GOOOOOAL!!!!!!!!!!!

B and cousin Z's soccer season started last week. Their team is proudly named "The Stingers." Unfortunately, I had to miss their first game because I was hosting a baby shower at the time. From what I hear, that game was pretty decisive in the loss column, but it really didn't seem to bother the boys. B just had a great time playing and isn't what it is all for, anyway? This last week, the whole family was there cheering them on, and while this game also ended up in the loss column, they played pretty great and there were some definite highlights. For starters, their team only lost by 1 or 2 goals. For another, their team scored, and for the biggest highlight of all, Brandon scored the first goal! As soon as he scored, he and Z started giving each other body slams. We were laughing pretty good and how cute and excited they were. Z came awfully close to his own goals, but they didn't quite go in. He was quite the defensive player though, as he said, "I protected the goal better than anyone else." They both played really well and were lots of fun to watch.

Here they are in all the flourescent glory.

Here they are during their "body slam" session. Too bad I couldn't get the timing right with the picture...

In action. B is #2 with his back to us, and Z is facing us in the act of kicking the ball.

Great Neighbors!

Most of y0u who know me have heard me go on and on about how wonderful my neighborhood is. We absolutely love it here. There are so many great families and lots of kids around for my kids to play with. We have been truly blessed to live here and have the friends we have. Last year, one of our favorite families moved and we have been so sad every since they did. Their kids are all the same ages as mine and consequently, my kids best friends. Their oldest son is 1 1/2 week older than D Their next is a daughter who is 3 months older than the twins, then a son who is a year and a half younger than them. With the last 2 girls, we told each other we were pregnant at the same time. She would say, "I think I'm pregnant," and I'd say, "Wow! So do I!" With KL, I was so sure she was going to be a boy, but when my dear friend Debbie found out she was having a girl, I said,"Hmmm...maybe it will be a girl after all..." Of course, she was and I tried to tell Debbie that was a sign that she was suppose to stay and not move. She didn't listen to me. Thankfully, they do come back and see us though. They were here last weekend and stayed with us. We had a lot of fun. We went out to our neighborhood park for picnic on Friday night. Because our neighborhood is so social, if one person goes out, it doesn't take long before there is a big party going on because everyone else comes out as well. Here are some pictures from our fun Friday night.

Anna, Lani B. Savanna (the one who left us...) and L

The boys playing football (or maybe tag at this point) in the dark. B is in the front with his back to us.

CK and KL going down the slide. This is KL's new favorite thing.

Debbie, Tara (another awesome neighbor) and me

The kids were pretty wiped out when we got home. We let CK and Kiera lay down on my bed to watch a movie. It didn't take long for this to happen.

Crafts 08

Yesterday, we decided to have some fun with crafts. We got a hold of some old cabinet doors and I have a great neighbor who has some fun stencils, so we decided to get a jump on some Christmas Crafts. I set up a couple of tables and we just spread out and went to town. It was fun and I always love anything that makes me think of Christmas. Her is a pic of my sister hard at work. This was after it had died down quite a bit. It was pretty hopping for a while there!

Here are some of the things I did. I used the cabinet doors, then used scrapbook paper over the inside panels and stenciled over that. I just love the look it gives. The Silver Blades one had a raised panel, so I just stenciled right on the panel. I love the way that one turned out too. So if you ever come across old cabinet doors... grab them! They make for fun art projects!

Andria's Baby Shower

Last Saturday, we celebrated forth coming arrivial of baby Max! We decided to do this by throwing a shower for his mom, Andria. (She is Dave's cousin who has lived here about 2 years now and has been gracious enough to always come and hang out with us. We quite love her!) Andria and Jared have one other little boy, but I hadn't met her before she had him, so I had to jump on this opportunity to throw a shower for her! Here is the sweet mommy...

We played a really fun game courtesty of Beth. She had a present and had it wrapped in several layers of paper. We took times opening 1 layer at a time and each new layer had some directions. This is a picture of my sister Mary who is due about 2 weeks after Andria. Her direction said that she had to preform a dance for everyone.Here are the 2 preg-o's having a sock matching/folding contest.

One of the things said to have a grandma drink a sippy-cup of juice in less than a minute. Here is my mom doing the duty. I think the glasses really do a great job to emphasize the whole "grandma" thing! Love you, mom!

Beth falling victim to her own game...she had to suck a pacifier for 30 seconds.

Cute little baby!

KL obviously loves her dinner! We had tortellini last night for dinner. She was having so much fun eating and playing, so we just had to get some video! As you will see, she has really gotten into making herself giggle. (I'm not quite sure what is up with the tongue!)




She has also learned how to be so reverent during the prayer. Usually, she when it is time for prayer, she will run over and kneel down with everyone else (sometimes, she does try to pull the one-knee kneel like daddy). She is also learning a couple of signs. Anyway, we really have fun with her!

Beautiful Ballerina

CK takes dance class with her little friend. She loves it. Whenever we play card games together and I say I'm going to shuffle the cards, she gets quite perplexed. Finally, she said, "Mom! That's not how you shuffle. This is how you shuffle." She then took the cards and brushed them up against the floor just like she would do with her foot when doing "shuffle, kick" in tap! Here are just some little pictures of the two little ladies before heading over to class.

Here CK said she wanted to dance like Mom and Dad

Just another little funny about her... We, unfortunately, are sometimes plagued with cockroaches. My sister absolutely loathes them. They are to her what snakes are to me, and CK spends a lot of time at her house. One day she looked at me and said, "Mom, when we see a cockwoach, we scweam and wun."

"We are suppose to scream, huh?"

"And wun.," she added solemnly while nodding. What a cute little stinker!

Like Father Like Son

I had my little sister send me some pictures of her darling little family so I could work on a family calendar page (which I still haven't done, because this just seemed more pressing). I was looking at them and just had the hardest time picking out just one picture of her sweet little boys to use! The oldest, T is just 6 weeks older then KL (so that puts him at almost 18 mos) and sweet little baby G was born at the end of July. I actually had the amazing experience of being in the delivery room with him when he was born! Very cool! Anyway, they are so cute, so I just had to post both the pictures here.



This is a video that my sister took with phone so it isn't the best quality, but still! Dang! He's cute! His dad is the one who plays for the Broncos and he is clearly learning to follow in his daddy's footsteps!

Here are the authors of these little dolls:

Ode to the Dishwasher

Now, to some of you, this may seem like a very strange thing to blog about, but I have to express my gratitude! Last spring, Dave and I redid some of the things in our kitchen. Among those changes, were our appliance. Our old dishwasher had some issues and since we needed to replace that, I decided we should have them all match our stainless fridge that we had bought a couple of years ago. After shopping around and looking into different features in the various appliances I wanted, I made my selections. A microwave with cooking sensors first. Then, I decided that I wanted a double oven. I knew from the beginning I would love it, and I have! I love having the small top oven. It heats up quickly, it is more energy efficient, I can cook 2 different things at once, etc. It's great. There have been no surprises there.

However, I can't say the same about my dishwasher. At first, I very few ideas of what I would want in a new dishwasher. It didn't take me too long to decide that I really wanted something that had the controls on the top. I can't say how many times I had to restart the dishwasher from the beginning because one or more of the kids came by and played around with the dial during the middle of a wash cycle. I could never be sure if the dishes had be fully cleaned or just been rinsed. So, controls on the top soon became a must.

(I just looked at this picture.

I guess I should have cleaned it before taking the picture, but oh well!)

I soon found that the dishwashers that have the controls on the top come with some other seemingly insignificant little features. Admittedly, as they were explained to me, I thought they sounded nice, but not things were anything close to deal breakers for me. Over these last months, those once insignificant features have come to far out weigh the once all-important "control panel on top" feature (which is still huge to be by they way). My lovely baby is able to adjust in so many different configurations to allow for thousands of dishes to fit inside. (OK, maybe not thousands, but certainly way more than your average dishwasher). The prongs in here can go up and down to fit big dishes, the top shelf rises and lowers allowing for full-size plates to fit on the top rack; all sorts of small attachments can fit in and move around to hold sippy cup lids, flatware, etc. Again, I recoginze that this is a crazy thing to blog about, but I am loving it. This weekend, we had some great friends come to stay with us. They have 5 kids like us. So, we had 10 kids here. Last night, Dave and I were watching all the kids. I went to load the dishwasher after dinner only to find that I hadn't started it after a baby shower from that afternoon! I had 2 large punch bowls in there as well as other misc. dishes. Drat! Now I am going to have to wash all the dishes by hand! Not so! Here we are with the 2 punch bowls, plates, cups, silverware, tupperware containers, and whatever else the kids messed up over the course of the afternoon. So, I had to pay tribute to this beauty. Like I said before, I knew I would love my new oven, but this dishwasher has been such a treat for me, that I just had to express my gratitude and love for all the hard working inventors at GE. Thanks! (Also, this baby is so quiet! When I first got it, I would call people and hold the phone up to it so they could hear--or not hear!-- just how quiet it is!)

Here we go!

I have been semi-sucessful at downloading all my pictures over the last couple of days, hence I haven't posted anything in 2 whole days! But now, I have a ton of pictures to put up. These aren't in chronological order. Mostly, just in the order that I found the pictures today!

June 08: Enjoying lunch out on the porch swing at the family cabin.
CK, B, D, L

5-26-08: KL's first birthday! We celebrated a couple of days after her birthday because she adn I were out of town on her birthday for a friend's wedding.



11-06: While my brother in law was playing football at UofA, we use to get season tickets. The kids just loved going down the games and idolizing their amazing uncle! Here is one night after a game we were at.

L, B, D and Dave

4-07: This is as the spring scrimage: Josh, Scottie, D, B, Spencer, Tyton, Annie, With Wilber, the school mascot! Josh, B, D, Scottie

Halloween 06: We went all UofA! All the boys were not only UofA football players, but Spencer Larsen players! This was again a problem with all the pro ASU people around here. At one point D came up to me with tears in his eyes and said, "Mom, everyone keeps saying UofA stinks!" The adults included! This is where I decided it was ok for my kids to learn to trash talk!

B, D, J

Yes, as scary as it is, that is me in the middle! I was the superfan.

B, L, Cheryl, CK, D

5 mo. old KL. Pretty cute...

5-08: D getting his bear award at cub scouts with Mom and Dad

11-07: When Grandma Shirley and Grandpa Allan came to visit:
D, Grandma, KL, CK, Grandpa Allan, B, and L

Grandma and KL

Of all the Haloween's with my kids, this has to be one of my favorite cosutmes. CK was Wonder Woman. She did this so she could match with my nephew's costume...

The Flash! And boy can he run when he is in this costume too! Aren't they cute little superheros?

L was obviously Cinderella. Isn't she lovely? Unfortunately, I never got around to getting the boy's pictures taken. Of course, it is no surprise that they were UofA football players. This year, we are thinking of branching out a little bit for them. They are thinking of being Bronco football players!

B&L's bday party! we were suppose to play kick ball at the park, but as soon as started, the sprinklers came on. Oh well. They had fun anyway.

B & cousin Z

Nov. 07: L with cousin A at her first dance recital

Fall 07: L, crazy hair day at school

March 07: We took the kids to Sea World. Since I was 7 months pregnant at the time and CK was too little to go on any rides, she and I spent a lot time looking the animals by ourselves. She especially just loved these polar bears.

Spring 07: Can't remember the exact reason for this one. I imagine it was for some "nerd" day at school.

January, 2007... This is something that you NEVER see down here. This was taken at my sister's house. In all my life living here, I have never seen snow stick to the ground. It was fun, so I let D (age 9 here) miss the school for the morning so we could go and "play" in the snow. Here he is collecting snow to go and show is class.

L (6)

Me, CK(3): Overlooking the white golf course

B(6)

B, L, D, CK with the snowman