The reason that there isn't a family portrait on our wall:

Our children are not fans of cooperation.

(We did get a few good pictures, but none of the entire family. Because that's impossible.)

More pictures from our little vacation will be up tomorrow. :)

Families are Forever

A year ago my great grandparents both passed away. How lucky am I, to have had great grandparents well into my twenties? How lucky are my children, to have met their great great grandparents? Pretty lucky. Especially when I consider my husband, who never really knew any of his grandparents. Every time I think about them, these are the thoughts that come to me. They were both wonderful people: Grandma with her books of poetry and her crazy stories, Grandpa with his gruff demeanor and his soft, kind eyes. He was a veteran, a former marine. If you said 'Hey, Grandpa, I love you' you were likely to get a 'Yep' in response... But look at this photograph and tell me that you don't see love there:

And this is the only photograph of Grandma that I have in my possession:


I like to think of her in happier times, before she had grown this weak and frail, when she was still spunky and bright... but this is still a lovely photograph. Ryker, not even a whole day old, and his Great Great Grandmother, just a month away from 85.

Anyway. As I said, they both passed away last spring, only a few weeks apart. And just this weekend their headstone was finally put in place. The family gathered together to see it. We had a picnic at the park, and then drove over to the cemetery.
It was lovely. A dark, beautiful granite. "I chose this one because it's the strongest granite that they had," says my grandfather. You can tell that he's proud of it, glad that there's something beautiful to mark the spot where his parents rest. Though, if I know G.Grandma, she's not really resting. Maybe she's dancing. Or crocheting up a storm. I wonder if you can crochet on the other side?

Kite Festival

We never even got the kite out of the box. The bounce houses were just too much fun.





And, of course, the train.

Easter Sunday

Things that are making me happy today:

-Easter Egg Hunt at Grandma and Grandpa's house (458 eggs to find!):
Ryker really isn't so chubby that he's busting out of his clothes, it only looks that way because of the wicked wind that was blowing out in Leeds.


-Mangoes!:

-Easter Crafts with Anicka:

-A Beautiful Easter bouquet from Adam:

-A Pretty Bowl Full of Fresh Fruit:

- Church in my Pajamas!
(imagine that there's a picture of something General Conference related right here. I'm too lazy to look for one.)
Our Easter weekend was wonderful, not counting the awful coughs that my children came down with unexpectedly. I hope that you all had wonderful weekends, as well.

it's too bad that vacations can't last forever.

I have been having too much fun the last few weeks to worry about blogging. Adam was able to take a week and a half off of work (with pay!) and we enjoyed every minute of it. Well... the one possible exception might be the day that we spent doing a deep clean of the apartment. Adam might not have enjoyed that quite as much as I did.
Christmas this year was fantastic.
Anicka was old enough that she remembered last Christmas and was excited for this one, and Ryker was old enough that he knew what to do with the presents that he was handed. The kids had a great time decorating the tree




Anicka was determined to wrap all of her gifts herself, this year. The only thing I was allowed to do was hand her precut strips of tape, since she still has a bit of trouble working the tape dispenser on her own.

As per tradition, we spent the night at my parent's house in Leeds. And by 'we', I mean 'everyone in the family', which is starting to become quite a feat. It's hard to sleep twelve people in a tiny, three bedroom house. But, as the saying goes, love grows best in little houses; and it's wonderful (and worth it) to have everyone together on Christmas morning.




I forgot to take pictures of most of the gifts that I made, but here are the pajamas that I made for Anicka: And the CD holder that I made for Evie's new car:

I used this tutorial from Puking Pastilles to make the CD holder.

And, lastly, here is Ryker devouring the first of about half a dozen of my mom's awesome cinnamon rolls that he ate over the course of the weekend.
Since there are already half a million pictures in this post, I will end it here and share more tomorrow.

Halloween in December

How sad is it that I'm only now getting around to posting Halloween pictures? Ah, well. life is busy, what else can I say? Anyway. (These pictures are just for you, my dearest Crystal. :D )

Halloween is my favorite. I can go all out on decorations and costumes, I get to try new things and let my creative side run wild... It's awesome. This year I made almost everything for our costumes. Anicka and Ryker were a Princess (Belle) and a dragon, respectively. And Adam and I went as Cleopatra and Marc Antony. My first idea was to go as Dr. Horrible and Penny, but I didn't think many people would know who we were. Anyway. Adam and I made the 'armour' out of cardboard, and I crocheted my wig and made all of the jewelry.

I made Ryker's costume out of a couple of blankets and a scarf from the dollar store. The cape/wings was my favorite part of his costume, but we couldn't get a good photo because this was about the happiest he was all night:


Here is Anicka's princess pose:
Her dress came from this:


Which I found at the D.I.
It was about three sizes too big, and pretty plain, so I spruced it up for her.
And here is a picture of the Three Musketeers, who had fun trick-or-treating together. Sienna is a ballerina and Kaycee is an old woman (complete with sagging bosom, though you can't see it in the picture):They are the cutest little girls on the planet, seriously.
Annnnnd, lastly, a few photos of our Halloween Decorations. There were the hanging bats in the window (can you guess which ones Anicka made?):

the pumpkins that we painted, plus Anicka's scarecrows (which she calls 'co-crays' for some strange reason) and her beloved stick collection:
our paper-bag pumpkins, which sadly looked more like orange pineapples:
and our cute ghost jars, which looked pretty sweet when they were lit up with glowsticks:

Well, folks. that is the end of my very verry verrrry belated Halloween post. Goodnight.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program...

We spent the labor Day weekend up in Kolob, at a cabin with Shane and Dusty. It was one of the best vacations I've ever had. There was no stress, no worries, nothing to trouble us during our four days in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

We spent the days playing shuffleboard, ping pong and pool.





Adam and I were introduced to 'around the world' or 'round robin' ping pong, which is one of the funnest games I have ever played! Unfortunately, we were having too much fun to remember to take pictures of the game.

The kids were so well-behaved the entire time (except for one nearly-sleepless night with Mr. Ryker) and they both had a blast.

We even got some good exercise in, chopping wood. The boys tried to get the chainsaw running, to no avail.

So, we chopped it up the old fashioned way. My back is still a bit sore from swinging that axe!
It looks like Dusty enjoyed it, though...
We decided to take advantage of the beautiful scenery and tried to get some nice pictures of our little family.


Anicka wasn't very interested in cooperating, though. She was too busy dancing around in her underwear, like a heathen. A really cute, wild haired, tiny little heathen.

For some reason, she now refuses to smile normally in pictures. Ah, well. One of these days we'll get a good family portrait taken. Anyway. I wasn't exaggerating about this being one of the most beautiful places on earth. Check out this amazing scenery. This was the view from the deck of the cabin:

I started a painting of that scene while we were there, but wasn't able to finish it. I will post a picture of the finished painting here, if I ever do get a chance to complete it. Here are a few more of my favorite pictures from our weekend. Some of these were taken by me, and some were taken by Adam.