See ya next year!

Happy New Year's from us to you. We hope your celebration is fun-filled. Best wishes!

~Alice & Theron

Christmas Explosion!

Christmas was quite the success around here. The kids stayed up so late last night they had to be woken up when they slept till nearly 8:30am. LOL! We all had a lot of fun watching the kids and talking to family today. Theron got the punching bag he's wanted forever! He was VERY surprised and his expressions were priceless. He thought I was saving up for next year to get it. Funny! We recorded it and put it in the family archive of great moments. haha! Christmas dinner was awesome with ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, yams, corn. Mmmmmm! I totally forgot to defrost the rolls in time so DANG! Anyway, it's great to have Theron home with us today. :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

This month has flown! I can't believe it's already Christmas Eve. I woke up this morning thought about what day it is and got really excited like a kid at Christmas again. :))) Then I was irritated the rest of the morning, but that's another story for another day, not. :) Theron will be home this afternoon so that's exciting. Thankfully he helped me wrap all the presents hidden away in this house when he was home last week. I can't wait to see the kids faces as they open their presents and see their brothers and sister open the presents they bought for each other. It's time to turn on some Christmas music and get the Christmas feeling going in full swing. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Flashback Friday!

Here is a funny story from Theron's past for our flashback this week. When Theron was about 8, he and his 12 year old brother (at the time) Mark, went to the movies to see Bruce Lee on a Friday night down in Los Angeles. They were dropped off then were supposed to call for a ride afterwards. So they call Arthur (a family friend living with them) and 20 minutes later they see Arthur drive by. They're wondering what he's doing at this point then a few minutes later they see him circle around again with his head hanging out the window yelling at them to tell them he has no brakes. :) Arthur goes around one more time with his foot out the door trying to slow it down a little this time around and Theron and his brother run to catch the car and somehow manage to jump into the moving vehicle. The rest of the way home they ran through every red light and were going up and down off the curbs to try and slow down. They made it home safely Flinstone style. LOL, with their feet out the doors to try and slow the car down. It's a miracle they didn't get hurt. It's pretty funny to hear Theron tell it. He's hilarious when you get him going. :)

Poor Jacob

Jacob has had a rough past 24 hours. Yesterday he fell off the futon couch in the playroom and scraped up his nose then today after church Benjamin had him on his bed and wasn't being careful and poor little Jacob fell head first off. It was a very sad moment, bless his heart. He's doing awesome now and the bump is practically gone, but boy are they painful looking for the first little bit. :)

little chuckles :)

The other night we were all sitting at the table for dinner and the boys had done their ritual of arguing which cup they wanted then Benjamin was saying the blessing on the food. It was all smooth and normal until Ben says, "please help us to not have a cow over a stinkin' cup". It was such a surprise to hear and caught me off guard that I burst into laughter....good grief. Gotta love kids. :)

Flashback Friday!

Okey dokey, Theron's picture for today was 3 years ago and makes me LAUGH. He is such a nut when he gets going and laughing then next thing you know you're laughing with him because he's such a dork. haha! This picture rocks. Love you Theron! :)

These two pictures of me are from the lovely girl's camp album. The one with mom and dad when I'm like 12...ish?. I can never remember exactly. Then the other one with the blue hands I'm 16. Gotta love camp pics. Happy Flashback Friday everyone!

I found the PLAYROOM!!!

This an odd blog, I know, but I was so AMAZED! For the past two weeks the playroom upstairs has been a disaster. It started when Michael used it as his place to hibernate while recovering from surgery. Then we had company in town over Thanksgiving so Ben slept up there too. I should have known that it would look similar to their bedroom. It's always a disaster in there. I can walk out with it clean then ten minutes later walk in and not recognize it. Good grief! Anyway, I finally got fed up with not being able to see the floor in there as well as seeing an empty bookshelf and 4 boxes sitting around with books in them. I wish I'd taken before pictures so you could see the difference then I decided it's a good thing you didn't see the before pictures. haha! The drawers and cupboards are perfect for hiding all the toys and movies. :) Yes, that's my humongous pile of clothes to be folded in the background in one of the pics. It's a work in progress...definitely not my strong suit. I'll wash and dry them, but folding and putting away...ugh. Anyway, I'm posting for a journal moment so I can remember that this is how this room can look. :))))

Happy Birthday Dad!! 71 years young!

It's December 7th and Pearl Harbor Day and DAD'S BIRTHDAY! I made up a cake last night so it would be ready for dessert with lunch after church. Dad forgot it was his birthday until I said Happy Birthday when I saw him while getting ready this morning. Funny guy. The kids all sat up to the table to make cards for Grandpa then Benjamin hung them on his bedroom door. It was cute. We sang, he made a wish and blew out his candles then he opened up a present of brand new size15 slippers. He was excited. Anyway, here are some pictures.

Flashback Saturday? lol

This was scanned on the same page so they're a little smaller...oops. Anyway, the top one is Hyrum, Joe and me at my older brother Daniel and older sister Mary Lynne's graves in Joseph, Oregon.

The middle one is me, Joe & Hyrum again when we were little.

The bottom pic is Hyrum, Joe, me & Andrea. All of us the night I got home from my mission back in 1998. My parents drove out to California to pick me up and drove home with them.

The one below is an old family pic at maybe a funeral? I can't remember where we were. Ben, Michael and Paul were so little! lol. Paul was Jacob's age right now. Crazy. Ok, I posted more than one to make up for missing so many weeks of Flashback Friday now. haha!

The tree is up!

Our Christmas tree has been up for the past 3 days and we finally got it decorated tonight. Yeehaw! The kids had a blast putting all the ornaments on and Jacob has fun taking them off again. LOL. It will be a work in progress with Jacob's curiosity. :)

Thanksgiving weekend.

Thanksgiving weekend was a lot of fun around here. My brother Hyrum and his family came to town. It was great. We had a really nice Thanksgiving stayed really busy. Here's some pictures of the fun. Michael was up and at 'em like he hadn't had surgery...crazy kid. Can't keep him down. Anyway, it was lots of fun. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving as well!!

Playing Eye to Eye Thanksgiving night. Hyrum stealing the oreos. haha!

Kristi chillin' with Owen and Brigham looks like he might tackle Uncle Theron. :)

Dad and Theron stacking the wood that Hyrum brought down for us.

Dad, me, Hyrum and Theron all stacking wood.

more wood stacking :)

Jacob after his Thanksgiving meal :)

Theron taking it easy after eating.

We're getting ready to eat.

Benjamin holding Owen

Mmmmm, now we're digging in. Brigham and Makenzi were done first so I didn't get them in the picture fast enough...darn it.

Kristi looking mighty chipper on our Walmart spree at 5 something in the morning. woohoo

Can you say "yikes"? haha! It was a zoo for the first hour in that store. Yes, we spent 2 hours shopping. haha!

We were all done and on our way to McDonald's for breakfast at this point.

little Owen surrounded by our goodies

Madelynne got her hair chopped off.

Every little girl has a short phase, eh? This is hers....hopefully the last, hahahaha!

We got home from shopping to see that the guys has drilled a hole in the ceiling to find the chimney for installing the wood stove. it was a disaster. I see why they waited for us to be gone, it wouldn't have happened otherwise. haha!

That was soot pouring down. At first there was no tarp. I stopped that quick and they cleaned up the mess they'd made then we covered everything. Good heavens, haven't they seen Mary Poppins?

Anyway, it was a fun filled weekend. Kristi got a lot of pictures I didn't. It was sort of a "grab the nearest camera" weekend. I loved playing Guitar Hero with Brigham. That was too cute. Hyrum and Kristi gave it a try too. Fun fun.

Michael's adventure up at the hospital.

Hey there! We're back and have some pictures to mark the occasion for Michael's 2ND hernia operation. LOL. Boy was he loopy on the Versed. He had me rolling...good grief. Michael and I drove up to Billings and stayed in the motel across the street from the hospital up in Billings last night. Michael loved the motel room. It was kind of funny how often he told me it was "so cool". It was like being on an adventure. We are glad it's over and that all went well. Michael is already feeling ready to be back up among the living. He gradually looks better and better in the pictures. Well good to worse first though. ha ha! I haven't kept him down since we got home for more than ten minutes....sigh. If he's not hurting then that's the important part. It's so nice to be home since Theron is home.