Molli's Wedding

 Such a special day for these two.

The day was made even sweeter for me as Jeff and I were invited to attend her sealing, which took place in the same room as our own marriage.  A room I hadn't been back to since my own wedding day, now a treasured place where we both began our happily ever afters.

When she announced her engagement to me…one night at about 2:00 in the morning…I knew instantly what I wanted to do for a present for her.  But it took me forever to come up with a pattern that suited her personality. Case in point:

About a week and a half before her wedding I figured it out and made her this quilt. The pattern's name is Wild Thing.  I think it fits her perfectly.

These two girls were my best friends in high school. I love them both dearly and it was so good to spend the day together (well, actually mostly with Cressa as Molli was a *little* bit busy). I am excited that Molli has moved back to Idaho (her husband will be attending BYU-I) so she, Cressa, and I can resume our Girl Night Outs when I come up, which usually consist of the three of us going out to eat and staying up way too late laughing. I am so happy that we are all in the same place in life now.

Also, when we saw all the chocolate and caramel syrup set out at her luncheon, it may have been quite hard to resist paying her back for what she (and Cressa, Ryan, Maria, Jason…just to name a few) did to my car at our wedding. But I restrained Jeff, as I figured it might be worse to try to get frozen syrup off of a car as opposed to melting syrup.  Either way, Jeff still gets mad when he sees these pictures. Seriously, syrup and toilet paper?

Christmas 2013

The night before Christmas…

Chicken noodle soup for dinner, Christmas jammies, Daddy reading us the Nativity while we watch the  Nativity movie, then watching The Polar Express, and setting out freshly baked cookies for Santa.

Christmas Morning…

Carson and Jonas out of their beds at 1:30 in the morning, barely (we're talking like by one minute!) missing Santa Claus…he may have woken them up!

Two little boys who just couldn't go back to sleep after they saw what Santa brought.

One little boy up at 6:30 ready to open his presents.

One little boy who got the tender to his Lionel Polar Express train and lots of Darth Vader stuff!

Two little boys who got a much desired Lego set from Grandma Larsen.

The bigger one got his Christmas dream of a Star Wars AT-TE Lego after Santa found a killer deal on it for $30 off.











The other boy getting his "toy Millennium Falcon"…also a very good deal for Santa at $17 off.

Santa was one frugal shopper this year!

One baby who wasn't sure if he wanted to get up, and who was wearing oversized jammies due to his jammies packet being labeled one size and the actual jammies being another size…he'll grow in to them, right?

One husband who is in serious need of de-hairing.  Good thing Santa put a razor in his stocking. Also, he was spoiled with a very expensive train engine for his model railroad thanks to his awesome wife and step-dad.

 One little toddler who found out his toy came with a sippy cup holder (aka helicopter pad).

Christmas Afternoon…

Four boys working on Legos.

One little boy who was so proud of building this Lego mostly on his own.

Christmas Evening…

Second round of present opening with the in-laws at our house. 

Turkey and ham dinner and stuffed bellies.

One full house. Five bags of garbage. Totally worth it.

That Time of Year

It seems like we only do our family pictures once a year and for the most part that happens in the fall so  I can use them on Christmas cards. This year, my friend Alisha took our family pictures when we were in Idaho for my mom's birthday in November. It turned out to be quite beautiful with freshly fallen snow. 

This year I designed my own Christmas card.  Normally I just go to a place like Shutterfly and drop our pictures into one of their templates, however, this year I just couldn't find a card that I liked.  I tried several different websites and nothing was working. So I decided to do it on my own. Then I had our cards printed out on pearlized card stock from the company that Alisha uses to do her pictures and they turned out fabulous.  They are probably the nicest cards we've sent out and their quality really blew Shutterfly out of the water.

Here are the rest of our family pictures.

This picture makes it quite obvious that Carson is our random older child.  I love that kid.

I never imagined that I would one day be the mother to a bunch of boys.  But these little men have my heart and I can't imagine life without all of the rough and tumble. The Lord knew I needed these guys.

Thanks Alisha for the beautiful pictures!

 I know that this blog has been really sparse lately.  I keep thinking that I am going to get back to the glory days where I blogged all the time, but the reality is that it probably won't happen. Instagram really has kind of replaced blogging for me as a way to document our family's day to day life. I can instantly publish what happens and not have to worry about making the time to come back later to try to retell it.  That being said, I still love this blog as a way for me to more fully document important events for us. My goal is by the end of the year to go back and do a month by month recap of all those important things I haven't made the time to blog about.

Baptism

 In September our little man was baptized. So much preparation and planning went into this day.  At the beginning of the year, Jeff challenged Carson to read the Book of Mormon before his baptism and Carson had read quite a bit of it before his big day. We also challenged Carson to pray about his decision to be baptized. One day he told us that he had prayed about it and felt the Holy Ghost telling him that it was the right decision.

When we were in Rexburg for TyLee's baptism, Alisha took some pictures of Carson up at the Rexburg Temple.  Then I designed an announcement to send out to our family.

Finally the big day arrived and this mommy tried to get in a quick photo shoot before we headed to the church. Unfortunately all of our photos ended up looking something like this..

 The program was simple and sweet.  Carson was baptized with four other boys from our ward. It was such an amazing experience to see my husband take my son down into the water and baptize him.

 Afterwards everyone came back to our house for Cafe Rio Pork Salads. I love being surrounded by family and friends and was so thankful that everyone came to support our little man.

Eight is Great

Back in July, this handsome boy turned 8.

We spent the day at Black Ridge Reservoir in Herriman with our good friends the Snedakers.  The boys had an absolute blast playing on the sandy beaches and in the warm water.  We will definitely be going back there next summer.

For his birthday, Carson had really wanted a dog.  My boys have wanted a dog for the longest time but we have always told them no because our backyard isn't fenced.  Jeff had challenged our boys to keep their Legos cleaned up for 2 weeks(a really big challenge because with four little boys we ALWAYS have Legos on the floor somewhere!) and he told them that if they did, he would consider getting a dog. Well, our boys sure wanted a dog and they were very diligent about keeping their Legos cleaned up. After considering a lot of options, we decided we wanted to go with a medium to large sized dog because we felt it would be more "durable" with four little boys. Carson kept praying really hard that Heavenly Father would send him a doggie that would be perfect for our family.  One day about a week before Carson's birthday I decided that we'd better get looking for a dog and decided to set up an appointment with some people who were selling a dog online.  I also told the boys that we would be going to the shelter to look.  I told them we were NOT going to get a dog that day, but that we needed to start looking around so we could decide what we wanted.

We went to the shelter first, and after a quick walk through, Carson picked out a few big dogs that he wanted to look at more closely in the "getting to know you" rooms.  As we walked through the small dog area, I noticed a cute little terrier that looked very friendly and was the only dog not yapping at us. After being told that one of the big dogs Carson wanted to look at was not recommended for kids and the other one had been returned to the shelter for destroying property, I suggested looking at the little terrier. My boys instantly fell in love with this sweet little dog.  I reminded them that we weren't getting a dog that day, and we were just looking.  I asked the shelter worker if they could hold the dog for us until Saturday and she said that they don't hold dogs.  She also said that the terriers are usually adopted in a few days.  We had to leave the shelter to go meet our appointment with the dog that was being sold online.

We drove to our appointment and met up with Jeff to see a 6 month old Boxer mix.  Jeff had a Boxer dog when we were dating and he loves those kinds of dogs.  Carson, again fell in love with the dog (I think he'd love any dog!) but Mason and Jonas were scared of the bigger dog and didn't like that she jumped so much. In fact, Jonas wouldn't even get out of the van to go see the dog. We told the man we'd have to think about getting the dog.  Since Jeff was now off work, we drove back to the shelter to show him the little terrier and to look at the other dogs again.  As we walked through the shelter, Jeff and the boys picked out another big dog, a Walker Hound, to look at it.  It seemed nice enough, just high energy, and it frightened Mason and Jonas.  We looked at the terrier again and the boys were in love. The shelter was running a special for July and all dogs were $17.76 and they came neutered, with a rabies shot, microchip, voucher for a free vet visit, and a bag of food.  This made it very easy for us to choose the little terrier! He is the absolute sweetest little dog and we love him so much.  After trying out several different names on him, we finally settled on Oliver.

Carson loves his little dog and his favorite thing is to have Oliver come hop on his bed at night and sleep with him.

Lost Tooth

About mid-June my little Jonas man lost his first tooth! He had been working on his wiggly tooth for quite a while and he finally let Jeff pull it.

He was so excited for the Toothfairy to come, and was a very disappointed little boy when he woke up the next morning and had nothing.  There was a miscommunication between Mr. and Mrs. Toothfairy, with each thinking that the other was going to leave Jonas a surprise.  He sure was a happy guy the next day when he found a nice letter about how the Toothfairy had gotten lost in the storm (it was rainy that night) and she wasn't able to make it.

About two weeks ago he lost his second bottom tooth. It was very loose, and just barely hanging on, but he refused to let Jeff pull it.  One day it just happened to fall out and he has no idea when or where it happened! In fact I was the one to ask him where his tooth had gone, and then he realized it was out.  I'm guessing it happened when he was sleeping, although we never were able to find it in his bed.

29

Shopping at City Creek

To start off, I have to say that I have an amazing husband. Seriously.  In June I turned 29, and he made it the best birthday ever for me. For the longest time I'd told him that my 19th birthday had been my favorite. Clear back in '03 when we were dating, he'd surprised me by coming to my parent's house (I was home on summer break from college) and decorated my bedroom while I was out on a morning walk with a friend.  He had made me a bedside table (that is still in our room today, ironically, on his side of the bed) and then he took me to Downata Hot Springs for the day. It had always been my favorite birthday, until this year.

This year my birthday was on a Monday, and Sunday night I was kind of dreading that he had to go to work. I told him that I would probably take the kids to Thanksgiving Point or swimming for the day so we could do something fun for my birthday. He told me that would be a good way to spend the day and then when he got home he'd make me dinner and we'd have family over for a little party.  The next morning my alarm went off at 7:00 (when Jeff is supposed to start work) and when I went to roll over to shut it off, I noticed Jeff's arm was still around me.  I immediately panicked and yelled at him that he had slept in and was late for work. He shouted, "Surprise! I took the day off!" but in my groggy state I was still a little confused and asked, "You mean you don't have to go to work?" He then got up, made me breakfast in bed, and took care of the kids so I could have a relaxing morning getting ready.  Then we headed into Salt Lake so I could go shopping for a birthday present.

I was on the hunt for new bedding as ours was getting quite old.  We first stopped in to Target to look around, and I found a beautiful pin tuck comforter, but I'd had my heart set on a pin tuck comforter from West Elm, so I passed it up.  Jeff bought me two shirts and then we headed off to grab some lunch at Cafe Rio.

Umm, Pork Barbacoa Salad for my birthday lunch?? Perfect!

After lunch we headed to my SIL's house to drop our kids off for a few hours. We went over to City Creek so I could hit up West Elm and drool over all their cute stuff.

I seriously love West Elm.

  In the end, I decided to go with the Target bedding since its price point also allowed me to get new sheets. An awful picture of the bedding, but you get the idea.  Next up on the list is a new bed, or headboard...Christmas maybe?

After a full day of shopping and feeling spoiled, we came home and Jeff cooked me the most delicious ribs for dinner. I love that man.

 Then his family came over for cake and ice cream and my SIL made these super cute cupcakes.

Jonas and Mason snuggling in the new bedding with me.  Love these guys a "million-gillion".

For my birthday I had also gotten money from several people and I saved it up to fund our board and batten project. You can read about it on my other blog here. Overall, it was a spectacular day and I am so thankful for my wonderful husband and little boys who made it so great.