Merry Christmas!

Fun times before Christmas

Jeff's brother Mike brought his family down to visit for us to all make the trek to Las Vegas for BYU's bowl game. Here are some fun pictures from the past couple of days...

Connor looking cute:
















Skyler & Bailey sleeping - what else is there to do?:































Brooke with her little cousins:

Las Vegas Bowl 2009

We had a great time at this year's bowl game - we took the girls this year... it was really windy which made it really cold. Brooke was miserable, but toughed it out.

Lots of pictures from the game....

Before the game:





































In the stadium:





































Pregame - military w/ giant flag & Terry Fator singing the National Anthem:
















The girls trying to keep warm - they ran up & down the stairs & drank hot chocolate:

After the game, Jeff ran down on the field, the scoreboard with the final score, Max Hall & Bronco Mendenhall with the trophy, etc.:

It's almost Christmas!

Didn't really feel like pulling out ALL the Christmas decorations this year... oh well.

Here are some pictures.... first our small tree - it's about 4 feet tall and we put it on a table so our babydog doesn't knock it over (and she has tried). Then, the St George temple all decorated for Christmas... what a great time we had at the visitor's center looking at the Reflections of Christ portrait display. We also caught a showing of Mr. Krueger's Christmas... one of Jeff's favorite Christmas movies starring Jimmy Stewart. And then finally some pictures of the stockings I made the girls this year (these took A LOT of effort and I tried new techniques for the first time... glad I only have two kids so I didn't have to make a whole lot of these. And they're big! They are about 2.5 feet long!)

It snows in St George?!?

Before I get any snide remarks about how it's not really snow, and it's colder at my house.... Yes, I acknowledge we have winter weather VERY easy here comparatively. The girls have been begging us to drive up to someplace with snow so they can play. Hopefully the thimble-full we got here appeased them, because this is as much as I want to deal with! :)

Some pics of the hills in their cold, snowy blanket:

Girls playing and building the mini-snowman that melted a few hours later when the snow turned to rain (and Amber, the dog, did not know what was going on, but knew she was cold and didn't like it):

Happy Birthday to me!

I turned 30 a couple of weeks ago. I spent all year telling anyone who would listen that I'd never need to celebrate another birthday again... but I decided by the time the actual birthday came around that being 30 isn't so bad. Now I can just laugh at my parents because they have a 30 year old! :)

Some pictures of the pretty flowers my dad sent (for free it turns out) on my birthday:

Thanksgiving

Does this picture sum up how Gerald & Judi's trip went while they were here?















Just kidding! They had a really nice time, and even though Gerald was recovering from surgery, Jeff's parents seemed to enjoy a break from harsh winter weather and relax.

Here are a few pictures of the sunsets we enjoyed the week of Thanksgiving:

Brooke can ride a 2 wheeler!

Even though Brooke is 7, she's never expressed interest in trying to ride a 2-wheeler by herself before a few weeks ago. So, on Thanksgiving while I was cleaning up dinner, Jeff took Brooke out and helped her (she picked it up immediately, so she was more than ready by herself).

Here are some pictures:

Christmas Decorations

Brooke is begging me to decorate for Christmas. With this head cold, the background on this blog is as far as I'm getting this weekend.

In more fun news, I scored some great deals at the fabric store today so this week I will be making Christmas presents! :)