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.