Family Pictures

In November we had some family pictures taken by a girl in our stake who was raising money to adopt a baby from Ghana. She did a great job and we had a really good time. Check out her blog at http://brittanythephotographer.blogspot.com/

December Stuff

December has been a busy month. Early in the month Brigham turned 5! And then we were heavy into Christmas.
Brigham's Snowman cupcakes
Briggs and his new Wii game.






Christmas Eve Dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Tolman's.

Siri's first Christmas.

Christmas morning.

Kaise's Baptism

The day after Thanksgiving we were able to baptize Kaise and were blessed to have almost all of her family from both sides there with us. It was a special day and one we know she will remember forever. We are so grateful to everyone for being there to support Kaise. We are especially grateful to have Kaise in our family and for the good decisions she is making. We love you Kaise.

Thanksgiving Trip

It has taken me whole week to post pictures from our trip to Omaha and Des Moines because it has taken us all about that long to recover from the whirlwind of travel. We spent a few days with Kris and Tiffany and their family in Des Moines. The kids had fun at the park and swimming and playing together. Then we drove to Omaha the day before Thanksgiving to visit with Grandma and Grandpa McLane on their mission in
Winter Quarters. We had a
great Thanksgiving with almost all of
the McLane cousins. We saw some of
the historical sights around
Winter Quarters and the yearly
Christmas gingerbread exhibit which
was pretty impressive. We were especially
glad to spend time with so many of our family.

Kaise Turns Eight

It is hard to believe that Kaise is already 8! We were a little shocked to find out how much she has grown this year when we measured her on her birthday. She has grown over 4 inches this year and is almost 4' 7" ! I took a picture of her growth chart so you can see how much she's grown. I guess that is why she is the tallest kid in her class, but I'm not sure where she is getting that from. She had a small party with some friends and they had lots of fun doing crafts and playing. I also found out why I am not a professional cake maker. I had some instructions for making this cute purse cake and thought I would give it a shot. The cake in the picture is actually cake #2. Cake #1 ended up getting dumped because it was originally supposed to be made standing up which I tried, but it fell over and broke and was a huge gooey mess which is why cake #2 is not standing up. Oh well. I guess I learned my lesson and our poor kids will go back to getting plain boxed cake mixes with nothing but candles.
We are anxiously looking forward to Thanksgiving with Grandma and Grandpa McLane and cousins in Omaha and having so much family there for Kaise's baptism.

Five Months

We can't believe Siri is already five months old. She is growing up really fast. We think she is pretty cute.

Big Cottonwood

One of the great things about living in
Salt Lake is that we can be up one of several canyons in minutes. Last weekend we took the kids for a hike up Big Cottonwood Canyon since it is probably the last weekend before it will be covered in snow. In fact if we had driven about five minutes more to Brighton we could have played in the snow. It worked out great because Kaise had been studying about where utilites (water, electricity, etc.) come from that week as part of social studies at school and Big Cottonwood is our drinking water source. So it was fun for her to see where the water comes from and we even drove by the water treatment facility.

New Pics of the kids

Its that time again.
Time for family pictures.
We have been spending a lot of time
lately at the Salt Lake City Library.
It is a really amazing building.
The architecture is awesome and the facility is great.
The kids section has themed reading rooms;
one is a replica of the crystal cave in the Superman
movie and one is a replica of an attic
with lots of little reading nooks.

Anyway, outside there are lots of cool gardens and places so we took the kids there for family pictures this time.
Unfortunately,
Kaise wasn't feeling great that day (we found out later she had strep) so hers didn't turn out and we ended up taking some of her at the sheep dog trial the next week, which is why her picture doesn't really match.

International Sheep Dog Trials

Labor Day weekend there

was an international

sheep herding trial at

Soldier Hollow which is where

the cross-country ski and

biathalon events were held for the

Olympics. It was a really

pretty place. The kids were not as

entertained by the herding as

we were, but they were thrilled

with the Splash Dog

competition which is the

dock jumping competitions you see

on ESPN sometimes.

They got to stand right by the

pool and watch. Lots of

the dogs were jumping over

twenty feet! It was pretty impressive

and the kids got just

wet enough to cool down.

We didn't get very many pictures of

the herding because they cover

so much terrain that dogs and sheep were just

little black dots in the

distance a lot of the time.