GoldenGrams

Somehow we had pictures of Easter on our camera that we hadn't downloaded...until now.  Let's relive the egg hunts.

This was the city egg hunt:

They were giving out kites so we snagged a couple:

Then we went to Dallas's mom's house for a nice dinner and egg hunt.  Note Caroline and Brooke's excitement as they searched for eggs:

Note that Spencer doesn't look too excited:

The girls with their loot:

Spencer with his loot:

We couldn't get Spencer to pick up a single egg.  He just bee-lined it straight to the sandbox and played happily with Oma's huge sand trucks oblivious to the candy eggs that could be his.  No need for candy when there's a cement truck that needs playing with.

Christmas morning came and everyone was excited.  We put tape across the hall so the kids couldn't pass until we were ready.  I made them get dressed before we went down to see the presents.  I had wanted to do the girls' hair also but alas, the hair supplies were on the other side of the tape barrier.

The kids ripped down the tape and I hurried and did their hair.  Can't have Christmas pictures with little ragamuffin kids, after all.  Plus, I loved delaying the process and hearing their groans.  I remember my parents doing similar things to us and what's the fun of having kids if you can't torture them a little now and again?

Hair done.  Check.

Spencer got a train set.  He could see it from the top of the stairs and was so excited to make his way down to it:

Caroline got a doll house:

Brooke got a My Little Pony castle which I apparently did not take one single picture of.  I have no idea how that is even possible.  She's been obsessed with My Little Pony lately and was hoping Santa would get her some ponies.  She was thrilled.  As she sat down to play she said quietly, "Oh, I could just cry I'm so happy!"  Well done, Santa.

My brother, Abe, was in town so we headed over to my parents' house to open the rest of the presents.  Here's a picture of me and my siblings.  As my sister pointed out, my older brother Jacob is in the picture in spirit as is evidenced by the BYU football ornament on the tree behind us:

My dad cooked a prime rib feast for us all:

Family picture!

My parents:

We got to meet baby Newland for the first time:

Newland was just the cutest, happiest little guy.  I took my turn holding him:

Sarah and Carson:

Ben:

Brooke gathered all her gifts and was excited to get started:

She got a scooter and spent the next several minutes hugging it:

A scooter for Caroline also:

We gave Newland some books:

Caroline got the doll she was hoping for:

Ben got a big smile from my Dad when my Dad opened up his favorite movie - Hoosiers:

Dallas got a big smile when he opened The Dark Knight Rises from Abe and Klarissa:

Brooke got more ponies:

Spencer finally graduated to a front-facing car seat:

He also got a lot of cars and trucks though I don't have any pictures of him opening those.  His routine was to open a present, squeal in delight if it was a car or truck, and then run into the other room to try it out on the coffee table.  After several minutes, he'd come back to us and open another present and the cycle would repeat.

The girls enjoyed a game of Candy Land with my dad:

Just some random pictures of kids looking cute:

Caroline was using one hand to play with the train set and her other hand to rock her baby.  Multitasking already.  Those skills will come in handy when she is a real mother:

Spencer also had a few cute moments with the baby:

Snow day!  Brooke is not making a snowman.  It's a snow bear.  Get it right:

When we moved into our new neighborhood, we got into a conversation with one of our neighbors about Christmas decorations.  Just as I was saying we weren't the type of people to put lights on the outside of our house, Dallas was saying that we WERE going to put lights up this year.  It was then I realized that though we'd celebrated nine Christmases together, we had never had a Christmas in a house, so we'd never had to make a decision about exterior Christmas lights.

So, since we are outside-Christmas-lights people (who knew?), Dallas spent a Saturday decking the house.

Here's the end result:

Probably should have taken the picture at night for maximum impact.  Oh well.

As Dallas was putting up the lights, he decided to film some footage of him stringing lights and pretending to fall from a ladder.  We had his video camera in one of the rooms above the garage filming outside as he was putting up lights on the garage area.  Every few minutes he would pretend to fall.  The results were hilarious, especially since one of our neighbors was also putting up lights and apparently got alarmed every time Dallas went into acting mode and "fell" from his ladder.  I'm afraid stunts like these are securing our place as the friendly neighborhood kooks.

We found out RC Willey had a day where Santa visited.  Since we needed to go to RC Willey anyway, we made a Santa stop while we were there.  Caroline told Santa she wanted a doll:

Spencer pretty much just wanted a candy cane:

And Brooke wanted nothing to do with Santa.  She didn't say a word to him because she was "too shy" (her words).

She told us beforehand that she wasn't going to say anything to Santa so she drew pictures of what she wanted so she could just give him the picture.  Problem solved.  I got a kick out of her wish list (click to enlarge):

I particularly loved #5 - glasses with googly eyes that spring out.  Her drawing is quite realistic.

Here's another picture she drew of Santa coming down the chimney:

We saw Santa again at the ward Christmas party.  Here we are waiting in line:

Spencer was brave:

As was Caroline:

Some children in our family once again decided sitting on Santa's lap is overrated and opted out.  But we did get a family picture:

Brooke had her school Christmas program.  The kids sang Christmas songs complete with actions.  Well, most of the kids did.  Some kids just looked like this pretty much the whole time:

She did get into it a tiny bit when jingling bells was involved:

Ever since Halloween the girls have been begging to make candy houses.  Finally the day arrived:

My family had a Christmas Eve program.  My uncle dared someone to stuff an entire Twinkie in his mouth.  You never know when a Twinkie will cross your path these days so Dallas jumped at the opportunity.  As he was asking if there were any other volunteers, he failed to realize he was holding a very willing participant:

After our Christmas Eve program we hurried home to get ready for Santa.  Brooke laid out treats for Santa and some carrots for Rudolph.  I loved how she found a Christmas notepad and drew arrows to which person should eat which treat:

Shortly after this picture was taken we nestled Brooke into bed.  Did St. Nicholas come?  Did everyone's Christmas wishes come true?  We'll find out soon!

In past years when we've done clever, family-themed Halloween costumes I've been excited to post the pictures right after Halloween.  Perhaps my posting our Halloween pictures a week and a half after Halloween lets you know how excited I was about this year's costumes:

Believe it or not, we are themed.  Halloween 2012 will forever be remembered as our "Dollar Store Halloween."  Dallas and I had no idea what to do for Halloween.  We happened to be in the Dollar Store just as they had all their Halloween things on display.  I thought about past years and the excitement and challenge of trying to make fun costumes.  Then I thought about how easy it would be to simply lift a couple of items off the shelf, load them into our cart, pay, and call it good.  You can see which scenario won out.

Brooke and Caroline were instantly attracted to the fairy wings, crowns, and wands.  Unfortunately, at the time this picture was taken, they didn't want to wear their wings or crowns.  Spencer's favorite thing in the world is fire trucks so we thought the fireman costume would be fitting...though not literally as the vest was huge on him.

Truth be told, my costume along with Dallas's came from Michaels.  I was searching for a witch's hat and the Dollar Store failed me.  Michaels pulled through with the dorky little headband hat that you see me wearing.  That left Dallas costumeless, though not for long.  We passed the letter aisle and Dallas said, "I could go as a letter.  I'll be the letter G."  Sadly he chose to use string to make his G necklace leading at least one of my relatives to think he was something a little racy.  For the record, we had not even thought about that as a possible interpretation.

This is the part of my blog post where I take a minute to marvel that I just spent three paragraphs explaining every detail of our dumb Halloween costumes.

Huh.

Moving on.

My brother Ben and his girlfriend dazzled all with their great costumes:

My grandpa and all the kids awaited the lighting of the candles on the birthday cakes:

Here are all the kids on Halloween:

Oh my goodness this fireman was cute:

After trick or treating Brooke got right to work inspecting her candy and organizing it all:

Organizing candy ended up being a really fun game, and Brooke and Caroline periodically dumped everything out to make designs with it:

We finally got around to carving pumpkins (the day after Halloween):

We also decorated Halloween cookies:

We went to our ward trunk-or-treat.  The table decorations were so cute I just had to take pictures:

Okay, so full disclosure - I was in charge of the table decorations.  I am not good at this sort of thing so frantic phone calls may or may not have been made to my sister.  After all my stressing she wanted to see how they turned out so those last three pictures are for her benefit.  (The middle picture has a tinsel spider on it, by the way.  Sort of hard to tell.  And yes, I got the pumpkins and spiders from where else -- the Dollar Store.)  Feel free to add any of these pictures to your Pinterest inspiration boards.  I fully expect these centerpieces to take the Internet by storm.

We had a great Fourth of July.  We sat on the golf course and took lots of pictures before the fireworks began.

First, my parents:

Glow sticks as earrings:

Dallas being extra patriotic with his blue shirt and red skin.  Apparently he was outside all day at work and got a bit of a burn:

Eli watched the fireworks with only one eye:

Spencer cracked us up by saying "WOAH!" every time the fireworks went off:

The kids participated in an Easter egg hunt.  Here we all are:

The girls were dying to find the eggs but had to wait until everyone arrived:

Caroline's age group was first:

Then it was Brooke's turn:

Spencer enjoyed popping bubbles:

After the hunt Brooke inspected her loot.  Notice her outfit - her Easter hat, necklaces, a skirt, and a tutu.  She insisted on the skirt, the hat, the necklaces, and the tutu because she was marrying Wyatt and needed to look "super beautiful."  Yes, apparently she still fancies Wyatt.  I asked her why she is going to marry Wyatt and she said because he's a boy.  I pointed out that she has other friends who are boys and she never says she's going to marry them.  Her response was, "Oh, it's because Wyatt has such a cute..."

In the split second after she said "cute" I nearly died thinking she was about to state how cute she thought Wyatt was.  I mean, I do think he's a really cute kid, but surely she's too young to notice or care about that, right?  RIGHT?

Thankfully she ended her sentence with "bunny."  Yes, that's more like it.  The way to Brooke's heart is certainly through stuffed animals.

Today we are coloring Easter eggs

We had a great Christmas.  On Christmas Eve we went up to my parents' house.  Ben and Brooke were anxiously awaiting the program:

My aunt organized a Minute to Win It game.  Brooke wanted to try it out until she was told she'd need to dip her nose in Vaseline and use it to try to transport cotton balls from one plate to another.  She bowed out after hearing that:

Maggie was a great baby holder:

Rachel was also a great baby tender:

And that brings us to Christmas morning!  Spencer couldn't wait to see what Santa brought him:

The girls were thrilled with their new kitchen:

Caroline showed off her flashlight:

The girls love flashlights.  They always find our flashlights, hide them in their room under their beds, and then pull them out after we've turned out their lights.  Sneaky, sneaky.  After yelling at them countless times for taking our flashlights, we finally decided to just get them their own.

Spencer loved his new toy:

Lately the girls have enjoyed being superheroes.  They will take Spencer's bibs and wear them backwards and pretend they have capes on.  That gave me the great idea to make superhero capes for them for Christmas.  Didn't they turn out cute?  The girls hate them.  Oh well.  Can't win them all.

All of our festivities made the kids exhausted.  Any time we got in the car, this happened:

A cute picture of the kids with my parents:

Brooke and Caroline love the Play-Doh machine Grandpa Golden gave them:

Brooke was dying to make a candy house, so one day we did.

Brooke was very meticulous about putting the candy on her house so that it filled in all the space:

Caroline...not so much:

Dallas decided to get in on the action:

(It's a die in case you couldn't tell.)

Spencer was upside-down:

...which reminded me exactly of the top picture in this post from three years ago.

Brooke and Dallas were coloring pictures one day.  Dallas colored the Santa on the right.  The next day Brooke requested that I print off another Santa just like that one.  She then colored it exactly like Dallas did.  We thought it was pretty good.  (She explained that all those scribbles above her Santa were her testing the crayons to make sure she got exactly the right color she needed.)

The girls love hearing Christmas carols on the radio, especially anything with "jingle bells" in it.  However, Brooke refuses to sing "Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh."  Instead she substitutes "reindeer" for "horse."  I love it.

Happy Thanksgiving one and all!

Being a teacher really got me in the Halloween spirit.  Having family-themed costumes did as well.

This year I wasn't teaching, and we didn't do a family theme.  We were given costumes for the kids, and I was won over with the easiness of simply putting their costumes on instead of dreaming up ideas, figuring out how to make them, sewing them together, running to the store twenty times because I forgot something, and then wearing bulky costumes all night.  Yes, it was easier, but it was definitely not as fun as years past.

Now that I've thoroughly set you up to be disappointed in our costumes, here we are!

Me:  A ladybug.  Brooke:  A butterfly.  Caroline:  A kangaroo.  Spencer:  A pumpkin.  Dallas:  A zoologist...though my family thought he looked more like Indiana Jones and his family thought he was a migrant worker.  We got a good laugh out of that one.  Maybe next year.

Ward Trunk or Treat:

After Brooke had visited every car, she plopped down on the grass and exclaimed, "Let's have a picnic!"

And picnic she did.

Christmas 2010 - Ready, Set, Go!

Meeting Santa

Caroline's favorite baby in the world - Baby Eli

Eating Lucky Charms under Grandma's kitchen table

Eating Lucky Charms in a high chair

Santa brought a marble machine!

Santa brought a car seat!

I made quiet books for the girls!

Allow me to give you some unsolicited advice.  Someday, one of your friends may approach you and ask if you want to make a quiet book.  Her idea is to find 12 people who want to make quiet books.  Each person would choose one page to do and then make that page 12 times.  Then all the participants would exchange pages and voila!  A quiet book!

If somebody ever asks you to do this, the correct answer is no.  You do not want to do this!  You don't know it, but the quiet book will destroy your will to live!  You will think you've chosen an easy page to make, and it won't take much time at all, but you will be wrong!  So very, very wrong!  Do you know how long it takes to cut felt?  Do you know how long it takes to sew felt pieces together?  Do you know that by the time you factor in all the time you spent making the book with the cost of materials you could probably have purchased a dozen quiet books from a store and still come out ahead?  Yes, the books will turn out darling and your girls will love them, but can you guess what consumed my life in the weeks before Christmas?  Can you guess the state of disaster my house was in?  Probably not.  Luckily there are no photos from that dark, dark time.

Ahem.

Sorry about that.  Back to Christmas.

Is there anything sweeter than watching a little baby mother a toy baby?  I think not.

Play-doh machine courtesy of Grandpa Golden

Another hit from Grandpa Golden - a Magna Doodle

Dallas and I obviously need to do better at documenting people other than our children.  You wouldn't know it from looking at our camera memory card, but we actually went to several family parties and saw nearly all of our close relatives.  Perhaps next year we'll obtain photographic evidence of those endeavors.  Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Reading Luke 2 before the storm of opening gifts.