Kailee, Joseph, and Adelaide

Adelaide and Joseph came over yesterday and played with Kailee in the snow. This was taken in our backyard on TOP of the trampoline. haha! The had fun jumping in the snow. :o) Joseph really did not like it very much because he had a hard time standing up in that big snow suit and snow boots. :o)
They are sitting on the innertube in this picture on our back patio that Gene attempted to shovel off until the snow shovel broke. There was about 2 feet of snow on our patio--lots of work to move all of that stuff!!! The drifts were close to 3 feet out there.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!!!

This was taken at Chad and Melanie's house on Christmas Eve--you can't really tell from the picture, but their car is pretty much buried in the snow. I am sure Chad would have had to shovel the snow just to get their car out.
This was taken at our house on Christmas Eve also. You can't even see the mountains behind the houses because of the low snow clouds. But that is about a six-foot pile of snow from our driveway. Jenalee's Jeep is pretty much surrounded by snow. Kailee had fun sliding down the pile of snow on her innertube--she would go about 20 feet each time.

Christmas Day

This is a picture of Melanie and Jenalee taken at Jared and Shiloh's house on Christmas Day--we spent the afternoon over there and ate a yummy meal and exchanged presents. Jenalee is holding up her Hannah Montana journal that Jared and Shiloh (mostly Jared) bought for her--as a joke. They also got her a gift card, which she has already partly used--that didn't take long. :o)
Chad and Melanie are enjoying watching the kids open their presents. Well, actually it looks like Chad is PLAYING with the kids' toys instead. :o)
I made Jared and Shiloh look at the camera so that I could take their picture--I think everyone was glad when I finally put the camera away. :o)
Kailee is opening her present from Chad and Melanie in her new Christmas sweatsuit. I'm just glad that it fit and that I didn't have to take ANYTHING back this year. If you notice Adelaide's striped socks, Kailee bought those for her, and they actually light up on the sides. Chad painted a picture of Gene and I, but he is still working on it, so I will have to take a picture of it and put it on my blog when he is finished. He did a really good job on it--too bad it looks just like us. :o)

Christmas Day - continued

This was Christmas morning, and Kailee is trying on some new houseshoes that she got for Christmas. Her new Cricket Cutter is sitting behind her in the white box--I believe that may be her favorite Christmas present ever. She has been making all kinds of things--mostly paper dolls. I will have to post some pictures of hers AND Jenalee's paper dolls later. :o) Did you notice the little gingerbread dolls behind Kailee?? Sharon made those for Jared and Chad a LONG time ago, but we still set them out every year. :o)
This is a picture of Laura over at Jared and Shiloh's house waiting to open one of her presents. She was being very patient because we went around the room and took turns opening our presents.
Joseph was so excited about his green glitter ball that Christiaan and Laura gave to him--you can't really see the glitter in this picture, but it is a really cool ball. Shiloh's mom found them at The Container Store in Dallas and sent a bunch of them to her to give away.
Adelaide is sitting on Christiaan's 'couch' admiring her white glitter ball. She is in her new 'dance clothes' that she got for Christmas--she loves to twirl around in it and dance for us.
This is what we got Christiaan for Christmas--it is a construction set complete with dynamite and rocks and loud stuff. His parents will love it. :o) Notice their big-screen TV in the background--really nice for watching BYU games. :o)

Santa's Suit

Here is a picture of the little Santa suits that Kailee and I made for her friends at church and school. Notice the little flap on the back side of Santa's suit--isn't that cute? Anyway, this is what the attached poem says: "I went looking for a stocking, and couldn't find a spare, so I stuffed your goodies in Santa's underwear." Then we put candy and a little Christmas magnet that we made inside of the suit. We got the idea from a friend in Texas, so we can't take credit for the cute idea.

Hogle Zoo

Jared/Shiloh invited us all to go to the zoo with them yesterday--it will probably be the last time for awhile since it is freezing today!! We rented a wagon to carry the little ones around the zoo, and Joseph always had to sit by Wawa (Laura) as he calls her. :o) He just loves her to death--they would sit there and smile at each other, then he would lean over and give her a great, big hug. I thought he was going to rip her head off a few times. :o)
Adelaide had to take a turn sitting by Laura too since she's the baby of the family. Notice the 'bracelets' on Laura's hands--they aren't really bracelets. They go with a toy, but she loves to wear them as bracelets. :o)
They just finished this really cool carousel at the zoo--Jared/Christiaan are sitting in a peacock, and instead of horses, they have all kinds of animals for the kids to sit on, like panda bears, tigers, penguins, lions, polar bears, zebras, etc. The kids loved riding on it.
Melanie and Christiaan got tired of walking, so Chad pulled them in the wagon for awhile. It was a little hard going UP the hills. :o)
All of the kids, along with Gene, Jared, Jenalee, and Kailee went on a little train ride. We had already walked around the whole park, and by that time, the park was closing, and we all went home. The weather was PERFECT for a trip to the zoo, so we really enjoyed it.

More Halloween Parties

You can't have enough Halloween parties, right? :o) Chad/Mel invited Kailee and I to go with them to their Primary Halloween party for the children in their ward. It was at their Bishop's house again, so we just walked there. Chad/Mel dressed up like Wesley and Buttercup from the movie "The Princess Bride". Chad made his mask from an old dress that someone had given to Melanie, and Melanie made her dress from a tablecloth that they had never used. :o) I thought she did a really good job on the dress, especially considering she didn't even have or use a pattern for it!! Chad had a partial mustache and then colored in the rest with an eyebrow pencil. :o)
This is a picture of Chad's Bishop inside their house--if you can't tell, he dressed up like a hippie. :o) The little boy behind the Bishop had on a Steve Young football jersey, and Joseph had on his penguin suit again.
You probably can't tell, but there is a little boy inside this chicken suit. It was the funniest thing watching him trying to walk in that suit.
This is their Bishop's backyard--all of the kids LOVED the built-in slide. You can see Adelaide, Kailee, and Joseph at the top of the slide.
I had to get a picture of this little dog, so I had the owner hold her up for me. She had the dog dressed up like a fairy--it was hilarious. The green part is the skirt. :o)

Little Halloween Goblins

We had our ward Halloween party last night, and it was a lot of fun. We ended up taking Adelaide and Joseph at the last minute--Chad/Mel wanted to go eat out, but they weren't gone for long. They came back and played some of the games with us. Anyway, there was a really good turnout--I am sure there were close to 200 people there. We had a dinner too, so they had prepared lots of food. Papa is holding Joseph in this picture while he gets a ghost painted on his face. The girl who was doing it told him to hold really still, and it was so funny--the only thing that he moved was his eyes, and he kept looking around and cutting his eyes, but he never moved a muscle. He was really good for her. They had already painted a little red heart on Adelaide's face. The big guy is the 'nerd'. haha! Adelaide was dressed up like Cinderella, and she borrowed some 'glass' slippers from a friend. Anyway, she asked Melanie, "If I drop my 'glass' slippers on the floor, will they break?" :o) Joseph was dressed up like a daddy penguin, and he had a stuffed baby penguin that he was holding. Every once in awhile, he would just squeeze his baby penguin really tight. :o)
I made Kailee pose for this picture--she was thrilled. :o I just thought the picture of the pumpkin was so cute, and I wanted her in the picture. This was the "Go Fishing" booth, so they all got a bag of goodies with candy, play dough, play jewelry, etc.
This was Adelaide as she was trying to 'catch' a fish. She wanted to know if they were real fish. :o)
Joseph didn't really understand the whole fishing deal, but he was excited to get his bag of candy. :o) You can see him eyeing it in this picture. haha!
This is a picture of Kailee with a couple of her friends. Kailee is holding up her Longhorn foam finger--she got a little tired of carrying it around, so guess who ended up with it for part of the time? :o) Ashley, the one in the middle, was dressed up like a black cat, and Kiera was dressed up like a Krispy Kreme donut girl. I asked her if I could have a donut, but she just laughed at me. :o)

Little Miss Pixie

This picture was taken a few weeks ago, but when Adelaide comes over here, she loves for Kailee to dress her up like a little pixie fairy. She is wearing an old dress of Kailee's, which is still a little big for her, but she didn't care. Then Kailee pinned some wings on her and slicked her hair down like a little pixie. Kailee got her hair all wet, then sprayed it, then she put the back of her hair in pig tails, which you can't see in the picture. They were TINY, little pig tails. :o) But Kailee loves to fix her hair for her. :o)

Drummer 'Girl' Buttons

These are the buttons that I made for Kailee's dance class--they look small in the picture, but they are about 5" wide. Her class is doing a dance to the song "Little Drummer Boy", so Amidey wanted the girls to dress like toy soldiers. Anyway, I had to make 10 of these buttons--each girl will have 2 buttons on the front of their skirt. They were fairly easy to make--I just cut out the cardboard circles and wrapped them in aluminum foil. Then I had some round stickers that I colored black and used those to look like holes in the buttons. The black circle around the edge of the button was just drawn with a magic marker. I pinned some huge safety pins on the back of the button so that the girls can attach them to their clothes.

The Dinosaur Museum

I had Gene pose for this picture. haha! This is just a picture of a 'man' excavating some dinosaur bones. The sets inside this museum were very real looking.
This is not a picture of a dinosaur--this is actually the bones of a real dinosaur. Isn't it strange looking with the tall bones on his back?
They had an exhibit of a cave that looked similar to where these small dinosaurs would live. Kailee had fun climbing in and going through the little cave. If you look really close, there are some very small dinosaurs up above Kailee's head.
I could only get the legs of this huge dinosaur in the picture with Kailee. This dinosaur was called a "Super T-Rex"--I didn't even know there was such a thing!!
This is a picture of a strange looking dinosaur that was found here in Utah--that's where it got its name. It is called a Utahraptor.

Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point

This activity was called 'gemstone mining'--we had to BUY a bag of sand for $6.00, and mixed in with the sand were all kinds of stones that they let the kids pretend to mine. They dumped the sand into the little box that had a screen in the bottom. They had water running down the trough to wash the sand on down. After the sand cleared out of their box, all that was left were the stones, and they gave Kailee a little bag to collect the stones. This was her favorite thing to do that day I think.
This was just a huge 'pumpkin tree'--you can't really tell from the picture, but each pumpkin has been carved with all kinds of different pictures or faces on them. The tree has green lights all over it, so they light it up at night.
There were different slides all around each side of this huge stack of haystacks--the hay was stacked up about 10 feet high and about 30 feet long.
In their corn maze this year, they cut out a picture of David Archuleta--he came in second place on the American Idol show last year. Anyway, this was a picture of the maze that we had to get through--it is really big, and they have several tall lookouts throughout the maze so that you can climb up and see where you are.
I don't know where they got this big chair, but Kailee had fun climbing up there and posing for a picture. At the top of the chair, it says, "Cornbelly's Rocks".

Antelope Island

In the background of this picture and off to the right, you can see the road that leads out to this island. It isn't a bridge--it is actually something called a causeway, which is a raised road across wet ground or water. Anyway, you have to drive several miles on this causeway to get out to the island. This island is in the Great Salt Lake and was discovered in 1845 by John Fremont and Kit Carson--they saw several antelope on this island, so that is where it got its name. Water flows into the Great Salt Lake from 4 different rivers with no outlet so the evaporation leaves very high concentrations of minerals. The lake is usually 5 times saltier than the ocean.
This is just a fiberglass bison--I don't know why they made it white, but they did. Anyway, the visitor's center is in the background on the left. There are a lot of things to do on this island, just not in the fall. haha! They usually have paddleboats, lake cruises served with dinner, horseback riding, rides on the WWII amphibious duck vehicle, hiking, mountain biking, and camping.
This is one of the 500 bison that are found on the island. There are also mule deer, big horn sheep, and antelope, but we never saw them. There were 2 bison in the middle of the road as we were driving, but as soon as we got close to them, they ran off the road, and this is a picture of one of them.

Let's Party!!!

This is a picture of Kailee on her 11th birthday opening her new digital camera. It seemed like it was a week-long celebration since we had a small family party on her actual birthday and then another party 2 days later with a few of her friends.
Here's a picture of all of the girls after they decorated their t-shirts--I thought they all turned out cute. You can't really see the decorations very good in this picture, but the girls really liked them. The 2 girls on the ends are twins. Anyway, from left to right is Jessica, Whitney, Kiarra, Kailee, Kiera, and Samantha.
I found these foam pumpkins at Wal-Mart, so for one of the games, we blindfolded the girls and let them try to draw a jack-o-lantern with a permanent marker. Some of them were pretty funny. They only did one while blindfolded, but they wanted to go ahead and do all of them--I think they had about 5 each. Anyway, some of them are pretty good artists!!
This is another one of the games that we played--Gene came up with this one. But we tied a string that was about 18" long onto each balloon, and the girls had to 'eat' the string until the balloon touched their mouths. Some of them were kind of gagging. haha!
We didn't open presents until the end, but Kailee mostly got Pet Shops, and they were ALL different from the ones that she already has!! That's amazing considering she has about 90 of them now. :o) Kiera brought a really cute gift--you can see part of it in the picture. But it was a purple basket filled with all kinds of things for a movie night. It had a gift card to Hollywood Videos to rent a movie. Then there was some popcorn with the yummy Mallow Magic, a bottle of orange soda, 2 pairs of socks, a bunch of candy, an activity book, and I can't remember what else. But it was a really cute idea for a gift. I am sure Kailee will put more pictures of the party on her blog, so be sure and look there also. :o)

My Nursery Class

Here are a few of my nursery kids--I took this picture on Sunday. I have about 3 or 4 other kids in my class, but they weren't there. I know at least 2 families were at Disneyland, so that's why they were gone. Anyway, starting on the left: Max, Laila, Kate, Sam, Trevin (Kiera's little brother), Naomi, and Kennedy (her dad is the high school football coach here, and her mother works with me in the Nursery). Max brought the treats on Sunday--we had pretzels and rice krispie treats. Yummy!! If you notice the wagon in the background, that is our wagon. It was such a nice day on Sunday, that I decided to take the kids for a wagon ride around the church. They loved it!