Getting ready to open gifts. Notice the lovely sign in the background that everyone pitched in to make. It was really cute! 
We went to Grisanti's, our kids' favorite restaurant, for dinner after Jessica's baptism for dinner.
The people at Grisantis sang to Jess and Maleah for their birthdays and they each got a piece of cheesecake. Cheesecake makes life beautiful!
Blowing out her birthday candles. She missed several times!
I saw these pictures and my heart warmed with gratitude to my Heavenly Father for the blessing of still having my dad here with us. To see these pictures reminded me that I have received an answer to many, many prayers that my dad could be here so my kids could know him. I am so blessed to have a great dad that shows so much support and interest in my life. He frequently calls me to see if I'm "still alive" and I cherish the conversations that we have been able to have. Thank you, Dad, for living what you believe and teaching me so that I can pass those things to my kids. Watching you go through so many trials and staying upbeat and strong in your testimony has been a great example to me and my family. You are such a blessing to us. We love you!
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.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 with her orchestra teacher.
She's in the zone here!
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!
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.
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. 
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.
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!)
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.
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.
Here she is performing with her class
Here she is waiting in line to do the limbo with Abbie, Eliza, and Isaac.
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.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.
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!!
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.
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