Jessica's Baptism

I can never get this right!!! These pictures are in backwards order. Oh, well, you can figure it out. Anyway, this picture was in the dressing room after Jess was baptized and we got her dressed in her white baptismal dress that Grandma Mickey made for our girls' baptisms. She looked beautiful! I can't believe she's old enough to be baptized. She is such a special, sweet girl. She has a tender heart and she is incredibly thoughtful. Cody and I so frequently find our bed made with a note on it from our "secret admirerer" (written, of course, in Jessica's handwriting!!) She is a wonderful daughter and I am so grateful to have her in our home.

Our not so little family before the baptism. Man, we are getting old!

It was so great to have Grandpa Barry and Grandma Judy there for the baptism. Brandt was there too, I'm not sure how he escaped being in the picture. It was so great to have the support of family for this special day. It meant a lot to Jessica.

I absolutely love this picture! Jess and her dad have a really special relationship. It was so sweet to see them in the waters of baptism together.

Maleah's Winter Concert

Maleah Announcing

Here's Maleah at her concert. It's far away, but she amazes me how comfortable she is in front of an audience. I wish I had her confidence!

Maleah's Concert

Here's Maleah with her chorus teacher after the concert. They did a really good job and had lots of fun.

Maleah with her orchestra teacher.

She's in the zone here!

New Year's Eve

I just thought this was cute. We went to Curtis and Diantha's house for New Years Eve with Steve and Katie. This was when we put all the kids down on the family room floor to watch a movie and the IDEA was that they would eventually fall asleep while we played games upstairs. Well, being the irresponsible parents that we were that night, we stayed up until almost 2 am and consequently so did the kids. It was quite the party, but we had a lot of fun. We ate all sorts of good food (that in itself is a party to me) and we played games. We're so lucky to have such good friends to have fun with!

Maleah's 10th Birthday

I can't believe Maleah is 10!!!! She is growing up too fast. She is such a great kid! She has such a kind heart and an enthusiastic personality. She is incredibly smart and talented. She's good at almost anything she tries to do. I feel the Lord has really blessed me to give me the opportunity to be her mom. It's so fun for me to watch her get older and see how she views the world and it's great to see her wanting to do right and watching her testimony of the gospel grow. She is a wonderful person to have in our family. She brings so much fun and enthusiasm. Happy Birthday, Maleah!!! I love you!

On Maleah's birthday we had Elisa (our friend from Brazil that is here for her Senior year of high school) over for a "sleepover". The girls had a lot of fun with her! We also had Steve, Katie, Abbie, and Eliza over and we went to the church and had a soccer game in the gym. It was really fun. Here we are after dinner getting ready to sing "Happy Birthday" and bring out her cake.

The Toys Are For the Kids, Right?

Christmas evening after the kids were all in bed Katie, Steve, Cody, and I went downstairs to test the durability of the kids new toys. This picture was actually taken with the lights off (because the lightsabers light up and make sound, so the effect was so much better in the dark!) so Cody had no idea what a great shot he had.

Christmas Day

The highlight of the Christmas presents was all of the Star Wars stuff: lightsabers, actions figures, Star Wars dishes and books. The kids thought it was great to watch Rylan with the lightsaber. He thought he was pretty cool too! You can tell that Rylan is the center of entertainment in our house.

This was Christmas morning. Each of the kids made us gifts at school and that is always one of my favorite things. Maleah made us a ceramic bowl that was beautiful. Jess made us an adorable snowflake ornament with her picture in the middle of it. And Isaac gave us a Christmas magnet with his picture in the middle of it too. We had a ball opening gifts and the kids got a kick our of Rylan's excitement for the paper and boxes. He was actually scared of his gift! It was a ball popper that sings songs and blows balls in the air. It was a little too much for him to begin with, but he eventually warmed up to it.

We had a great Christmas this year. We have the tradition of taking fresh homemade bread to all our friends during the holiday season. And since I can't bake and deliver 15 loaves of bread in one night we do a few per week and it kind of lasts all through the holiday season. We have a great time visiting everyone. It's one of my favorite things about the Christmas season.

Christmas Eve

This was our Christmas Eve tradition of fondue. We did it at Steve and Katie's this year. We had a great time! The kids made a massive mess once we got to the chocolate part, but that was part of the fun. We did our white elephant gift exchange which is always hilarious. We made the rule that it had to be something you already had and you couldn't purchase anything. So the kids even went through their stuff and they had to wrap it so that no one knew what it was (except usually me because I need to help in the wrapping process for some of them). There were some funny things. Isaac got a "Worst Case Scenario" board game that he was very pleased with! Steve got a microphone and a dancing Santa Claus (well, it used to dance before it broke). Maleah got cloth diapers (that was Rylan's contribution!). Anyway, random stuff, but we had a lot of fun. We are going to miss Steve and Katie next year. They are going to move this spring because Steve joined the military. We have had so much fun living close to them and we've become great friends. We hope they'll be back in a few years for law school!

Well, I think we threw this picture on about 2 months ago thinking we would get right back to telling about it and here it is almost February and I'm just getting back. I guess there are a few other things that take my attention (like the 4 little people in this picture!)
Anyway, this was the tree that we chose to cut down for Christmas. We love going out to pick out our tree every year. Sure, it's just a tree farm just outside of town, but where else are you going to find a pine tree to cut down . . .in the mountains of Nebraska?

Thanksgiving

The end result! (Sorry the pictures are in backwards.) Rylan doesn't look as pleased with the turkey as the rest of us were.

Stuffing our bird

This was the first Thanksgiving with just our little family. Well, not just our family, we had a few friends from the ward and the missionaries. But this was our first time preparing our own turkey and we were PROUD! Here is a picture of the kids cutting veggies to go in the stuffing.
We had a really good time.

A Taste of Egypt

The past couple of months we have been choosing a different country to learn about during some of our family home evenings. This month we chose Egypt (Jess's idea). So last week I was running errands with Isaac and Rylan and we came home to an Egyptian restaurant in the basement. We sat on the blanket and ate rice,couscous, veggies, and kabobs. We ate everything with our hands. (Isaac couldn't pull it off, though. He couldn't handle the idea of dirty hands.) The girls served us and Jessica gave us some Egyptian trivia. We had a great time.

Jess's 2nd Grade 50's Program

Here she is performing with her class
Here she is waiting in line to do the limbo with Abbie, Eliza, and Isaac.


Here are some pics from Jessica's second grade program. It was really cute. They split it up into three parts. The first part was where we took the video and the picture up above where everyone could join in and dance and do the limbo. I love this video! I've never seen Jess let her hair down in public like that. I was proud of her! The second part of the program was the whole group singing the songs they have learned this year. And then there was a last part where they made a video of a story they had written and illustrated as a class. It was really fun. She was adorable.

Little Hermit Crab

I'm not sure how he got that on his back, I just thought it was cute.

Climber

It took Rylan a little while to decide he wanted to start moving around, but once he started to crawl he has started to climb. I feel like we are entering a new realm with a little boy. My girls were never climbers, but I think we're in for it with this little guy. This picture was a few weeks ago. The box that he is on was standing up blocking the bookcase and he tipped it over so he could climb on it and get the rock that he is about to pull off the shelf. I will be cursing this behavior soon enough, but I kind of thought this was cute.

Family Entertainment

We are rather pathetic. You would think Rylan is our first child because we think everything that he does is hilarious, cute, brilliant, etc. He is the center of entertainment in our home and here is an example. While we think this video is funny it probably is only funny to us. But I thought the commentary in the background was entertaining.

Family Scripture Study

We have family scripture study every morning at 6:45. On this morning I was the last one to come in and this is what I saw. Isn't this what early morning scripture study is supposed to look like? We've got it down!!

Cute Girl in a Little Coat

I was in the kitchen the other day after school and Jess came in dressed like this. It's Rylan's coat! She had it all zipped up an everything. I thought it was rather funny.

Rylan's Giggle

Cody and I visited Little Rock Central High (the first high school to desegregate) when we were there. It was an incredible place! We walked around the grounds and went to the visitor's center next to the high school. It was one of the highlights of our trip. Anyway, when we were walking around the grounds Cody made some sound while we were visiting and Rylan started to do his belly laugh. It was so funny! He went on for about 10 minutes laughing whenever Cody would make that sound. There was a class out in the quad that we were walking in and his giggle was echoing all through the area. It was really cute!

Arkansas

Cody, Rylan, and I went to Little Rock, Arkansas this weekend to one of Cody's conferences for work. We left Maleah, Jessica, and Isaac with Steve and Katie for a 2 days and then they stayed with Paul and Trio for 2 days. Anyway, we had a great time! Here are a few of the pictures of our trip.

The store where Wal-Mart began in Bentonville, Arkansas. We thought it is an important part of our history since a large portion of our paycheck goes to Wal-Mart. We got there after it closed, but it was fun to see.

Here we are at Liberty Jail. There was a really awesome spirit there. We really enjoyed our tour there.

These last two pictures just showed how beautiful the fall colors were down there. The scenery was amazing.

Cody and Steve

These two are quite the pair! Cody and Steve enjoy using their baldness for entertainment around Halloween. Here they are as an airport landing strip and a putting green. They are hilarious!!!!

The slimy-looking stuff on his head isn't a bad fungus it's glow-in-the-dark cream that actually worked! The kids thought he would make a good Darth Mal from Star Wars, but we thought it probably wasn't good to come to the ward Trunk-or-treat dressed like someone who resembles the devil.

No, he's not smoking, it's a golf tee in his mouth.

Halloween

Isaac chowin' down after the Trunk-or-treat at the church on Halloween. It hasn't taken him long to figure out that Halloween is all about candy and now he is a big fan. He's so cute!

Maleah as Princess Leia from Star Wars. She is a big time fan of Star Wars!!! She did have her hair done like Princess Leia but I thought this was such a cute picture of her. I can't believe how as she grows she looks more and more like Sharla. She's getting so pretty.

Here's Jess as Guenevere. The highlight of the costume for her was wearing make-up. She looks beautiful. I love her missing teeth!

This is one of my favorite faces that Rylan makes, but with the addition of the pumpkin costume I thought this picture was adorable!

Rylan's Army Crawl

Boo at the "U"

This was Boo at the "U" put on by the equine program at UNL. We went to the Animal Science building and visited all the horses they had dressed up for Halloween. This one was my favorite. I've never seen a horse dressed up as a cheerleader before. They also had one painted as a zebra, there was a tiger horse, an M&M horse, and several other fun ideas. The kids thought it was great. You can see Isaac is a little distracted. The horses made him a little nervous, but we were proud of him just for being brave enough to stand by it. THAT'S PROGRESS!!!

Maleah decided this is going to be her major when she goes to college. SURPRIZE!!

Jess thought the place was stinky. Also a surprize!!

Rylan was just funny. He giggled whenever we would let him pet the horses. He was adorable as always.

Anyway, we loved it. It made Cody even more anxious to move out of town and have animals and involve the kids in 4-H.

On Monday October 20th we went to Paul and Trio's for FHE to carve pumpkins. Our friends from our ward, Doug, Mary, Ali, and Eliza were there too. We had a great time.

Here is the end result.



If this isn't typical Jessica I don't know what is!

Here's Isaac and Jess elbow-deep in pumpkin guts. Isaac is so proud of himself as he should be. He has come a long way since his first Halloween when he didn't even want to touch the stuff.

Here's Maleah getting us started poking the pattern into the pumpkin. She's getting so big I can't believe it!

My kids are hilarious!

I just thought this was funny. The kids were playing with the costumes the day we were decorating for Halloween and they were flying around the house like this. I'm not sure how Maleah kept Rylan on that broom, but I was impressed with her talent. I also thought Isaac's random sock is quite dapper!

On October 11th I ran in my first relay race.  It was so much fun!  It was an 86-mile run from the old market in Omaha to the Haymarket in Lincoln. I was on a team of 8 women.  We started at 6:30 am and took turns running different distances throughout the day.  I was runner #7 and I ran 3 different legs of the race.  My first leg was 3 miles, the second was just over 5 1/2 miles, and the last leg was around 3 1/2 miles.  I ran the final leg into Lincoln and my family was there to meet me.  Here I am with my big supporters.  It was so fun to have them there!

Here is my team.  From left to right:  Kristen, Charmaine, Ashley, Becky, Katie, Me, Sonia, and Jessy.  There were some fun things about our team.  It was Charmaine, Ashley, Katie, Sonia, and Jessy's first race.  Five of the eight of us were breastfeeding so if anyone had been paying attention to our team vehicle they would have seen more bags of breastmilk coming out of it than any other vehicle in the race.  It was quite entertaining!  We had a really fun group and we had a great time together!

In August Cody went back to Brazil for research and he was able to visit Gabriel, Isaac's best friend for the whole time that he spent in the shelter.  Both of them were adopted and left the shelter within 2 weeks of each other.  I have no doubt that the Lord had a hand in that. Anyway, Gabriel went to a family in Porto Alegre, where Isaac is from, and they have been very good to keep in touch with us and send pictures and letters.  We are so grateful for their being willing to keep in touch with us.  Gabriel was an important person to Isaac while he was waiting for us to find him and there continues to be a special bond between the two of them.  Here is Cody with Gabriel in his home.  He's so cute!

Here is Isaac proudly displaying the gifts that Gabriel sent home with Cody.  He gave him some cars and a photo album where Isaac can put the pictures that Gabriel sends to him.  

This is very old news, but I wanted to have something written about it.  This is Maleah and Jessica with their friend, Maren, and their piano teacher, Stephanie at their first piano recital the first week in August.  It was the first recital for all of the girls and it was Stephanie's first recital as teacher.  She gave them each a flower at the end and here they are taking a bow.  They were adorable!  They did such a good job and it was so fun to watch the way they each performed.