All about Ali

Allison 4 months already



Already eating cerel, 4 days and she was a pro!!



Is it bad that she LOVES to watch TV with the boys??

Camping in January

It has been harder than I had thought to keep up a blog. I have never been much of a diary person, so I thought this would be a good way to have things about my children in a written format. However, you have to spend the time writing it to be able to have this "diary".

I think my problems is, I've never been much of a story teller, so it's hard for me to write the stories out and make them sound presentable. So I've decided I'm not going to try to make it perfect, I'm just going to start typing it out, sorry English teachers.

Oh NO!! My perfect child has committed a crime.......

Jerin came home from school the other day with a prized possession - a little red dinosaur. I asked were he had got the toy and he said it was from a friend at school. I didn't think to much more of it because this friend was the "sunshine of the week" at school. A little later in the week, while getting the boys in the tub, Jerin reached in the pocket of his school pants and pulled out a few more of these dinosaurs. At that point I knew they were not given to him - he had taken them from the school. I asked him if they came from his class room.

I was a little relieved he did not lie, but now I had to have the talk about taking things that do not belong to you. I went searching for my parent handbook on how to handle this situation.... oh wait - there is NO parent hand book. How do you explain to a 5 year old - actions and consequences. I knew he already knew what he did was wrong, because he did lie about were the toy came from and he was sneaking them out by putting them in his pocket.

The next day, we left for school early. I took the other two kids to a friends house so I could walk Jerin in and have him talk to the teacher. I think I was WAY more nervous about having to face his teacher than he was. Of course Jerin did not want to tell his teacher what he had done, but I was very proud when he sat down next to her, looked her in the eyes and said sorry he took the toys from her classroom. She was so great to talk to him, she made him understand why it was wrong, but without making him feel like he was a bad kid - I was very very impressed - what a GREAT teacher!! I want her handbook :)

Christmas Eve

I know I'm a little late, but I'm trying to catch up.

Christmas Eve tradition at Grandma Harpers house. We start out with a great meal, each family member providing a dish. After dinner is cleaned up, the grandchildren make cookies for Santa. While the cookies are cooking, we usually have some kind of program or story. At the end of the night, each grandchild gets a small gift to open (usually from great granddad Sterger).

Excuses.....Excuses....Excuses

My first excuse for not posting..... being so busy with three small children, I've had a hard time finding an extra minute to sit at my computer at home. I sit at a computer at work, but if I post from work, I can't add pictures.

My second excuse ...... I have been having an issue with my computer and my camera. I am so scared to delete the pictures from my camera, that every time I want to import the pictures from my camera to the computer it takes forever going through all of the duplicates. So... I have been spending the little time I have at the computer at home, organizing and putting my pictures into folders. Today I finished and was able to burn ALL of my pictures onto 2 DVD's for safe keeping. I still had butterflies in my stomach as I finally did delete the pictures from my memory card.

Now that my pictures are updated, I will take the time and get our Christmas pictures up ----soon.

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.