December 2010

Tanis at his band concert

Tanis received the Student of the Month award for his class we were so proud of him.

The stockings were hung with care.....

And Santa Claus found our house. We had Christmas at my house this year and it work really well. I have to thank my sweet babysitter though for getting my tree up and decorating it with the children. I didn't know when I was going to have the time to do it with school 4 nights a week and she surprised me one night to a beautiful decorated tree. And the kids loved doing it.

I absolutely love this face when Ash opened her Ipod Shuffle she was so excited. Santa did well this year.

One of the reasons we had Christmas at my house was my dad refused to get a tree this year and every year he is as we call him the Grinch or Scrooge. So while we were out shopping my mom found the book How the Grinch stole Christmas. It was prefect and she made him read it all the way through till the end to find his real present of movie tickets.

One of my days off that Derek also had off from work we decided to go for a family outing. We took the kids to the Arizona Museum of Natural History. It was really neat. Lots of dinosaur bones, we got to pan for gold, saw a flash flood, and there was a mine are that had the train that Wyatt is pointing at he loves trains. We had a lot of fun.

After the museum we headed over to see the Mesa temple lights and the nativities that were set up in the Visitor Center. It was so amazing. The lights were beautiful and all around the grounds they had life size parts of the nativity. The Visitor Center nativities were neat to see from all over the world. All in all we had an amazing December. We had multiple people leave gifts and cash on our doorstep to make our Christmas season special. It was a special thing for us and a wonderful teaching experience for us to teach our children about the gift of giving. I can't wait to be the family doing the giving. Thank you to those who we will ever be grateful too for those generous gifts of giving.

November 2010

Linda and Kent came to visit us the beginning of November. We had such a fun time with them. Tradition when Grammie comes to visit is Rice Crispy Treats. The kids love to bake with her. This time even Wyatt got to help her. And of course they were so yummy.

The big thing we did while they were here was we went to the Phoenix Zoo. It was so much fun. We saw lots of animals. Our favorite area at the zoo was where the giraffes were. The funniest thing was to watch Wyatt with the map. The other funny thing was when we saw the tortoises one of them was trying to get out to get Elora. We loved having them here and can't wait to be with them again.

The Wedding of the Century

Dad and Kelsie at The Rehearsal

This is one of my favorites from the weekend. Wyatt helping pull the cooler to the Rehearsal Dinner at the Park.

Our flowers

I painted all the little girls fingers and toes red they loved it.

Front of Ashley's hair

Back of Ashley's hair

Aly putting on Kelsie's necklace

Mom fixing the veil

The bride aka Kelsie

Kathleen (maid of honor), Jalissa (flower girl), and Chrissy (bridesmaid)
3 of the 9 dresses I made

Ashley all ready for pictures and the wedding. She looked absolutely gorgeous.

The 3 flower girls. So adorable.

The centerpieces.

The kids dancing. They really didn't stop till the night was over.

The cake

Derek and Ashley dancing.

Feeding the cake to each other. They were nice to each other and didn't smash it.

Brian (ring bearer), Ashley and Elora.

Derek and Elora. This is towards the end of the night and it was like 10pm and she was still awake and going.

The last dance. Mr and Mrs Pensyl.

So the wedding of the century happened in our family. My sister is finally married. Many of you know that this was a lot of work for me and many months in the planning. I will post pictures of all the things I created to make this wedding come together in a different post. It was so beautiful and we had lots of fun that day and night. Wish I had some ceremony pictures to put up here but Kelsie just got them online and hasn't gotten her disk yet so I will have to do a second post of the ceremony. In the end I will never recommend the Wig Wam to anyone but we still had a blast and they looked amazing. Wyatt refused to walk down the aisle and even started stripping his tux off behind the bushes but I couldn't do anything cause I was at the front as a bridesmaid. Just one of the many funny little things that happened that day. When you have kids you just never know what will happen. So glad that it was all she wanted and that they are happily ever after now.