It was a very merry Christmas

                    
     Our Christmas Break has been full of family fun. Here's some photos of the highlights:

Christmas Eve Candlelight Dinner

Opening one present (jammies not so matchy thanks to Mom getting some wrong sizes)

Leaving treats for Santa (everyone leaves Mtn Dew instead of milk, right?)

Looks like Santa came!

Brady's favorite gift

He has hardly taken it off since he got it!

Mallory got a little video camera, so you can be expecting some sweet Sunday afternoon movies soon.

A new bike for Dallin (since his last one was stolen...but I don't want to talk about that)

Aspiring chef McKenzie got a crepe maker and this fun cupcake book

I got Mark this cool canvas for his office,

and he got me a zoom lens for my camera (I took this picture of a hawk from my kitchen window!)

After opening up all our goodies we headed to Shelley to see Mark's family. We had a fun party Sunday night with our favorite $1 present exchange game.

Notice Brady's missing front tooth (unfortunately he didn't lose the second one in time for us to sing "All I Want for Christmas...", you know the rest)

         Here's some of  the cousins trying to trade the gifts they weren't exactly thrilled with.

Monday we left for Pocatello to meet up with three of my sisters, Amber, Chelsea and Lindsay and their families for just a few hours. We had such a great time that we all forgot to take a single picture!

Now we're back home and the kids are enjoying playing with all their new toys and I'm enjoying sleeping in and wearing my pajamas until noon. I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas filled with the people you love!

18 years and counting

Mark and I had a fun anniversary weekend celebrating 18 years of marriage. Considering I was only 17 when we met, 18 years is a long time! Mark surprised me with these gorgeous flowers Saturday morning that go so well with our Christmas decor!

 

Reminded me a lot of this picture from when we were first dating (taken in the hall of my apartment in Heritage Halls) Mark's always been a great one for bringing flowers.

Friday night we went to a couple's Ugly Sweater Christmas Party. Check out these lovely numbers:

You may not notice the shoulder pads and metallic gold thread that accent my fabulous (and itchy!)  sweater. And no, I'm not pregnant but I certainly look like it here!Saturday we watched BYU play football (yay!) and basketball (boo! their first loss) and then went out to dinner with friends. I had to make sure Mallory took another picture of us so the ugly sweater one wasn't the only one to document the weekend.

I feel very fortunate to have spent more than half of my life with this wonderful man and look forward to many happy memories to come.

Last Wednesday we woke up (at 5:30) to the sound of the answering machine informing us (in Spanish) that we would be having our first ever snow day! Aren't those the two words every kid dreams of hearing? We had a wonderful cozy day staying home and playing in the snow. I only left to go pick up this visitor from the airport.

We had a great weekend with Ashlee visiting from Phoenix. Lindsay came up as well and we had some fun sister time shopping, eating out and watching episode after episode of Modern Family. I only wish the rest of the Moyes girls could have joined us!

 

Thanksgiving 2010

 

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend with our good friends the Robertsons. They drove up from Herriman, UT to spend the holiday with us. We've known Eric and Raquel since we first moved to Maryland for med. school over 16 years ago.

Here we are at one of our last Thanksgivings together in 1996 (along with the Carters and the Beans):

and McKenzie looked like this:

All these years later and we still love spending time together. Our kids match up perfectly, making it hard to say good bye, especially when they have to leave early because of the weather.

 

(Mallory showing off her origami skillz)

We had a great time cooking, eating, shopping, playing games, watching sports and going to the movies. This Thanksgiving we were most thankful for good friends who are like family to us!

First Snow

This morning we woke up to this:

Ten minutes later Brady was dressed like this:

One month later

OK, it's officially been a month since I've posted and I don't even have a good excuse for why I've been gone. I have been trying to keep up with Young Women's, two different PTOs and my crazy kids. I haven't been keeping up on taking pictures, exercising or keeping the house clean. Life has settled down quite a bit now that the boys' football seasons are over. Dallin's team finished undefeated and if you know Dallin, that's a big deal (it's all about the winning for him.) Brady's team also had a perfect record, in the opposite direction. They didn't win a single game but there were a few close ones! Here he is at the team party:

Instead of trophies we had a family that made full size posters of each kid with pictures highlighting their season. Such a fun idea.

Now that football is over we are taken over by basketball: Mallory cheering at the middle school games, Kenzie taking yearbook pictures at the high school games and Mark obsessing about the BYU games (he even drove to Provo last weekend for the season opener.) Luckily Dallin won't start playing until January and we decided to let Brady wait another year or so. It is nice not running to practices all the time.

Halloween was great, with a fun Harvest party at the school and the ward trunk-or-treat.

Since the costume box was out, there was also a lot of other dressing up going on. I found these pictures on my camera:

(Face will remain covered to protect his identity)

(Notice the famous "stick gun" which was painted camouflage to coordinate with his army Halloween costume)

The funny thing is, we were looking at some old photos for FHE this week and it's crazy how many times Kenzie and Mallory dress up the boys as girls. Eventually the boys are going to object to this, right? Right?

Dallin celebrated his 10th birthdy last week with a fun party with 11 friends. Note to self: eleven 9-10 year-olds can be loud...very loud, especially when singing Happy Birthday.

 

 One of my favorite moments during the party was when the boys were watching Toy Story 3. When Andy was packing for college one of the boys said, "Oh, I hate growing up. Growing up is the worst!"  I agree, and having your kids grow up is even harder. I can't believe Dallin is already 10 (and more than halfway out of the house! Think about that!) He's such a great kid and while he may drive me crazy at times I wouldn't change anything about him. It's like his teacher said in conferences a few weeks ago, "It's not just that he's such a smart kid, it's that he's also such a nice kid." I couldn't ask for more.

Design Help Needed!

I recently started changing up the decor in our bedroom. My old bedding was starting to feel a little old-ladyish and I wanted something fresher. Here's what I found on clearance at Dillard's (with some help from Ashlee and Nathan finding some pieces in Phx. and Denver)

Before:

After:

(Please ignore the old furniture that I would love to change...someday.)

This is what I did with the wall to the right:

I need help deciding what to do over the bed. I was thinking about a collection of different white plates, but is it weird to have plates in a bedroom? And is that too girly for Mark? How about different white mirrors? A large piece of artwork? Do I need to expand and have some other colors or is it OK to just do green and white?

P.S. This post is mostly for my sisters who live too far away and on whom I rely for validation on most decisions that I make (and who are also great decorators...I'm talking to you Melissa!) But of course I'll take suggestions from any of my readers!

Goooo Cougars!

Homecoming 2010 did not disappoint, especially since the team came through with a W, making this boy very happy.

 Is it weird to say that I got a little emotional during the parade when the marching band was playing the fight song? BYU and Provo just mean so much to me (it was the town where I was born after all!) and being there always feels a little like coming home. It's so fun to see all the blue and white after living in Boise surrounded by orange and (a not as nice-looking) blue.

Loved getting to see lots of family and cute new babies. A great tradition that I hope continues for many years to come!