Merry Christmas

This is our first ever family picture with Santa! Thank you Hinckley Dodge for inviting Santa to your dealership so that we didn't have to wait in line at the mall to give you our Christmas wishes this year! It was the best! Our kids weren't upset by the end, no one was screaming, and they are actually smiling in the picture! The kids were a bit shy and Mark was just sure that this was not the real Santa... but they know that Santa can't be every where, so he has lots of helpers. Thanks again!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Funny story

I went to my parent's house earlier this week. Grandma hadn't left for work yet and she wanted to talk to Spencer. She asked him to come over and the conversation is as follows:
Grandma: "Spencer, what do you want from Santa Claus today?"
Spencer: (imagine a 4 yr old in deep thought here) "Umm... today what I want from Santa is .... Pixos!"
Me: "Spencer, I thought you wanted 10 one hundred dollar bills and all the playdough at Walmart for Christmas..."
Spencer: "Ugh, mom... that's what I want from Santa for CHRISTMAS. TODAY I want Pixos!"

Oh boy! It's a good thing Santa doesn't come everyday! Oh and if anyone has an extra 10 one hundred dollar bills just laying around . . . you could be Spencer's best friend!

Tumble Weed

Tumble Weed... Also know as Russian Thistle.
I was going to pick up Spencer from preschool. I was topped at a light and going across the road was a tumble weed. My immediate thought everytime I see one is how funny they are. And then I thought it might be nice to be a tumble weed. So carefree and you just go where the wind blows you... and then the thought stopped. I am so glad I have control over where I go. I may not have control over everything that happens in my life and what goes on around me... but I do get to choose what I make of that. So that being said I still think tumble weeds are funny... but I am glad to not be like one.

Designer Beanbags

Are any of you blog addicts? I know many people who are. We can't help but spy into other people's lives in hope of what? The answer is different for each of us. Some of us hope to find out that someone else has a harder life. Some of us hope to be inspired. Some of us hope to find that we are better/smarter/prettier than others. Well whatever our reason is we do it. I just love to find out what/who is out there. I love to be inspired. So my cousin came over today. I love family and I love that they feel welcome in our home. She ahd been blog hopping and came across some adorable bean bags. They were made from designer fabic and so cute for the little ones. And of coarse as many of tend to think.. she thought I could make those. So we pulled out many scraps of fabic and chose out the ones that inspired us.

We made them all sizes and with different sized beans. The colors and textures were to die for! She was so excited to give them to her baby and I was so excited to have something different to make. I love when I get a new project. It feels so fresh and new. And it's fun to see other people being excited about something hand made. We used ricrac, minky, corduroy and cotton. It was so much fun.

Here is the finished product... not the best picture I know. My favorite ones had all the textures on them. We turned out with about 15 bean bags in about a total of 2-3 hours work... that includes picking out fabric, cutting, sewing filling and sewing some more. Oh and the baby and my two little ones loved them! Then when the older two came home from school they wanted to know where their's were!

A Garden of Art

My sister and I are participating in A Garden of Art this weekend. It looks to be a good show. We've never done this before though, so we'll see how it goes. This is a picture of our booth. Our Dad made the things we hung our dresses and jackets and things on. Next week we'll put our jackets on our etsy shop http://www.thesistyuglers.etsy.com We'll see how that goes. Wish us luck!

I'm old!!!

It's official! I'm old! I just turned 30 last week. Dave was out of town, so I don't actually have any pictures of the big event. But it turned out to be a pretty good day. Dave's mom, Lael, took me and Spencer and Sadie out to lunch. Then we wandered arounf Gardner Village. I love Gardner Village. If you've never been there you should go. It's just like an old fashioned little village with fun shops and resturants. Then Lael watched the kids so I could go out to dinner with one of my sisters. We went to The Cheesecake Factory. Yummy! I really love their 30th anniversary chocolate cheesecake. We wandered around the mall for a bit after dinner. I got some winter clothes for the kids and a sweater for me. I got home about 10pm (I wanted to be sure that Dave was there when I got home so I waited until I was sure he would be there). When I got home my honey was there and that made a perfect ending to my birthday. I just love him so much and it is always hard when we are apart.
Thank you to everyone who helped to make it a wonderful day!

Golfing and the family party

Mark took some friends mini-golfing for his party this year. They ahd a great time. It was probably my favorite party I've ever done. It was really fun and really easy. The kids had a great time. I didn't have to make a cake, we got slurpees after, and there was nothing to clean up when it was done.

Here's the friends. Four crazy boys made for a fun round of golf. We went over to the skating rink afterwards to play video games. They thought that was great.

And here's the cake! I got this crazy idea in my head this year that I wanted to try out fondant. I heard there was a kind you could make that tastes great! Well it didn't taste great, but it was edible, and it looks really cool! I would definatley make it again. The cake turned out really cool and Dave even had fun helping me decorate it. So naturally I thought it was more fun because Dave helped and was excited about it. And with our Dr. Seuss theme it fit really well.

I really liked the wires coming out of the top the best. Well actually I just like the whole thing. I was a lot of fun to make. It took 2 1/2 cake mixes and a huge batch of frosting and then 1 1/2 batches of fondant to decorate.

And here's the family at the party... the kids had fun opening presents. And everyone else looks like they are really enjoying watching them open them. A lively bunch aren't they?

Spencer loved the playdough. I think I must be crazy to have told Grandma Lael to get that... I am not a fan of playdough... but Spencer really likes it alot, more than his brothers do, and ours was all dried out. He has played with it almost every day since he got it. A great present. He also got a bunch of Bakugans (visit http://www.bakugan.com/ to learn more). I'm not sure why, but he loves those little things.

Mark got a cool thing, Eye Clops (http://www.eyeclops.com/) from his Uncle Jonny. He's had fun looking all sorts of things up close. He also got some Legos and books.

We got Spencer a Wiggle car or Plasma car and he thought that was pretty cool. Some of out neighbors have one and they all think they are pretty cool. And so the birthdays are finished for at least a couple of months.

Mark's Birthday

Mark wearing the birthday hat! They think we are funny to make them wear the hat each year... but we've told them they ahve to wear the hat or they get no presents!

Waiting patiently for presents can be really hard.

Mark loves Legos. And I think he like Bionicles the best. That is what kind he asks for most often anyway. But Lego in general are the best. He has at least 10 sets now and I'm sure that number will grow over the next few years.

Spencer's Birthday... again?

We didn't have the birthday hat with us in St.George, so we had him put it on on Mark's birthday, just so we could get a picture. It's he cute?!

Spencer had a Wall-e birthday with some of his little friends this week. They had a great time. Here is his cake. Cute, yes... but not my best cake ever. But the kids thought it was cool and so that's what matters most.

Here they are playing one of the games we had planned. They thought it was alot of fun to throw around garbage (just little balls of crumpled paper).

Opening presents. The kids were all so excited to do presents, although some one them were a bit reluctant to give thiers away.

St. George- Home again, home again, jiggety jog

Sunday Morning we went to church. It was about like our ward here. There were lots of people. The chapel was full. But apparently they get lots of visitors so they don't ask anyone if they are new. This suits me just fine. That way I didn't have to answer any questions.
When I was little and we would visit my grandparents in Kanab, it seems like we did a lot of wandering around. We visited lots of places in Utah many times. One of the thing I remember liking was going to ghost towns. So on the way home we stopped by one. It wasn't as cool as the ones I remember, but it was still fine. It was Silver Reef. This town mined about 25 million dollars of silver ore. Pretty cool that places like this used to exist. They had about 200 people living there at it's height.

And old wagon along the road.

This is the pioneer cemetary at Silver Reef. None of the wood markers have any names on them. There were a few stone ones dating back to about 1880. Most of those ones were either babies or children. It really made me think about how blessed we are to have all our children still with us. I can't even imagine what it would be like to have to bury one of our children. But the pioneers were strong people. They knew what they believed in and they stuck with that. I'm sure they still had struggles and many hard times and I'm sure burying those little one wasn't easy. But we are so blessed to have the gospel in our lives and to know that families are forever. I know with out a doubt that heaven would not be heaven without being surrounded by family. It's wonderful to know that death really isn't goodbye forever. It's just a waiting period until we meet again.

Our nest stop on the way home was Cove Fort. All I can say is, "Amazing!" I couldn't live like they did so long ago. The picture above is on the inside of the fort. They have 12 rooms in the fort. 6 on the north and 6 on the south. The south side was for work and the north was bedrooms.

This is the telegraph room. You can see the telegraph machine they used to transmit messages. They told us they had to have someone every 30 miles to send messages from place to place.

Here is the dining room. It cost 35 cents to eat dinner here. Mrs. Hinckley cooked 10-12 5 lbs loaves of bread everyday. They travelers who stayed over night here got to eat in this room with the Hinckley family. They always said a prayer before eating, even with non-member visitors.

Here is the kitchen. It's amazing to me how good of a kitchen it seems to be. While it is nothing like what we have these days, I look at it a think it would be worth knowing how to cook in this kind of a kitchen. I actually really thought it was amazing.

Here is the washroom. Unlike the kitchen... I would not want to have to do this. Maybe it's because I love to cook and hate to clean. I would not want to have to make my own soap from fat and stuff (the soap is in the yellowish container on the left).

Here is the Hinckley boy's bedroom. They traded with Indians, so each bed had a blanket on it. This room had the entrance to the cellar. I really would have liked to go in it. I also would have liked to try out one of the beds. I'm not sure how I would like sleeping on straw with ropes underneath.

This is the room Brigham Young would sleep in when he traveled south and then back north. It was probably the nicest bedroom of them all. There were two other bedroom for travelers. One for girls and one for boys. To sleep on a bed it cost 12 cents a night for half of the bed. Many travelers would go to bed alone and wake up next to a stranger. They didn't say if it cost to sleep on the floor.

And here we are in the entrance as we were leaving. The wall are 18 ft high. The walls are made from lava rock and limestone mortar. The wall are 6 ft thick at the bottom and 2 ft thick at the bottom. They had holes in the walls to stick out guns if needed, but they were very blessed to never have been attacked. In fact the only one who was ever shot there was on of the Hinckley boys and he was accidentally shot in the knee by his brother.

And that's the end!

St. George Day 3 & 4

On Friday I guess we didn't take any pictures... we went swimming in the morning. Then after lunch we went to the Fiesta Fun Center. It's like Boondocks... with mini golf, bumper boats, video games, a soft play area, go karts and batting cages. We played lots of the video games to win tickets to get prizes and then the dads took the kids on the bumper boats. They all had a really good time.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPENCER!!!
For his birthday Spencer wanted to go swimming. So we did that. The after lunch we went to see Night at the Museum Battle at the Smithsonian. It was a pretty good movie. Sadie even got to sit on her own seat and she thought that she was so cool! It was a lot of fun. That night we had a little party with cake, ice cream and presents for Spencer.
Getting ready for the party!!!

Opening presents. Spencer loves Bakugan. We've never seen the show or played the game. I think he just loves that they open up when they get on metal. So that's what we got for him.

Here he is blowing out the candles on his chocolate cake. There is more about this at the bottom. You'll want to see it cause it's pretty funny.

And more presents. He was really happy.

And here is the video... we put candles on his cake and my sister asked if they were they kind that keep relighting and I said "no, that's mean." Well you can see for yourself what happened below. Hopefully you'll get a good laugh.

St. George- Day 1 and 2

The drive down went well... Sadie only threw up 3 times! Luckily the condo has a washer and dryer, so we could clean up everything when we got there. When we got there we ate hot dogs and homemade salsa.

Here we are on the night we got to the condo. Thanks so much Winterton's for letting us come with you guys. We had a really good time. We'll have to do it again sometime. There aren't any pictures, but we went swimming pretty much everyday... but that's what you do when it 100+ degress outside, right?
On day two we drove to the lovely city of Las Vegas! We went to the aquarium there at one of the hotels. It was alot like the aquarium we have here, but bigger and with a much cooler room with glass walls, floors and ceilings. Very cool! I think these fish are really cool. They look all spikey.

This is a picture of one of the sea turtles. I guess they don't come out much cause everyone was very excited to see them. But then it's not every day that you see a sea turtle, so maybe they were just excited. The picture isn't very good... I tried to get a good one... but with virtually no light and lots of people and thick glass and not knowing how to really work the camera this was the best I could do.

Here we are on the strip... luckily it was pretty clean. The kids wanted to go to M&M World. And of coarse they spent their $ on way too expensive M&M candies... but at least they had fun!

And here is the beautiful landscape between Las Vegas and St. George. The sun was setting and I just love mountains. The kids were pretty good on the 2 hour drive back to the condo. We had Sadie and Michaela and Mark and Maddie in our car. The kids thought I was fun to play musical cars pretty much eveytime we went somewhere. This created some drama, but less then it would have if we made them all ride in their own cars.

Ever wonder how they take those cool pictures of car and city lights where it looks like the lights are moving? Well... it's actually pretty fun. I had alot of fun playing with the camera on the way home. Lights and cameras can be very cool

4th of July fun! Day 1

We just love Grandma and Grandpa Upton. We are so glad they came to visit. It's too bad we don't get to spend more time with them cause they sure are fun. Sadie was the only one who was a bit wary of them at first. But she warmed up and even let Grandma hold her before we went home. The kids sure had lots of fun on the blow up water slide. Thanks Uncle Michael for getting it and setting it up. Sadie even enjoyed getting plowed over by the boys on the slide.

Zach wasn't too sure about all the water, but he and Grandpa had a great time hanging out in the shade. Grandpa always has a good time watching us all play.

The kids decided that after the slide got put away they weren't quite done yet, so they all hung out in the kiddy pool. But the little girls were done with it by then, so it all worked out.

At the end of the day the kids sang songs and Grandma and Grandpa gave them each a flag and a little wind mill. We tried to get a good picture, but with some many little bodies it's next to impossible. Luckily Uncle Devin took the real picture and I'm sure he'll share.