Chicken Little

Clayton came home with a little {BIG} surprise for the boys {and me} tonight.  He had vaguely mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that he would love to have chickens to provide our family with fresh eggs.

I guess i didn't realize how serious he was.

The boys fell madly in love at first sight. Cooper named his chicken Grimlock (think Transformers) and Adam named his little chick Sparky.

They both expressed how excited they are to take care of the chicks and love them, feed them, water them and clean up their cage.

Adam excitedly told us "I guess this means we are farmers now!" 

Customized popcorn bags for movie night!

This is how we do movie nights. It wouldn't be complete without individual customized popcorn bags drawn by mom :)

Luckily they are easy to please so even my crude drawings are welcomed and appreciated.. hehe.

PS. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 is a super cute movie!

Christmas Eve Traditions

This post is about 3 weeks late but better late than never I say!

We started a Christmas Eve tradition a few years ago with our kids that we hope to carry on until they are grown and have families of their own:

We start the evening out by baking sugar cookies for Santa

While they are cooling we pull out the scriptures and read the Christmas Story in Luke.
This year I wanted something a little bit more visual and interactive so I found some cutouts that helped explain the birth of Jesus and laminated them. I bought a foam board so the kids could tape the pieces up and help tell the story as their dad read it.


Afterwards we bring out a present for each boy to open from us:
Matching Christmas jammies!
For some reason this really riled them up and they ran around like crazy for about 40 minutes.. (looking adorable in their jammies of course!)

Then it's time to frost those cookies!!
We know from previous experience that Santa likes LOTS of frosting and LOTS of sprinkles so we don't hold back. We lay them out on Santa's special plate and set them next to the tree.





Next we make sure to hang Santa's magic key outside our front door so that he can get in. (Since we don't have a chimney we had to make sure there was a way he could safely get in..don't worry it only works for Santa)

(This picture is from last year but I had to post it to show the key)

Clayton and Adam then went outside to sprinkle "Reindeer Food" (Oatmeal) on the lawn. (Santa's Reindeer deserve a little treat too!)

The last thing we do is snuggle on the couch and read a Christmas book. This year Adam picked a book called "Santa's Reindeer Games", a funny story about how all the reindeer have to try out in special games to see who can pull Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve.

By now the level of excitement and anticipation at our house is reaching the boiling point! Everything is as ready as it can possibly be for Santa to come!!

Finally, the children are nestled snug in their beds, while visions of sugar plums dance in their heads...And mom and dad? We can finally sit down and catch our breath! :)

Until Christmas morning that is...

Hello Again!

I can't believe it's been 2 months since I've posted anything!!

We have been so busy that at the end of the day I just haven't had the energy to post! September flew by as we got back into the school year and tried to soak in what was left of the warm weather.
October was seriously a blur! We have SEVEN birthdays within our families in October (3 of them are on the same day!) so there was a lot of celebrating going on. We also found time to put up Halloween decorations, visit the pumpkin patch, carve pumpkins, and go trick or treating. I had the busiest month ever with my photography and I was gone several nights a week all month long shooting photo sessions. and I can throw in that I'm on the Families Support Adoption Committee for LDS Family services and devoted one weekend to teaching classes for the required adoptive couple trainings! The last busy event was my Birthday on the 1st of November and now we can breath a sigh of relief...(PHEW! Just typing all that gave me anxiety!) that it's all over and we can focus on the upcoming holidays!
The kids are doing well and had a fun fall. For Halloween Cooper was dressed up as baby cosmo and Adam was a T-rex. He has a new found love and fascination with dinosaurs and was slightly disappointed when his costume arrived on our front porch and we opened the box to find that it had spikes all down it's back. Adam informed me that according to his dinosaur book "T'rex's do NOT have spikes on their backs so this is a Giganotosarous and NOT a T-rex" Luckily I was able to convince him that both dinosaurs are equally fierce and scary and that he could just pretend it was a T-rex costume and nobody would know the difference!

We have already had snow 3 times and it's currently freezing outside which means we are probably in for a cold and hard winter. For some reason, the older I get the less appealing the cold weather is... I can't believe how much I used to love it as a teenager!

Anyhoo here are a few pics from the last couple of weeks:

Cooper as Baby Cosmo
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Adam as T-Rex
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The boys in their matching halloween pj's
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My new hair cut and COLOR!!
This took a while to get used to after my bleached blonde look that I've had for always!
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Adam with one of his favorite stuffed friends "Beary"

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Clayton got the dad of the night award for dressing (more like squeezing) "Beary" into a pair of Adam's old pj's after Adam was concerned that Beary would be cold if he had to sleep in just his fur.
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The cute duo at the pumpkin patch!
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A super adorable pic of Cooper!! Clayton and the boys came with me to one of photo shoots up in the canyon and I snapped this cute pic of Coop with some fall colors in the background. Can't believe he's 14 months old already!
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Our Halloween pumpkins this year :)

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Gettin' our parade on

We had a fabulous 4th of July weekend.

Luckily for us, we get to celebrate twice here in Utah!

This weekend we will be attending our first ever..
Fish Rodeo.
It involves an 18,000 sq ft. man made pond,
over 700 fish,
and hundreds of little kids.
Adam will be right in there trying to catch
his very own fish with his bare hands!

We're looking forward to lots of sunshine, the carnival,
BBQing, and the "real" rodeo.

The finale will be participating in the parade with the rest of the FSA group. We hope to see all our FSA peeps, and family and friends out there too!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Our Spring Trip

We had a great time on our family trip to California

Warm breezes...sunshine..palm trees...the ocean..

Sigh...

We visited the San Diego Zoo

Adam got to climb some Bamboo just like the monkeys

We rode the sky tram...brrr it was chilly up there!

Took many family pictures :)

Adam got a chance to imitate a Gorilla and he totally went for it.

I got a great shot of a humming bird!

We visited Sea World
where we got to feed and pet a dolphin!

This is Monte!

As we were leaving the dolphin exhibit Adam turned to me
and said " That was SO COOL!"

that made the trip totally worth it.


We explored the Wild Animal Park

Went on many, many, carousel rides

Cooper rode one for the first time!

Got our faces painted and saw lots of animals

Adam got to pet cute little deer

And feed cute little birds!

We spent a glorious day at the beach in Coronado

Cooper loved the sand..especially eating it.

Adam swam in the ocean,

And went exploring for sea shells with his dad.

I didn't want to leave.

We spent our last day at the happiest place on earth.

It was wonderful.

Plans are already in the works for next year.

Winter

This past weekend we took a little R & R with the boys



I can't remember the last time we went on a vacation....ok one night does not constitute a vacation but we needed this nonetheless.

It was just nice to be together.

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The views weren't too bad either.
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I was in photographer mode.
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Luckily I always have someone adorable to photograph.
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Our next getaway will be longer. It will definitely be some place warmer.
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For now though, we are enjoying the winter.