More Pictures

Well I don't know if my mom just read my recent post but she just sent me a picture of Nick and Blake at Christmas. I was just saying an hour ago how I wished I had one. So I thought I would post these pictures she just sent me.

Christmas pictures finally

We headed up to Flag for Christmas this year. This is our year to spend with the Dutton family, but since both families were in town this year we got to spend it with both. We actually stayed with my family this year since Jared's brothers are currently living with his parents until they can sell their Tucson home. The pictures are a little out of order. We woke up early and opened presents at Grandpa and Grandma Harris's house then headed over to the Duttons.

Joey, Jared's brother wrapped some silly string for the nieces to open and in the middle of opening presents a big silly string attack was launched. It made quite a mess, but fun and unexpected.
Elizabeth made this tin soldier in school this year out of a Pringles can. It turned out great. She also made me a stiching of an apple.
The girls of course got a ton of high school musical dolls this year. I only got them one set of each doll, which was really hard for me to do. Everytime I would go to the store there would be another one on clearance but I would have to tell myslef, "How many of these dolls do these kids really need?" So I would put them down and not buy them. Yay go me.
Blake got some actual boy toys cars, trains, and blocks. Now he wont have to play with dolls and tea sets anymore.
This is Kayla with her two cousins, Ella and Galey. They played great together. Kayla is still excited for July though when she will get a new baby cousin for her birthday. :)
Here are the pictures at my parents house. My parents went to Disney World a few weeks before Christmas and were able to load up on some great High School Musical merchandise! Towels, journals, games, dolls, and puzzles. We are well stocked.
Here is the cute BYU coed.
Blake loves his Grandpa. He always wants to be held by grandpa. I wish I would have gotten some pictures of Blake and my brother Nick. Nick was the supreme play mate, he would throw Blake all over the place. Im sure when we left Nick took a huge nap because Blake played him hard.
I told you the pictures were out of order. Here are the kids on the stairs waiting to come down Christmas morning. I think this picture is funny because the kids are really happy and ready to go and Jared looks like he needs to go back to sleep. We had a great time. Blake acutally slept all night long this trip, at least I think he did, if he didn't I didn't hear him. :) Now we are back home and school has already been going on for a whole week. It has been tough to get back in to our rhythm of waking up early and doing homework. We are still trying to find a house after a year of searching and hope to actually have one by the time Christmas rolls around next year. We will see. Happy 2009 everyone.

kitchen helper

I thought I would make the girls chocolate chip cookies today for when they got home from school. Blake wasn't being very cooperative so I put him up on the island to help me. I had creamed the sugar and butter together and was starting to add the dry ingredients, when Blake decided he would help me. He grabbed the teaspoon and started to add some sugar. So I told him "no", but of course my children do not listen to me so he continues to add more sugar. I promptly removed the sugar from the island, while I was doing so he dumped half a box of baking soda to the dough! I was not very happy! So I scooped out a quarter or so of dough and threw it in the trash. But now I am not sure how much more flour to add since I have thrown out some of the dough, great. I add about a cup more and call it good. Well as you can see from the picture not much about these cookies turned out right. They got nice a crispy brown on the outside and gooey and undone in the middle. Oh well Jared and the kids still thought they tasted fine.

Sledding

This isn't that great of a picture but I thought this outfit of Blake is so cute I thought I would post it. Jared looks pretty good too in his ski hat.




Since I am being lazy and don't feel like getting the Christmas pictures off the camera right now I thought I would post up some pictures of us sledding the day after Christmas. It was a white Christmas for us this year. I don't think Flagstaff has seen that much snow in years. On our way to the sledding hill Blake fell asleep so I stayed in the truck with him while everyone else went and had a pretty good time well that is until the girls crashed and got hurt. Grandma brought hot chocolate to keep everyone warm, it was incredibly cold out. But I think all in all it was a success. We usually like to go out into the woods for sledding and a big fire but with all of the snow this year there was no way we would have been able to get into the woods with all the roads covered in snow.

Kayla's new do

Kayla has been begging me to cut her hair for probably a year now. Here are the before pictures.

















And here are the after shots. I didn't intend to cut it so much but her hair is just so curly it curls up and you are left with really short hair! She absolutely loves it though. She was so excited to go to school today and show everyone. We even put it half up with a pink ribbon.

Spooky

Tonight as we were getting ready for bed Blake turned off the lights and said "spooky". He doesn't say very much so it was really cute to hear him talk. He also learned a new word this week, no. You would think it would have been one of his first words but instead he would usually say uh uh or shake his head no. But all of the sudden the other day he said, "no" and now wont stop saying it.

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we were in charge of making the Turkeys. While we knew we were going to smoke a turkey the opportunity for us to throw a turkey into a pit came up and we jumped at the chance. Jared went over and helped rig up all of the turkeys with hooks. When the fire was ready they threw in around thirty turkeys. They then covered the pit with a metal plate and piled on a ton of dirt until no more smoke came out. I think the turkeys were in the pit for around 12 hours. Though the cooking method was pretty cool the pit turkey was not nearly up to par with Jared's smoked turkey. He is getting so good at smoking meats. We had a little problem while smoking the turkey though, it blew out our electricity. Jared had to run to Walmart and get a new plug. He also had to cut down the wires since they became brittle and broke from the blow out. It was really stressful since Jared was leaving as soon as we were done eating to go up to Flagstaff for his Elk hunt. He couldn't just leave us here without the electricity working.


We ate dinner at Papa's house. Mimi, Uncle Mike, Grandma and Grandpa Harris, Rich and Liz, and Bridgit were there. We went to the park and Blake showed no fear climbing up a really tall slide.





Friday night Grandma and Grandpa took the kids to Amazing Jake's. They played video games, lazer tag, goofy golf, rode on rides ect... Apparently Blake loved a little train ride and wouldn't get off. So he just went around and around. Bridgit and I went to go see Twilight and got some dinner afterwards. It was fun to have a girls night out. Apparently she already has a boyfriend up at BYU! I guess I was the last to know no one tells me anything. Well we had a great weekend. Jared is still away right now on his hunt and I am wishing he was home. I'm not used to being apart from him for so long. But, only two more days and he will be back. Well Happy Thanksgiving everyone.