It's beginning to look alot like Christmas....... Snow in St George

Our biggest snowman yet
Jerin & his two best buddies - Parker and Gary



Probably the only times in their lives they will shovel snow from the sidewalk

Oue eventful weekend

We started the day out looking for places to do our family photo reshoot. Our other family picture gets a little blurry if you go any bigger than a 5x7. Our photographer is so great, she let us pick out the place and came out in the cold for the reshoot. Chris has such an artistic view; he picked out great spot. When our photographer arrived she was also in love with the spots he had chosen. I’m very excited to see the picture - it will be a long two week wait.

Next we were off to see Santa. We told the boys if they were good for the pictures we would take them to see Santa. They were both perfect little angles and gave some great smiles. Jerin was so excited all the way to the mall. He told us, “we have to see Santa or he won’t know what I want”. Of course, how could we have not known this fact? And to think we almost let that precious moment pass us by. Jerin jumped up on Santa’s lap and started naming off all the toys he wanted, even as his brother was sitting on the other side screaming. Unfortunately we could not get Cayson to stay there long enough to get all three kids in the picture.

Later that night was my Granddad’s 90^th birthday party. My sister and I (mostly my sister) put together a book about his life. It was amazing to see all the old pictures and to watch him and his brothers go through the book and reminisce about their youth.

Sunday was Jerin’s reward day. For those that don’t know, he has rules and chores charts. He earns (and has taken away) reward sticks throughout the week. If he is able to get 7 sticks he gets to pick what he wants to do for his reward. This Sunday he wanted to go crystal (rock) hunting. We ended up driving to the small town of Springdale (just outside of Zion National Park) to the rock store. He was overwhelmed by all the choices. We were at this small rock shop for about 45 min looking at all the different rocks. He finally picked out one and now it is his prized possession.

This year we did as many people do on Thanksgiving weekend, we put up our Christmas decorations. We are usually the house on the block that puts up the decorations 2 week before Christmas and takes them down a month after New Years. Chris had some difficulties with the lights, seems like every other strand he plugged in only half the lights worked. It’s not worth the time to go through each bulb to find the bad one, so we only put lights on our bushes and trees this year.

The Christmas tree on the other hand took a little longer. We have a fake prelit tree and after being smashed in a box all year, it took some time getting it looking like a tree again. Jerin couldn’t wait to decorate it, he asked everyday for three days if he could please start putting decorations on the tree. It was fun having a child that was excited to help with Christmas. We put on our children’s Christmas CD and went to work. These are a few pictures of the boys working on the tree. Chris held Jerin up to put the angle on top when we were all finished. Jerin was so impressed with his work he said “There, now we have our angle to look over us”.

Chris and I are so excited to see our boys this Christmas. Cayson is now old enough to open his own presents and Jerin counts every morning how many days are left. Jerin also went Christmas shopping with his grandma and bought each of us a present with his own money. The next night grandma came over and watched the kids while Chris and I went out shopping. The two of them wrapped the presents and put them under the tree. Jerin was so excited when we got home to show us the presents he bought for everyone. He couldn’t keep it a secret what he bought Cayson and Allison and he wanted to tell me what he bought for me. We talked about how fun it was to have it be a surprise and he has done pretty good keeping his secret, even though he tells us everyday he can’t wait for us to see what he bought. I’m glad he is having this experience while he is young and getting excited about the GIVING part of Christmas, not just the getting presents part.

2 months gone by already

Our beautiful little girl, or sister as she has been called, is already two months old. She is more alert and is already making noises and smiling.