Halloween

My mom and dad came up to help the girls and Devin carve pumpkins. Justin and Mariah were in Texas visiting Jeramy and his family. They didn't get back home until Halloween afternoon. Their pumpkins turned out really cute. This year Emily did her pumpkin all by herself. Here are pictures of the costumes. Riley's zombie face. Can you tell what Emily is? She wanted to be a baked potato for Halloween. I love that girl. Where does she come up with these ideas? So yes, I had to make her costume. As you can tell I am not a very creative or crafty person but we got it to work. Mariah said she looked like an egg on toast. I guess we can save the costume and use it for that next year. Mariah dressed up as a BYU superfan. I thought the idea of Halloween was to dress up as something you are not. In this case she really is a huge fan. Her costume was easy to do since she already owned all the stuff. Devin was Buzz Lightyear. He loved the costume that we borrowed from Natalie. Especially the wings. He wore the costume to 2 Halloween carnivals and trick or treating and he took people with the wings everywhere he went. My favorite part of the trick or treating was Devin and Lily. This is on my next door neighbor's porch. They made it this far before they were sitting down, looting their buckets. They were content to just sit there and eat. It took a lot of convincing to get them going again.

Thanksgiving!

Looking back now, I think it is a little funny that we went all that way just for Thanksgiving and I took a total of 3 pictures that day. I guess we were so busy visiting and eating that I just didn't think about it. So these are my great moments for the day. The food was delicious. And it was fun to try some new things.

New Year's Eve

We hosted New Year's Eve at our house. The past two years we have missed Jeramy, Erin, Scout, and Eden. This is the most of the group that was at our house (Justin's family, my mom said she didn't know if she could make it until midnight). We have so much food. Really too much food. Lots of snacks and seafood. We do fried shrimp, clams, and crab legs. Here are Emily and Mariah with some of their cousins. The kids all got along pretty good. It is such a long night for them. Even Cooper, Lily, and Devin made it up until midnight. I wasn't trying to keep Devin awake, but he took a late nap and with everything going on he wasn't ready for bed. Tiffini and Spencer and their kids spent the night at our house so they didn't have to drive back home that night (and Dominic stayed too). The girls were really excited to have a sleepover with their cousins. They were all so tired everyone slept good. It was fun way to start the new year.

Holiday Highlights

Here are some highlights of our Christmas vacation. Justin's aunt had a Christmas party and Santa and Mrs. Claus came to visit the kids. It was great . The kids were very impressed. He had a real beard and brought photos of all the improvements he has been making to the North Pole. It was really fun. We received lots of questions about if he was the "real" Santa. We celebrate Christmas Eve with my family and they come to our house for dinner and presents. Here is my mom and dad with Devin. This is Devin on Christmas morning after we had opened presents. He really liked the presents and he did play with his toys not just the wrapping paper and boxes. This is Justin's mom with her pile of presents she purchases for her kids, their spouses, and the grandkids. She does an amazing job getting us what we like. She puts so much time and effort into getting things for everyone. It was a good day. We had a great Christmas. I hope you all had a good one too!

Easter

I am a little behind on what has been happening. So I am going to give a quick summary of the last couple weeks. We had a great Easter. Here are some pictures of the kids in their new Easter clothes.