happy birthday sandee!

Sandee is one of my favorite people.  She is such a wonderful friend aunt and great sister in law.  I am so glad we got to be neighbors for so many years because she is absolutely wonderful.  She is so willing to help out other people (especially me).  Always helping me decorate my house, helping me scrapbook and make any other sort of craft, letting me borrow eggs and stuff all the time, making cakes for all my kids birthdays, bring dinner over.  Awesome is a great word to describe her.  I miss living next to her, but I am so glad I got to so that we were able to become such good friends.  Sandee is just amazing and I really admire her for her caring heart and her friendly personality.  Happy birthday sandee! we love you.

Happy Birthday Elena!

Happy birthday Elena.  We think you are awesome and we are so glad you are our aunt and sister in law!  Elena is so fun to hang out with.  She is a happy peoples person and she amazes me because she is never scared to try different things from real estate to stand up comedy, photography, you name it if she is interested in it she will learn about it and get into it whole heartedly.  She has taken some amazing pictures of our kids that I absolutely love. She is just fun to be around.  I will always remember the "kitty" game we played were she climbed up on dads lap and purred trying to get him to laugh.  We love you and hope you have a wonderful birthday!

Uncle Brent

My dad's brother Brent passed away yesterday.  He had been sick for awhile from some kidney issue he had.  We knew he wasn't doing good but it is still sad when the news comes that he has passed on.  I am very grateful that Aunt Darla was so inspired and generous to host a family reunion before his death.  He was a great man.  He was a great uncle.  I have many memories of hanging out with his family and being at his house.  That is where we always stayed when we were up visiting family.  He married a beautiful woman who is so sweet and kind.  They have raised an amazing family with the most wonderful children that I am so grateful I know.  I love them all so much and am so grateful for the examples they have always been to me.  They are all so kind and gracious and have such strong testimonies.  We have been praying for Uncle Brent and his family for a long time now and I am sure we will be keeping Aunt Laurie and the rest of the family in our prayers for a long time.  Jennifer wrote on her blog about how they have all been comforted so much and felt such a peace during the difficult past few days they have had with him.  I am grateful for that.  I am grateful for the knowledge that families are forever and that one day we will get to see him again and that he will be reunited with his children and grandchildren that he loved so much.  I think everyone knew that about him that he just loved his family and thought the world of them.  It was so fun to see him as a grandpa, he just seemed to adore those sweet kids.  I am sure there is a wonderful reunion going on in heaven now as he is welcomed by his dad who died over 30 years ago as well as other family members.  We will all miss you dearly Uncle Brent but we are so glad for the memories we have, and as Jenn said the world truly was a better place because you were in it.

January 2011 Family Pictures

 Sandee helped us take a few quick pictures since we somehow never seemed to have actually gotten anything scheduled.  I wanted pictures for a Christmas card but never seemed to find time to do it then Christmas came and went so we just decided to get the pictures taken anyway since the last time we had them done was when lila was only about 6 months or so.  I think it is impossible to actually get a picture that everyone looks good in though.  These are a few of my favorites.

Dallin's belated 7th birthday party

 Poor Dallin has a birthday that is a week before Christmas.  It kind of makes for a hard time to ever get a real party for him.  This year we promised him he could have a party but since we were out of town on his brithday we ended up not being able to celebrate until New Year's Eve.  We headed on over the Peter Piper Pizza for a fun party.  He had a really hard time narrowing the guests down because he really wanted all of his cousins there but we finally got him to narrow it down to his Marble cousins (purely out of convinience since we all live so close) and 3 friends, Hunter, Caliber and Ethan. 

 He got his own personalized pizza and a decorated table with more coins than we knew what to do with!

 Aunt Sandee made the cupcakes.  I don't know what we would do without her, she supplies the cakes to all of my parties since I am so untalented in that area.  She is so awesome!

Dallin got a new bike for his birthday.  He was very excited to have a bigger bike since he thinks his is too small and babyish cuz it has spiderman on it.  Boy do kids grow up fast Alden was totally fine with character type stuff in 1st grade and Dallin wants nothing to do with that kind of stuff.  Anyway I hope he had a good birthday. Dallin is a wonderful help with Lila and a great kid.  He is lots of fun and we are so glad to have him in our family.

Christmas Day Evening

 After getting a good nap in we headed over the spend the evening of Christmas with the Marble's.  The brothers were very excited to give their dad a new remote control airplane.  I think it use to be a hobby of his.  My amazing Aunt Kim helped us out with the other gifts we gave them; a "Marble" name board and a "grandpa's scoreboard" to keep track of all the grandkids.  Of coarse they spoiled our whole family like usual. The kids can always count on that.  In fact when using Santa won't bring you any presents as a threat the kids didn't even care their response was "so papa with get us something."

We had another cousin gift exchange.  It was really fun and all the kids did a great job.  They got some really fun presents for each other.  The adults did a white elephant exchange too, which is always a blast.

We had to test out the sparklers too just to make sure they worked for New Years Eve!  We had a wonderful time and it was fun to be all together, we are starting to get to big to do that very often.

Christmas Morning

 We had a really nice Christmas like always.  The kids are spoiled rotten and I got a little carried away getting Lila things since it was all girl and different for a change. 

 The boys faces walking into the family room.  They were so excited to see that Santa Left them a wii a cool red one.  They each got a different color controller in their stocking too.  Alden got a guitar so he could start learning how to play.  Dallin and Alden both got roller blades and Brig got a Chalkboard/easel thing.  They got tons of other presents but with the wii I think they pretty much forgot about everything else.  They have a one track mind. I love the picture below with them just staring at the wii in awe it was pretty funny. 

 Lila got a kitchen lots of things for her babies like highchairs/rockers and a cute car that she loves.  She would hardly come out to open something up and then get right back in it.  It was really funny. 

 She did find time to turn the easel into a jungle gym though.  The kids each got to buy a gift for one of their siblings and it was fun for them to pick it out wrap it and try to keep it a secret until Christmas.  I think they all did a great job picking out gifts for each other.  We had a really good morning and with the wii being so popular Scott and I were able to get a really nice nap in!

Christmas Eve at the Thurston's

 We had a lot of fun at gma and gpa house on Christmas Eve.  The kids got to dress up and do the story of Christ's birth.  Lila was a cute angel for about 2 seconds before ripping the costume off. 

 We had a great dinner with lots of yummy food.  After the nativity story Uncle Dallin read the kids a cute Christmas story "Twas the night before Christmas" is the tradition but the book he read was that story with a twist and it was really cute.

 The kids got to each pick a cousin to buy a present for. I think they all had fun shopping for their cousins and they all got to open them at the same time.  Then we played the "right/left" game and the kids got
to open up their present from gpa & gma.

 They all got jean blankets BYU style with their names embroidered on the edge. They were really cute and the kids all love them. I loved Brig in the picture below cuddling up with his newly unwrapped blanket. The adults had a fun white elephant exchange too, we got rid of the dreaded singing cowboy and the autographed picture of chad to Dallin this year and we have been warned to "beware" of next year!



 After all the goodies we could eat we headed over to the temple lights.  Jordan Bluth was the guest singer for the program and so it was supper crowded.  We like him in the forgotten Carols that he does every year so it was kind of neat to see him singing at the temple although I could have done with out the huge crowd.  After the temple the kids got to open up their pj's and then we headed home so Santa could come. 

Happy Birthday Grandpa Brad!

Today was Grandpa Brad's birthday.  The boys had fun guessing how old he was. Alden was the closest, Brig thinks his daddy is older than him (ha ha he doesn't quiet get age stuff yet!!). The boys had fun playing Wii golf and bowling with gpa for his bday. We also enjoyed yummy oatmeal cake and ice cream.  The grandkids all love grandpa so much and have so much fun with him.  I love the example that my dad is to everyone around him.  We enjoy the "BTBits he sends us daily.  We love that he expects the best out of us.  We hope you had a great birthday grandpa and a great year!