Christmas 2010

Christmas is such a wonderful time of year. It is really sweet and magical. It has been fun with our kids getting older, they understand things and get more excited. We loved reading Christmas stories about our Savior's birth. It is fun to hear their little testimonies and thirst for understanding and knowledge as we study the gospel as a family. Every year we track Santa online through NORAD. We click on the different world cities he has visited throughout the day and learn about the countries. Lily in particular loves that. Christmas Eve we spent with my extended family eating dinner and exchanging gifts. Then we came home to read the Christmas story from Luke. The girls got to open their presents from mom and dad that had their Christmas pjs and pose for a picture. The week before Christmas Lily got obsessed with Pillow Pets. She talked about them all the time. So I found a tutorial online and made her one Christmas Eve day. I was pretty proud of that hippo! I made Cloey a bunny that night so they could each have one and I am going to make Autumn a dog soon. Christmas morning was awesome. The looks on their faces were priceless when they came out to see the gifts Santa had brought. Not to mention the plate that still had crumbs from the cookies and the empty mug of egg nog. We went and stayed with Brian's family for the day and had a lot of fun playing games and spending time with each other. I am bad though and didn't get any pics!! I was just enjoying the time with our family. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Family

We took some pictures after Matt's homecoming talk, no idea what is up with my camera making us all stretchy. For some reason Lily was not wanting any of it, so this time Cloey and Autumn are the smilers! We love our family!

Here Comes Santa Claus...

Our ward Christmas Party is always a blast. Yummy dinner, and great company. There is always great songs, and the crowning exictement for the kids is singing Jingle Bells and then hearing the bells coming into the gym with Santa ringing them! This is the first year none of the girls were scared, even Autumn was great!

Preschool Field Trip!

We love the preschool group we have, some other mom's in our ward and I formed a preschool and hold it twice a week. Once a month we do a field trip. December we went to the Paramedic Dept. where Hunter's dad works. They all had fun buckling up int he seats in the ambulance and seeing all the different things they had in there and the lights! They even got a goody bag with sticker badges, bandaids, and a pencil.

Matt's Home From Georgia!

My brother, Matt, has been on a mission for our church for the last 2 years to Atlanta Georgia. Autumn was born days before he left. It has been fun to write to him and hear how he was doing. The day he flew in to return home Brian had school at BSU until 3 and Mat was flying in at 4:50 so we hit the Discovery Center for some scientific fun! It was fun to see the different things that intersted them. The biggest hit was the grocery store just their size. After that we went to the airport for a great reunion with Matt! So glad he is home!

Cheesers!

Autumn just loves her Nanny, I loved this picture, so them!!!! Look at those cuties!

Snow Day!!

Lily's first year in school and she gets a snow day! Brian stayed home for the morning to play in the snow with the girls. Not mention Rhino was having a blast in the deep snow! Autumn hated the sled, the other girls love it, she just screams! So she stayed next to me while I took pictures.

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we spent with Brian's family, everyone was here! It was so fun, we had a girls night, went to the temple, had delicious meals, and went to Harry Potter 7! I love family, but I am terrible, I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked! Not much at all! Here are 2 pictures from the first night we hung out, all the little cousins eating yummy ice cream....and then Silly Uncle Justin, that was what we all heard most from the girls, Silly Uncle Justin, they thought it was hilarious to shout that at him at dinner time! I love family! I love this wonderful time of year!!

Crazy Posting!!!

So I played catch up with a lot of posting. If it kind of looks interesting it is probably because I used picasa to upload the pictures and you can only do so many at a time but it is a lot fast to do than the normal blogger way. I hope you will read and enjoy seeing all that we have been up to since August! I think I am in a good place now where I will try to keep up with my blog, it is my family journal and I love hearing from those we love through it too!

Skyler's Memorial

Every 2-3 months St Lukes does a Memorial Blessing for the babies who have been lost in pregnancy, and birth before 26 weeks. Skyler's was on Nov. 17th at the Dry Creek Cemetery, 5 minutes from where we live. I had mixed feeling leading up to this. I was really emotional, I already get emotional randomly about missing him, but it seemed to happen more as the days got closer to the service. I didn't know what to expect or anything but I am so glad they do this for the families, and for our precious angels. It was nice of them to also have placed a marker where they buried our babies, so we know where he is. They will move it in January for the next angels who need a resting place. I bought 12 white/blue/ivory balloons for ust let fly into the sky, one for each week his tiny little heart beat, it happened that I had enough balloons to hang a letter from his first and last name. So I attatched cute little sail boats with each letter. I brought some flowers and a teddy bear to leave at the memorial stone too. I was so comforted to have some family and my friend there to support us and to recognize my son. The chaplain said a prayer for the babies and the families, there was only one other family who came for their baby who was a boy as well. It was hard to see that the pain I have and continue to feel on their faces too. Everytime hear that someone else has gone through this, which as been more than I ever would have thought, I just feel so terrible for them. I know how hard this has been and still is and my heart goes out to them. I love my son, my little Skyler he has touched my live more than I ever would have dreamed. I love him and know I will see him again one day. I had the honor of carrying him for 16 weeks, and I know my Heavenly Fathe is mindful of me, my family, and my little boy. I have felt so incredibly blessed becasue of this trial in my life, and although I would changed it in a heartbeat, to have him here experience life with us, I know he is where he needs to be right now and I know he is a special Child of God.

My mom and Jesse braving the very cold windy weather! Love you!

Mom, Sarah, Gary, Grandma Sparks, Brian, and Lily.

Grandpa Keeley, Autumn, and Cloey. So glad he came!

Our entire eternal family!

Portraits!

So we decided not to do school pictures, they can be pricey, and we took our own pictures of the girls. Walgreens had offerd 50% of pictures, so I got 3 super family packages and paid less for more picture of each girl than paying for one small package of just Lily at school. I'll take it! My sister Sarah and I took the girls to Merrill Park in Eagle and walked back behind it to the Green Belt and got some great pictures! Of Lily and Cloey anyway. Autumn was so not interested! Cloey loved posing, such a portrait queen! Here are the pictures I loved the most!

Happy 2nd Birthday Autumn!!!

This little sweetie got 3 birthdays!! I made her Dora Backpack cake for the 10th of November, which was her birthday. She loves Dora and loves to shout "backpack", so I thought it turned out pretty neat. We did a party with my side of the family, and we had to teach Autumn how to blow out the candles, she kept trying to touch the flames, the little pyro! She has so much family who love her and care for her, what a lucky little girl! We did a party for her at Brian's parent's house last night. Abbie, her cousin from California, is in town with her family for thanksgiving and so we wanted to get together while they were in town. Uncle Justin gave us a little talk about his 2 year mission to the Marshall Islands, they sat on his woven mats and got to see awesome jewelry and cool conch shells. It was really neat to hear about his mission, even with 5 wiggly little girls under the age of 5!