner so we reserved the gym at the church. It was great to be at the church and have plenty of room for all of the kids to run and play. Once we were done with our fabulous dinner and the gym was cleaned up a game of basketball was played. I enjoyed sitting around talking to my sisters and just relaxing most of the afternoon. I am very thankful for the family that I have and that I am able to live close to at least some of them.

Some of the cousins

Matt and Rachel

John playing ball

The game is on

The game ended with poor Rachel getting bog piled!

Trunk-or-Treat

Halloween is one of our favorite holidays! The kids get so excited when thinking about what they want to be for Halloween and they almost always surprise me with what they want to dress up as. This year our Halloween consisted of going to two Trunk-or-Treats and going out Trick-or-Treating in the neighborhood Sunday night. This picture is of the kids all dressed up ready to go to the Trunk-or Treats.

John always has to be something scary for Halloween and this year was no exception. He wanted to be a pirate,but not just a regular pirate. He had to throw in this gross mask to make himself look scary. He also informed me that he is getting to old to go out Trick-or Treating with his family and that next year he wants to go with friends.

Jessica wanted to be a clown this year. It fits her personality so well and everyone loved her clown costume. I loved it because all we had to buy was the wig and red nose. Jessica was invited to a Halloween party Friday night at Grace's. She wore her costume for the party, so Jess ended up wearing her costume 3 nights in a row. In order to make it to the party on time Jess had to wear her costume to piano as well, she was little embarrassed when people would stare at her as we drove down the interstate.

My Abbi wanted to be a cat. We looked at many cat costumes and she finally decided to be this black and white one. We found this really cute cat nose to wear with the costume, but it was a little tight and hurt her nose. Dad did a great job at painting her face though.

For all of our festivities this year the weather was great. Normally on Halloween night it is really cold, the ground is often covered in snow and you have to bundle up so much that you can't even see the costumes. This year the kids went out just how you see them in the pictures. John and Jess did not have anything on under their costumes and Abbi just had leggings and shirt under hers. We could not have asked for a more perfect night.

Pumpkin Carving Time!!

We got our pumpkins at the beginning of the month at a pumpkin festival and the kids have been dying to carve them ever since. So today for family home evening we finally carved our pumpkins with Steve, Mike and Chantel. John decided he wanted to try etching his face this year instead of doing a typical carving. It took a lot of time but turned out great as you will see later in the post. I have a creative son!!

Jessica dug right in when it came to taking out the seeds. This girl loves to get her hands dirty!

Abbi on the other hand was little more neat about the process of taking the seeds out. She took her time and used a spoon or the scoop to clean her pumpkin.

Here is Abbi's finished pumpkin. She had very little help from me and did wonderful.

Here is Jess' finished pumpkin. She decided to do an owl and it turned out great, with a little help from dad.

Here is John's finished pumpkin. As I mentioned earlier it took a lot of time, but it looks awesome. He had pumpkin shavings all over Mike and Chantel's house, but he is very proud of his pumpkin.

School is in Session...

And my kids could not be happier!! My three sweeties ready to start a new school year.

Gone are the glasses, say hello to contacts!!

(He has been wearing contact for about 7 months now, but this is the first time since 2nd grade starting a school year without glasses.)

John in his "perfect 1st day of school" outfit to start 7th grade. It took a long time to find just the right outfit, not only for the first day of school either. He and I went school shopping and John had to try on everything before we could consider buying it. He had to make sure it fit just right and looked GOOD on him. It is so fun to watch the changes he is going through and that he actually cares about his appearance. He is a wonderful young man. (Just a side note, John is now 5'5" and is wearing a size 11 shoe.)

Jessica is now in 5th grade and is still my spunky little girl. She is quickly becoming a young woman though and is caring a little more about what she wears as well. Once we bought her school clothes I told her to put them away. A little while later she called me into her room to show me that she had hung up all of her shirts in the order she was going to wear them for the first two weeks of school. Jess and Abbi switched Elementary schools this year and Jess was a little nervous about going to a new school. She had a great first day of school though and has made several new friends, one of them is a girl named Grace who just moved into our ward. She is a very outgoing young lady and makes friends so easily, for that I am grateful.



Abbi is in the 2nd grade and loves school! She is always so excited to pick out her outfit and has always worn a skirt on the first day of school. She loves any occasion that she gets to dress up and look pretty. This year it was a little more of a casual outfit, but she looked darling. Abbi use to be a very shy little girl and I was a little worried about her starting a new school, but she surprised me and was not even nervous. I thought she was going to have me at least walk her to her class, but she didn't. I helped her find her place to line up and she said "bye mom, you can go." It almost made me cry to know that my baby does not need me anymore. I am so proud of her though, she is growing up so fast. She too made new friends very quickly and loves her new school. Her teacher is great!! He seems to love what he does and so far has made Abbi's 2nd grade year great.

One More Week of Summer....

How Can That BE??

It seems like we wait most of the year for summer to come and then summer comes and goes in the blink of an eye.

~This summer has been a busy one, but one filled with fun adventures~

Here is a run down of our fun from this summer.

We have pool passes and went swimming a couple times a week. The kids and I are officially fish.

We went to Reptile Gardens several times!!

Twice this summer we were able to go camping with friends at Angostura Reservoir and had a great time.

The kids and adults enjoyed playing in the sand and keeping cool in Angostura Lake during our second camping trip. The first trip was fun but a little cool and rainy.

We all love going to Spearfish Park and playing in the river,on the playground, and feeding the fish at the hatchery.

Abbi was not sure about going in the river at first. The water was really cold!!

Jess was having fun on the rocks in Spearfish River



Some of our hiking adventures!!

There were plenty of hikes this summer. Two of our favorites were Roughlock Falls trial to the water fall and Harney Peak. Here is Jess on the trail to Roughlock Falls.

We were able to hike Harney Peak which is a 7 mile hike. All of the kids did great and it only took us 4 hours.

This is the troop at the beginning of the hike....

And they made it to the top!!