Happy Birthday to Tom

Today is Toms Bday but we celebrated yesterday since he took the day off. The kids were out of school for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We went to Alvin and the Chipmunks the squeakquel at the theatre and had pizza, texas sheet cake and homemade vanilla ice cream. It was fun. Thanks for being born Tom. We love you tons and can't imagine life without you! Thanks for being such a great daddy and best friend. We wish you never had to work and we could hang out all day everyday.


Conor and Kya were busy all morning making this crown and a bday card for Tom. They are so thoughtful and love their daddy tons.


Tom has absolutely no self control when it comes to chocolate, so he kept sneaking little bites until the cake looked like this before I could even get candles on it. Can you tell we had just eaten pizza?

Like father, like sons! Notice Conors hand sneakin' a bite.

December 2009

Decorating the tree. No real tree this year. Crew is too, "into everything," this year so we opted for the little fake one that we could put out of his reach. Brilliant. Tom is a bit obsessive about the outdoor Christmas lights, but this year he only had time to put up about half of what he usually does. On most of the days that he got home early enough to put them up it would be like 5 degrees out with tons of snow. At least our penguins made it out. They love the snow!

Conor & Kya helping me wrap carmels. I made these at Chrismas time with my mom when I was a kid and they truly are the greatest carmels in the world. My mom even sold them for a while and got requests for special orders. So while we were wrapping Conor asked why you can't buy carmels this good at the store. I told him it was because it was our secret family recipe. He asked what the secret ingredient was because my kids know that I always have a secret ingredient in my cooking. Kya covered her ears and said, "don't tell me because I might forget that I can't tell anyone and I might accidentally tell someone." She was completely serious and begged me not to say it. Finally after much pleading from Conor I said, "the secret ingedient is LOVE! He said oh like in that book when the kid and his grandma made cookies and their secret ingredient was love. I love hanging out with my sweet kids. They are so entertaining!

Briley turned one and we got to go to her party. She was so sweet to share her cake with us and share her sleds at the park. It was so fun. We love having a cousin close by.

Conor and Kya's school Christmas program. It's easy to spot them. Just look for the two cutest kids up there. It's was so cute to see how excited they were about their big performance.


We figured out that the little space between ours and the neighbors house is the perfect sledding slope. Now the kids spend hours with the neighbor kids sledding down it. What a great discovery! Watching my kids play in the snow reminds me of when I was a kid and my siblings and I would play in the snow for hours and not even realize we were cold until we came inside and started to thaw.

We had four families over to make graham cracker gingerbread houses. There were 20 kids in all! Thank goodness for our big fun basement! It was so fun and the kids now want to do it every year.

Tom had to have surgery on his thumb for the arthritis he has been suffering with for a couple of years now. Poor guy. He had a bad reaction to the anethesia and they didn't let me see him for a couple hours after because he was dry heaving and they were trying to get him stabilized and comfy. Finally we went home and he stumbled to bed. But the next morning he went to work. Crazy I know. I tryed to talk him out of it but things were crazy at work so he felt he had to be there. Stupid work! It took a couple weeks for him to feel totally normal again. He slept whenever he could.

Briley and Auntie Krista reading a Christmas book together. I love her and she totally loves me.


The Hardy's came over for Christmas Eve Dinner. We had a Christmas story and then went to see the cool Christmas lights house in our town. When you are parked in front of the house you tune your radio to a cerain station and the lights dance to the music. It's amazing! We went there several times a week the whole month. We are huge fans! We love that Kindy and Nate live close enough to hang out with us.


Christmas day was simple and fun. The kids got a ton of gifts from their parents grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins and that sweet old Santa Claus guy. Thanks everyone for loving them and helping them to feel the spirit of Christmas. I love having the opportunity to make Christmas magical for my kids as my parents did for me. I feel that our anticipation of Christmas gives us an idea of the anticipation that people felt long ago waiting for the arrival of our Savior. We prepare for Christmas by thinking of others through service and gift giving and finding ways to help those less fortunate than ourselves. This reminds me of the people we read about in the scriptures preparing themselves for the birth of Christ. It's such a beautiful time of year and a beautiful story that we are celebrating. I feel honored to get to teach my children the story and try to help them feel the importance of it.

Sadly, Grandpa Kennard passed away the day after Christmas. So the following Tuesday we headed over to Utah to be with family and attend the Funeral. But not before bringing the van to the shop on Monday for a problem that Tom couldn't fix. Usually he fixes the cars. So of course we found out that it had a major engine problem and would cost more to fix than it was worth. So since we'd had that van for 6 years and knew that one major repair would only lead to more, we decided it was time for a new van. At 9pm the night before leaving for Utah, we left the dealership with our new, well new to us, van.

We of course got to see lots of family and I only got a few pics but I think they are great ones. Tom said a beautiful closing prayer at the funeral. Tom and I and the kids loved getting to hang out with our cousins and family. We're glad we were able to be there.


Hanging out at the pool with some of our fun cousins and of course Gramps, who is the biggest kid of them all when it comes to swimming.


Conor making cousin Mina smile. So sweet.



Conor and Kya holding Uncle Danny's chickens


Gramps and Grandma with 9 of their 12 grandkids. Two more will be born this year and that will make 14 in 8.5 years. Cousins are so great!


All of us at Danny's house on New Years. Except Aunt Brenda, Gramps' baby sister, who was taking the picture.

We went over to Uncle Ster and Aunt Mels on New Years Eve to hang out with them for a couple days. We love getting to see them when we're in Utah. We went tubing with them and their two youngest. Then we met up with the rest of the clan at Costa Vida for dinner and to watch the indoor surfing and indoor skydiving, which was awesome to watch. I love all my cousins! They are the greatest. The saying that says, "Cousins are friends for life," is so true.

Cute girls, Conlee and Kya were inseperable.


Raysh was so sweet to carry worn out Conor up the hill when it was time to go.


Crew loves Raysh and Conlee. They are so sweet with my kids.It is always fun to hang out with them.



My cousin Daniel's baby Caprilee and Crew are about 4 months apart and were so cute to see together. She badly wanted to attack him and take his binky and pull his hair, all out of pure love of course. But Crew wanted nothing to do with it and would run the other way and hide. This was the only pic I was able to get of the two of them together while they were watching the indoor skydiving.


On our way home we stopped at Little America for dinner and of course 50 cent ice cream. CHEERS!

Christmas Clothes

My mom got new Christmas clothes for the kids. They look so adorable in them so I tryed to get a pic of them together, which is almost as impossible as getting to 9:00am church on time.

So we got a few like this before Tom became a genius and gave Crew some of his church snacks and he finally held still for two seconds and actually looked at me.

Thanks for the fun new Church clothes Grammy we love you and hope you're feeling better and walking better soon! (Grammy just had her first of two hip replacements. poor little crippled Grammy. At least they are going to be able to fix her. yea!)

Thanksgiving Break '09

This is what came off the bus last Tuesday instead of Kya.

Tom got tickets to a CHL hockey game for the night before Thanksgiving. We became huge fans of the Sundogs when we lived in Az. Tom was always getting free tickets when we lived there too since he's in the same type of work. So when he was offered tickets to a Broncos or Nuggets game, he asked if he could just have tickets to the local CHL game. It was fun but it made us miss our Sundogs. We will have to go again when they play the Sundogs, who this team lost to in the championship game a couple years ago. Haha.

There was a family sitting near us who were very nice and even shared their doughnuts with Kya and Crew. Anyway their teenage daughter was obviously pregnant. So on the way home Tom and I were talking about how hard that would be if your kid got pregnant while in high school. So Tom yelled back to Kya, " Your not allowed to hold a boys hand, EVER." Kya's response was, " what about when we're playing ring around the rosie?"

This was Kya's contribution to our Thanksgiving meal. So sweet.

After Crew ate his meal in his high chair he joined the big kids table.

Yes, Kya is eating a whole turkey leg. She insisted that she have one.

Crew stole this from our friends baby girl, who came to share Thanksgiving dinner with us. Crew bud, I don't think they wanted to share their binky too, but great color.

On Saturday we met Kindy and Nate at Bass Pro Shop. They had activities for the kids while they waited to see Santa. Conor and Kya got to race each other on this track. Conor stood in line a long time to get a turn.

Crew found this and we couldn't keep him off it, even if another kid was on it. He just tryed to but his way in.

He gave Briley a ride........

.......and she obviously loved it!

Giant Snowman

We got more snow and after shoveling the driveway and sidewalk, Tom, with his two little helpers or course, made another one of his giant snowmen. I don't think he knows how to make them small.

Hot Air Balloons and Swimming

These hot air balloons were going up right by our neighborhood. We were watching out our window and one came so close that we could see the people in the basket waving at us. It totally made our day!



A few weekends ago we went to this awesome pool near our house. We've been wanting to go for a while and finally had time. Tom and Kya went down the huge slide a few times before they told Kya she was not tall enough. She was bummed for a second and then found other slides for kids her size. Conor and I each went down once and that was enough for us. We're the not so daring ones in our family. At least we have each other right?

Extracurriculars

Conor's Archery goes year round, we just sign him up every month. There are actually twice as many kids in his class than you can see in the picture and there are a lot of different skill level classes. He is trying out different things trying to find something he likes. He is liking archery and has improved quickly. Tom takes him on Saturday mornings while the rest of us sleep in. Last time they got out 3D targets, like fake animals, and Conor shot every one at least once. I think maybe I'll take him next time so I can witness his mad skills.




Soccer is in the Fall and the Spring here. Lucky for Kya because she is always asking when soccer starts again. This was her third year to play and she loves it. I go through the list of things to sign up for with her because she wants to be in something right now but all she wants is soccer. She only has to wait a few more months to play and she can hardly wait.