The girl side of the family

So we took our family pictures last week, and decided that we needed to have the girls side of the family too! So while she looks happy in these TWO pictures, Shelby was not happy to be out in the cold WAY past naptime. I was so excited to find a couple of really cute smiles. Dusty is one lucky guy to have all these beautiful girls surrounding him every day!!!

Especially Mandy! Isn't she georgous? And 7 months pregnant no less. Now I know what they are talking about when they say that pregnant women glow! You are beautiful Mandy!

My OWN family pictures!

I LOVE Christmas time! I love the snow! And I especially love the snow falling on the red rocks of Kanab. I havn't done family pictures for like a year and a half. So I was VERY grateful for my mom to come brave the snow to take these for us!!! Especially since she is sick! I hope you get better soon mom! I can't believe how quickly my boys are growing up! I love my family so much! I feel so blessed every day to have these boys surrounding me. even the weeks filled with stitches and root canals! But I'll save that story for another post!

The lights at Temple Square

We love to go see the lights on Temple Sqare. It is a magical place. It feels like a fairytale and this year was no different. Surrounded by all of my family, we ventured out into the cold, to ride the train from Aarons work (a few blocks from the Temple) to Temple square. The kids love to be with their cousins! Especially when it comes to new adventures. When we got there you could feel the excitement in the hundreds of people gathering in. We took pictures and had snacks, and waited, more patiently than I've seen my kids wait for anything for a while. And then..... They were on! An Ahhhhh rippled through the crowd, and the kids eyes got wide as they turned in every direction trying to take it all in. What an amazing sight. My favorite part was listening to the bagpipes playing Christmas music in the background. It was the kind of night you pack away in your greatest memory box, and pull out when you need a smile!

Turkey bowl 2009

Gabe loves going up North for Thanksgiving for the annual Turkey Bowl! (Then complains about it for the next week! Ha ha) All the brown boys were there, except poor Kelly who can't kick his sickness. Poor guy! It was fun to watch the big boys and little boys alike! Happy turkey day!

Somebody call 9-1-1- this fire's hot!

I'm so excited for Gabe. He just joined the volunteer fire dept. And he loves it! They had a training today where they burned down this old house on purpose. They asked me to come take pictures. It was so fun to be able to be up close. To see just how exciting it is to these guys. They take it so seriously. And we are lucky to have such a great fire department in our little town! Plus it's so sexy to see my man strutting out of a burning building!!!

funny boy

So we are having our morning snack, an apple. And Troy eats a couple of bites. I gave him the whole thing, (which I never do! I almost always cut it and give him a few slices at a time) So he takes a couple of bites and says, "Mom, what's inside here?" I say an apple. He say's, No what's inside of here? I said it's an apple buddy! He says no, there's something in here like bones...... or something??? I said Ohhhh there are seeds in there. Perfectly satisfied, he said, Yeah that's what I mean seeds........

This is my return to bloging.

So I was talking to my friend Ashley Kartchner today about her little boy Max. He says the funniest things. And I asked if she was writing it all down. She said yes, that she has journals for each of them. Well, I'm not the super mom that Ashley is, so I don't have journals for each of my kids, but I do blog. Well I used to blog, well I like to blog! I can do it, and my little boys would much rather have me blogging than wasting time on facebook. So this is my come back. Not that I will stop using facebook all together, but I want to remember the quirks, the laughs, and the tears of being a mother to these three wonderful boys. Like today, when I was sitting at the table working on homework with Kolby. (That by the way takes an HOUR every night. An HOUR. I think it's crazy for a first grader to have an hour of homework every night, but I digress....) Well he had to go to the bathroom, so he left and Troy promptly took his seat. And started talking. I asked him what? He said not you mom.... I looked around, there is nobody else in the room, and he must have sensed where I was going with that because he said. "I was talking to my imaginary mom, not you." HE'S TWO!!! Ok to be fair, he's almost three, but still....

One of my favorite things

So one of my favorite things is the whispers and giggles that come from the boys room at bedtime. I hear the most interesting stories, funniest conversations, between boys who mostly love each other. Tonight, Kolby said, "You know we have a cousin Lydia, she must be 9 by now." So funny.

Halloween 2009

The Knight, the spider, and the robot, what a great threesome they are. I sure hope they always stay the buddies that they are now. So we had a fun night. I don't think we've ever gone out to eat on Halloween, but the kids were anxious to get their costumes on, and I didn't want to take them THAT early, so we went to Pizza Hut for dinner, then we went trick or treating. Well, I was walking them up to one of the first houses, and Gabe grabed my hand. He said, "You know, they are big enough to do that themselves this year." So he tucked me under his arm and we watched our big boys go trick or treating by themselves, (well mostly)

Gotta love when the cousins come down!

This is my niece (one of only 2 Brown side) She is JUST now starting to smile for me. I've been trying to persuade this little chica to like me for YEARS. And I'm finally succeeding!!!!

Turning lemons into lemonade!

So womens forum inspired a pretty good FHE that we had tonight. I got some lemons, and we cut them in half. I let each of the kids taste the lemon. I asked them if they liked the lemons just the way they were. You can see the response. So we talked about some of the "lemons" we face in our home. Being frustrated, someone hitting you, not obeying, ect.... everyone took turns saying something that made their life "sour" as they sqeezed their lemon into a cup.
Then I asked them what would happen if we added sugar to our cups of lemon juice. You would have yummy lemonade! So we each took turns sharing ways to make our home more "sweet" as we added sugar to our cup. It got yummier and yummier the more ways we found to make our home "sweet".

It was a great object lesson. The boys LOVED it, and maybe we are making a "sweeter" home little by little.

I'm not gone forever!

So I'm alive, I've just been on Facebook. It's a black hole! But I couldn't resist posting my little man's first day of 1st grade pix! I can't believe how big he is! I love him so much. He is such a great helper and I appreciate the great kid he is.

Doesn't he look big? And maybe like a genius?

Waiting with the neighborhood boys at the bus stop.

There he goes! I hope he has fun! Learns lots! And acts like the good kid he is!

fun week with cousin Kyle!

So we've been playin' really hard with our cute little Kyle! We got to have a birthday party on Friday! (We'll do anything for cake around here) He'll have another party with mom & dad on Saturday, but we had to here him sing happy birthday to himself.
We've been swimming a few times. Kyle loves it!


This pictures made us think about getting the scissors out. Don't worry megan! Every lock is safely intact!Do you see how hard we're playing! Kolby has taken him under his wings (literally) And we had a great time on the fourth of July! Kyle would point to the fireworks and just giggle! And Troy kept saying "Holy Moly! Holy Moly!" It was so cute to watch the amazement of the kids!

And just think, the fun is only half way done!