Birthday Celebrations.....

Carlie had a few friends over to celebrate!! They had pizza, made a craft, decorated sugar cookies and made ice cream sundaes!! It isn't always the worst thing to have a birthday around the holidays:)

I can't believe all of these girls are going to be turning "9"!!

This year because of our lack of space we celebrated with both sides of our family seperately!! It's a lot more work for me but Carlie loved it since it meant more parties for her:)

I found this circus cake idea in a Taste of Home magazine. Just an FYI, don't put the cotton candy on the top until it is time or it will end up looking like this (the moisture from the frosting made it shrivel up):) It still turned out really cute though and no one seemed to mind!!

Uncle Matt flew here from Arizona just to celebrate Carlie's birthday!!

This week was the party with Lance's side of the family

I found this "Willy Wonka" cake idea on the internet. Carlie had to make a sign that said it was her cake, not a bowl of candy because everyone who walked past wanted to take a handful of M&M's!!

Carlie has wanted a REAL American Girl doll forever!! She has had this specific doll picked out for a while now! We surprised her with the doll at the party tonight, she was so excited!! She had a printout of this doll in her room labeled "Carlie's dream doll"!!!

Drive Up Service......

Why wait in all those long lines to see Santa when he will come to you!!:)

Temple Square Christmas lights

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Happy Birthday to a wonderful Husband and Father!!

The kids made birthday cards and when Lance opened them Cayden had put $1 and a penny of his own money inside:) He is such a sweet boy!!

Jr. Jazz

We just had our first clinic for Jr. Jazz Basketball!! Cayden has never played basketball before so we thought we would try it (plus he really, really, really needs to get some energy out while we are living in our tiny apartment)!!!:)

Learning to pass the ball

This volunteer was helping Cayden learn to block

Cayden is excited he gets to play on the same team with his friend Brody!! If the Jazz decide to ever play again they may even get to go to a real game:)

Another use for leftover Thanksgiving Pie.....

Lance better watch out!! When he is least expecting it, we will get him back:)

Snow Day!

Carlie and Cayden love the snow so they couldn't wait until they could put on all of their snow clothes and go play in it! It is just the first of the many snow days to come!!

Halloween 2011

Lance had his work party at a bowling alley, the kids thought it was great!

We went to Gardner Village to do the yearly Witch scavenger hunt

Carved pumpkins on Halloween Eve:)

This year Carlie was a Cat and Cayden was a skeleton (only made a couple kids cry before I convinced him to remove the mask)!!

Pumpkin Patch

We went on our yearly trip to the pumpkin patch!! One way to speed things up is to go when it is almost dark!! The kids didn't have much time so the race was on to find that perfect pumpkin:) Usually Cayden is really quick but this year I think he picked about 5 different ones until he found "the one"!!

Cayden insisted we have a wheel barrow since everyone else had one!!

We always tell the kids they have to pick a pumpkin THEY can pick up:)

Farm Gate

Moving is never fun and we should be experts by now, but it is always still a huge ordeal!! Trying to decide what you are going to need for a few months since you can't take everything is difficult. In the end it always works out and you figure out what to do with everything one way or another:) This is our temporary home for the next 4 months until our new home is built.

Before

I was ready to cry it looked so impossible to find a place for all of this!! We only brought basic stuff and it still looked like (was) a disaster!!

After

Omaha Street

To make a really long story short, we sold our home on Omaha St. in Riverton after 3 years of trying to sell off and on and the past 2 months of living out of boxes and sleeping on the floor!!! This means the past 3 years I have had to have my house "perfect" and clean ALL the time (which is not easy, especially with 2 little kids)!! We had lived in this home for the past 5 years (the longest we had lived anywhere) and it was the only home Cayden has known, so it was bittersweet. We have loved the neighborhood and the friendships we have made!! It was time though to move on, especially since Carlie got into a Charter School 2 years ago and now both kids go there. The driving back and forth was getting old. So now we are living temporarily in an apartment (Cayden refers to it as the "hotel", I think he is a little confused since he has never done this before) while we build our FINAL (and I really mean it) home in Bluffdale!! This will be the fourth home we have built in almost 12 years and too many moves to count:) We are grateful for all the friendships we have made over the last 5 years and hope we can continue to keep in touch!!

Carlie's first Utah game!!

Carlie has been begging to go to a football game so today was the day!! She loved getting to go with her dad and even made it through the entire game despite the cold weather:)