Fire Station Fieldtrip

Here are some fun pictures from Sean's preschool fieldtrip to the Fire Station.

The firefighters were really great with the kids and we all had a fun time!

Well, Hayden doesn't look very excited, but I'm sure he's like,

"When I grow up, I'm gonna be a firefighter!"

I mean, he didn't say that out loud, but if we could read his mind . . .

Makin' Some Memories

For some reason, our school had a Tuesday inservice day, so the kids had this random day off school in the middle of the week.  So Dallin & Daphne helped me teach preschool (it was my week to teach Sean's mom preschool thing) and then we went and made some memories.  Dallin, who would have rather stayed home and played on the computer, said:

 "Mom, you're always making us go have some memories!" 

 

I don't know if that's true, but I hope he'll remember that when he's a dad!  So he came along somewhat grudgingly after being bribed with a treat at the end of the excursion.  We visited the Aquarium and Botanical Gardens.  

We took lots of silly pictures because that's always fun.  

And since it's the middle of winter, not a lot of people were at the gardens.  So we seized the opportunity to do something I've always wanted to do . . .  

We rolled up our sleeves and plunged our arms into the icy water fountain and dug out some coins!

Yes, it's true.  

Embarrassing, I know, but I've always thought I might be rich if I picked up all the coins in those fountains.  So here's the funny thing about coins in fountains:  The water distorts the size of the coins, so you think you're grabbing a bunch of quarters, and come up with nickels instead.   Dallin & I collected a whopping 65 cents out of that fountain.  We stopped because our arms were turning quite red from the cold water . . . and also, some people started walking our way.  Didn't want to be caught "red-handed!"  (ha!  how's that for a pun?)

On our way home, we got ice cream cones at McDonald's, and then just for fun, we pulled out the hide-a-bed and the kids watched a movie on it.  They ask me all the time to do that, and usually my answer is, "probably not this time."  But we were having a fun day, and there's nothing like watching Kung-Fu Panda all snuggled up on the hide-a-bed.

Stonehaven 2009

Every year after Christmas my family goes up to Northstar (Lake Tahoe area) and stays at "Stonehaven," my grandpa's 7 room cabin for a few days. It is such a blessing to have this available to us since it's hard to fit us all in a regular house these days. We just go up and enjoy good food, good company, skiing/snowboarding, games, movies, and lots of great hanging out time.

Chillin'

Arthur, Dallin & my brother Nathan hitting the slopes.

Stone Family

Last time we'll all be together until Reed gets home from his mission.

Mom and all the sisters

We spent a lot of time on New Years Eve singing.  We went through the hymn book and sang as a family lots of our favorites.  There was a really sweet spirit as we all sang together.  Then we got a little silly.  One of the best was "In our Lovely Deseret."  If you've never sung this hymn, I suggest you get out your hymn book and sing it for your next family night.  The words are quite  humorous, and it's really fun for kids to sing.  "Hark! Hark! Hark! tis children's music!"

   The above picture is just the sisters singing some Les Miserables stuff (After most everyone else was all sung out.)  We were having such a hilarious time.  Anyone who is familiar with Les Mis probably knows that it's not exactly a funny musical.  But I guess everything is funny when you drink too much sparkling cider.

Me & Dad on the chair lift

Arthur & I with Lake Tahoe in the background.

The kids just havin' a ball.

Here is a little video montage of this year's best busts.  My brother Reed loves to go off on "The Chute" and make a jump to practice his sweet moves on.  I had to try and be cool too.  There's no video of my landing, thank goodness, because I crashed into a tree.  (and not a soft one either.)  Luckily, I stopped myself with my hand before my head made contact.  Arthur's fall at the end was pretty good.  He just kept going, and going . . . Anyway, enjoy.

Sledding!

The day after Christmas, we tagged along with Mikey & Amber to go sledding up with some of Amber's family.  They were so gracious to us, and we had such a fun time sledding down the road.  That's right; the road.  When we first got there I saw some kids carrying their sleds back up the road and I thought, wow, that's pretty dangerous.  Come to find out, we would be sledding with those kids a few minutes later.  Sledding on the road definitely has some advantages.  We got a super long ride (and more exercise walking back up when we were done).  And it was nice and smooth, (until a snowplow came along and dumped a bunch of sand on our sled run.)  The dangerous part is, of course, when a car comes, you have to bail and get off to the side of the road. Happily, since it had just snowed, all the cars were going pretty slow, and we had plenty of time to get off.  We were going much faster than any of the cars I saw driving around there.  Anyway,  good times!

Christmas in California

Christmas Eve

Here is our little Nativity Re-enactment.

In case you were wondering, that big black blob is my brother Reed pretending to be the donkey.  

Here he is again hiding for Santa.  

Here's a funny story about this gorilla suit.  He and his roommates at college got these suits and would put them on and run around "the gardens" on campus and scare all the couples who were making out.  Ha!  I would have loved to be there and see the reactions he got.

Here are a few pictures from Christmas morning:

*We all look so glamorous because we wake up at like 5:45 and run out of bed into our hiding spots where we secretly watch Santa deliver the presents.  Once he leaves, the festivities begin, and we all look like we rolled out of bed and started opening presents because that's exactly what happened.

(you might notice I purposefully didn't include any pictures of myself. But in all fairness, I was the one taking the pictures, so how could I be in them? )

Nathan, Dallin & Melanie

Hayden

My sister Julianne & husband Eric

The kids all pitched in and got Dad some scout gear for the National Jamboree next year.  Here he is modeling his very cool official scouting hat.

Here is mom looking at her present.  Since her mother passed away this year, Natalie had the great idea of making an "ABC" scrapbook for Mom about Grandma.  We called it "A is for Alice."  We split up the layouts between any of the sisters who wanted to help, and Jacob and Emma drew beautiful portraits of Grandma that we included also.  It was a very sweet experience for me to help in creating this tribute to Grandma Alice.   I was reminded over and over what a remarkable woman she was and how privileged I am to have such a heritage.  

Merry Christmas Mom!

Getting ready for the Christmas Feasting:

Official Potato Peeler

Preparing the Christmas Feast;

Many hands make light work!

The Christmas feast clean-up got a little crazy this year with a dish towel war.  I can't flick those towels worth a darn!  Jenny is the best flicker of the sisters, but the guys have us all beat.  

But they don't look as good as we do.  Haha!

"Messiah" Performances

So, like everybody else, the holidays got really busy for me, and that's why it's taken me forever to get caught up.  Part of the busy-ness of my holidays were two performances of Handel's Messiah.  

I was involved in the Albuquerque Stake's 2008 production of the Messiah in preparing the choir and also singing one of the solos.  It was such a great experience to sing that wonderful music with other dedicated members of our Stake.  I can't think of a better way to start the Christmas season than with singing praises to our Savior.  It really helped me focus on the reason for this special time of year.

The weekend after the Albuquerque "Messiah" performance, I flew out to California to sing the Soprano solos in the Turlock Stake's "Messiah" Concert.  I was fighting off some kind of cough and was so blessed that it stayed mild through the performance.  Monday morning after the performance it really hit, so I was very grateful that I was able to sing my best on Sunday night.  

Here I am with my Dad in all my diva glory.  

I was walking down the halls of the stake center when a little girl who'd come to hear the performance stopped when she saw me and looked at me with her eyes wide and her mouth open, like I might be a fairy princess.  It totally made my night.  I don't think I've ever worn a dress that poofy before so it was kind of pain every time I stood up to sing.  I got glitter all over the stake patriarch who was narrating.  (That was kind of embarrassing.  But still really fun to wear a fairy princess skirt.)

From Left to Right, Aunt Kathy, Dad, Mom, and me.

Aunt Kathy sang the alto solos, Dad directed it,  and Mom and two of my siblings were in the choir, so it was really cool to have so much family participating.  One of my favorite things was singing a duet with Aunt Kathy on "Come Unto Him."  I wish I had a recording of it!