Christmas morning with the Butlers

I have so much fun spending time with my sister. It was such a great Christmas to be with my family. We stayed at Becky's house and she was a wonderful host. As you can imagine, we ate delicious cookies and fudge all week long and simply enjoyed being together. It is much more fun to wrap presents together, cook together, and shop for last minute big wheels all over the valley together. Thanks Becks for the fun times!



These cute boys got Geo Trax and were so excited! Boys are sooooo fun!



The lighting is bad, but here is our jammie photo on Christmas eve. With all those kids in one house, the air was so thick with excitement you could cut it with a knife!



And the pink big wheel was a hit!



The best part was that all of those presents got a years worth of play by all the kids in 1 week.



Note to self for next year...If you have an idea for a present, just buy it, you can return it later if you change your mind. Also, less is more!

Christmas

I know, its out of order and past the season, but I can't leave out Christmas 08 with the Palmer family.



We had so much fun spending time with family. So much, in fact, that I didn't get to see all of the friends that I planned on visiting.
Here is one of my favorite memories...Max and Jake dressing the part of the shepherds for the nativity at Dan and Kristin's house. It was a special night to be together on Christmas eve. The best part was my dad sharing his testimony and conversion story with us.

These two boys were hillarious and wouldn't sit still for the life of them. They are the best of buds.



This picture of Rachel cracks me up. She is such a sweetheart. I loved spending time with her and Anna while we were spending the night at their house. All of our nieces and nephews are the best!

Lovely

Max can write his own name! He knew of course he was in trouble so he quickly said, "mom, the paper is too slippery, I HAVE to do it on carpet."

Enjoying a quiet Saturday evening...

I am sitting here on a Saturday night, the kids are asleep and it is raining outside so I am wrapped in a blanket thinking about what yummy treat I can look forward to tomorrow.
This is a picture of our yummy orange juliuses Alex made for our last Sunday evening treat. They were delicious. I don't think I have made those since junior high.

Happy Valentines Day!

My favorite part of Valentines Day is the making heart shaped sugar cookies. I loved having Valentine's Day on Saturday this year because we celebrated all week long. We started by making our first batch of dough on Mon, frosted them Tues, and gave them away. Then on Wed we made another batch and frosted again on Thurs. This sounds crazy and insane but I love baking! Max does too and he is fun to bake with. He told me, "mom, I LOVE baking with you!" It was so sweet. He is so sweet. I love my little boy!
BTW, I gave that dough to them to play with and Max insisted on cutting out hearts and cooking it...boy were they interesting!

A little note

Wow! yeah, its been a few weeks since I have posted, and sorry for the lack of photos tonight, but this is going to be just a short post to see how many of my cousins have not given up on me!
I bought my tickets to go to newport with the cousins in a few weeks and I am sooooo excited! I hope you all can make it because I can't wait to see you and spend a relaxing weekend with the girls. Really I am going to try not to spend too much money and be more frugal on this trip, but I think I say that every time. That being said, I am looking forward to a churro at the swap meet and OK a chocolate covered banana too. And staying up all night laughing and talking and Grandma's fart machine.
See you in Cali!

October and November fun

Halloween was easy this year with borrowed costumes. I was ready to get creative and crafty, but neither of them cared worth a darn this year! For the life of me, I couldn't get Max excited to dress up, but you can bet he was ready for the trick-or-treating. I almost couldn't get him to wear a costume this year at all! Ironically, about 2 days ago he was sitting on the stairs (his thinking spot) and asked me, "Mom, is Halloween going to come again?" I told him yes and he said, "I think I want to be spiderman next time!" A little late buddy!





On Halloween night we had the Sorensens and the Droubays over and we went up and down our street which took a whole oh, half hour, and then all the kids were done! NICE! It was quite the crowd. This picture doesn't show the Droubays, but it was 7 kids all under age 6. They were in heaven. Oh yeah, Allie was so funny because she would get right up in the front of the group and try to walk inside all of the houses. She thought it was open house style Halloween.





October and November consisted of more soccer. This is the infamous Isaac with Max.




For Allie's birthday in November we took her to In-n-out burger. The Droubays came with us and we celebrated with hamburgers and french fries-Allie's favorite! Actually, all food is her favorite...this girl can put food away! She wakes up in the morning HUNGRY! The first thing she says every morning is, "mommy, can I have dinner?" ( I must say, she has an appetite like her mamma!)

Later in the month we had Nancy and Nelson and the Kawalskis over for cake and ice cream. Allie was in heaven being the birthday girl! She is such a sweet 2 year old!